Strangled

Little Red slashed through each clone easily, with proximity directing her attacks.

As soon as a wolf entered her arm's range, it was either met with steel or fist.

No thoughts, only action.

With a snarl, Little Red's figure blurred with speed.

Fingers, head, legs, arms... Everything on the woman's body was transformed into a whirling weapon, viciously tearing past each of the Wolf's clones.

At first glance, she appeared to be overpowering the wolves through sheer force.

But as Asher looked on, he could tell that her efforts would not be enough. At best she could hit three, maybe four clones at any given point of time, but the Wolf could easily switch to another body before she could ever successfully land a hit on the main body.

And soon enough, the inevitable occurred. Overwhelmed by the sheer number of targets, Little Red found herself surrounded, with over a dozen clones millimeters away from her body.

Asher's mind buzzed with concentration.

He tuned the effects of 'Last Chance' to their limits, and time began to crawl, agonizingly slow.

Inch by inch, Asher's joints cracked as he pulled himself forward.

The air was the consistency of jelly; time had slowed to a hundredth of what it was before.

Still, Asher's inhuman flexibility, paired with his newfound strength, allowed him to move rather easily.

Compared to the pair of Abnormalities in front of him, Asher seemed to walk at a pace that was only considered a sluggish, average speed.

But considering that time had slowed down by one hundred... Asher suspected that he was well past the sound barrier.

Asher pulled his arm back, using his joints and tendons to fill his right arm with an unbearable tension, enough to break an ordinary human's arm in a thousand different places.

With a sharp exhale, he flung his knife, aiming straight to one of the wolves that was prepared to attack.

That would be the third attack, Asher mused to himself as the knife floated in the air, in slow motion.

If the Wolf did not want its brain to be pierced, it would have to swap into the last body.

Asher's target.

He clenched his fist.

'Full Power, [Fourth Match Flame]!'

This would be his fourth attack.

A culmination of over fourteen-thousand Fortitude.

Before Asher had a chance to move, a burning heat filled his body.

His body was not entirely under his control anymore. Instead, the warmth of a single, searing matchstick began to fester inside him.

The flames drove Asher's body forward.

His skin began to flake as heat burst through his veins.

Asher grit his teeth, pulling his gaze down to his arm, already blazing white. He hadn't even attacked yet, why was it...?

[The effects of certain skills depend heavily on your statistics. Finish your attack before your body crumbles.]

Asher trudged forward, his molars fracturing as he grit his teeth in agony. Each step poured another drop of molten lava into his veins, sizzling through his bone marrow.

His Temperance couldn't keep up with the strain.

Asher had never wished for time to speed up before, yet here he was.

Another step was forced out of him.

"-!!"

Asher's breath created a trail of motionless black smoke. His lungs began to sublimate from his scorching blood.

Through the corner of their eyes, the pair of Abnormalities finally noticed him.

A figure wreathed in pure white flames. Glowing cracks split the boy's skin apart, flaking away to create a trail of blazing sparks.

Behind the approaching figure was the remnants of his own evaporated flesh.

And the air began to crack with sheer, pressurized heat.

For a single moment, the two Abnormalities forgot their enmity, each simply staring at the impossibly bright figure beside them.

Then Asher's arm pulled itself back.

The Wolf's mind blanked, its smirk stretching to something inhuman.

This was unlike anything it had ever seen before, even after countless encounters with the 'chosen'. None of the others were like this.

It could not move. Excitement coursed through its body.

Asher was in front of its main body now.

The forest had unravelled into motes of light. The Wolf's fur began to smolder and sizzle.

A rasping, animalistic scream burst from the boy's lungs, filled with tormented pain.

After a pause that seemed like an eternity, Asher finally moved once again.

With a jarring crack, he shot forward.

His entire body was like a shooting star, its trajectory focused solely on the Wolf.

The Wolf did not attempt to switch bodies. Whether it was due to Asher's sheer speed, or whether it gave up, its eyes merely followed the blinding light that approached it.

As the figure came closer and closer, Little Red's pupil began to narrow until it was only the size of a pin.

A hint of desperation reached her expression.

Again, the boy had surpassed her.

A boy, who could not have been older than fifteen.

So this was it. All of her efforts were useless. Blood, sweat, and tears, it seemed everything was useless in the face of destiny.

Everything is useless in the face of destiny.

An epiphany that would usually cause hopelessness instead filled Little Red with hatred.

How was this fair?

She watched the scene in front of her, unable to move.

Her rage gave way to fear.

Don't do it.

Terror filled her eyes as the boy's fist inched forward.

Stop-!

For the second time in her life, tears blurred Little Red's vision. Vaporizing before they could drip down her cheeks.

The moment before the impact.

Time stopped.

A single snapshot was taken.

The Wolf's smirk had resurfaced, glimmering with glee.

It was going to die, yet it held a strange, anticipatory gleam in its eyes.

Asher's body was quickly dissolving into rancid smoke.

His mouth was open in a silent scream.

The forest was unravelling, atom by atom.

And for the first time in her life, Little Red's arms were shielding her face, defending herself from the attack that would shake the world.

Her expression was filled with fear.

...

Silence filled the forest as Asher's fist burrowed into the Wolf's skull.

A supernova lit the sky, painting it the purest white.

At the point of contact, an atomic explosion blossomed.

The Wolf's head instantly burst, its bones were instantly powderized.

The shattered corpse skid along the ground twice, snapping four trees in half before rolling to a stop.

Broken and pitiful.

An eternity passed in motionless silence.

Then sound caught up.

*BOOM*

The world rumbled as a sweeping wind blew away soil and clouds.

Trees were pulled out by their roots, tossed into the sky like leaves in a tornado.

And when the wind settled down-

Everything within a one hundred meter radius had been replaced with a single, uniform crater.

...

Little Red groaned, pushing aside a tree that had landed on her arm. For a second, her thoughts were blank, cleared from the ungodly explosion that was imprinted in her mind.

She rolled to the side.

Her eye widened.

An incomprehensible babble wormed past her lips.

"N-No... NO!!"

The woman scrambled to her feet, dashing to a broken, headless corpse a few hundred meters from her.

It was the Wolf.

And it was certainly dead.

She kneeled on the ground.

A strangled sob burst through Little Red's throat.

She dug her fingers into its skin.

As she tore into its body, crushing its bones in her grip and rending its flesh with her nails, her tears began to fall.

Tears of regret and sorrow.

It wasn't the same. The blood on her hands wasn't warm. The blood on her hands wasn't pulsing with life.

It wasn't the same.

What she wanted... This wasn't the same.

She stared down at her bloodied hands.

She dug her arm into the Wolf's chest, pulling out a still, beatless heart.

It just wasn't the same.

Little Red paused, contemplating the heart in her hand for a few seconds.

The forest held its breath as a silent tension simmered in the sky, distorting the air around the Abnormality.

Before boiling over its limit.

"YOU!!" An enraged scream echoed across the forest. A hatred that Little Red had never felt before, not even with the Wolf, festered inside her.

She whirled in place, immediately she locking onto a faintly beating heart a kilometer away from her.

With her remaining leg, she leapt forward, covering the distance in a fraction of a second.

But even with her rage, she froze at the sight of the aftermath.

The boy was not resemblant of a human anymore, or any living being at all.

All of his clothes had been singed away.

All of his limbs had been blown off, replaced with garish black stumps.

A lump of glorified charcoal.

Yet life was still preserved inside it. As Little Red approached, a plume of black smoke escaped the boy's lips in a wheezing cough.

"red...? r-red?" Asher could sense her presence looming above him. His voice was racked with feverish pain, pain that numbed his mind to mere infantile stutters.

The Abnormality's vision was tinted with hatred. She crouched next to him wordlessly.

She raised her hands...

Bringing them on the boy's throat.

She clenched her grip.

"CK-!?" Asher's body trembled as a vice-like force crushed his throat.

His chest heaved with dry, dust-filled coughs.

He was choking on his own ash.

"DIE! FUCKING DIE!!" With a roar, Little Red's fingers dug into Asher's windpipe.

Using the piece of flesh as a handle, she lifted the boy into the air, before slamming the unrecognizable figure into the ground.

Asher's sputters of pain gave her some form of vile, corrupted joy.

How his voice was tinged with confusion as his skull fractured on the rocks, it gave her solace.

She raked the charred stumps of his arms with her nails.

"MGH!!"

A cry of wordless pain.

Little Red kicked Asher's body, panting as it slammed into a tree trunk.

A sense of disgust surged through her veins as she looked down at her hands. They were covered in flakes of human char.

What was she doing?

But hatred soon reddened her vision once again.

She rushed forward, her fingers already forming into claws-

Suddenly, an indescribable screech came from the boy's body.

Agony voiced into sound. The charred lump trembled as every remaining fiber of its body began to scream.

The latent strength hidden inside the boy's body abruptly disappeared. At the same time, liquid began to seep from his skin, dyeing the ground an ominous, brackish brown.

Blood mixed with ash.

Asher's incomprehensible wails were filled with pain that Little Red couldn't even fathom.

Just what kind of agony must the boy be feeling right now?

Little Red shakily backed away a step, stumbling to the ground.

The flickering crimson shadow in her pupil subsided.

What am I doing?

The sheer, tangible pain in the air cut through Little Red's emotions, dousing her rage.

The Wolf's death-plan faltered at its last step.

Little Red crawled to Asher's side.

Listening to his last whispers.

"red... i'm s-sorry... i'm sorry..."

A voice of guilt, racked with pain.

The boy felt... guilty?

'...'

Little Red's pupil trembled as she brushed her hand along his cheek.

"it hurts-" Asher let out a sob, "it hurts so much..."

Asher mewed with pain, his thoughts incoherent.

A prompt appeared in Little Red's vision.

[Choose.]

'...'

[The boy dies in fifteen seconds.]

[Choose. Now.]

'...'

The System made no further attempts to convince her.

Little Red closed her eyes, listening to the dimming sound of Asher's whimpers.

Ten seconds passed.

Asher's heartbeat began to slow.

The forest once again returned to a solemn silence as Asher's cries lost their strength.

Before the last beats of the boy's heart faded away, Little Red opened her eye.

"I accept."

Instantly, the world faded around her, turning into a void of pure darkness. Asher disappeared into the folds of the void, leaving Little Red alone to converse with It.

[You shall be bound to serve this boy until he perishes. Your soul will be sewn onto his, synchronized in life and death. Do you understand this commitment?]

The darkness enveloped her, forming into visible words.

Little Red growled, neither in agreement nor disagreement.

[So be it. He whose past lies in Hell, guided by the Crimson Mercenary.]

The System seemed to pause for a second, contemplating the Abnormality floating in the void.

Just what was It thinking?

[Good luck.]

Before Little Red could question what It meant, she blacked out.