The King's Hold (10)

Leaping backwards once it was confirmed that my leg struck his head, my body took quite a while before hitting the ground.

Strangely enough, it seemed that despite being much larger and heavier, the stones never moved past a certain speed.

This strange dissonance in size and speed was the one deciding factor in allowing me to bounce around all around with the chaoticness of a pinball.

Finally realizing this oddity as I spun around and balanced myself atop the grey stone walls, the forest in the distance shifted once more before moving farther away.

It seems that the words spoken by the Vampire count whilst in his giant beastial state weren't a lie.

'I did wonder how we were falling for so long'

Glancing at the forest which was slowly but surely getting nearer and nearer, my eyes dragged themselves from the blackened treetops and moved to observe the Vampire Count

I don't even know if I could even call that thing the Vampire Count with how messed up it was in all sorts of ways.

Feeling an indescribable feeling to purge whatever it was in front of me, I shook off the urge with some effort and observed its physical form while trying to ignore the metaphysical urge to burn this thing.

It wasn't easy.

Groaning loudly, the thing in front of me tried several times to get up, failing each time.

It was no wonder that he was failing, I'm surprised that the thing was still functioning what with half of its head and a good portion of their torso missing, turned into the pile of gore sticking to my leg.

'Oh God it's still clinging to my leg.'

Hurriedly kicking at the flesh clinging to my leg with an unnatural stickiness, flames coated my limbs as they incinerated whatever little was left stuck to my leg.

Flesh flying from my rapid kicking, the moment that they collided against the ground they twitched before crawling to the main body.

Whenever those fleshy blobs met with another heading to the same destination, the muscle fibres tensed before twisting around each other to form another even bigger twitchy moving muscle slime.

Morphing into larger wholes of broken bone, snarling teeth and several dozen eyes that appeared all of a sudden, they growled loudly before they attempted to merge with the main body.

As if I was going to let that happen.

'I think it's time to just purge whatever hell this came from.'

Lighting my hand with flames, I tilted my head before changing my mind and producing one of the broken spears and setting it alight.

*SCREEE!!!

Even in death, those things were incredibly disgusting.

Grimacing as otherworldly screeches hammered at my head with nails, a disgusting smell reached my nose before being resolved by my fiery head.

"Return to whatever hell spawned you and never come back." Cursing the fleshy blobs to eternal damnation, they let out a few more screeches before turning into ash that flew into the wind.

Repeating this action several more times, even going as far as to carve out portions of the green giant that had touched the moving blobs of flesh I let out a sigh of relief once I noticed that there no more of those nightmares.

I suppressed a shiver 'I suppose I should pray that I don't have any nightmares'

Recalling the forms of the twisted abominations, the amalgamations of meat, teeth and eyes disappeared into pieces of ash as I turned to look at the rest of the Vampire.

Or what I suppose was the Vampire after they merged with the Boss Cell well before they were ready whatever that meant.

I glanced at the two separate halves of the Boss cell hiding within my inventory 'Does that mean I can merge with the cells to provide myself more power?'

My hand fiddled with the blue vial hanging off my waist. 'I mean, the normal cells were rather effective in granting me power albeit temporary.'

'Actually scratch that thought' Frowning as I stared at the twist corpse lying in front of me, the giant green thing bleeding blue mist and red blood.

'I don't want to become something like that, and if I recall, they didn't seem particularly fine just by being near it'

Remembering the two women who had bled once they reapplied the seal on the boss cell, blinked and looked back at the corpse and observed

Green skin, red blood, white bone, blue mist...

'Huh.'

Refocusing my eyes on the body, I was now able to appreciate the fact that the blue glow once emanating from the numerous thin scars covering the green skin was now gone, replaced by blue mist leaking out of the gaping wound in his chest.

I gingerly touched the blue mist and felt my body become revitalized suddenly as if something was filling my body

'I guess that the blue mist is just pure mana.'

A sudden pinch assaulted the portion of my hand used to touch the blue mist.

'Scratch that, it's not pure mana.'

Pulling back my hand to reveal a hand that was now significantly more plant like than before, as much as it was in my left hand, I frowned.

It seems that this impure mana flowing through the Vampire Count's corpse was the main reason for the twisted form of his.

'And my money's on the Boss cell being the cause of this.'

The Two timebreakers located in the Clock tower and Fractured Shrines respectively didn't seem fine even just by being near the things after all.

Hell, the Boss cell itself was the source of the Malaise, one of six different portions of it at that.

A disease that resurrected the dead by killing the body to prolong the soul, a process that irreversibly mutated the body as the soul tried to make it live.

It had the side effect of causing insanity.

'Now how the hell am I supposed to get it without mutating myself?'

Glancing at my hands before looking at the body, I wondered if I should just let the boss cell drain itself so that I could retrieve it, before shaking my head.

If my suspicions were right, for something that was at one sixth of its power, it was still terribly powerful.

One Boss cell equivalent was still able to have the whole island in a death choke, the actual boss cell could be the most inefficient thing there was and it would probably still have enough juice to last itself another month.

Way to much time for me and the island which would instantly revert back to the past in one months time.

Besides, wouldn't the leaking of power from the Boss cell just end up contaminating the entire island again?

There was no use in trying to retrieve the boss cell if everything that made it a boss cell disappeared into the ether and contaminated the island all over again.

So the problem therein lies.

'How to get the boss cell out of this damn corpse without getting mutated, without time reverting the island to the past and without the boss cell loosing all its power'

Looking at the body, although the structure seemed familiar enough to a humanoids innards, even accounting for mutations like Guillian had taught me, I don't think it accounted for something this mutated.

'Hell, I don't even think this thing could be called a humanoid anymore, where the hell did the human go?'

Chewing my lip as I absentmindedly poked at the corpse with the spear, with every prod of the spear, the flesh split apart revealing more blue mist to the air.

I blinked.

'I think I'm stupid.'

Realizing my stupidity much to late for my liking I smiled and pulled out a pair of spears.

'I wonder if this is how microsurgery is like'

Holding the two spears, I carved a cross section against the green skin, carving thin scars that didn't heal.

I smiled

'I guess I know how to fulfil all three requirements without even moving from my spot now.'

---

Cherry awkwardly sat across from Ella Eisengard, her twin sister who claimed to be the older one, something that she had once vehemently denied in their younger days.

Now though that they were older and the only thing that they could rely on was their mother's words, Ella was older then Cherry by a minute.

Something that she once lorded Cherry over before they parted ways to the different orders of the Sevallian Kingdoms.

But if we just ignored the literal minute difference between them, they were nearly identical in every way

If it wasn't for their differing hairstyles and colored weapons, they were basically identical.

It made it all the more awkward for them however when they met each other again however.

Despite all their similarities, they were unable to broach a topic with the other no matter what they tried

The past? They had lost contact with each other ever since they joined differing orders to pursue their dreams of reaching their brother in their own unique ways, there was also rarely any interaction between orders.

The malaise? There wasn't much to talk about the monsters that the disease created that they didn't already know about, what with how long they spent waiting.

Their family? Well they were the only ones that they had been able to see for quite some time, not much you could talk about with the dead.

Their friends? That would be broaching on someone else's privacy and they weren't exactly the types to pry in someone else's private life.

It was incredibly awkward for the twin sisters who were supposed to be close.

That was until they broached a topic that they were both able to talk about.

A man that had recently appeared in their lives and helped solve Cherry's lifelong desire of killing the Bronze Order Captain as the Vice Captain.

"-And he's weird." Ella ended as she finished her recollection of the man with orange eyes and black hair.

Filled with descriptions of his unnatural combat prowess and powers, she also talked about the man's flaming head that sometimes appeared.

"I agree." Nodding her head in agreement, Cherry recalled how the man had pulled a spear out of the air to stab at the eye of a zombie that had lunged at her.

"He's weirdly competent, to competent, I wonder why I hadn't seen him before, surely such a man would've been known before the island was encased in a bubble of time."

Like a combat machine, he was able to tear through hordes of enemies without so much as breaking a sweat.

And all the while he did that, it was as if he was immune to the pain of the monsters inflicting their wounds on his body and the pain of his flesh healing.

In addition to that otherworldly combat prowess and superhuman pain resistance, the man was able to support them whenever they needed it, pushing and pulling at just the right moments.

As if he had fought hundreds of thousands of times alongside unknown people, comrades, enemies and many others.

With that much combat experience, it was impossible for the man to be unknown.

But unknown he was.

It was as if he had suddenly appeared one day with none the wiser.

"Do you know anything else about him besides those facts?" Resting her head against the palms of her hand, Cherry locked eyes with Ella.

"Well..."

Ella paused as she recalled an interaction she had alongside old man Blacksmith.

"It seemed as if he doesn't know our common sense." She flipped her fingers to reveal a golden coin engraved with the insignia of the kingdom. "When I tried to tell him about Sevallia, he just tilted his head as if that were the first time he was hearing it."

"...Are you kidding me?"

"No"

"How!?" Nearly raising her voice in the ruins, she looked around before hurriedly suppressing her voice "Isn't the Kingdom of Sevallian famous for its maritime warlord that nearly conquered the Sea Kingdoms?"

"Apparently he didn't know that, and get this, he didn't even know that we had mana!"

Whisper hissing, Cherry widened her eyes as she leaned forwards to look at her sister Ella.

"Really? Did he really appear out of nowhere?"

"I think so?" Ella sighed "I first saw him in the Prisoner's quarters utterly confused as he wandered around killing all the undead he could see."

"Are you sure he wasn't just some timebroken normal man that was just recovering from his wounds for several loops?"

"Pretty sure, you don't just wake up to the amount of skill like him with that amount of familiarity in killing."

"Huh."

Falling silent, Cherry looked at the burning flame in front of the two stoked by an iron Poker.

"...Who even is Slade?"

"..." Answering with her silence, Ella silently stoked the flame as the call of the Horn bearer reminiscing it's last instincts heralded the call of the morning.

The red moon set that day

+++

How does China have another God damn disease

Tree