Free Web NovelChapter 20: Killing Cutely?
"Can I... see it?"
"You want to see me kill it?"
"If possible, yes."
Sarael touched a finger to her chin, and the silence that followed had nothing to do with hesitation. There was never any real doubt that she could kill the golem.
The only question was how.
She was already thinking about the kind of finish that would suit the moment, about style and presentation, about the exact method that would make Ronan’s eyes widen and his breath catch.
Something elegant. Something memorable. Something that would settle itself so deeply into his memory that he would never again wonder whether she was useful.
She wanted to impress him. Not only to prove that she was capable, but to make the proof feel like an art. To show him that his wife was not simply competent, but indispensable.
That if he were ever wounded, ever weakened, ever brought down to little more than a heartbeat and a prayer, she could carry him through whatever this dead world threw at them.
And that was no exaggeration.
Sarael stepped forward.
It was only a small motion, barely a shift of weight from one bare foot to the other, but the shadows around her responded as though they had been waiting for the signal. They uncoiled from her ankles and spread outward in a silent wave, a sheet of living darkness flowing across the clearing floor.
Ronan felt them pass beneath his boots, cold, weightless, and humming with something that made his teeth ache.
At first, the golem didn’t notice. It was still tearing into the porcupine-bear, its massive claws hooked under ribs and pulling. The wet sounds of feeding echoed through the dead trees.
Then the shadows reached its feet.
The golem froze.
Not in the vague, human sense of the word, but all at once, its body locking mid-motion, claws still sunk halfway through a rib cage, jaws open, that single orange eye flaring with what might have been confusion, or the first real flicker of fear a flesh golem had ever known.
"What—" Ronan began.
"Shh."
Sarael glanced back at him, her smile gentle, reassuring, the kind of smile belonging to someone who had done this before and knew exactly how it would end.
"Watch."
The shadows began to climb.
They wound around the golem’s legs in thick, pulsing ropes, not so much restraining it as claiming it. The dark substance moved with purpose, slipping into the seams between its segmented plates, finding the gaps, the weak points.
The golem tried to move. Its muscles bunched and strained, claws gouging trenches into the dirt. The shadows didn’t even stretch. They held it as effortlessly as a butterfly pinned beneath glass.
"See?" Sarael said, her voice light, almost conversational. "The plating is thickest at the chest and skull. But the joints..."
She lifted one hand and curled her fingers.
The shadows at the golem’s shoulder tightened.
The joint came apart with a sound like a tree trunk snapping. Black ichor sprayed, and the golem’s left arm hit the ground, claws still twitching.
"The joints are soft."
The golem screamed, that same bone-deep, marrow-shaking cry Ronan had heard from the first one, the one he’d killed with the Titan Greatbow.
But this scream didn’t last nearly as long.
The shadows were already at its other shoulder.
SNAP!
The second arm fell. Then the darkness moved lower, sliding across the golem’s torso, finding each hip, each knee, each ankle with surgical patience. One by one, the connections that held the monster together were pulled apart.
Disassembling the golem as if it were a figurine.
Sarael’s hand moved in small, precise motions, like a conductor leading an orchestra. Her violet eyes tracked every shift in the shadows, every joint separating, every spray of ichor.
She wasn’t even breathing hard.
"Are you watching, Ronan? This is the important part."
The shadows reached the golem’s neck.
They didn’t crush it or snap it. Instead, they slipped into the gaps between the neck plating and began to expand, pressing outward with slow, relentless force.
The golem’s head separated from its body with a wet, grinding pop.
Its eye stayed lit for three full seconds after the break, rolling in its socket as though searching for something none of them could see. Then the light went out, and the massive body collapsed while the shadows withdrew like a tide easing back from shore.
[Soul Absorbed: 5,000 EXP]
[Level Up: 13 → 14]
[Ronan Night]
[Class: God-Bound (???)]
[Level: 13 → 14]
[STR: 28 +20 +110] → [STR: 29 +20 +110]
[AGI: 26 +20 +15] → [AGI: 27 +20 +15]
[CON: 24 +20 +150] → [CON: 25 +20 +150]
[MAG: 18 +20 +0] → [MAG: 19 +20 +0]
Sarael turned back to him. Her hands were clasped neatly in front of her, and the shadows that had just taken apart a B-Rank monster like a puzzle now curled around her ankles again, obedient as pets.
Her eyes were bright.
Hopeful, and waiting.
Looking more like a clingy cat than a deadly deity.
"Did I do well...?"
Ronan looked down at her. She was still close enough that her shoulder nearly brushed his arm, close enough that he could smell the night-blooming flowers in her hair.
The distance between them hadn’t changed at all.
Only the golem had changed.
"Yes," he finally managed. "Yeah, you did... really well."
Her face lit up. The expression of someone who’d just been told they mattered.
"Really? You’re not just saying that?"
"I’m not just saying that. That was..." He looked past her at the scattered remains. "I’ve never seen anything die like that before."
"Is that bad?" Her smile flickered. "Did I do it wrong?" ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom
"No. No, it wasn’t wrong. It was just... different."
Different was an understatement. The first golem had taken a greatarrow through the eye and still thrashed for a full minute before dying. The second had taken two arrows and a death scream that shook the ground.
This one had been disassembled from fifty meters away by a goddess who hadn’t even moved.
"Great job, Sarael."
Ronan tried petting her head, a small reward that he thought might work for her, and, to no one’s surprise, it did. She nuzzled against his palm as she happily accepted the reward.
"You’re so good to me~"
