Free Web NovelChapter 18: Who? (4) — moremoreMOREwhyisAlicecrying?
At first, there was only the ringing.
A high, unbroken whine that filled the whole inside of my skull, as if my thoughts had been swapped out for one long white scream. Then things came back one at a time. The taste of copper, thick, coating my throat. The cold of the stone against my cheek. And the pain — not a pain, every pain, everywhere at once, so vast I couldn’t tell anymore where my body began.
I tried to open my eyes. The world refused to hold still. A mush of grey and red that swayed, split in two, reassembled. I blinked, again, again, until the shapes consented to stop moving.
And I saw my own body, sideways, sprawled in the rubble like something that had been thrown there. My right leg jutted off to one side, bent at a place where a leg doesn’t bend. I tried to draw a full breath, and something deep inside me caught — a dull, deep flare that folded me double and made me spit a long jet of blood onto the stone.
Where. When. How. The questions turned without finding any purchase.
And then, straight ahead of me, where I should have been, a silhouette took shape in the blur.
Anthonius.
Standing. His great shield raised before him, half torn away, melted, still smoking at the edges, planted between me and the place the spell had come from. freewebnøvel.com
"...So you saved us," I breathed.
He didn’t answer. He didn’t move. And as the veil lifted off my sight, I saw what I hadn’t wanted to see: his eyes wide open, fixed, looking at nothing at all anymore. Dead. Dead on his feet, shield still up, at the exact spot where I should have been turned to ash.
Something clenched in my chest, more violent than all the rest.
Us.
Alice.
I whipped my head around, my heart in freefall, searching the blur in every direction. And I saw her, over there, far off, lying on her side against the stone. Not moving.
Move. Move.
My body didn’t respond. Not a muscle. Nothing but the pain and that leaden weight nailing me to the floor. So I reached for the only thing I had left.
Override.
My torn muscles obeyed an order they should have refused, and the pain exploded, white, total. I screamed — a raw, animal cry that tore out of my throat and lost itself in the empty hall. And I dragged myself forward. One arm first, planted in the rubble, then the other, the rest of my body following like dead weight, the broken leg scraping the stone behind me and firing white bolts up through me with every inch.
"AAAAH—"
Another arm. Another scream. Blood kept rising into my mouth and I spat it out so I could breathe, then started again. The stone painted itself red behind me. I didn’t care. The world had narrowed to one single thing, over there, at the end of that corridor of pain: her.
[ Override — Lv. 3 -> Lv. 4 ]
I reached Alice after what felt like an eternity. I collapsed against her, pressed my ear over her mouth, and waited, breath held, until I felt against my cheek a thread of air, faint but steady. She was breathing. Alive.
My shaking hands ran over her, her face, her shoulders, her stomach, hunting for the worst — and there was almost nothing. A scrape at her temple, some bruises. My shove had thrown her clear of the blast just in time.
The relief stripped away what little strength was holding me up. I crumpled onto my back beside her, breath in tatters, eyes open on the caved-in ceiling and the grey, dead light falling through it.
"Aaaaaahhhhh..."
And there, stretched out in the rubble beside her, it all came crashing back down on me at once.
I had done nothing. Nothing.
Outside, the fight still rumbled on — Elsa, the demon, shouts, a din that shook the walls, far off, muffled. A while ago, from the top of that breach, I’d watched that fight without even managing to follow it with my eyes. Too fast. Too far. Too high above me. Alice had been able to send her light down into the thick of it, knit Elsa back together, tip an entire battle with a single spell. And me?
Me, I hadn’t been able to protect her with one spell. I hadn’t been able to hold a single second at Elsa’s side. The only thing I’d managed, in that courtyard, was to get myself blown apart like a beginner, and to let a man die on his feet to cover me.
Anthonius. Dead for me. Eric, before him, cut in two at a door because I’d been too slow. Alexia, before them, withered in a corridor while I slept. And how many more, after? How many would still fall while I lay here on the ground, coughing blood and unable to do a thing?
A rage rose, black, and it was all I had to keep from going under. I clenched my fist and struck the stone. Hard. Then again. The pain shot up my arm and I didn’t care — I struck again, and again, until the skin of my knuckles split, until my own blood mixed with the blood already slicking the floor.
Weak. One blow. So weak. Another. Pathetic. Useless.
I didn’t want it anymore. Never again to feel this — to lie there watching others fall in my place, to be the dead weight they protect, that they shield, that they bury. Everything in my broken body drew tight around a single want, enormous, devouring, bigger than the pain, bigger than the grief, bigger than anything I’d ever wanted in my life.
To become stronger. Here, now, this instant, more than breathing.
So, in a body that should never have allowed it, I pushed myself up.
My broken leg carried nothing. I leaned on the other, swayed, nearly went down, caught myself. The hall rolled around me, the ceiling slid, blood kept climbing into my throat with every breath. But I was standing. On one leg, bent double, shaking in every limb — standing.
[ Override — Lv. 4 -> Lv. 5 ]
I picked up my sword. My fingers closed around the sticky hilt.
And I danced.
At first, I still thought. One move, I told myself. One more. The Dance started in my hips, rose into my arm, and the blade split the air despite the dead leg giving out under me at every step. Each motion tore something open inside. I didn’t care. One move. One more.
Stronger.
That was all that was left. The demon outside, Alice lying behind me, Anthonius, Eric, Alexia — all of it slid away, went out, stopped existing. There remained only a word, beating in my skull in time with the blade.
Stronger. Stronger.
[ Override — Lv. 5 -> Lv. 6 ]
[ Second Wind — Lv. 1 -> Lv. 2 ]
And with every blue window that lit up, something ran through me. Not relief, not pride — a jolt, burning, that dropped down into my gut and demanded another at once. More. Again. Give me more.
Stronger. Faster. Stronger.
[ Drowned Widow’s Dance — Lv. 3 -> Lv. 4 ]
My body was failing. My knees buckled under me, my sight doubled, and I rose, and I danced, because stopping had become impossible, because every window was a swallow and I had a thirst nothing could fill.
[ Override — Lv. 6 -> Lv. 7 ]
[ Second Wind — Lv. 2 -> Lv. 3 ]
[ Override — Lv. 7 -> Lv. 8 ]
Stronger. Stronger faster stronger. One more move and one more, don’t stop, never stop, because stopping means falling again, means becoming the one they protect, the one they bury, and no, never again, so stronger, again, the blade again, the water again, faster, stronger, until the words drain of meaning and nothing’s left but the beat, stronger stronger stronger stronger, more, again, until there’s no more pain, no more courtyard, no more dead behind me, no more Kuro anywhere, nothing but a blade turning and a voice in my skull demanding always, always the same thing — stronger, stronger, STRONGER, MORE—
[ Override reaches maximum level ]
And there, the System did what it had never done.
[ The System hears the host’s resolve. ]
[ The System acknowledges the host’s resolve. ]
[ The System invokes the rights of Infinite Evolution, and works a miracle. ]
[ Skill Evolution ]
[ Override — Lv. MAX ] -> [ Ascension — Lv. 1 ] (passive)
[ Compatibility detected. ]
[ Ascension ] + [ Second Wind ] -> [ Transcendence — Lv. 1 ]
[ Compatibility detected. ]
[ Transcendence ] + [ Resolve ] -> [ Apotheosis ] (Unique Skill)
[ Apotheosis — Unique Skill ] - The threshold where flesh touches the divine. As long as the host’s will does not yield, his mana regenerates faster than he burns it, and his body draws on a bottomless vigor where it should have given up the ghost; the longer the ordeal drags on, the more he rises instead of bending. An endurance nothing in this world can exhaust — for as long as he refuses to fall, or until death takes him.
I should have stopped there. Anyone would have stopped there.
But the miracle, instead of sating me, threw wide a door I no longer knew how to close. The pain didn’t slow me at all anymore. My mana didn’t run dry. My body, which should have been a corpse, rose from everything, again and again, and the water answered my movements in wider and wider currents. Nothing stopped me anymore. Nothing — except me, and I didn’t want to stop.
Stronger.
I danced. And I danced again.
I’d stopped counting the windows. They lit, one after another, and my eyes passed over them without reading, blue glimmers piling onto the other glimmers, swallowed by a thirst that never eased.
[ Eye of Infinity — Lv. 2 -> Lv. 3 ]
[ Drowned Widow’s Dance — Lv. 4 -> Lv. 5 ]
Stronger. More. Somewhere, I’d stopped knowing why. There remained only a silhouette turning in the grey light, a blade, water, and a word that no longer even meant anything, just a beat against the inside of my skull.
strongerfasterstrongerFASTERstrongErfasterstrongerfasterStRoNgErfasterstrongerSTRONGERfasterfasterstrongerFASTERstrongerStRoNgErfasterstrongerfasterSTRONGERSTRONGERfasterstrongerfasterstrongerFASTERstrongerstrongerfasterstrongerFASTERfaster—
[ Eye of Infinity — Lv. 3 -> Lv. 4 ]
[ Drowned Widow’s Dance — Lv. 5 -> Lv. 6 ]
Time came apart. The minutes, the hours, I had no idea anymore. The light from the breach turned, paled, without my noticing. My feet slid in something, and I didn’t even wonder what. The trance had eaten everything: the pain, the grief, the fear, and with them the last thing that made me someone. Only the hunger remained. Stronger. Always more—
I was laughing, maybe. Or crying. I couldn’t tell the difference anymore. My Eye, open since the start, refused to close; the world was nothing but a web of glowing lines, and I was one of those lines, turning, and turning, and—
I only stopped when something gripped me around the waist.
Two arms. A warmth, against my back. At first, in the fog I was drifting through, it meant nothing — just a hindrance, a weight getting in the way of the motion. I tried to keep going, to break free, to dance on.
The arms squeezed harder. And a voice, broken, against my shoulder:
"Stop. Stop, Kuro, I’m begging you. It’s over. You’ve done enough."
Something in that voice finally caught. I looked down, still half inside the trance, and saw hands knotted over my stomach, then, turning my head, a face against my shoulder. Alice.
My sword slid from my fingers. It fell behind me with a strange splash — heavy, thick, nothing like water.
Her face was streaming with tears. And I didn’t understand. Why was she crying? What was wrong? Everything was fine. I was getting stronger. That was good, wasn’t it?
And then I followed her gaze, and I saw.
All around me, across the whole stretch where I’d been turning for hours, the floor had disappeared. In its place, a sheet of liquid. Thick, dark, an almost-black red that lapped with every movement. The water from my magic — except it wasn’t clear anymore. It was gorged, saturated, reddened to the dregs by all the blood my body had let run, turn after turn, motion after motion, without my feeling it. A pool. I had danced for hours in the middle of a lake of my own blood, and I hadn’t even noticed.
A fear seized me then, sudden, like none I’d known since waking. Not of the demon, not of death: of myself. Of how far I’d gone without meaning to, ready to dance in that until the very last drop, never once knowing how to stop.
"I know," Alice murmured against me, as if she’d followed every one of my thoughts. Her voice trembled. "I know. But it’s over. I’m here now."
And around us, gently, grass began to grow. The white flowers opened one by one across the red surface, bathed in that light that came from nowhere, and the warmth of the Garden spread through my whole broken body. The leg settled back into place, the bones finding their line again. Breath returned to my chest. The pain ebbed, wave after wave — and with it ebbed the hunger, the trance, the madness, everything that had devoured me slowly loosening its grip.
And I became myself again.
In that same instant, as if a thread had been cut, my legs gave out, and the exhaustion of a thousand deaths dropped onto me all at once. But I didn’t hit the floor. Alice caught me, eased me back against her, and laid me down in her arms, my face in the hollow of her neck.
My eyes were already closing. I had not an ounce of strength left, nor an ounce of will — it had burned away entirely. And as the dark, gentle this time, came back to take me, I felt rising all around me, from the flowers opened in the blood, that scent I knew by heart.
A scent of flowers.
And I let myself go.
