Chapter 77

Boras Perspective

He held Clare, who was stabbed through her chest by his sword; he then threw her aside, watching for Rita’s reaction, but he was a bit disappointed to find that she didn’t react at all.

Thinking Rita was in shock, Boras waited, but the only thing that changed was her demeanor.

Boras watched and heard Rita speak in a truly emotionless tone that sounded like gibberish, but he soon realized it was some sort of language he did not know.

A bit amused and curious by it, Boras asked what Rita was speaking in, but she had ignored him, as if he did not even exist.

Rita continued to speak in that strange language, not showing a hint or trace of emotion. Boras couldn’t tell what Rita was thinking, and it made him wonder if killing Clare pushed Rita too far, not in the way he wanted.

So, sighing, with the feeling of being let down genuinely filling his heart like all his work was for nothing, since Rita showed no signs of any hostility or much of anything other than speaking in a language he wasn't even sure was real and that she seemed to be a different person, Boras jumped toward her and approached.

As he suspected, even when he cautiously grabbed hold of her shoulder, in case it was a trap, Rita didn’t resist, nor was there any indication of it being a surprise attack from her body language.

However, as he grabbed Rita’s shoulder, a sword stabbed through his arm. Boras did not even realize he was stabbed because Rita's movement felt so natural and unexpected, and devoid of any intent to harm him, that Boras didn’t even notice what had happened at first.

It took Boras a second to react, as Rita moved in a blur and aimed straight for his head. Rita cut his throat as Boras barely moved back from having his head lopped off on reflex.

Now realizing what Rita was doing to him, which was attacking him, actually trying to kill him, he jumped back as fast and far as he could as Rita thrust her sword through his shoulder.

Boras held his throat, stopping the blood gushing out, and jumped back several buildings. Numerous questions filled his mind on what had happened, but he knew if he stayed close to Rita for any moment longer, he would have been dead.

Taking out a health potion, he splashes it on his throat, stopping the bleeding, and then on his shoulder and arm. Then, snapping his finger, a large group of the Lucendi family’s black knights, around 30 in total, who were ordered to stay on the sidelines by him, suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

His throat, now healed enough to speak, he told them. “Fight her, kill her if you must.”

Saying that, the black knights with bows shoot their arrows while the rest move to encircle her.

Rita responded by jumping off the rooftop, getting out of the way of the incoming arrows. Then, as she landed on the streets below, she was followed by the black knights, cornering her and cutting off her escape routes.

Boras just watched from the edge of the rooftop to see what Rita would do as he held his throat, which was a bit red after being healed, because Rita didn’t hesitate to try to kill him.

The first to attack Rita were two black knights, one with a spear in front and the other with a pair of curved daggers behind.

The black knight with the spear attacked first. He thrust his spear, but Rita redirected it, letting it hit the dirt ground. Then, closing the distance between them, she stomps on his spear, pins it to the ground, preventing him from using it, and jumps toward him. Without any hesitation and in one smooth motion, Rita beheaded him.

Following that, without looking back, Rita sprang off the dead body of the black knight with the spear, using him as a platform to somersault off him and dodge the daggers being swung at her from the black knight behind her.

In one precise motion, Rita threw her sword into one of his eye sockets, into his brain, killing him instantly.

Not stopping on just that, Rita landed on his dead body, and instead of picking up her sword, she grabbed the two daggers from the Black Knight she had just killed.

Then, glancing up to see the black knights with bows aimed at her, without hesitation, she threw both daggers at them. The dagger spun in the air, aimed at a pair of archers, but seeing them coming, the two archers Rita aimed for moved back from the edge, causing the dagger to fly past them, missing them.

However, the daggers weren’t meant for them, and they flew up high in the air, then curved back down, targeting a different pair of archers who weren’t paying attention to the daggers but to Rita instead.

The daggers pierce through the sides of their necks, cutting the arteries and severing their spinal cords.

On the edge of the rooftop, looking down at Rita at a distance, Boras watches in wide-eyed amazement, seeing with each swing of her sword, one black knight falls after another, as if it were so effortless for her to do compared to her earlier struggles.

Boras watches in shock at the things Rita can do when she is no longer holding back. It felt completely inhuman to him. Even now, Boras could not sense any trace of hostility from her. Boras thought to himself, the best thing he could describe was like watching a contracted spirit fight, but different because even though spirits are inherently emotionless beings, since things such as emotion are completely foreign to them, they still do have personalities and other things that make them individuals. Whereas Rita, right now, has none of those things as far as Boras can guess.

In less than a minute, Rita had killed 15 of his black knights and began moving to the ones on the rooftop. A shiver went down his spine, and he felt fear, which he rarely felt, and it made him smile.

Boras looked for Rita, and instead of grimacing, he smiled with the biggest smile he could make. He thought to himself that something had definitely changed within her, something he wanted to find out because it was too interesting for him not to explore.

Now, he wondered what had changed, if she could express her true emotions or not, and if he could push her hard enough. If it were the case and her emotionless mask broke, he’ll be really happy. If not, he’ll still be content for breaking something in her, which made her willing to kill him without a second thought, since Rita wasn’t willing to kill someone with her own hands before.

“Captain Boras!” Approaching him was a black knight who looked terrified to approach him.

Annoyed by his interruption, Boras glared at him and said. “What?”

Fearful, he said, “Sorry, Captain Boras, we’ll all n—”

Snapping at him, “We’ll all need what?”

“We desperately need your assistance, or else we’ll be wiped out.”

Hearing what he said, Boras was even more annoyed by his request and said.

“If you're all this incompetent to be defeated by a spoiled child of all people. Who are you to make demands on me?”

“But–but–b–”

“But what?”

Boras’ hair glowed green, and green wind surrounded his subordinate’s head in a sphere, cutting out all air inside. He watched as the subordinate suddenly began struggling to breathe, desperately holding his throat as he tried in vain to gasp for breath.

“I know you’ll die, so what will it be?” Dispersing the sphere around his head, which was turning purple from the lack of air, Boras told him.

“By my hands or the young lady’s?”

The subordinate coughed, regaining his breath, and with terror in his expression, he started running blindly to Rita, only to be cut down by her.

Seeing that, Boras shrugs his shoulders and mutters under his breath.

“I guess he’s still too green. Lucius must be desperate to send people like him out here. To think a small threat like that would startle him—why does he care if he dies? He’s already a dead man.”

After muttering that, Boras went back to watching Rita, only to realize she had killed everyone. They both stare at each other, Boras in wide-eyed amusement and Rita with completely dead, artificial, emotionless eyes.

Continuing to stare at each other, Boras was the first to blink, and when he did, Rita was gone.

Immediately, he watched his surroundings, on guard for her, wondering where she was until he felt the air around him move, despite there being no footsteps behind him.

There, he saw Rita swinging a sword at his neck again, somehow getting behind him this closely without him noticing.

He smirked as he barely dodged the sword coming for his neck because to be that quiet and have that lack of presence, even put to shame his own skills in stealth, and to be able to move that way, he couldn’t think was possible.

Boras thought to himself, just who taught Rita these things while she ran away, or maybe how she even knew how to do it, since she couldn’t have learned how in such a short amount of time.

In another blur, she rushed in, closing the gap between them, fast and close enough for Boras not to have enough time to use his magic.

Boras held his sword, and both their swords clashed. To Boras’s delight and surprise, he was pushed back by Rita’s sheer swordplay.

Knowing it was a losing battle if he let Rita this close to him, he sent out a burst of wind expanding in all directions from his body, sending Rita back a couple of meters.

Preparing another spell, Boras was keeping an eye on her, but he saw Rita using the momentum of the blast of wind he used to leap off the roof and drop down to the streets below.

Seeing that Rita was out of his sight, he stopped casting his spells and used his wind to send out gusts throughout the streets and alleyways to try to find her.

For some reason, Rita realized she was being watched, noticing a gale Boras had made, which was another oddity he noticed. She, for some reason, stopped running and did not move, which Boras found strange.

What was she planning? He thought that and moved toward her, keeping a distance for any traps she had planned.

However, as he approached, Rita suddenly cut the rotten wooden frame of the building like she knew he was nearby.

The building that Rita cut, which was in disrepair, had its wall collapse, and she ran into the building.

Contrary to what he expected, he didn’t see Rita running out of the building into the streets on the other side.

He stayed on the rooftop; he readied a spell and waited for Rita to emerge, but she did not.

After a minute or two, Boras canceled the spell he was casting and decided to find her. Gusts of wind formed around him and went inside the house, filling it with wind.

He searches every nook and cranny of the house until his wind flows through a hole that leads to the neighboring house over.

Flowing wind through that house, then the next, and the following houses, Boras soon realized something.

He immediately took a step back as a sword poked out of the very tile he was standing on. It retreated, then came out again, out where Boras had stepped back. This happened several more times before Boras decided to move to a different building, not connected to the one he was on.

However, as he jumped, Rita leaped out a window and went down into the street below.

Landing, Boras was immediately on guard, and a couple of seconds later, he felt the air around him move, and a blade was thrust toward him, aimed for his heart.

This time, Boras was ready for any surprise attack, and he leaped off the ledge toward the next building while countering it with his sword.

Landing on the next building, Rita followed and jumped as he landed, then immediately attacked him.

Rita did not relent and continued attacking Boras in a relentless flurry. She was moving fast, very fast, to a point that Boras was having trouble keeping up.

Guarding against her swings that were hard to even react to, Boras countered after taking numerous cuts throughout his body, seeing a very small opening that he almost missed through Rita’s many slashes.

The sword Rita held was flung away, but, like Rita had planned, she moved in very close because Boras overextended and couldn’t move his sword back in time. Rita strikes Boras in the gut with an elbow strike, followed by a right hook to the liver and a sharp kick behind his knee, forcing him to kneel.

Taking out her engraved knife, Rita grabbed Boras by the collar and thrust it at Boras’s neck. At the last millisecond, Boras recovered a bit and instinctively moved to the side, dodging out of the way from Rita targeting his neck. However, Rita switched targets from his neck to swiping at his left eye.

Kicking Rita back, she guards with her arm as she is hit, while he moves back, holding his left eye in pain.

Watching Rita move to grab her sword, Boras began laughing, finding it all too amusing. Rita is a true mystery, he thought to himself, since everything she had done in this was just too unbelievable.

His hair glowed bright, and he stared at Rita for being able to do this much. A long, tense moment filled the air around them as they watched each other to make the first move. Boras wanted to see what unbelievable thing Rita would do next. On the other hand, Rita stared at him, waiting for his move since she couldn’t get close to him in time before his spell took her out first.

The staredown lasted for a while, only stopping as Boras noticed blood trickling from Rita’s nose, and the white part of her eyes, turned bloodshot, dyed red, contrasted with her strange, new blue pupils.

Not wasting the opportunity, even though Rita did not react to what happened to her body, Boras moved to cast a wind spell while having a barrier to protect himself, while Rita retreated and jumped from the rooftop, making her way down to the alleyways below.

Already knowing that this would happen, he moved fast and simultaneously cast binding spells made out of wind.

Because Rita was jumping down, her movement was predictable; granted, Boras had to do it multiple times to bind her.

Floating in the air, Rita tries to wriggle herself free from his bindings, but to no avail. Lifting her up from the alleyway.

“My… You’re certainly fun.”

Smiling and looking toward where Redra was, who was fighting Skis and Athrun at the same time, causing many buildings to be destroyed.

“It’s a shame that I couldn’t play with this new side of you and find what else you are hiding any longer.”

Sighing, he then said. “It’s time to end our playtime and save it for another day. Don’t worry, this won’t kill you, but it will hurt a lot, not like my lady would mind.”

Boras’s mana, which filled the air, invisible to the naked eye, started to move the air around. Like a miniature cyclone forming with him at its center, it slammed itself at Rita, the violent wind acting like invisible whips, lashing out at her as she was sent back and slammed into the wooden wall of a dilapidated slum house.

Half of the house was destroyed, and the rest looked like it was about to collapse as Boras landed on the rooftop of a house on the opposite side of the alley, watching the debris settle down, only to hear…

Nyx’s Perspective

"Subject’s emotional states are within acceptable parameters. Releasing mental barriers in 5 seconds. 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…”

I stared at the blue sky through the half-destroyed house I was sent flying through. Clare was dead and pure, unadulterated, and seething rage filled my mind.

It would seem that my mental safeguard had to kick in from my past life, which was like a fire suppression system to keep me from feeling extreme emotional outbursts.

My body was in agony; other than the lashes covering my body from Boras’s attack, every muscle was in pain, every breath I took hurt, my heart felt like it was going to burst, and I could barely see out of my right eye.

Despite all that, I moved my hand and clutched my forehead, and I thought to myself, I needed more power, more strength to kill that bastard.

“Ah, you’re awake, my lady, and you're back to normal. How are you feeling?”

I looked at Boras with whatever energy I could muster, standing on the edge of the roof on the opposite side of the alley, and I saw him extremely surprised and happy, much more than before.

I remember him smiling and laughing when my mental barriers suppressed any and all emotions, leaving only the drive to complete the mission unaffected. I saw it all, and he was more excited than ever.

One thing filled my mind, and I said, “I’m going to fucking kill you” in my emotionless voice because screw it, I did not care anymore.

I’m going to kill him, I’m going to kill him, I’m going to kill him.

Moving my other left hand to the last weapon I had, which was my engraved knife, since most of my things, like my pouches and Athrun’s sword, were blown away somewhere in the rubble, I held it.

Taking off my hand that was clutching my forehead, I gritted my teeth and got up unsteadily and glanced at my surroundings.

The first thing I saw lying on the rubble I was on was a pouch with monster cores scattered all over. Then I saw Athrun’s sword stab into the rubble; however, I couldn’t find the full heal potion he gave me, which was the most important thing here.

Realizing that the full heal potion was gone, I gritted my teeth because it would be really helpful with fighting Boras, but I doubted I really needed it.

With all my strength, I’d move my body up and stand up unsteadily. I watched as Boras stood there and smiled.

“My lady, I’d love to continue, but I’m afraid the game has ended, so I must take you in now.”

I glared at Boras with my expressionless face, but my bloodlust for him truly showed around me.

He grinned and said in a mocking tone. “My, are you still angry? This is truly the first time I know what my lady is feeling. What a wonderful thing. Oh, let me guess, is it because I’d kill that maid of yours? But that just leaves the question, what or why do you care so much about her?”

Why do I care so much about Clare? Oh, I don’t know. What do you think? I furiously glare at him as I say those things silently in my mind.

Just looking at him, I grew even more angry and frustrated by his taunting and by my inability to save Clare. I felt my mouth move, and I began laughing. My back felt like it was burning, and strength flowed through my body, though it did not alleviate my aches and pain.

All the negative emotions I felt suddenly turned to joy inside. Was this normal? No, I already knew that this was not normal, even in my past life.

“My, did I break you this much after killing that maid of yours?”

Surprised by my sudden outburst of laughter, I watched as Boras was completely shocked by it, making him completely stunned.

“Hee… hee-hee… HEEHEEHEE… HAHHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHAHA!!. I’m going to fucking kill you.”

Filled with bloodlust, I said it happily again while laughing.

Whatever emotionlessness I’d exhibited was gone, and excitement and fun filled what I said, which I couldn’t control.

Out of stunned silence, his smile grew even bigger as I said that and responded, “Good, good, good. Maybe I’ll spare another 5 minutes playing with you; I doubt Redra won’t mind.”

I grip the engraved knife in my hand, my nails digging into my palm to the point it started bleeding.

Electricity started to be emitted by it, but for some reason, it didn’t affect me, and I felt a strange familiarity as I saw the electricity turn black.

It spread to my arms and to my back, where it was burning like red-hot steel was pressed into my nerves.

Then, I felt the burning pain from my back spread, and light blue markings grew out.

With that, black electricity was now sparking all over my body, then spread to the rubble around me, specifically sparking around the monster cores.

I suddenly felt even more strength fill my body, and the burning pain grew even worse. Why does this feel so familiar?