Transference

**Warning: This Chapter contains content on sensitive topics such as suicide.**

“Yo-You’re like me?!” She exclaimed.

“Like you? You’re just an intruder in my world.” He exclaimed.

“This is my home too! My father was Rosso!” She exclaims.

“What?!” He exclaimed. “There’s no way… Unless…”

He grinned and started laughing.

“My mother told me all about this world when I was younger. About how she had a strong hatred for humans. She was a young mage centuries ago. Back then, classes weren’t known about, and so she and her siblings were persecuted for it. Her entire family was hunted, being called a witch. That’s what led to her hatred of humans. Their fear of the unknown and unwillingness to try and understand it. She rose to power using her hatred as a catalyst and created ichor. “ He explained.

“We know all this. This was explained in the game.” Arte states.

“Just setting up some background. When your father dealt the final blow to my mother, it didn’t kill her. Rather, in his exhaustion, he failed to realize what he killed was an ichor clone. So when they used a mysterious spell to escape the Deep Abyss, she killed Rosso and his wife and stole the spell for herself. This enabled her to come to our world. The problem was that her ichor contained the essence of her hatred itself. With all of it left in CQ, she became a shell of herself with nothing to live for.” He explained.

“Malady was in our world?!” Leo questions.

“She was taken advantage of and in the end had me. It must’ve been a side effect of the ichor, because when I was born, I looked like a monster. Kids bullied me, teachers laughed at me, and I lived a nightmare my entire life. Art and games were my only solace. CQ was the only reason I could keep going. My mother tried her best to keep me and survive in an unfamiliar world, but she never lost that apathy she had, and one day she… Killed herself right in front of me. I’ll never forget it. While going through my mother’s old keepsakes from CQ, I found her bell, which brought me here.” He explains.

“I’m sorry to hear that…” Arte apologizes.

“Don’t be. Because I plan to kill you after this!” He smiled.

“Once I’ve remade this world, I plan to leave, this time with the bounty of my mother’s power and destroy the world that rejected my mother and me.” He states.

Arte rises to her feet.

“I won’t let you.” She states.

“Life is all about how you react, and you choosing to end the world isn’t gonna change anything.” He says.

“I don’t need it to change anything. I just want revenge.” He admits.

They grip their blades, and the Warpainter runs toward them. He stabs straight forward, causing Leo and Arte to dodge to the sides. He freezes his blades in position, using them to pull himself forward, and kicks Leo across the face, who grimaces and stabs him through the gut. Arte summons the purifying flame, and her blade is intercepted by one of his flying blades. Each angle she tries using it from, the blade moves to block her as he and Leo exchange blows. Leo knees him in the chin and stabs him in the head with his dagger. His second blade follows up after his first, cutting her in the back.

“The only way I can get past these blades is by breaking them! And there’s only one way to do that. She thinks.

Arte’s blood fills her last finger nail, and her hair bursts out in a dark red color, growing longer in an instant. Red veins appeared through her skin as she reached level three of her ability. By forcing her blood to occupy different parts of her body, like her fingernails and toenails, in addition to her already low blood, she was able to induce the effect on herself. She grabs the blade with both hands and, with a heavier slash and cracks the blade where she hit it. The Warpainter pulls the dagger out of his head, flips Leo by twisting his wrist, and grabs his blades.

She raises her blade to slash him, but he zips past her, and she’s unable to see that he slashed her multiple times when she couldn’t react. Wounds covered her body as blood tried to spill out, but was held in place over the surface of the wounds.

I can’t keep up with him. She thought.

He spun back on her with a downward slash, and she held her blade up to block, by he cut her leg instead. Each time she went to block or attack, he was capable of getting an attack off before she could. Leo quickly ran over and joined in, and both of them were repeatedly getting cut.

At this rate, we won’t do any real damage!” Leo says.

Despite being familiar with his fighting style, the speed at which he moved surpassed their memory and reactions. Right as he raised his sword, Leo flipped a coin. The coin grew enlarged and not only blocked his flurry of slashes, but reflected them onto him. The coin sent it back in the form of a giant crescent slash that cut his torso and arms. Arte focused her blood to her eyes. While it strained her eyes, it made her vision sharper, allowing her to see much better than before. She tightened her grip on the sword, channeled the purifying flame, and raised the blade in the same breath. He used his sword to move into the way once more.

“Ahhhhh!” Arte roared.

With her enhanced vision, she could see his sword moving into position to block her blow, and she aimed for the cracked blade. Her blade cut straight through it and stopped at the second, cracking that one. Leo kicked his upper body into the air, past the second blade. The blade bounced Arte’s sword back before flying after him.

“You’re doing better than expected. Let’s change that.” He states.

All the remaining demons he’s summoned turn into ichor before gathering them all up into his sword as his body regenerates. With an upward raise of his sword, a giant trail of black energy rose from the ground like a wall of darkness emerging from the earth, tearing into the sky like vicious fangs. Arte managed to dodge with her enhanced vision and jumped after him with a spinning slash that cut into his body before passing him.

The school building was split entirely in two and began collapsing into rubble. The school gates and walls fell apart, and the grass of the meadow was cut in a wide cleave. The attack faded into the midnight air as though it never existed. Arte looked toward the blast zone, seeing a cloud of smoke, and remembered she could only see it because of her enhanced vision. Her heart rate spiked.

“Leo?!” She called out.

She heard coughing in the smoke and ran over.

“I’m okay… but…” He looked down at Valeria, whose lower half was missing. Blood was spattered across the ground wildly.

She dived in to save him because she could see it aimed at Leo.

“Valeria!” Arte exclaimed.

Valeria smiled weakly.

“It’s a teacher’s job to protect the students.” She says.

Tears filled Arte’s eyes.

“You’ve both exceeded my expectations, now go… Finish this.” She states.

She presses her fist against Arte’s chest before her hand falls weakly. Behind them, the Warpainter fell to the ground. Arte tightly closed her eyes, and Leo ran his palm over Valeria’s face to shut her eyes. He patted Arte’s shoulder and stood up.

“Come on. We need to finish this.” He states.

“You’re right.” She says.

As they turned to the Warpainter, the ground shook.

The Warpainter laughed.

“It’s your loss!” He shouts.

A giant pillar of ichor erupted from the center of the continent. It was such a large pillar that everyone all over the continent could see it.