Chapter 56
To Forget
Stabbed.
Stabbed.
---
Two flashes of steel entered from angles the monster couldn't watch.
The blades crossed the air at the sides of its head and sank into the inner part of the monster's upper jaw, right where the flesh was softest and not yet finished regenerating.
The impact was brutal.
The monster suffered a sharp jerk in its head, its predatory movement slowing as if it had bitten an anchor.
The swords vibrated inside its flesh, forcing it to stop.
That instant—that minimal break— was enough for the fire soldier to finish.
His fist rose from below with all the force of his twisted body, all the accumulated momentum, all the fire of the red aura crackling on his arm.
Bang!!
An uppercut… yes, but more like a subterranean battering ram than a human blow.
The blow and the swords forced its inhuman "neck" to twist backward with a viscous snap.
The creature released an indescribable noise.
A mix between retching, vapor, and tearing flesh.
And just as its head was arched, it felt a new pain.
The swords embedded in the roof of its mouth were now being dragged backward with more force, a force that seemed to want to split its skull in two.
The monster turned its eyes.
Its vision was inverted from the blow, but it managed to see the ones responsible.
The soldier in the blue coat and the air bullet soldier with such ferocity it demonstrated the enormous effort of moving such a heavy body.
Both were pulling with all their strength from behind it, bodies arched forward, tendons standing out, aura enveloping them in a trembling layer, as if the energy itself were forcing their muscles not to break.
The swords dug deeper, stripping flesh from the monster's palate, and the upper jaw creaked…
first like taut leather…
then like bone fracturing under pressure.
The monster felt the primal fear of a cornered beast:
its regenerations couldn't keep up, its body trembled from the shock of the blow, and its enemies were disarming it from within.
And with no legs to brace on, the monster was falling.
The colossal body swayed, leaning first to the right, then backward, its unbalanced weight trying to find a non-existent support point.
It raised its arm to attack one of the two…
PANG!
The sound echoed in the room like a cannon shot.
The fire soldier's kick impacted its thorax with all the inertia of a full charge. It wasn't a clean hit: it was a human battering ram crashing against a horrendous mass.
The impact shoved the monster; its torso lurched, its body gave way, and ended up dragged and thrown onto its back with a sharp thud.
PUM!
The monster bounced slightly against the floor.
And before the creature processed what had happened,
before its eyes even stabilized…
a shadow crossed its field of vision.
A soldier jumped over its face, leaving the sensation of a cutting wind and a wake of red aura in the air.
The monster tried to move its sole remaining arm again, but it didn't reach.
TRASHK!!
Something flaming pierced the arm.
The fire soldier had already gotten there first.
The soldier landed on it like divine punishment.
His knee, coated in dense red aura, struck the monster's forearm, and without losing a second, the soldier, with a short spear of fire in his other hand, drove it through, piercing flesh directly. Vapor rose like a moan.
And with a roar, he pinned it to the floor.
Then, so fast the monster couldn't react, the soldier stretched, grabbed one of the two swords in its palate, and ripped it out with a tug.
He positioned his sword perpendicular over the same arm, ready to be used as an executioner's edge.
Then the second soldier fell.
The air bullet soldier descended exactly onto the sword, both legs together, bent, feet wrapped in compact red aura.
THRAK!
His whole body was a single descending line, like a human hammer. He kicked the sword with both legs, burying it with a violence that made the monster's arm give way. The edge entered, tore, crunched, broke what wasn't yet broken, and finally severed.
The creature's remaining arm detached with a wet, fragmented sound.
Moments later, still in fluid motion, the air soldier flexed his legs, crouched over the embedded sword, grabbed the hilt, and with a twist of his torso let himself fall sideways, dragging the weapon from the hole and pulling it away before the monster could try to regenerate over it.
He rolled a meter on the floor, rising with a brief impulse, sword in hand, as the monster released a choked roar.
In the same instant the arm fell severed, the fire soldier was already acting.
He knelt on the open stump, placed both hands over the wound—palms open, fingers spread—and, as if squeezing the air itself, released two torrents of flames directly onto the cut.
The flames erupted like jets from a double blowtorch.
The heat roared with a low, thick sound.
The burnt flesh contracted, sizzled, the regenerative tissues…
Cauterization by fire.
The monster tried to react.
A spasm ran through its body.
Its muscles tried to pull back, push itself like a mutilated beast trying to rise.
But it didn't get far.
A hand coated in aura—the one belonging to the soldier in the blue coat—closed over the hilt of Eilor's sword, still embedded in the monster's ruined eye. With a sharp, violent, almost contemptuous tug, he drove it deeper and pulled, forcing the monster back down to the floor with a dull thump.
The creature let out a growl.
The same hand, wasting no time, released the sword, slid to the upper jaw, and probed the inside…
…right where the second sword, the last one, was still embedded in the upper palate.
The soldier found it, gripped it with a grunt of effort, and ripped the weapon out with a brutal tug.
Internal bones crunched.
The wound opened further.
The monster tried to rise again, pushing forward with a desperate, unbalanced, ridiculous movement in its mutilation. The upper part of its body began to lift…
…until a figure appeared from below, entering its field of vision like an orange flash.
Eilor.
He shot up from the floor with an ascending leap, body wrapped in electrical sparks, and with a direct kick—fast, precise, full of accumulated electricity—impacted the monster's face.
TRAKK!
The blow broke the creature's momentum.
Its attempt to rise stopped.
Its head fell back again with a sharp thud against the floor.
Eilor landed on one knee, chest heaving violently, electricity climbing his back and arms like living branches.
The creature, wounded, mutilated, and growing slower, released a weak growl…
---
For the third time, in the presence of that same individual, the monster suffered a different, deeper spasm, almost involuntary, as if its body recognized something its deformed mind couldn't comprehend.
Eilor.
Around the young man, dozens of sparks erupted, larger, denser, more alive.
Orange electricity snaked around him as if someone had broken a dam and the energy had decided to escape in all directions.
That was what the fish monster managed to see…
…before feeling another attack.
First, an internal, violent jolt that ran up its entire spine as if a red-hot iron had been driven into its marrow.
Then another.
Another more.
Spasms that made it tremble from the depths of its wet flesh, burning it from within, but unable to move its head to try to defend itself.
A full second of convulsions.
Just one.
But long enough to feel endless.
And then, the monster's vision filled with even more orange electricity.
It gushed around Eilor, climbed his arms, wove lines between his fingers, vibrated the sword still embedded in its face.
The monster saw smoke begin to seep from the right side of its own body—white smoke, wet, smelling of charred flesh—and felt the sudden, brutal burn of being incinerated on that same side.
Its right eye—the only one still working—suddenly captured a figure entering the scene.
The soldier in the blue coat.
Standing, dark against the illuminated background, a sword in each hand.
The monster saw him advance without haste, without shouting, without trembling.
Just walking.
Determined.
Lethal.
And then it felt it.
A foot planting on its side, on its numbed body, wrapped in that red aura.
Before it could even react, the soldier drove the two swords into the lower part of its torso, one at each angle, piercing soft flesh, fibers, internal fluids that splattered the floor with a wet slap.
The monster wanted to scream…
but its throat now only produced a bubbling sound.
Then it saw Eilor again.
The young man raised his left arm.
Only two fingers extended: index and middle.
The rest closed.
A gun.
The same one he'd used before.
But now charged to the maximum, electricity accumulating at the tips of his fingers, illuminating his entire outline.
There was an instant of silence.
A minuscule instant.
CRASH!!
The remaining half of its vision vanished.
As if someone had turned off the world with one blow.
As if the entire universe had suffered an abrupt cut, but with a sensation of being pierced.
The discharge pierced what was left of its eye, its head, its capacity to see.
Darkness arrived with horrendous sounds, pains, and convulsions.
***
But from nowhere…
everything became silent.
Not the silence of a blow, nor the silence of shock.
An absolute silence.
A silence that had no air, nor distance, nor temperature.
And then, everything turned white.
An infinite space.
White above, white below, white on the sides.
No shadow, no horizon, no body… except its own.
The monster looked at itself and noticed it was whole.
Whole.
Complete.
Without cuts.
Without burns.
Without scars.
Without electricity piercing its flesh.
As if nothing had happened.
As if it had never been injured.
But before it could understand…
The space changed.
The white folded, hollowed, collapsed on itself like a falling curtain.
And in a blink, the monster was in a square.
A wide square.
Full of people.
With shops in stone buildings, children running, men in suits, adventurers carrying weapons, people chatting at wooden tables and chairs.
The monster stood still for a second.
Just one second.
Then…
Its body tensed.
Its muscles aligned to leap.
It saw the first adventurer within reach of its weapon.
A thin man, with a short sword at his hip.
And the monster lunged.
An explosion of speed.
A choked roar.
Claws open.
But when the blow should have torn flesh…
Its arm passed through the adventurer as if through fog.
Its claw emerged on the other side without having touched anything real.
The monster took a step forward, confused.
It looked all around.
The people kept moving, but…
they moved like shadows.
Their faces had no detail.
Their voices were shapeless echoes.
And it was then that it saw him.
Someone leaning against a wall, not far away.
Motionless.
Watching it.
A young man in his twenties.
Fair skin.
Blond hair.
A neutral expression.
And a red bandana tied around his head, whose color—unlike the rest of the square—was real, sharp, and deeply tangible.
That young man was watching it.
Still, leaning on the wall as if nothing in that distorted world mattered.
But his eyes… his eyes followed the monster's every movement.
When the monster moved right, the young man's eyes went right.
When it moved left, they followed left.
Always exact.
And that disturbed it.
For the first time in that strange world, the monster felt something akin to a defensive impulse.
An agitation in its muscles.
It was… alarm.
So it lunged.
It leaped at the young man with a violence that would have split any real adventurer in two.
Claws open, and a silent roar.
And again—
Its claw passed through the body.
Passed through the non-existent flesh.
Passed through the torso and the wall as if they were smoke.
But this time was different.
The young man turned on himself, following that ghostly attack as if perceiving it with absolute precision.
As if he weren't reacting to the physical blow, but to the monster itself.
And when the ghostly figure of the young man faced it again…
The monster stopped.
Unwillingly, without understanding.
Its empty eyes stared, trying to process something impossible for its kind.
The young man opened his mouth.
He said nothing.
He emitted no sound.
He didn't even breathe.
And yet, the monster trembled.
A tremor that didn't come from the body, but from the very center of whatever made its existence function.
A chill that had no physical origin.
A reaction its body didn't know and its instinct couldn't name.
And then, the young man smiled.
A big smile.
Too big.
Mocking.
Twisted.
A smile that pierced it as no sword ever had.
And as he smiled, tears fell from the young man's eyes.