Asking for financial support because i'd like to keep both writing and having electricity.
If you'd like to read up to 20 chapters ahead, you can support me on Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/cw/Thanarit
Thank you for all your support. it really keeps the story going.
Not into subscriptions? No worries! If you'd still like to support my work, you can leave a one-time tip on Ko-fi.
Thank you so much, and may good fortune find you.
☕ https://ko-fi.com/thanarit
"I said put that down, you wretched thing!"
Lu Changcheng's scream tore through the burning hall, and he drew steel as he moved, a blade pure white and radiating heat that warped the air around it. Legendary rank. The Pure Yang Sword, forged for exactly this kind of moment and unsheathed for the first time in longer than most of the people watching had been alive.
Rachel turned her head toward him, unhurried, still cradling Ren's severed head in both hands like something she had been waiting a long time to hold again.
"My, my. Guildmaster, don't be rude."
Her voice carried a warmth that had no business surviving contact with what she'd just done, a pleasantness worn smooth over something underneath that wasn't pleasant at all.
"Wait a moment. Once I've finished extracting the fragment of the Outer God, I'll return my worthless husband's corpse to you. Whole, even. I'm not a monster about the details."
Shing.
An axe came down out of nowhere and severed her hand at the wrist before Ren's head could hit the floor, the blade catching it clean, and an armored foot slammed into her side a half second later.
BANG.
The impact sent her through the restaurant wall entirely, drywall and brick giving way in a rolling cloud of dust and debris.
Lu Changcheng lunged forward and caught Ren's head before it touched the ground, cradling it against his chest with both hands, his sword still burning white in the grip of his other fist.
"Bone Saw. You arrived at exactly the right time."
Bone Saw adjusted his cracked skull mask, red fire flickering low and unsteady behind it.
"Guildmaster. What happened here."
"Long story short. Rhea appears to be some kind of monster who calls Ren her husband and just took his head off."
Lu Changcheng looked down at the head cradled against his chest, still warm, eyes closed like something merely sleeping.
"Is he still alive," he asked.
Bone Saw's skull turned grim.
"Father's fallen into some kind of deep sleep. Our connection went dormant a few minutes ago, no warning, nothing. That's how I knew something had happened. That's why I'm here."
"If he's still alive," Lu Changcheng said, "that's all that matters right now."
A voice drifted out from the settling dust of the ruined wall, unbothered, almost bored.
"That's very rude, Mister Bone Saw. I only just introduced myself."
Shing.
A thin red line opened across Bone Saw's body, running from the crown of his skull straight down to his groin, and he split cleanly in half a heartbeat later, both sides of him collapsing separately to the floor.
Rachel stepped out through the hole in the wall, missing hand already regrown, expression untouched by any of it, the same face she might have worn stepping out of a fitting room.
"What kind of gentleman kicks a woman, Mister Bone Saw."
She tilted her head, patient and curious, a scientist studying an experiment that hadn't quite behaved as predicted.
"You call my dear husband Father, don't you? Shouldn't you be calling me Mother, then? I did carry half of what makes him what he is, after all. Or near enough. Details."
She looked down at the two halves of him on the floor, tutting softly.
"There. Now you're the one having a bad night."
Behind her, the halves of Bone Saw's body began dragging themselves back together, obsidian bone knitting across the cut with a sound like wet gravel.
BANG.
Lu Changcheng smashed one fist through empty air, and the space itself cracked open, a seam of black tearing across the room.
He stepped through it, Ren's head still cradled against his chest.
The crack sealed shut behind him.
Rachel sighed, the sound almost fond, almost disappointed, a mother sighing at a child who'd tracked mud through a clean house.
"Oh, Guildmaster. Why did you have to make this complicated."
She turned, unhurried, and watched Bone Saw finish reassembling himself on the floor, both halves fused back into one whole, red fire flickering back up behind the skull mask.
"Oh good, you're back together already."
She said it warmly, almost proud, praising him for a trick he hadn't actually been asked to perform.
"Try not to make me do that again. It's rude to keep repeating a lesson someone should have learned the first time."
Across the ruined hall, Chu Xinghe had already grabbed Lucy, Martinez, and Lily, shoving them toward what remained of the exit.
"Go. Now."
They were three steps from the door when the sound came.
Slash.
"I forgot you were still alive, Vice Guildmaster."
Rachel's voice had gone soft, conversational, entirely unbothered by the fact that she'd just cut through bone and muscle without appearing to move.
"I still haven't repaid you for helping me with my fake father's debt. That would be terribly impolite of me. I do so hate leaving accounts unsettled."
Chu Xinghe went down hard, his right leg severed clean at the knee, blood spreading fast across the tile beneath him.
"FUCK."
"Lucy."
He was already screaming it, dragging himself up on one arm, the other hand clamped over the stump.
"Take the kids and RUN."
Lucy grabbed Martinez and Lily by their collars and hauled them toward the door.
"Where do you think you're going."
Rachel's tone stayed pleasant, almost playful, a hostess reminding her guests the party wasn't over yet.
"We haven't even gotten to dessert."
Lucy didn't stop moving. Martinez stumbled once, caught himself, kept going. Lily was crying without making any sound at all, the specific silent terror of someone whose body had decided screaming would only cost time she didn't have.
Rachel watched them go with something almost like fondness.
"I do admire commitment," she said, mostly to herself. "Running like there's still somewhere left to run to."
She swept one hand through the air, casual, and something invisible shot out from the motion, a blade the eye couldn't quite follow.
CLANG.
Chu Xinghe had already dragged himself upright on one leg, sword drawn, and caught the invisible strike on the flat of his blade, the impact ringing metal against metal through the burning hall.
"Fuck!"
Bone Saw came in low from the side, axe already swinging, and Rachel turned to meet him without any visible urgency at all, catching the haft in one bare hand.
Shing.
She opened him from shoulder to hip this time, a different angle, almost thoughtful about it, as though testing which cut he'd find least convenient to recover from.
"Twice now," she said, watching him fall.
"Do try to make the third one count for something, Mister Bone Saw. I'm starting to feel like I'm doing all the work in this conversation."
He hit the floor in two more pieces, and behind the mask something that might have been a laugh, wet and furious, bubbled up out of what remained of his throat.
"You talk too much," he managed, before the halves of him started pulling themselves back together for the second time.
"I've been told."
She smiled, genuinely pleased by the observation, and tossed the axe aside without any concern at all, letting it clatter across the tile several feet from where Bone Saw's two halves were still dragging themselves back into one piece.
"It's a character flaw. I'm working on it. Slowly."
BANG.
Bone Saw, whole again, had already crossed the distance and retrieved the axe before she finished the sentence. The third swing came from above this time, catching Rachel's skull dead center, and her head came apart entirely, blood and matter scattering across the tile in a wide arc.
Bone Saw, whole again for the second time, didn't wait to admire the work. He crushed the remains under one boot on his way past, scooped Chu Xinghe up onto one shoulder, grabbed the severed leg off the floor with his free hand, and sprinted for the exit without slowing down to check whether the kill had actually taken. He doubted it had.
Behind him, Rachel's headless body stood back up.
It took its time about it, unhurried, joints realigning with small, wet clicks, and the ragged stump of her neck began knitting itself shut from the outside in, skin crawling back together over muscle and bone until, within seconds, her head sat whole on her shoulders again, expression settling back into its familiar warmth.
The restaurant around her had gone almost entirely to ruin. Fire still climbed one wall in slow, patient waves. Overturned tables lay scattered across a floor that had, an hour ago, been marble bright enough to reflect the candlelight. None of it seemed to register on her at all, the destruction as unremarkable to her as a rearranged living room.
"Hm. That isn't going to work, is it."
She flexed her jaw once, testing it, and glanced toward the exit where the last of them had already disappeared into the night.
"I need more power."
She raised one hand to her own face, fingernails already lengthening into something closer to talons, and without any change in her expression at all, without so much as a flicker of the pain any human body should have registered, she dug two fingers into her own socket and plucked her eyeball out whole.
She held it up to the firelight, turning it, examining it with the detached interest of a jeweler appraising a stone.
"Much better," she said, to no one, to everyone, to the empty ruin of a room that had, not so long ago, been full of people eating dinner and laughing at nothing in particular.