The cold tile was the only thing supporting my weight as I stared up at Dominik. My femur was a jagged white shard piercing through my skin, a gruesome testament to the gap in our strength. I tried to lift my Blood Sword, but my arm felt like lead.
Dominik saw the flicker of defiance in my eyes and his face twisted into a mask of pure, sadistic boredom. Dominik even licked off the bloodstained knife that he stabbed in White for an actual dramatic effect.
"You just don't know when to stay down, do you?"
Before I could swing, he lunged forward. SHUCK.
A white-hot spike of agony erupted as his rusted dagger drove through the center of my right palm, pinning my hand deep into the floorboards. I let out a choked, wet gasp. I was anchored to the ground, a butterfly pinned to a display board.
"Pain Manipulation."
I forced the mana to flood my hand, numbing the pain easily, turning the sensation of the steel tearing through my flesh into a cold, distant pressure. But while the pain was gone, the reality remained. I was trapped.
Dominik leaned over me, his shadow swallowing my vision. He didn't finish it immediately. He wanted to savor the light dying in my eyes.
"Look at you, Roxy, you really thought you were the protagonist of some grand story, didn't you? The girl who gained a dark power to save the weak. But look around this kitchen. The maids are cold meat. The stranger in white is a broken doll. And you? You're just a mistake that the world forgot to erase at the crosswalk. You aren't a hero, and you aren't a monster. You're just... pathetic."
Dominik whispered, his voice dripping with a disgraceful, oily venom. He spat on the floor next to my pinned hand.
"Go ahead. Die knowing that every life you tried to protect ended because you were too weak to hold a leash on your own curse. You're a disgrace to the very blood you drink."
Something inside me snapped. It wasn't the Blood Curse. It wasn't Miera. It was the raw, primal rage of Roxy… the girl who had been pushed too far.
"Shut... your... fucking …mouth."
I wouldn't unable to pull the dagger, it was stuck in one place. My left hand is multiated and my right hand had pinned in place. If I have a prosthetic arm, I would make this job a lot easier.
"Plasma, what should I do?"
"This is a difficult decision, Roxy. You need to maim your hand once again. There's no other choice."
"Your sane Plasma, too sane."
Unable to free my right hand, I gripped the floor with my broken leg and pulled. I didn't care about the skin. I didn't care about the tendons. With a guttural, animalistic roar of fury, I ripped my hand upward. The steel of his knife stayed pinned to the floor, but my hand tore through it, maiming myself just to be free.
Blood sprayed across my face as I stood up. My right hand was a mangled ruin of split flesh and exposed bone, but I didn't flinch. I forced my weight onto my shattered leg, the Pain Manipulation holding the bone in place through sheer willpower.
I summoned the Blood Sword. It manifested not as a clean blade, but as a jagged, pulsing shard of crimson hate that hummed with a lethal frequency. My mangled hand gripped the hilt, the blood from my wound flowing directly into the weapon, making it glow with a blinding, demonic light.
Dominik stepped back, his eyes wide as he watched me stand on a leg that should have been useless. He let out a frantic, mocking laugh to hide the tremor in his voice.
"Still!? You'd tear yourself apart just to stand? You're a lunatic! You're a freak who doesn't know how to give up!"
"I'm the consequence. "And you're out of time."
I wheezed, my one red eye burning with a light that made him flinch, then Dominik mocked me.
"Pathetic you little parasite!"
I forced my weight onto the shattered remains of my leg. The sound of the jagged femur grinding against the tile was nauseating, but I pushed the Pain Manipulation to its absolute limit. My nervous system went cold, a dead zone of artificial calm.
"I'm not a doll, and I'm done being broken." I growled, my voice a wet, ragged snarl.
I sprinted. It wasn't a human run; it was a desperate, lurching lunge fueled by the Blood Curse. Dominik's eyes widened, his face pale beneath the flour and blood. As I raised the pulsing, serrated Blood Sword to cleave him, his form shimmered and dissolved into thin air once more.
Invisibility.
He expected me to panic. He expected me to turn around blindly. But I didn't need to see him; I could feel the displacement of the air, the heavy scent of his sweat and fear. As I felt the cold rush of his approach behind me, I didn't turn… I spun low, swinging my blade in a blind, horizontal arc behind my back.
The sword bit deep into something solid.
"AGHHHH!"
Dominik's voice exploded in a shriek of agony as he materialized, a massive, diagonal gash torn across his chest. He stumbled back, clutching the wound that spilled dark, hot blood onto the white-dusted floor. He spat out a string of foul slurs, his face contorted in a mask of pure, ugly hatred.
But he was a cornered rat, and he was dangerous. With a frantic dive, he reached for the rusted knife he had pinned into the floorboards earlier, ripping it free with a snarl.
"I'll carve the heart out of you yet!" he screamed.
I didn't give him the chance. I gripped my sword with both hands, ignoring the mangled state of my right palm. I poured every remaining drop of my mana into the blade.
"Defense Reduction"
The Blood Sword turned a blinding, incandescent crimson. I launched myself into a heavy overhead strike. Dominik raised his knife to parry, his face twisted in a confident, desperate sneer.
"Bingo."
My blade sliced through his steel like it was warm butter. The knife shattered into a thousand useless shards, and the Blood Sword continued its path, burying itself deep into Dominik's chest. The force of the blow sent him tumbling backward, crashing into the kitchen cabinets.
He lay there, a broken ruin of a man, blood bubbling from his lips. Even then, as he clutched the massive wound in his chest, his eyes remained twin pits of evil.
"You... you think you won? You're still... a freak... Roxy... just a monster in a... dead girl's skin..."
I stepped forward, raising my blade for the final blow. Dominik lay broken beneath me, his life spilling onto the tiles, yet his eyes still burned with that same taunting malice.
Twang! Twang!
The sharp cracks of crossbows echoed from the hole in the dining room wall. I didn't have time to turn. I didn't even have time to breathe.
One bolt hissed past my shoulder, shattering a plate behind me. But the second found its mark with a sickening, wet impact.
A heavy, iron-tipped arrow drove straight into my right eye… the red eye from my face.
The world exploded into a blinding white flash followed by a crushing, absolute darkness on my right side. The shock was too violent, too sudden. The force of the projectile snapped my head back, sending me staggering across the kitchen floor. My hands flew up to my face, but they couldn't stop the warmth of the blood now pouring from the socket.
"Dominik! The guild reinforcements are being pushed back! We need to retreat now!"
Two voices wailed from the ruins of the dining room.
Through my one remaining eye, the green eye, I saw Dominik's form shiver. Even on the verge of death, the monster found the strength to move. He triggered his invisibility one last time, his ghostly silhouette fading into the shadows. The two bandits fired a final, desperate volley to cover their tracks before fleeing into the dark corridors of the manor.
"No..." I wheezed, my voice barely a whisper as I slumped against a counter.
I reached out with a mangled hand, trying to find the hilt of my sword, but it was gone. The Blood Sword had shattered back into mist. The Pain Manipulation flickered out, and every injury I had sustained… the broken leg, the slit throat, the ruined hand, and now the arrow in my skull… hit me with the force of a thousand hammers.
I used my inspect skill to view my mana meter a split second.
Mana Meter: 0/10000
As expected, it drained out, I felt every injury from my body, it burns like I was inside of a microwave
The room began to spin. I watched the flour on the floor turn red as my vision in the left eye began to blur and fade. I collapsed onto the cold, blood-slicked tiles, the silence of the kitchen finally drowning out the ringing in my ears. As I slipped into a deep, hollow unconsciousness, the last thing I felt was the cold weight of the iron bolt still buried in my head.
"Do..mi..nik… I… swear… I'll… Kil you!"