The ground beneath me didn't just shake, it began to dissolve. One moment I was ready to sprint toward the manor, and the next, the solid cobblestones were turning into a hungry, churning maw of loose silt and jagged rock.
I began to use inspect at the conjoined twins, Cassi and Isaac..
Cassi and Isaac
Skills: Earth Manipulation
Vitality: 1000
Strength: 1700
Defense: 1500
Agility: 1000
Mana: 5000
Earth Manipulation- manipulate terrain in a mile radius.
My earpiece crackled with Mochi's strained voice.
"Roxy! A little help here! I nearly took Dominik's head off, but this Lara woman... she's a nightmare! He won't stay down!" Mochi said via earpiece
"Wait a minute, Mochi! I've got a situation out here. I'm coming!" I shouted back, struggling to find footing as the earth groaned.
"Flea, Where do you think you're going? You aren't leaving this circle alive." the left head, Cassi, hissed, his eyes glowing with an earthen, muddy light.
"You belong to us now," Isaac added, his arm blurring as he lashed the thorned whip forward.
The earth beneath my boots crumbled into a deep, vertical shaft. I felt the sickening drop in my stomach as I plummeted. Instinct took over, I slammed my hand into the side of the newly formed pit, conjuring a blood sword to act as a climbing spike. I hauled myself upward, my muscles screaming, and leaped back onto the trembling surface just as the hole collapsed inward.
Around me, the screams of the revolutionaries were cut short. Dozens of demi-humans weren't as fast, they were swallowed whole by the shifting ground, their bodies crushed by the weight of the manor's courtyard as Cassi manipulated the very foundations of the earth.
I stood panting, my blood sword shaking in my grip. I watched them closely, my mind racing to dissect their rhythm.
Cassi's eyes were fixed on the ground, his hands moving in slow, rhythmic gestures, he was the anchor, the Earth Manipulator keeping me trapped.
Isaac, however, was the predator; his focus was entirely on me, his whip-arm coiled and ready to strike the moment I tried to move.
Suddenly Plasma warns me in time
"Roxy, kill Cassi first, he had earth manipulation that has a pain in the ass."
"They're a perfect unit. One holds the stage, the other performs the execution."
"You're fast for a maid, But how long can you jump when there's nowhere left to land?"
"I don't need a floor to kill you, I just need one good swing."
Isaac mocked, the whip whistling through the air, narrowly missing my neck and shearing the top off a stone pillar behind me.
I looked up at the manor's high windows, knowing Mochi was losing ground against an immortal Dominik. If I didn't break these twins now, the revolution would die in the dirt.
The air whistled as Cassi gestured with a jagged hand, sentry bricks from the nearby wall ripping free and hurtling toward me like cannonballs. I spun through the air, the stone grazing my ribs, and lunged forward. I was closing the gap, my sword raised for a lethal arc, when Isaac's whip hissed through the air.
CRACK.
The thorned lash caught me square in the stomach, the poison-tipped barbs hooking deep into my flesh. I felt my guts twist, a hot jolt of agony threatening to buckle my knees, but I gritted my teeth and forced my Pain Manipulation to trigger.
Luckily, my poison immunity saves the day, these poison whipped slashes were nothing to me, only the damage. I didn't dull the sensation, I harnessed it, turning the white-hot flare of suffering into a raw, jagged fuel for my mana.
"Is that all?" I spat, blood bubbling at the corner of my mouth.
"Hardly," Cassi hissed.
Before I could recover, the vibration in the air shifted. I looked up just as a massive cluster of foundation bricks, enchanted with Cassi's crushing weight, slammed into the side of my skull.
The sound was sickening, the distinct crunch of a shattering skull.
"Bullseye Cassi, I didn't knew you have aim like that."
"It's okay my conjoined twin, I'll handle the projectiles while you in the front lines."
The world tilted into a nauseating blur of grey and red. I hit the churning earth hard, my vision tunneling as blood poured from the gash in my head, matting my hair and soaking into my collar. My eyepatch, torn by the impact, hung by a single frayed thread, threatening to reveal the void beneath.
"Look at her, the little flea's shell is cracked."
Cassi didn't laugh; he raised his hands, and a dozen more bricks rose from the debris, hovering like a firing squad. They weren't just throwing stones; they were using the city itself to bury me.
I felt the lifesteal effect from the previous fight kicking in, my fractured skull beginning to knit together with a frantic, itching heat. But I couldn't wait for a full recovery. If I didn't stop the source of the earth-magic, I'd be pulverized before I could even stand.
Cassi was the brain. Isaac was the muscle.
As the next wave of bricks launched toward me, I didn't dodge. I rolled through the mud, staying low to the shifting ground. I channeled every drop of stolen mana into my legs and exploded forward in a low-profile dash, a streak of crimson against the dark earth.
"Isaac, the whip!" Cassi screamed, sensing my intent.
The thorned lash swung wide, but I wasn't aiming for the body. I slid under the arc of the whip, the wind of it whistling over my head. I looked up, locking eyes with the left head, the one with the rolled-back eyes and the chanting lips.
"One head too many," I growled.
I swung my Blood Sword in a rising, diagonal slash. The blade hummed, fueled by the pain of my shattered skull and the desperation of the riot.
The steel met the pale flesh of Cassi's neck. There was no divine regeneration here, only the spray of hot, dark blood as my blade bit deep into the cervical vertebrae. If I could sever the link, the earth would go silent, and Isaac would be left screaming in a half-dead body.
"Isaac you moron, protect me!"
The Blood Sword whistled through the air, a clean, horizontal arc that didn't stop until it exited the other side of the twins' shared neck.
Cassi's head, the one that had been chanting the earth-tongue, has spun away into the darkness. The connection was severed instantly. High above, the swirling storm of bricks and masonry lost its magical anchor, the stones became mere dead weight again, raining down harmlessly into the mud with a series of heavy thuds.
The massive body lurched, the center of gravity shifting violently as the left side went limp. But the right head, Isaac, was far from finished.
"Cassi! NO! You... you little... FILTH!"
Isaac's scream was a guttural, wet sound of pure agony. His eyes turned a manic, bloodshot red as he looked at the stump where his brother had been.
Driven by a berserker's rage, Isaac didn't aim for a tactical strike. He lashed out with the thorned whip in a blurring, horizontal snap. I was still recovering from the follow-through of my swing, my guard down for a fraction of a second, and that was all he needed.
"Roxy look out!" Plasma screamed
"Huh!?"
The thorns caught me across the face, the jagged barbs tearing through flesh from the corner of my mouth all the way to my ear. It was a jagged, deep furrow that exposed bone and teeth.
I collapsed to one knee, clutching my face as the copper taste of my own blood flooded my mouth. My Lifesteal ability, fueled by the fresh decapitation of Cassi, surged through my nervous system like liquid fire. I could feel the magic working, pulling the edges of the skin back together and knitting the muscle fibers with frantic speed.
But something was wrong. The poison on Isaac's thorns was designed to fight healing magic.
The wound closed, the bleeding stopped, and the skin fused, but it didn't return to being smooth. A thick, raised, and jagged scar remained, a permanent mark of the twins' malice that stretched across my cheek like a bolt of lightning.
The perfect face of the maid was gone forever, replaced by the true mark of the girl that been through hell.
"Look at you, still alive? Still standing? I'll make sure the rest of you matches that face!"
Isaac hissed, his breath coming in ragged gasps as he struggled to balance the heavy, lopsided weight of his body.
I stood up slowly, letting my hand fall away from my cheek. I didn't need a mirror to know I was changed. I looked at Isaac, one-headed, bleeding, and desperate.
"Cassi's gone, and you're next.".
I said, my voice now carrying a slight, lethal whistle through the new unhealable scar.
I gripped the hilt of my sword with both hands. The earth was steady now. No more flying bricks. No more sinking pits. It was just me, a whip-wielder, and a debt of blood that was about to be paid in full.
The blade sliced through Cassi's neck like a hot wire through wax. The Earth Manipulator's head spun into the mud, his chanting silenced instantly. The ground beneath us suddenly solidified, the magical tremors ceasing as the source of the earth-magic died.
Isaac let out a primal, agonizing scream from the remaining head. Driven by pure grief and rage, he lashed out with the thorned whip, a desperate vertical strike meant to split me in two.
I didn't dodge. I raised the Blood Sword, the edge glowing with a dark, corrosive aura, Defense Reduction. The whip struck the steel and shattered into a thousand blackened thorns.
"You're lopsided now, and I'm done playing with half a monster."
With a brutal, horizontal swing, I buried the blade into the center of the shared torso. The defense-reduction magic ate through his skin and muscle like acid. The sword exited his back, cleaving Isaac, and the entire massive frame, cleanly in half.
The two halves of the giant collapsed into the blood-stained dirt.
I didn't waste a second. My body was screaming from the fractured skull and the whip wounds. I knelt over Isaac's cooling remains, the vampire's hunger taking over.
I pressed my palm against the open wound of the torso and began drinking the man's body. Because of its cubby build, the icon shows the results.
[Drain Activated Extraction Completed consumed seven liters of blood]
[Unable to extract DNA, conjoined twins spotted]
"Huh, I cannot get his DNA?"
"Obviously, they're conjoined twins, of course the shapeshifting ability wouldn't allow that."
"Fair enough, I don't wanna wear that man's skin."
I felt my skull knit together with a series of sharp pops. My mana pool, once a dry bed of sand, roared back to a shimmering, overcharged 100%.
I checked my mana meter with inspect.
Mana meter: 5000/10000
I stood up, wiping a streak of crimson from my chin, looking down at the two severed heads.
"Lara should have taught you how to heal yourselves, a puppet is useless once you cut the strings."
Crackle…
My earpiece hissed to life. Mochi's voice was ragged, punctuated by the sound of breaking stone.
"Roxy... get out... retreat! Warn the people... Dominik... he's too much. My injuries... I can't…"
The transmission cut out with a sickening crunch.
"Mochi!" I screamed.
I turned to sprint toward the manor, but the air in front of me suddenly vanished. A fist the size of a cannonball, wreathed in golden, explosive mana, connected squarely with my prosthetic arm.
"Suprise, flea."
The world turned into a streak of grey stone and night sky. I was launched backward, my body smashing through the manor's outer wall with enough force to bring down the masonry. I tumbled into the courtyard, the dust choking my lungs.
Through the settling debris, a shadow stepped out from the hole in the wall. Dominik stood there, his fine clothes shredded and his chest heaving, but his eyes were glowing with a murderous, red light.
"The knight is broken, now, it's just you and the dirt, little maid."