Chapter 928 - An old apartment building (Patreon)

Even after all these years, I am confident I could navigate it with my eyes closed. Though I am taller now, the number of steps required for me to take is less.

I pass through the hallway, avoid the broken bicycle resting against the wall that no one ever bothered to steal, and walk beyond the corner where the stairs start.

There is an elevator as well, yet it was always out of order more often than it was functional.

At the start of the stairs are both Dennis and Aaron, smiling at me in a friendly manner.

"If I could, I would, without any hesitation, let you die if it meant that I would be able to get my brother back," Dennis says, taking a step forward.

He pulls a long kitchen knife hidden in his sleeve and tries to stab me. The blade grazes me just a little as I drive the wooden stake of a broom handle into his bicep and force him to turn so he blocks Aaron. It causes both of us to stumble, as I am still getting used to such a weak body without the support of my mana or kinetic energy.

Dennis slams his head down, hitting my forehead and tearing the skin there, making blood trickle from it down my temple.

I wrestle the knife he stabbed me with out of his hand and pull out the wooden stake, driving it into his neck and kicking him away, using that kick to dodge the knife Aaron swings at me.

"I would also throw you all away for my brother," Aaron says.

As he attacks, he slides on the blood from his brother, allowing me to bodyslam him, and both of us fall to the ground.

His knife rattles off the floor as I grab his head and slam it against the floor.

"I don't mind," I answer honestly. "I would fight to stay alive, of course. I don't want to die. But I would never blame you for doing that for your brother."

"You will do it too one day. You will sacrifice the two of us for your sister, for your disc-"

I don't let him finish as I slam his head again, causing the words to come to a stop, and I push myself to stand up. I can feel a bruise on my body as I look around, picking up both of the knives from the floor and putting one behind my belt while holding the other one.

Taking off the jacket Dennis is wearing, I use it as a bandage around the wound on my side.

Before going upward through the stairs, I look back at them.

"Why would I sacrifice either of you? I quite like the both of you. And I am much stronger than you, I would find a way."

Then, once I begin to walk upstairs, I speak, this time toward the being currently hiding from me, deep inside of my memories. "I consider this quite a pathetic attempt. These were terrible imitations."

My words come to a stop as I enter the hallway and spot Tess standing at the end of it on the opposite side. She is smiling at me as well, holding a drawn bow in her hands with an arrow nocked in it.

That arrow shoots ahead as she releases the string the moment I jump to the side, and it stabs into my shoulder, causing me to spin and stumble a little as I get to running.

But not away, instead, I charge right towards Tess.

All thoughts are gone as I lock my eyes onto her and the bow, and feel the handle of a kitchen knife in my hand.

Tess calmly takes a step back, lodging another arrow into the bow and pulling it back.

I increase my speed further and lower myself. That tiny bit of mana present inside of my body sparks, and just as Tess releases the arrow, I use it to boost my body. That slight push, a boost to my muscles, makes me move to the side faster.

The second arrow only scratches my elbow, as I slam against Tess and both of us fall to the ground.

My knife is deep in her chest, and with wide eyes, a smile, and blood on her teeth, she is looking back at me. I don't even have to look down to feel the arrow she holds stabbed in my side. It is not too deep, but that sharp pain is there.

"You were supposed to be my Prince Charming. A bad boy with a heart of gold saving me from my tower where my evil mother imprisoned me," she whispers in her dying breath.

"I know. I'm sorry." I twist the knife, and when she stops moving, I stand up and pull the arrow from my side. A little bit of blood flows out, but I move my provisional bandage jacket that is there already to attempt to block both of the wounds. After checking the arrow that stabbed into and through my shoulder, I break it a little so it doesn't stick out as much and leave it there.

I clean the blood off my hands and the knife to make them less slippery and head back to the stairs.

Before I even reach them, one of the old doors with its scraping paint suddenly swings open, hitting me and pushing me against the door on the other side.

Maya rushes out of there, hitting me with a baseball bat right on my elbow and breaking it, causing the knife I hold to slip and fall down.

Yet even as it is falling, and Maya is pulling the bat back for another hit, I force my arm with the broken elbow to move, and my hand catches the blade of the knife, which cuts into my fingers.

I barely duck under the swing that misses my head, which throws Maya out of balance, and I grab the knife with my left hand. Using my leg, I push myself from the door and into Maya, causing both of us to slam into the wall, where my knife stabs deep into her leg.

Even then, she shows no emotion, and more like a machine than a human, she brings down her head to slam it against me.

At the last moment, I position mine a little so she breaks her nose instead, and I pull the knife out of her leg to stab again, but she drives her knee into my lower belly to get me off her.

As I stumble to not lose my balance, she stands there with her cold eyes locked onto me, entirely ignoring her heavily bleeding thigh or the blood from her broken nose getting onto her lips and dripping down.

She brings the bat high up and swings it down at a high speed that I barely avoid, then she instantly moves into another swing. But due to the way I positioned myself, her bat hits against the frame of the door, getting stuck on it, and she lets go of it to defend against my stab.

Maya grabs the blade of the knife in her hands, squeezing harder even as it cuts deep into her fingers.

I use my chest and weight to press against the knife's handle and push it through until the knife goes deeper into her chest.

Even then, she moves down to slam into my head, but as I avoid it, she instead bites into my ear and tears it off.

But like her, I do not stop, pressing the knife deeper and deeper until she finally gives in and her body falls to the ground like a puppet without strings.

She is instantly dead, as she had been giving it her all until the last second, and only her dying body gave up before her will did.

I lean down to take the knife and kick the bat away as I pass by her into the apartment at full guard, looking for anyone else about to attack me. Yet even as I examine the small one-room apartment in its entirety, there is no one.

Getting the body out of the way, I lock myself inside and then push a dresser against the door before I head into a small bathroom, where I turn on the faucet that hisses for a few moments before water comes out of it.

Even through the pain, I lift both of my hands and wash them, and then tear part of my shirt to tie around the cut fingers and palm of my right hand. I leave the elbow as it is. Using a small, wet towel, I press it against my missing right ear and keep it pressed against it even as it quickly colors with blood.

For five minutes and in the sound of running water, I hold it there, keeping my eyes closed and listening to all the sounds around.

Without opening my eyes, I throw the towel away and tear a piece of a bigger one that I press against my ear. With the adrenaline nearly gone, the pain is much severer now, and I have a feeling as if the wound has its own heartbeat. My hearing is also all wrong, so I keep tapping the floor with my feet to get used to the different sensory information.

More of my shirt disappears, too, as I clumsily spend multiple minutes tying the towel to my ear so it stays pressed there. Only then do I take some water into my palm and cool my face multiple times. I take some, pouring it over my hair too, and when I look into the mirror, I comb it back.

My expression is nearly exactly the same as Maya's, barely carrying any emotion. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I just let [Focus] take over. At these times, I also worry about what could happen if the skill becomes too high a level.

Closing the faucet, I grab the knife in my non-dominant left hand while my right one with the broken elbow hangs along my body. Of course, I am bleeding more now from the wounds on my belly and side. I can feel lightheaded too, but still I open the door, push the dresser back, and then enter the hallway.

I head once again toward the stairway, and the higher I go, the smaller I become. I am shortening a little, and the knife in my hand feels bigger. It all is making me have to tighten my provisional bandages.

In the middle of the stairs, Min-Jae charges at me out of the dark shadow, and even as I swing the knife at him, he pushes through it and slams against the window leading to the outer rusty stairs.

The glass cuts into both of us as I slam against the rusty railing. It gives in, and both of us begin to fall down, but I scrape by and grab the unbroken piece, causing me to stop, and he grabs onto my leg.

The both of us hang in the air with just a dark void all around and below us. I even see my knife, which I had to let go of to catch myself, pass by and fall down, barely missing Min-Jae.

Instead of climbing up, he pulls up and then hangs down, swinging and tugging and pulling to make both of us fall.

When the railing I hold onto begins to creak, I use my free leg and stomp. Over and over again I repeat the movement, crushing his fingers, stepping on his arm and head repeatedly until he lets go and falls down alone.

I can see his expression as clear as day before he disappears.

First, I pull myself up using the hand I use to hold on, and then add the right one too, even as the pain shoots through me. I barely have the energy to climb back up, where I lie on my back and breathe heavily.

But only for a moment, until I force myself to stand up. There is a sticking piece of rusted railing that I pull on until it breaks and gives in, giving me a forearm-long, somehow sharp metal pole.

I continue upwards without hesitation, feeling myself shorten even more.

There I smell smoke, and one of the apartments has flames flickering through the gap below, and I can feel the heat. From the inside I can hear a girl's voice scream in pain, beg, and keep slamming against the door.

These sounds chill me to the bone as I recognize Izzy's voice and pleas. For a moment I even reach toward the knob to open it, but I pull my hand back at the last moment and continue walking, speeding up as the sounds become much worse.

My hand hurts from how hard I am squeezing the piece of railing in my hand, so I force myself to weaken my grip.

The closer I get to my goal, the weaker I feel. Some unknown voice starts to echo in my ears, causing my thoughts to feel sluggish, and my hand begins to move on its own, raising the jagged edge of the metal rod and pressing it against my neck.

The voice becomes louder, whispering faster with some urgency, and I begin to push, pressing it into my skin and drawing blood. A few more steps, and my sight begins to haze, and I almost lose control over myself.

I reach toward that tidbit of mana in my body and boost my movement, spinning around and stabbing the metal rod into Sophie standing behind me. I don't have enough strength to pull the pipe out, so as she falls down, it remains lodged in her heart.

I don't even bother trying to get it back as I begin to walk again and for a moment see my reflection in the window nearby. A face and body that I used to have when I was six years old.

Lily is there too, she sits on the ground in front of the corner I have to walk around, and when I get closer, she lifts her head up to look at me. She looks so weak and sick, yet she still smiles at me as I am passing by and touches me.

I feel warmth spread through my body, and my wounds heal a little in exchange for Lily becoming even more sickly. Just as I pass behind the corner, her body slides against the wall, and she falls to the floor, not moving anymore.

But I am almost at my destination. At the end of the hallway in front of me looms a single unremarkable door. The one leading into the apartment where I used to grow up with my parents and Victoria. And Victoria is in front of this door.

Currently a Demigod's chosen Champion.

The chosen warrior of the coward who has hidden deep in my memories. The ones I don't like to visit. The coward that doesn't even understand what it saw of me, even while pulling from my subconscious worries, and turning my friends into what I just met, just to weaken me.

Here, the Demigod's presence feels suffocating while I possess just this weak, small body, and a pittance of mana. That small, beautiful droplet.

And Vic is here to stop me, to kill me. Someone the Demigod judges as dearest to me, and someone it made the most powerful where I will be the weakest.

The Demigod doesn't laugh, doesn't have an evil monologue, but I can feel its gleeful expectation as I close my fists and walk toward the door and Victoria.

My sister stands there tall, powerful.

Invincible.

Just how I always imagined her. If I were to face that image of her, here and now, I would die. In that, the Demigod is correct. And the closer I get to her, the more obvious it becomes. That presence of her in my head is more powerful than any Ruler I have met so far.

But the Demigod is foolish. It just doesn't understand. It doesn't understand me, it doesn't understand my sister.

Victoria doesn't even touch me.

She doesn't attack me as I open the door, and I can feel the surprise from the Demigod. The utter, absolute shock.

Even here, in this mental space, my subconscious cannot imagine me hurting Vic or Vic hurting me.

And so the Demigod's chosen one doesn't move.

When I close the door, the inside of the apartment becomes dark, and in the far corner I see two eyes glowing at the height of my head, as well as I hear a deep growling from there, and a flash of white fangs.

I lock the door twice and use the chain to secure it before I turn to the eyes and step into the darkness without any hesitation.

What charges at me is that dog I used to be so scared of when I was younger. The sort that kept barking and had bitten many people. Everyone knows a dog like that, a poor thing growing up to mirror their owner.

It now lunges at me from the darkness, it even looks exactly the same, just the eyes are the Demigod's.

I move to the side, and that drop of mana I have been gathering, which refused to be extinguished even here, bursts, strengthening my every movement.

I remember that day when that dog attacked and bit me, causing a deep wound. I also remember telling that to Vic. And I remember learning the next day from the screaming, angry owner that someone killed that dog.

Vic was 11 years old then.

My fist slams against the dog's head, and it is flung against the wall. I am brought closer, and when it bites into my hand, its teeth break against my reinforced skin, and I deliver another punch.

It jumps, it twists, and tries to get away, but I grab its leg, pull it back, and swing it against the wall where more of its bones break.

Its form grows, changes, and it turns into a full-sized white lion, but at the same time, my form grows too, as I return to my original size.

Heat radiates from inside my body, and under it, my bones snap and heal, and both of my hands shoot ahead as I keep the lion's mouth open even as it pushes me against the kitchen counters that we break.

With a burst of strength, I force that mouth open more until I hear it crack, and I throw the lion against the wall. Before it can even stand up, I move fast, step in front of it, and deliver a punch that sends it through the wall into the room that used to be mine and my sister's.

I calmly walk through the hole in the wall and grab the tail with a spike that shoots toward my head, and using the back of my hand, I cut it off and give the lion another kick.

It gets on its legs and attempts to say something, but I get closer and deliver a punch to its head, and as it is falling down, another one.

Then, while it is looking up at me from the ground, I lift my leg and stomp on it, and the body finally stops moving.

The apartment we are in begins to shake and disappear slowly as I begin to exit the mental space. I ride that wave until I open my eyes, and my last submind, which I left outside on the 12th floor, snaps back together with mine, and a wall of notifications fills my vision.

***

Author Note: Sooo, some time ago I mentioned something about a week-long vacation with my family, and these trolls found a nice city they wanted to see, but it's very "last minute."

I don't like not giving you enough heads-up so you can pause your subs and such, so I am really sorry about that. But as always, you can ask for a refund. Just be aware that I will look into refunds after I get back from my trip.

That's it! As always, thank you all for your support, and sorry again for the "last minute" warning!

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