Bab 25: Repentance
Beatrice wasn't sure of what to do as she gazed at the two beasts running towards her. Her mind went into overdrive as she tried to think of any way to slow the creatures down further.
'None of my mage arts have any effect on them. I'd be lucky enough to cause one of them to topple over.... Wait! No that's a perfect idea!'
Beatrice's thought process concluded within the span of a few seconds, and she immediately spoke out an incantation.
"Cascade Skyscraper!"
The woman propelled herself forward using the water that manifested from her spell. This carried her directly in front of the two rampaging beasts.
The creepers were slightly surprised by this but reacted quickly as both of their tentacled-arms tried to swat at Beatrice. As this was happening, she forced the water to push her forward faster by fueling more mana into the spell.
She easily made it between the two creepers as they swung at her with their tentacles, and she narrowly avoided it by going into a dive and flying in between the two creatures massive 'arms'.
All the creepers hit was water, and as they're momentum carried them forward, they ended up colliding with one another with a dull thud.
The two fell backwards into the buildings behind them as pieces of wood and stone flew in every direction.
As she flew towards the ground, she braced herself for a hard landing before colliding with the dirt road. Due to the speed she was flying at, she rolled dozens of meters forward before coming to a complete stop.
"Uugghhh," She groaned as she lay faced down in the dirt.
Beatrice found it difficult to get up, but after remembering the situation she was in, she quickly moved to hoist herself up. Along with the pain from colliding with the ground, she was also feeling lethargic from overtaxing her body again due to casting another spell. She looked at the cuffs around her ankles and wrist in annoyance because they were the root cause for her being unable to use her mana properly.
"Darn useless pieces of metal. If I could just get these things off I'd have never ended up in this situation in the first place"
The cuffs emitted a dark-blue and purplish color. It seemed they had some type of effect on Beatrice's mana and prevented her from performing multiple spells or casting more powerful ones that she possessed.
"No use worrying about it now I guess, " she spoke as she looked in the direction of the two struggling creatures that were roaring in pain.
When the two creeper's tentacles collided with one another, it caused them both to feel a world of pain. After all, being hit by those massive things was akin to being hit head on by an eighteen wheeler.
Seeing the two monsters struggle to escape the wreckage they'd fallen into was quite the comedic sight. They resembled two turtles who'd been flipped over on their shells as they tried to stand upright.
A tiny smirk manifested on Beatrice's face when she noticed her handiwork. She may have been bruised and battered, but the fact she caused those two monsters to feel even a fraction of the pain she'd felt was a win to her.
When she'd had to watch her husband die and her attempts at saving him become useless, she'd never felt so much pain in her entire life.
The only thing that could compare to such a feeling was when the two of them were separated from their children, Jeanne and Sam. She still remembered her daughter's tear-stricken face and her son's confused expression because he couldn't understand why his mother and father were leaving.
The two parents were neck deep in debt and had defaulted on a loan, and because of this, they were forced into slavery to repay it. The loan was only used to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads. She and her husband were both poor and had very few means to take care of their family.
Her husband was a farmer and due to him being a water mage as well, it wasn't uncommon for other mages like him to find themselves working a career in agriculture. He made a barely-livable wage to support himself but somehow made it work.
Surprisingly, Beatrice herself was a soldier. She'd attended Dawn Royal Academy and after graduating, enlisted as a combat medic. She'd spent her early twenties in the military before she met her husband, and after serving for about four years had decided to retire and settle down to start a family. During the time she lived with her family, Beatrice experienced true bliss.
They may not have always been good times, but they were still some of the best years of her life with children and husband by her side.
How she wished she could return to those simpler times.
Now though, her husband was all but gone and she was unsure of how their children were faring. She'd brought them to stay with a couple colleagues she knew in the military, but there was no telling how they were doing now.
It'd been four years since then. Four years of her children's lives she'd been absent for.
Tears once again started to fall from Beatrice's eyes. She felt anger, guilt, resentment, fear, and sadness all at once. Whether or not she made it out of this place alive wasn't even a question. She would die here just like her husband had, in the maws of those unholy abominations.
She watched as the swamp creepers were steadily getting up to their feet with a blank stare on her face. She didn't hope to make it out of this alive, nor did she expect anyone to save her.
This would be her atonement for failing to save her husband and leaving her children behind. She believed this a befitting punishment for failing as a wife and as a mother, and in her final moments she decided to ask forgiveness from her children, wherever they might be.
'Hah. Jeanne, Sam I'm so-'
Sadly, before Beatrice could finish her thoughts, something slammed into her right shoulder and sent her flying through the air.
She couldn't even remember what it was she was going to say as she flew threw the air and crashed into a building that must have been some type of jewelry store.
She couldn't look up to see what it was that had hit her, but she was sure it had been one of those monsters from the swamp.
It seemed a third had been attracted with all the noise and chaos brought about from the recent skirmish between herself and the other two creepers.
Beatrice was in a terrible state. Her entire right arm was caved in on itself and pieces of bone were protruding outwards from her skin. There were multiple cuts along her cheek and lips due to her flying through multiples panels of glass in the jewelry shop. Some pieces were even entrenched deeply into her back and arms as blood flowed down them like a river. Her legs could be the only thing, said to be left relatively unharmed, but in the state her body was in, she wasn't going anywhere anytime soon.
It was unfortunate the pain hadn't knocked her out because now she got to experience every bit of it.
It felt like a dozen fire ants were crawling all along her back and taking bites out of her flesh constantly, and her face felt like it was full of dozens of paper cuts from all the lacerations she received from crashing through the glass. Her eyes were glazed over and all she could do was look down at her legs.
Most of the pain though, seemed to stem from her arms because she could feel the bones that protruded outward threatening to tear through her skin and where she had been punched was making it hard to breathe due to the other part of her shoulder collapsing in on her rib cage. The pain she was feeling now was excruciating and she only hoped it killed her before the creatures came to eat her alive.
However, fate was cruel.
Just as she started to drift off into death's embrace, she was grabbed from out of the wreckage and hung right before the monster that had sucker punched her. She couldn't even put up a struggle as she was brought closer and closer within the creatures maws.
Hadiah
-- Hadiah diterima Status Power Mingguan
-- Peringkat
Power 
-- Power
stone