Bab 18: Ghostly Confrontation
"What the hell?!" Adam screamed, shocked by the pouncing figure and jumped to the side in panic.
The woman missed him but continued forward, carried by her momentum, until she collided with a tombstone.
As her nails pierced smooth bullet holes in the hard stone, Adam's eyes widened in shock, realising the same fate awaited him if she managed to land a hit.
Subsequently, she turned to face him with rage-filled eyes, causing him to ponder what she had said earlier. How did she know, and why did she hate him enough to attack instantly?
"Can't we just talk? I'm sure I can help you! there is no need to fight." He tried to reason with her, unwilling to risk a battle with his right forearm unusable. However, the answer he received perplexed him.
"You are one of them! Just outside, but the same!" she screeched, her voice a haunting echo through the graveyard. Then, she dashed towards him, even faster than before.
"Shit! Calm down. I don't know what you are talking about!" He screamed in outrage, his brows furrowing in anger. Why was she so unreasonably intent on killing him?
But his expression quickly shifted as he realised he wouldn't have time to dodge.
Gritting his teeth, he clenched his dagger, placing it in the trajectory of her strike.
CLANK
The sound of the impact reverberated in the surroundings as he was sent flying a few meters backwards, his left arm numb. She was much stronger than him, and her ethereal form was more condensed than his.
With a bitter smile of realisation, he promptly balanced himself and took a battle stance inspired by the stories he used to read with a shake of his head.
He really would have preferred to talk. After all, in our modern society, he never needed to fight and never learned how to. It was even truer for weapon combat, which seemed alien to him. Even in the tower, his victories were achieved through his use of the environment, traps and plans, not because of his fighting skills.
That's why the situation looked grim. With no plan or trap at his disposal, he had to confront the monstrously powerful ghost in a frontal fight and wasn't confident in his chances of victory.
"I really don't want to fight you. Please let me help." He made an ultimate attempt to appease her anger yet prepared mentally for the worst.
"Lies! Deception! You're all the same! Just like that officer!" She roared, her already horrible face contorting into a nightmarish grimace as bloody tears fell from her hollow eyes, making her look more like a demon than a ghost.
Simultaneously, her transparent spectral form flickered with an eerie, bluish light, releasing a mass of solid negative energy accompanied by a mystic hum.
The cold sensation permeating the area intensified, forcing him to shiver as his eyes widened in dread, not liking what was happening.
With a disturbing sound, the negative energy condensed in her right hand, gradually taking a solid shape.
After two seconds, a dark blue ghostly whip emanating a freezing aura caused his face to pale.
'Can she use magic?' He thought, cold sweat forming on his ethereal forehead, understanding the situation had gone from bad to worse. He had to fight to protect his life against the unreasonable mad woman.
His mind raced for a solution to balance the odds, a calculative light flashing in his eyes as he assessed her strengths in a second.
'With that whip, besides strength, she has better range, too. I have no choice. I'll have to use one of the oldest and most potent human techniques.' His face turned dead serious, and shadows danced on it ominously under the pale radiance of the moon as he screamed. "Escape!"
He drew all his mental strength, focusing on floating as fast as he could, using the labyrinth of tombstones as cover to hinder her vision.
Alas, would the ghost give up on its prey? Consumed by her madness and hate, she lashed out at Adam with her ethereal whip, aiming to lacerate his back with the many barbed ends.
By a hair's breadth, he ducked forward and phased through a thick tomb, causing the whip to miss its target and entangle the stone as the spikes pierced small holes on its surface.
Half a second later, the woman drew her arm back, retrieving her weapon... and the entire tomb with it in a rain and cacophony of rubble.
Palling and shivering in fright, Adam thought, 'I would be dead if she couldn't interact with matter!'
Thankfully, his quick-wittedness caught that detail on her first attack. Hiding behind the graves was the first step of his hastily made plan.
After a few more strikes ending in the same manner, the woman lunged forward, her voice cracking in a terrifying scream.
"Fight, fight me! I am strong! It won't be like last time."
However, only silence answered her words, causing her to lash out at the nearby stones, destroying them to find her target before resuming her search.
Meanwhile, Adam waited with ragged breath for an opportunity to turn the tables. His plan carried risk, but what other choice did he have? Even if he escaped, he would die from his wounded soul. Gritting his teeth, a trace of madness flashed across his luminous eyes as his heart burned with determination. 'I won't die here. I refuse!'
Half a minute later, the woman floated nearby, her eyes scanning the surroundings as she unrelentingly tracked him.
However, that was what he had been waiting for. Leaving the cover of his tombstone, he propelled himself upwards, his hand clenching his Beastbane dagger, and stabbed at her chest in a swift and decisive motion.
The dagger cut through the wind, reaching the unprepared scrawny woman squarely where her heart should have been.
In response, her head jerked back as she shrieked in a mix of pain and shock at the unexpected ambush carried out by her much weaker opponent.
Her open mouth revealed triangular sharp teeth glinting ominously in the night as she brought her head down in a flash, determined to bite her scheming enemy to death.
The echo of her jaws shaping powerfully resounded in the cemetery. However, confusion gained her eyes as she didn't feel the expected sensation. The daring ghost was gone, leaving only the dagger etched in her chest behind.
"AHHHHH! Where are you!?" she roared, her anger flaring like an erupting volcano as she threw the dagger in the distance.
The Beastbane dagger's extra damage to supernatural and monstrous enemies made her suffer the most. She felt her ethereal body burning continuously, making her ground her teeth at the familiar but hateful sensation.
Then, she once more scanned her surroundings, determined to take revenge.
However, she quickly forgot about Adam as her eyes widened with a perverse yearning light.
Not far away, she noticed a young woman crouching against a tomb, shivering in fear and clasping a baby against her chest.
"BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY."
Hadiah
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