章 16: The cloak that hides the monster
With incredible tranquility, the specter was freed from his prison while his claws pierced the abdomen of potential prey. How long had it been since he experienced that feeling? The ecstasy of hunting and the sweetness of the moment when distracted prey has entered their hunting grounds voluntarily.
The specter did not know how long he had slept inside that crystal and did not care, but that was the feeling he most missed of the time he was free. The expectation and ecstasy of the hunt, along with that indescribable feeling of fulfillment when all their plans have led a powerful animal into their clutches.
Originally, the specter belonged to a tribe that lived off the hunting and domestication of dangerous beasts. Whether in their original home or in the place they occupied after the destruction of their lands, that was always their way of life, so the situation caused him a certain nostalgia that pleased his heart.
Merigar could not dodge the blow, as he had been taken completely by surprise, the specter piercing his abdomen had methodically waited for the moment when his attention was diverted to another matter and within a split second had struck a blow that could well have been fatal.
—"Why didn't you kill me?" he asked as he tried to pull the claws of the spectrum out of his abdomen.
—"I thought ripping your heart out would not be appropriate." he said as he pulled his claws from Merigar's abdomen.
—"Oof! What did you say?"
—-"I think that people who have done something that I selfishly consider wrong must suffer a hell on earth before they are allowed to die in a cruel and ruthless way, as there is no guarantee that they will pay for their deeds in hell. Although if I had a guarantee that that site actually exists, I would surely think differently."
—"Wait, could it be that you are..."
—"What I am doesn't matter, all that matters are, what you do right now." He said in a deep, gloomy voice as he tasted the blood in his claws. "Will you try to flee? Or maybe you'll stay there?"
—"Do you think you can do whatever you want? I'm a Grand Master class adventurer!" He bragged as he prepared to fight." A simple spectrum is not a problem for me." He confidently affirmed to calm his own heart.
—"Do you think you can do whatever you want? I'm a Grand Master class adventurer!" He bragged as he prepared to fight." A simple specter is not a problem for me." He confidently affirmed to calm his own heart.
Evidently, Merigar was just bluffing, the fact that there was a specter in that place could already be considered a disaster. In his time as an adventurer, he knew few creatures that could reach the SSS classification and among those creatures, the most recurring was the Specter and undead.
Nightmarish creatures that only inhabit a place called the Whispering Forest, a place that according to legends is on the edge of the world, crossing the great desert of beasts. This uncharted territory, supposedly inhabits a tenth Titan who, according to books, is the most powerful of all the Titans.
—"I have to admit that you are right, as I am now, I could not fight a warrior with the power that emanates from you." He admitted, as his eyes lit up. "However, that would only be the case, if we had engaged in a frontal battle. In the present situation, even with this body, I can take my time to make you suffer as much as I please."
—"Don't speak as if you had defeated me!" he said furiously.
—"Don't you feel dizzy? In fact, it's awesome that you can keep it as if nothing happened."
In response, Merigar checked his wound, since, according to him, he had not received a fatal blow. While his internal organs were safe and the wound was not particularly deep, there was a problem. At the base of his hip bone, there was a small perforation that bled in an incompressible amount despite being only a small wound in the hip region.
—"What did you do to me?!" he asked annoyingly when he discovered a wound that could be dangerous if the fight dragged on.
—"I pierced your femoral artery and now I just have to sit back and watch life slowly leave your body while I torture you." He said as he savored the moment. "What amazes me is the lack of dizziness despite constantly losing so much blood, were humans always such resilient creatures?
—"You pierced my... what...?" Merigar had no idea what the femoral artery was, he just knew he had to stop the bleeding in some way, or even with his strength the situation would only get worse.
"Well, I spoke to you to hope that your strength would slow down, but since it seems that's not the case, let's start this little battle." The specter knew that the more he forced his victim to move, the bleeding would become more and more aggressive, so he stopped waiting for the loss of blood to weaken the man in front of him.
Merigar prepared his daggers to receive the initial attack from the specter. As an assassin categorized in the highest ranks of adventurers, Merigar was not an easy opponent to beat.
He was an assassin of Grand Master rank, a rarity among adventurers because it was very rare that an adventurer of that profession would surpass the Master rank. This was not because the assassins lacked skill, it was simply because the type of combat that characterized them made them level up much slower than their companions.
—"[Shadow illusion]" He invoked his favorite skill by completely blending in with the environment, giving the illusion that he had vanished into thin air.
In response, the spectrum simply produced a light laugh, then charged with great speed into a space that was supposed to be empty. Its claws cut the air mercilessly and a sound was heard from the other side of the place.
—"Ugh! bastard! How can you see me?" he said as he held his shoulder in pain. Merigar felt a pain similar to numbness, but adrenaline seemed to be suppressing the vast majority of the pain he really felt.
—"Spectra can perceive the spiritual energy of living beings, don't you know?" The spectrum shrugged. "That aside, but you don't forget something?"
—"What are you talking about?" he exclaimed angrily.
He initially thought the specter would mock him or something similar. However, what held the specter in its clutches surprised him.
—"Aaaaah! My arm!" He fell to his knees when he became aware of what had happened.
What looked like a failed attack had actually been a cruel and surgically performed blow. He had not noticed it before because adrenaline suppressed his pain, but his forearm had been cut by the sharp claws of the specter.
The Specter simply fiddled with his arm throwing it from top to bottom as if it were a child playing with a wooden stick. Then he seemed to be bored and using his monstrous force crushed his arm into his clutches and hurled it scornfully at its owner.
—"I give it back to you, anyway, I don't like playing with garbage." After saying those words, he was about to restart his attack, when from the prison gate a battle axe emerged that was flying towards the spectrum at high speed.
The specter merely dodged the dangerous blow, so the axe struck the cell bars behind the specter and amazingly broke them as if they were made of wood.
—"Are you all right, Merigar?" One of the Harlequin's companions had arrived, a gigantic barbarian carrying two axes had entered the room and asked for the condition of his companion.
—"Be careful with that thing, Astor." He warned his partner that he had suddenly appeared to help him.
—"I know, Merigar, I've fought these things before." The barbarian known as Astor Preya, was not inexperienced and knew very well the power of the specters. "But... What's a creature like that doing in a place like this?"
—"Don't ask nonsense and focus on the battle."
—"He is right" The specter stated that it had already begun its attack.
The barbarian used his other axe to cushion the wraith blow and removed his body to avoid unnecessary injury. The spectrum did not seem to be too strong, as the impact on his axe was minimal.
—"The specter I fought with in the past was much stronger than this one here." He said looking at his partner Merigar slightly. "I will activate my Berserker mode to..." When I was about to explain your action plan a strange event stole all your attention. "Huh?" His axe fell from his hands and hit the ground heavily.
—"No one protects their hands, isn't it a pity?" I affirm the specter.
The barbarian observed carefully what had happened, only his fingers had been cut by the sharp claws of the spectrum. That meant that the creature never aimed at his body, that was why the blow was so light. Instead, it had been a clean-cut aimed at the fingers holding the axe.
—"B-bastard!" Astor held his hand that already had only his thumb. Fortunately, the barbarians have an ability that allows them to tolerate large amounts of pain, so unlike Merigar the reaction was much less exaggerated.
—"Well, no matter how strong you are, if you can't hold your gun it won't matter and even if you were a monk, you would have lost half your skills by losing your fingers, isn't that funny?" He said the spectrum casually.
Astor was in a very big predicament. Although he had previously said that the spectrum was weak, he now had to retract his words.
—"Merigar, we have to escape this place, we can't fight this thing!" Astor tried to warn his partner that they should flee the scene but only found that his partner had long since left him behind. "Merigar?" he said incredulously.
—"It seems you have been abandoned." the monster claimed.
—"H-how could a creature like you have made it to this area." Astor knew perfectly well that he could not escape from a spectrum and had lost all hope of fleeing when his companion had left him behind. "How is possible the angels have ignored such a powerful specter?"
—"Mighty? Are you serious? You and your partner are three times more powerful than my current self, I just don't get in your game and I've set my own rules for this battle. Had it been a fight of strength, it would have been shattered for sure."
—"What?" Before the revelation, the barbarian glimpsed a small ray of hope that was instantly denied him.
—"However, it is too late to change anything." The specter attacked without mercy.
At first, Astor tried to defend himself as much as possible until his tendons were severed. From that point on, it was just one-sided torture, its members were sliced slowly and methodically as if the barbarian were a piece of ham, the spectrum was so skillful that no matter how much pain and suffering it produced, the barbarian did not lose life or consciousness.
His desperate screams were increasingly audible in the vicinity of the Lombardi prison. The specter did not bother to cover Astor's mouth while torturing him in the cruelest ways until the barbarian known as Astor was left with only a torso devoid of arms and legs, but incredibly Astor had not died.
—"Well, I seem to have lost my touch, he lost his consciousness." The specter watched the pitiful piece of meat that was once an imposing, stout man. "I suppose I can cure him and then hang him on a pole to starve or thirst, maybe the crows will even eat his eyes?" He said with a smile. Then he remembered that he had come out of the prison cell to help the girl with blue hair.
Only when the battle was over, he was allowed to be watched by the huddled girl on the side of one of the cells as she covered her eyes and ears in an attempt not to observe the terrible monster that was in the same place as her and her mother.
章 17: The curse
Priscilla had seen the terrible fate to which the barbarian who attacked her father was subjected, somewhere in her mind she even came to think that that person deserved what happened to her. However, the man's heartbreaking cries of help and mercy had broken her heart, at some point, the cruelty of the monster in front of her had made her aware of the kind of being she was.
Initially, the hooded man appeared to be a nice, good-hearted person with a somewhat twisted personality, sadly that was not the case at all. His actions simply could not be justified, doing something like that to a person who had not only surrendered but even cried begging for mercy while his limbs were methodically sliced as if he were extracting fine slices of ham for a sandwich, could only be described as the actions of a madman.
At some point, she had dragged her mother's body away from the merry monster who continued to play with her victim. After taking her mother's body to a nearby cell, she tried to cover her ears in an attempt to escape those heartbreaking screams.
Only when the screams ceased, did she hear a voice calling to her, it was a flat, deep, dark tone of voice that did not seem human at all.
—"Is something wrong, my lady?" the specter said as he approached Priscilla.
—"Don't come near me!" She screamed for reflex, she didn't want that creature from the Underworld to approach her under any circumstances.
—"Mmm... How can I say this...? Hadn't I already said I'm a bad person? I thought I'd made it pretty clear from the start..."
—"This has nothing to do with being a bad person, you don't even feel empathy! How can you be able to do something so cruel to a person?"
—"My lady, I don't know what kind of idea you have of me, but I'm afraid, being a wraith, I don't feel anything like empathy." The wraith paused. "However, I can understand what punishment or forgiveness is, based on my individual moral values."
—"Don't talk anymore!" She didn't want to hear it, not someone like him.
The specter was silent, sitting in the cell in front of Priscilla and her mother. He waited a couple of minutes until the girl calmed down a bit before trying to talk to the girl again.
—"My lady, I fear that if we do nothing in a few minutes in your arms there will be only one corpse." He warned tentatively.
These words caused Priscilla to lower her defenses momentarily and touch the face of her mother, whose temperature dropped more with each passing second. Priscilla hugged her mother's body tightly, she didn't know what to do, if she came out she would be hunted by her brother and if she did nothing her mother would die soon.
—"Can you save her?" She asked without raising her head.
—"Yes, I can."
—"How do you plan to save her?" She needed to ask that question, as at that point she could not be sure whether the specter would actually save her mother's life or whether he believed that saving her meant turning her into a monster or directly offering her salvation from death.
—"This body has almost reached its limit and even if I can extend that time by devouring the soul of that guy there, it would no longer make sense to do something like that. So, I think it best that use that energy to heal your mother and then disappear." Priscilla looked up to see the monster and what she found was a completely quiet creature resting in front of her.
—"I am not alive; I am not dead either. I will simply disappear into the void, because, from the start, something like me should not exist."
—"Wait, are you saying that you will sacrifice your life in exchange for saving my mother's life?"
—"That question is not very precise. It's nothing so noble, I'll just use my healing power to save that woman's life and because of that, my lifetime, if you can call it that, will be significantly shortened. Oh, but this is not a sacrifice, as the lives of my kind are not too long, to begin with."
—"Isn't that the same as sacrificing yourself?"
—"I suppose you can call it that, if you prefer, my lady."
—"I can't ask you to sacrifice yourself for something like this... that would make me equal to..." Priscilla couldn't finish the sentence.
—"My lady, could it be that you have a bad conception of good and evil?"
—"What do you mean?" The question bewilderment Priscilla.
—"First of all, I do not plan to convince you to abandon your human moral values. That said, we specters conceive of the world in a somewhat deferential way of you. The main difference lies in our ability to perceive the souls of living beings for who they are."
—"The souls?"
—"To put it simply, a soul takes a less dark tone the less guilt that living being feels. In other words, a guilt-free being will have a white soul and a guilty person will have a darkened soul."
—"Does that mean that creatures with black souls deserve to be punished?"
—"Not exactly, it would be more accurate to say that they seek to be punished to alleviate that guilt, as many souls become white by subjecting them to indescribable suffering, while there are others who even doing something like that keep themselves in the same shade of darkened color."
—"I don't think I understand you, are white souls a good person and dark souls a bad person?"
—"No, something like good and evil is a mere invention of intelligent creatures, referring to evil as something that does not suit them or something they fear, that's all." I observed the girl's reaction and then continued her explanation. "Now, guilt is different, a mother who was not able to save her children, will have a darkened soul even if she did nothing wrong. While a religious fanatic who really believes that, by massacring large numbers of people to justify his twisted ideals and who really thinks that he freed people from sin with his actions, might very well have a white soul, completely blameless."
—"Is that why you tortured that person like that? To save his life?"
—"Not really, I made him suffer because he was trying to harm a person close to me, that's all. I won't do anything against someone who doesn't try to hurt me or take something from me, I'll just let him move on quietly. How do humans say? Oh yes, [Your freedom ends where the other's begins. ]"
—"Why are you telling me all this... if you hadn't said anything, I would think that you are trying to justify your actions."
—"Maybe I do it unconsciously, as I was originally human and justifying themselves is somewhat intrinsic in human being's nature. However, I explain this to you so that you understand that asking me to sacrifice myself does not make you a bad person and should not feel guilty about it, it is simply a natural desire for the welfare of your loved ones over strangers."
—"Are you saying it's okay to ask you to sacrifice your life?"
—"I don't know if it's right or wrong, but I do know that, if you don't, your mother will die and believe me when I tell you, the guilt you will feel in letting your mother die, is not can be compared with the guilt you will feel in asking me to sacrifice myself. Personally I prefer not to see a darkened soul in the person I have chosen as my Master."
—"Wait, so you won't die?"
—"As I said before, I am only a projection of my real body, in fact, the specter that currently I habited is who is about to die, not me. Now, if you want to save the life of the spectrum, that's possible."
—"What should I do?" Incredibly, Priscilla was willing to save the life of such a being and her resolve made the specter hold his breath.
—"She is certainly a very strange Master... Well, if you let the spectrum inhabit your mother's body, both can be will save."
—"Are you saying I should let him possess my mother's body?"
—"That's the case, but just to clarify. That does not mean that she will lose her will, she will simply feed the specter with her spiritual energy and in exchange for keeping it alive, this specter will protect her."
—"I see... something similar to a parasite, right?"
—"You could say that. However, the one who will cure your mother, it will be me and when my conscience runs out of a container, it will simply disappear."
—"I see that you meant to disappear... and what if I let you inhabit my body?"
—"Huh?" For the first time the specter made an expression of disbelief so marked that upon seeing his ridiculous gesture, Priscilla could not help laughing.
—"Hehe, is something wrong with you? Did you think I wouldn't mind and let you disappear?"
—The specter was speechless, Priscilla had given in the nail, he certainly thought just that.
—"W-well, I thought you'd want to get rid of a creature like me..."
—"I will lend you my body if you promise not to take control of my actions." Priscilla offered the monster a sweet and sincere smile that would have touched even a rock heart.
—"Hey! Wait! Are you okay?" Priscilla was frightened to see that from the face of the disbelieving specter in front of her, tears of blood began to flow from her bright yellow eyes.
—"I'm sorry, I never thought a human would actually say something like that..." The specter wiped his tears and knelt in front of Priscilla. "I will be at your service, My Master."
—"Wait, you don't need to do something like that, just calm down a little bit, okay?"
—"I understand. But first, there is something I must warn you."
—"What is it?"
—"My original body had a curse and in an attempt to get rid of that curse, it divided his consciousness. In other words, I am the consciousness that was transferred to the curse, so when I inhabit your body, you will have the same curse as me, you still think to accept something like that?"
—"Only if you promise not to hurt me."
—"I would never dare to hurt my Master, but I am still a curse."
—"In that case, what kind of curse do you have?"
—"I don't know."
Priscilla blinked in bewilderment Why wouldn't she know about her own curse? Or could it be that she became a monster if she accepted the curse?
—"J-just to confirm something, will I become a monster or something like that?"
—"No, I know. All I know is, I'm a curse and it was planned to go away along with a part of my consciousness."
Without knowing about the nature of the curse it was very difficult for Priscilla to give an affirmative answer, even if she really wanted to save the specter, it was very dangerous simply to accept. That said, time was running out and every second his mother was closer to the gates of death.
In the end, she decided that it was a risk he could take and that, in turn, that risk would ensure that the specter did everything possible to save the life of her mother.
—"I will accept if you save my mother's life."
The Specter bowed deeply to Priscilla and approached Mirelia's body. After placing the palm of her hand on the woman's breast, the specter slowly faded and disappeared from view.
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