Haihai, Mono here!
Another new chapter it is! This one actually has some action! Everyone is overjoyed now! fufufufu...
Its a bit of an evil chapter but I still hope you like it~
Thank you very much to Dan and Nox-sempai for PRing it for me and pointing out mistakes I made :D
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WARNING: This chapter contains a lot of gore and such… please read at your own discretion!
“Ugh…”
When the pain had started she had excused herself from the others and hurried towards the basement she had created for this very purpose.
Hours later she was still lying on the rough, cold ground of black stone in the darkness. The pain had grown so intense she couldn’t stop herself from panting and groaning every few breaths. It was random where it would strike so she couldn’t even prepare herself for it.
As a new wave of pain started assaulting her head she thrashed around and dug her fingers into the ground before screaming and curling her body into a ball. She couldn’t keep herself from hugging her throbbing head.
As expected… her spirit couldn’t adapt to this new body… the pain was necessary. It was natural. That’s what she told herself. After all her spirit was now reconstructing it. Little by little. This was just the beginning. She had expected it, she had braced herself for it. It would be days more before it would stop. The intensity would only increase, yet…
“IT ****ING HURTS, **** ********”
Somehow the cursing had relieved her a little…. For a second that is. Until the pain came back even stronger.
In the next few hours she cursed everything. Herself, this world, the traveller who had created this body and the ones who had caused her to be in this situation. Especially the latter. She would get her revenge against them, against this world.
She clawed at the ground, punched at it with everything she had. She screamed, she cried and finally she pleaded but obviously the pain didn’t stop. She herself knew best it wouldn’t.
She was unsure exactly how much time had passed. At one point she had stopped thinking and gave in to the pain and rage. The pain in her body made her groan, but this pain was different from the earlier one. Sharper.
She looked down at herself and saw what caused it.
There were countless wounds on her body. Deep dirty scratches spread out on nearly every part of her. Her hand wandered up towards her head only to find a huge laceration on her forehead. No wonder blood was flowing into her eyes. Apparently she had banged her head on the walls, repeatedly from what she felt. She was a bloody mess.
She forced herself to get up and look around. What she saw caused her to chuckle.
Somehow the space she had created for her transformation had doubled in size. Rocks and debris lay all around her. Various deep claw marks were spread over the ground and walls and small craters occupied the space between them. And there was blood. Quite a lot of it.
“Kukukuku…. Seems I made quite a mess…”
Her voice was broken and scratchy. It came out as nothing more but a whisper and it hurt just to use it. But still she smiled. Her lips curled into a cruel grin.
It was over. This body now truly belonged to her.
“Just you wait… I’m coming for you… kukukuku… HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Not caring about the pain in her throat she laughed uncontrollably, her voice echoing off the walls of the room.
A ravine below Firchten
*BANG*
Behind a wall something was repeatedly bashing against the stone.
*BANG*
Cracks spread through the wall and small pieces of stone fell from it. There was a small break in the banging as the shadow smiled gleefully at the sight of the cracks. It stepped back carefully to get more momentum.
It had awoken due to the strong earthquake. After it regained its consciousness from its long slumber it had found itself trapped within a small space. Angry at being enclosed there its bloodshot eyes had scanned the walls of the place. It moved over towards the opposite wall and confirmed its suspicions. It sensed a large empty space behind it. There was probably food there.
It felt truly starved after the long hibernation. Food…
It had started destroying the wall after that for several hours until now. It started towards the wall as fast as it could. Determined, it slammed its body against the wall with full force one last time.
*BOOM*
With a huge noise it broke through. The force made it shoot out of the natural jail like a bullet. The gargoyle quickly spread its wings to stabilize itself and howled loudly, overflowing with bloodthirst.
It could smell food.
Its scream easily echoed up the bottomless ravine it was in up to the city of Firchten.
***
“But what if…”, Suitcase started but got stopped as he heard the howl from afar.
“W-what was that?”, Hinami whirled around towards the sound, completely forgetting that she had just been in the middle of a conversation with him.
“I don’t know… but it sounded bad…”, Suitcase next to her had gone pale as well and stared towards the outskirts of the city.
They heard the howl again, closer than before. This time, however, it was followed by terrified screams. Apparently, whatever made such monstrous sounds had reached the city.
“S-shit! Hinami! Go get the others! I’ll go check it out!”
“No, I’m coming along!”
“Hinami! We need to regroup!”
“B-but…”
“GO!”
Suitcase pushed her towards the plaza and quickly took off towards the source of the screams. Someone needed to scout out what was happening.
Thus he entrusted his sister with the task to gather the others for now. He knew she usually put up a strong front but in situations like this she would easily freeze up.
He didn’t even consider flying there. He wasn’t good with using the controller and didn’t think he could be stealthy enough in case he needed to get away fast. So he ran.
Once he got close to the screams he swiftly climbed up a small house and worked his way ahead over the rooftops more carefully.
“NOOOOO! Stay away from me!”
A shrill shriek echoed up from just below on the street and he could hear hurried footsteps of a woman. He bit back the urge to simply jump down and help her and carefully pulled himself closer to the edge of the building to see what was going on.
Once he could see below him horror spread over his face.
It was a gargoyle.
It stood at least 10 meters tall and measured 15 meters from head to tail and had stone grey skin. Only its yellow glowing eyes were a different colour and screamed hunger and blood thirst. A single horn was growing out of its forehead and its ears were pointy, but not longer than a human’s. His snout was huge and went over to huge fangs that lined his mouth. Huge wings grew out of its back and shadowed his long tail that ended in a spiked club. Dangerous looking claws grew out if its hand and feet, completing the picture of a high level monster.
‘Shit…’, Suitcase thought. If he remembered right gargoyles were at least Lvl 100. One this size should be even higher than that. Plus, judging from the tail this wasn’t a normal gargoyle…
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
It had closed in on the woman and was now about to attack.
What should he do? Should he help her?
Deep fear spread in his guts and made him unable to move. He was scared. He was hesitating now that he was faced with real danger. The fighting spirit and blood lust of the monster pierced into him mercilessly.
So all he could do is watch in horror as the monster closed in on the helplessly fleeing woman. Her wings seemed to be broken so she couldn’t fly away. Even if she did the gargoyle would probably have caught her either way.
Tears of desperation were flowing down her cheeks as she cried for help hysterically.
“Anybody…. Please…! UAAAAAHHH!!”
The gargoyle’s eyes flashed in certain victory and swung its claws, tearing into her back without hesitation.
Suitcase watched horrified as blood gushed out and the gargoyle split her in half. Before her body could even fall to the ground the monster had caught hold of both halves and brought them towards its face.
Then it opened its snout and started tearing into her hungrily, not caring about the blood that was dripping down its chin.
‘More… MORE… I’M HUNGRY… HUNGRY!!!’
The gargoyle had tossed aside its thoughts and had lost itself in the hunt. Its craving for flesh grew stronger and stronger, pushing back any logic it might have had left.
Suitcase could just stare in shock, unable to move at all as the monster raised its head and sniffed loudly, trying to locate its next prey. Then it slowly turned its head and looked straight at him.
It screamed a bloodcurling battle cry and leapt up towards him.
The stare of the monster had broken through his state of shock and suddenly he was able to move again. Quickly he scrambled away from the roof and allowed himself to fall from the edge on the other side of the building.
The monster was hot on his heels. Just a second after he had moved it landed heavily on the spot where he had just been, claws destroying the tiles of the roof underneath him as it let out another roar. The hunt was on.
Hikaru landed on all fours on the street below and rolled, then he scrambled up and ran. But his speed was no match for the gargoyle.
With just a leap it was right behind him. One more and he would be dead.
Just then he had reached the edge of the building and threw himself behind it, into the small space between this building and the next, hoping he could somehow pass through to stall the monster.
That was a mistake.
It was a dead end.
“Sh-shit!!”
He squeezed in as far as he could but the space got too small for him to pass eventually.
“ROAR!”
The monster had slithered past the entrance due to its momentum, but with a leap it was already back in front of the small alley, cutting off his escape route.
It reached inside with its long arm but couldn’t reach him so it opted to destroy the buildings to get to its prey.
Just then…
“KYAAAA! H-HIKARU!!!”
That voice was…. his sister!! She followed him after all!!
“H-HINAMI!! RUN!!!”
He shouted desperately but it was too late.
After she saw what happened his sister had bravely picked up a random long piece of wood and now beat against the monster, trying to stop it from reaching her brother.
She succeeded.
The gargoyle turned around and roared at her, sure his other prey wouldn’t be able to escape even if it had another snack beforehand.
“U-uaa!”, Hinami let out a scared sound when it turned towards her. She stumbled backwards and fell, dropping her wooden plank in the process.
“Aaah… aaah…”, she sat there shivering uncontrollably, unable to move or get up at all.
“HINAMI!!! NO!!”
Suitcase tried to move desperately, this time towards the monster, completely forgetting his fear just a moment ago. Not her! Everything but her!
But he was stuck. He had managed to trap himself between the walls and couldn’t move at all.
The monster roared hungrily and licked its lips in anticipation. But instead of leaping at her it simply raised one of its claws at her.
“N-no… p-please… b-brother….”
Hinami pleadingly stretched out her arm towards him, silently asking him to help her. But no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t get out.
“HINAMIII! DON’T YOU TOUCH HER!!!”
Suddenly black flames formed in its hand and not even a second later Hinami screamed. It was a scream so full of pain that it froze the blood in Suitcase’s veins.
“HINAMIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!”
Tears flowed from his eyes as he screamed desperately. The worst part was that he could see everything from here.
Flames enveloped her, burning her slowly. She thrashed around as she screamed, trying to put out the flames by rolling on the ground but it was no use.
Moments later she grew quiet and lay still.
She was dead.
“No…. NOOOOO!!! HINAMIIII! *hic*”
The gargoyle snickered and reached out to pick up the burned body.
“GET YOUR HANDS OFF HER!!”, Suitcase screamed angrily but of course the monster paid him no mind and devoured the body greedily.
He made a sick crunching noise every time he ripped out some meat from her body. The sound would stay to haunt him for decades to come.
“Hinami…”
Somehow his fighting spirit vanished completely and turned into a feeling of helplessness. Helplessness and anger. Anger at himself for not protecting his sister. Anger at himself for just watching as two people died before his eyes. He loathed himself. He was pathetic. A weakling and a coward.
He gritted his teeth and knocked his forehead on the wall in front of him.
Someone like him didn’t deserve to be alive when his sister wasn’t.
“Hinami…”, only a whisper escaped him now while tears were rolling down his face.
The gargoyle had nearly finished devouring her now. It would come for him soon. He knew it. And he accepted it.
This was the end. But at least they would go together.
While you wait... check for my writing progress as well as interesting bits about my world here
I've also added a few sketches of how i imagined my world and some characters
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