In the night (3)

Sami eyed Marmalade, who threw her body at the giant boulder, soaked in a goo of blood and fluids. A soft grunt escaped her lips. He wondered the meaning behind it.

"Ugh..." Marmalade attempted everything. Pulling, punching, and sometimes, kicking with her calves, but all it created were red bruises all over her body. Sami dropped down the sharp edge, sliding his feet across the feet. Lee followed by taking the ten-meter fall on her ankles, the same way as Marmalade.

"I don't get this human." Lee whispered, unable to understand her trouble. The panting woman, now leaning her orange bangs against the boulder, exuded a pathetic hue.

Sami glanced at Lee with a smirk, a dozen meter away from the scene. "Maybe, it's heavier than you think."

"That wouldn't change anything, probably." Lee answered with annoyance. An urge bubbled inside of her being, a thunderstrike without warning. "I'll get this straight." She walked in confident strokes towards Marmalade, before pointing at a nearby wall. Marmalade frowned, but complied.

Lee, standing proud in front of the boulder, a leg behind the other, began twisting her waist. Closing her hand in a fist, she arced it backward alongside her shoulder, before throwing the two at the boulder. The air, compressed by the bolting punch, exploded in a deafening shockwave. Lee held back the motion, barely grazing the rock, before glancing back Marmalade.

By lifting her chin up, Lee's gesture was haughty. However, Marmalade's current state of mind allowed for a unique question.

'How?'

Then, going back in stance, Lee repeated the motion three more times. Each time, a loud bang echoed in the North; every instance, her punch never connected. Marmalade had mixed emotions - from feeling insulted to awe.

Seeing how Lee armed a fourth punch, she shook her head in instinct as a cue. After gifting Marmalade a glance of understanding, Lee flickered the boulder, shattering it in ten, even shards.

"W-What?" Marmalade's voice shook. Lee shrugged, before crouching down. She began rummaging the organ sludge bathing at her feet.

"Right. The eyes." The realization jolted Marmalade awake. Walking up to Lee, she glanced over her figure, seeing three half-broken red gems in one hand. Lee turned her head to Marmalade, who shook her own.

"That's not usable; It'll sell for nothing." She said with a dejected look. Her perfect plan wasn't so thorough. Lee glanced at the gems, then closed her hand. A red powder slid between her skin, down to the squashed corpses.

Marmalade chuckled, widening her eyes in tandem. She heard Sami walk up to them and a yawn.

"Hey." Sami spoke. "Your notebook, what's in it?" He glanced at Marmalade's half-opened backpack, showing the tip of a blue rectangle.

"Ah, well." Pulling on the tip, she held a white, blue stripped notebook. "That's where we write our hunts. The number and the method." Marmalade explained, before showing off two pages clogged by writing, followed by blank ones. "I've got 26."

Sami frowned, together with the silent Lee. "That's dumb. In the first place, how do they verify these contents?"

"I don't know." Marmalade's flat answer deepened their lack of understanding. "But, they do. Last year, there was a guy who said that proclaimed he'd killed two-hundred-something wooky."

Sami nodded without context. "Hm."

Marmalade continued. "Well, when the discovered the ploy, they gave him an incense and dropped him in here. With proper preparations, of course."

"Then?" Sami expected the answer. Lee could barely hold her laughter.

"He died." Marmalade words made Sami's lips curl in a smile. Meanwhile, Lee burst into a frenzied laughter, her hands hugging her stomach.

Eventually, Marmalade joined Lee.

**************************************************

With a pumped chest and wide strokes, almost an act, Lee slogged through the snow. A meter or two behind, Sami and Marmalade lagged behind. The three were going tracing back their steps across a long straight path.

"I've a question, if you don't mind." Sami spoke, hands in his pockets. He'd grown accustomed to the comfort of a coat, while Lee's fluttered in the air.

"Yes?" Marmalade said with a faint voice. The fatigue piled up.

"26, in two weeks. That doesn't seem like a lot." His question made her choke, only a for a moment. She glared at Sami.

"Huh? I don't believe you know about it more than I do." Marmalade words were full of spite. Not because of hate, but rather her tired brain.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

"No, but think about it." Sami started. "I don't know how nutritive monsters can be, but surely, they wouldn't have sent you here if the situation was that dire. On average, that's two monsters a day, and a good share of food."

Marmalade nodded. She followed Sami's gaze who pointed at the sky - looming shadows were discernable in the night. About a dozen bird-like figures, with black fur and a gruesome morphology.

With a glance, Marmalade knew them to be Wookys. Sami recognized them in a part of his memory.

"These monsters-" He continued. "- are they hard to kill?"

Marmalade shook her head, glancing at them. "...Not really? I guess if all of them attacked at once, maybe?"

Sami sighed. "I see." Marmalade raised a brow at his attitude. Then, without giving a glance, he whispered,

"You're weak."

Marmalade's eyes shot open. She gritted her teeth in disbelief. "...What?"

"I don't want to insult you, really. But, it's the tr-"

"You two." Lee's excited tone cut through the atmosphere. Both turned their head to her, one drawn by the words, the other by sound. However, their focus wasn't much on Lee's figure. Rather, it was the twitching, yellow eyeball behind her.

Neither a beast nor an animal. Without a body, or perhaps it did. Near the first, a second glint appeared amidst the black night. Two rugged yellow glints, with a black sphere on the middle.

Marmalade froze. Her mind did, the raging blizzard, too, alongside the world. She couldn't know where the beast's figure ended, or if it had any at all. There was a soft breathing stroking her skin; not her own.

Sami let out a weird sound of awe. The mist of night made it impossible to identify any figure or logic behind it. Two yellow irises that didn't indicate anything. In an instant, they darted to his eyes, with a creaking noise. A wide grin formed on his face on instinct.

The yellow eyes were out of focus, exchanging glares with Marmalade, then Lee, before landing on the woman again. Nothing seeped through its gaze. When it hovered over Lee, however, it blinked.

Lee's eyes were a cluster of emotions - awe, surprise, or excitement. The possibility of danger never crossed her, because from the start, it never did once. An absence of fear that bordered on madness; it was enough to stun the hidden monster, if it was one.

"...See." Sami let out a mumbled voice, but the frozen silence made it audible. He took a step towards Lee, without averting his gaze. "You're weak, indeed."

Sami's words struck Marmalade. She remembered a point that one of her teachers made. The mountain air. A lack of oxygen; the illusions that it created. Yet, even with the realization, Marmalade's feet didn't budge. In fact, no part of her body did, like a wax statue.

Even if it was her mind playing a trick.

Maybe, the isolation had driven her mad.

But still, the beast that emerged was terrifying, enough for Marmalade to stop thinking. The best, and unique decision that she could take.

The world turned in slow motion. Underneath the giant eyes, Lee's figure hovered in the air, and golden bangs shone bright. She threw her legs in-between the two eyes, collapsing on the air.

Then, the yellow eyes convulsed, twitched, turned orange to red, before a sea of blood exploded onto the ground. Lee's hair was crimson, together with the snow.

Everything came back. The blizzard raged on Marmalade's face. A freezing gales burnt her face. Lee's face remained blooded. At her feet, there was a corpse with a pierced chest. Marmalade's body moved on instinct. Step by step, the beast's identity became clear.

"Phoenix." Marmalade blurted out. A tall bird of six, furless wings that extended like scythes. Its skin had an ugly gray hue and decaying spots scattered throughout. On the belly, a patch of greasy fur stood out. It almost seemed overweight. Then, at the upper body, a gaping hole of blood with the top of a tongue hanging inside.

Marmalade gazed at the phoenix's head. A long, thin rose tongue twitched inside of its beak, placed in the middle of a disturbing oval-shape. A pair of tiny, crooked eyes were placed on the expected forehead.

"This thing came crashing into us - it was on instincts." Lee's spoke up, looking down at her pray. She bowed at Marmalade in meaningless apology.

Sami chuckled. "Is this thing that scary to you? I'm getting worried, now."

Then, with her wits twisted and broken, Marmalade's puked out the Haptho's meat, until nothing remained.

Her consciousness slid away, blurring her vision in a white fog. The world contorted, shifted shapes. Marmalade observed a scenery come to life, pieces by pieces.

A soft wind was hurling outside, though she couldn't feel it on her skin. The sun hid behind gray clouds and a torrent of rain, wrecking Marmalade's subtle air-do. She wore a brown, black stained loose suit, leaning her body on an imposing backpack. On her sides, a swarm of people surrounded her, clothed the same; some had a backpack, others a suitcase. All shivered at the falling droplets that hit with the sound of a chime.

"Third-years, first class." A female voice rung out amidst the silence, cutting further into it. The scene was desolate. Towering above rows of unsettled trainees, a woman stood on a short ledge. With stunning white hair and a calm aura oozing out, it emphasized the beauty of the priceless fur coat resting on her shoulders. As raindrops try wetting the fabric, they withered in an untraceable mist of smoke.

While the woman was a second year, her demeanor gave her the edge over the bustling upperclassmen. Nobody refuted this authority.

"There's not a lot that I expect from you, but I'll keep my advice short." The woman began with a crystal-clear voice.

"Use your brain."

"Use your wits."

"And most importantly-" She paused, before letting out a snicker. "Try not to die. Or It'll bothersome work for me."

Behind the woman was a noiseless black train. The wide structure, made out of recycled beast parts, defied the laws of gravity. It hovered in the air above a cliff at the peak of Hilge, a ten-kilometer fall into the abyss.

As she turned around, a black door made way for the woman, as she boarded the flying train; then, a list of names were called out.

Standing in line without budging a muscle, Marmalade was bored. Her plain face frowned. Before her arrival, she planned to take this test easily. The rules, after all, stated survival as the highest factor, and hunting beasts was for the fools.

It wasn't that Marmalade was weak - her ego kept ringing this sentence in her head. - she wasn't reckless, that was all. A coward mentality, perhaps.

"Number 13, Kibe Marmalade." As she heard her name, a couple of people moved to the side, allowing Marmalade to pass. The imposing train and its narrow entrance faced her.

Then, the world shook. Like a sudden dizziness, or a lightning strike. A pair of yellow eyes, bigger than the mountain, materialized above her. They twitched, gazed at Marmalade's soul, seeping out a horrifying bloodlust. In her mind, she died multiple times, each death worse than the previous.

A giant maw took a bite at the mountain, devouring her, the train, the white-haired woman, and a piece of the world. It chewed, until Marmalade's mind was broken.

"...!"

Marmalade panted, feeling her heart shattered. A damp and dim cave, emitting a colorful hue, and a warm touch. Lee's delicate stroke, and a meaningful grin from Sami.