Chapter 32: Don't Fight Me, Ignite Me (6)

1

Caim finally halted his seemingly unstoppable advance, collapsing on all fours on the ground, breathing like a wild animal. Of course, the monsters of the Tower continued to avoid him. They had been doing so for a long time, and he had grown stronger, never stopping. Humans, if any had made it this far (which he doubted, as they were as fragile as dolls), also avoided him.

He was alone in the midst of devastation and darkness.

As usual.

The Tower and its challenges were nothing but props. His only enemy had always been himself.

Caim brought his hands to his chest.

The wound was almost healed.

The wound?

Well, it was a wound, but he hadn't been wounded. He had done it himself. With his own hands, he had almost torn out his heart. He could still almost feel it. The blood dripping between his fingers, the flesh throbbing.

And why?

Why had he done it? He still had many things to do, unresolved matters. He had only just begun. He couldn't die peacefully without getting answers, and even then, he would feel the urge to put them into practice. There was fire inside him. He would never commit suicide no matter how bad things got.

Then he remembered.

He remembered Victoria lying on the ground in a pool of blood, her own blood, flowing from the stump of her broken leg. A leg she had lost because he had torn it off. With his own hands.

The blood that ran between his fingers when he held his own heart was Victoria's blood.

He hadn't had time to squeeze, crush. Otherwise, he would already be dead. His body had changed a long time ago, it was extraordinary, but unfortunately, that didn't mean it had no limits.

And Yonah. He had tried to destroy her.

With my hands. With my own hands.

With one punch after another. Feeling her bones crunch. Seeing the spurt of blood just to avoid choking. Cruelly destroying her.

With his own hands.

It made no sense, he would never do that. But it wasn't a hallucination. They were memories, as impossible as it seemed.

There had to be a mistake. How could he do that to the most important people in his life? To the only people who mattered.

Caim doubled over and vomited violently.

He was trembling from head to toe, and it had nothing to do with the adrenaline injected by his racing heart.

Nothing.

2

The horrors of the world were hidden behind a red curtain.

"Come on!"

Come on what? Look? She wasn't sure she wanted to look beyond the curtain. Some limits were there for a reason.

"Come on!"

Anyway, her eyelids felt very heavy. Maybe what she should do was sleep.

For whatever reason, she felt very tired, though she wasn't fully awake yet. Yes, it would be best to sleep, she didn't like the shadows that could be seen through the red fabric, she didn't like the image they painted of the world.

Her body was asking for it.

She was simply too tired.

She heard a bitter cry. It was as if she had been slapped. Don't cry, she thought with every fiber of her being. Don't cry.

"Come on! Victoria, please, don't leave me alone."

Victoria opened her eyes suddenly.

The red curtain didn't fade, but it did part enough for her to see what she needed to see.

She didn't like what she saw, but that was another story: want and need.

Victoria opened her mouth, trying to say something.

What came out from the depths of her throat were not words.

Her mage's habit was stained red.

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"We still have time." —For what?— "You have to concentrate, please, I beg you."

On what?

On what?

But she already knew... She knew perfectly well.

One of her legs, from the knee down, had completely disappeared.

Oh no, no.

Actually, it wasn't far away, it was floating in a pool of her own blood (as expected).

For some reason, something like a laugh crawled up her throat.

"Victoria!"

Yes.

Concentrate. She had to concentrate. She shook her head, and it caused her great pain.

The leg. The leg. Victoria raised the magic staff in trembling hands, ready to channel the magical energy, that is, the life energy as it left her body. Yonah helped her, placing her hands over hers, stabilizing her grip. As much as possible.

Victoria shook the staff, reciting the appropriate spell in her mind.

Speed was the Achilles' heel of any mage, no matter how experienced. All mages who went to the battlefield had to learn to cast spells without speaking before even dreaming of it, and even then, they needed a knight to fight by their side, protecting them.

Even Victoria's extraordinary talent, a girl from a humble family born in the middle of nowhere, a genetic miracle and a hard worker, couldn't get rid of that weakness.

Without help, her maximum speed was still not enough. The world would devour her without even leaving the bones.

The same thing happened here.

She was casting the spell, performing the appropriate steps. She even saw her left leg start to regenerate from the stump, like a lizard's tail, that is, the one she had lost would stay there. It felt like she had more blood outside than inside her body.

Of course, this was just a feeling. If it were true, she would be dead and wouldn't have any damn feeling.

But the point was that she was at death's door, and the question was, what would act faster? Her magic or the brutal act that was taking her life?

She looked at Yonah, with tears in her eyes, hugging her, afraid she would disappear. As if that could prevent it. Scared. Alone.

No, that only if she died here.

Victoria gritted her teeth.

Her dying body suddenly filled with strength.

3

He had hurt them.

He had destroyed them with his own hands.

Nothing made sense, but he had to accept reality. What reality? Victoria. He had seen himself tear off her leg. He had seen himself leave her lying there. The reality that he had killed her? So much blood. The reality that he had destroyed the most precious thing to him with his own hands? His own reflection rippling in the blood. The reality that nothing could ever be the same again? Dark eyes burning in the middle of the red sea. The reality that he was now completely alone?

He didn't need that cold, painful, and cruel reality.

Caim brought his hands to his skull, squeezing. He heard the bone give way, crack. He barely registered the pain. Like a ghost's breath.

Victoria.

The tentacles writhed around him, bathed in blood that wasn't his. He was unstoppable, he was the greatest monster of all, destined to conquer the Tower as he had always known. It wouldn't even be a fair fight anymore. However, what good was that to him?

He had won every single battle only to lose everything.

Then, Caim concluded that the problem might be in his inner fire. He plunged his fists into his stomach and pulled them out forcefully, twisting his guts. His blood painted the ground at his feet.

And in the reflection appeared someone who wasn't him.

Caim looked closely, on all fours, like the wild beast he was. He stared at the false reflection.

"Who are you?"

The mouth in the blood made different movements, responding to him.

"You already know. I am the Final Boss. I am what you were always destined to find at the top of the Tower: yourself."

The impostor's mouth formed a cruel smile.

"Victoria and Yonah are dead. No, you killed them. You know it. You know it deep in your heart, you feel it as surely as you can feel the beats of your own heart, don't you? Don't you? Stop deceiving yourself and succumb, worm! Isn't that so?"

He laughed like a genuinely happy child.

A cruel laugh that at the same time had no trace of malice. A shiver ran down his spine.

"But don't worry, don't be afraid. Soon you will join them."

Hands emerged from the blood to close around his neck.

His own hands began to strangle him. What madness. Caim attacked with dozens of tentacles, but they only splashed the pool of blood and cracked the ground. Of course. Since those hands came from the other side of the reflection, from a different moment, the usual attacks were useless.

He brought his hands to his neck, trying to tear his hands, his own hands, from his neck. And they passed through them as if they weren't there. He had already known, but he thought it would be better to make sure.

What could he do?

Should he resist, in the first place? If Victoria and Yonah were dead, indeed he would have killed them.

Then it didn't matter what answers he could find at the top of the Tower, the secrets it hid. Once he left this madness, he would have no life to live. As soon as he heard that being say they were dead, a part of him had died too, although he had no real confirmation.

If he knew for sure, he could and would close his eyes to accept this. But he didn't know.

And he wanted to cling to hope. He needed it.

All any human wanted was a bit of hope. Peace of mind.

"Peace? What the hell is that?"

The demon on the other side of the reflection openly mocked him. It can read my thoughts, he thought. With a tremendous shiver running down his spine. He felt like a bag of bones at the mercy of the wind, just that and nothing more.

"Do you want answers? Did you come this far just for that? The truth is you weren't designed to have peace. You are a monster who can never have anything even close to a normal life. If you had settled down with those two instead of pursuing the Tower, at some point you would have lost it, you would have lost your damn mind and destroyed normality with your own hands because it's a poison to you. So accept it, close your eyes and die. You have no friends, no family, not even yourself, your own shadow is your enemy. Die because you are nothing more than an empty shell pretending to have life."

The surroundings began to change. Everything twisted, stretched, distorted, and finally ended up in a completely different place. A kind of large, open garden where water flowed freely and richly, and everything was as green as spring grass. The only thing that hadn't changed was the blood and guts and the hands around his neck.

That is, the important things.

He was running out of oxygen. Everything was fading, disappearing. His vision was covered with black spots.

It seemed that no matter how much he resisted, he would die horribly anyway.

Don’t Fight Me, Ignite Me (6): FIN