“Rea! Come out! We need to talk about something. I know you’re here.”
No one is answering his call so he entered the shack and uses the fire aura from his weapon to light the way.
Inside the house is pitch black and you will not see anything if the door and the windows are closed but tonight is a full moon. So the light from the moon passed through the windows and the cracks of the door and it made the atmosphere calm.
While he is slowly walking through the shack, he heard a voice inside the bedroom. He slowly walks toward that room and finds no one but he knows that she’s there. When he looked under the bed, he saw her looking at him with her glowing red eyes.
He pulled the bed to the side then took a step back to look at her. He prepared himself for the attack but Rea just stands up and dusts off herself then looks at him. Her hair is all jumbled up that it’s like she didn’t comb her hair for years. She looks like a middle-aged woman but the truth is she’s older than that.
She wears a white blouse and a green skirt and her eyes right now are brown but when he looked at her under the bed it was glaring red. But he knows the reason why it does that so he proceeds to ask her.
“After 6 days of tracking and traveling, I finally found you. Do you know this bounty? You have 100 gold and 500 silver reward in your head and that’s a big reward, don’t you think?”
Rea is very nervous in front of the bounty hunter because she heard of him before so she knows a thing or two about what he did to the monsters he killed.
“Y-yes. I know that bounty.”
“The information in the bounty said that you killed 12 fetuses and 5 pregnant women in the city of Kvatch. Is this right, Rea?”
“That information is wrong! T-there’s a not a single truth on that and it’s true that I’m a manananggal but when the night comes, I only eat the animals to relieve my hunger. I haven’t touched any fetus or pregnant women in my whole life!”
“Stop lying and tell me the truth!”
While Patrick is talking, he slowly feels that his fatigue is going down fast so he needs to act quickly or else he will blackout.
His moral dilemma is preventing himself to act quickly, he needs to find out the truth whether Rea did all that or not. He is not a mad killer that everyone thinks because they thought that Patrick of Valen, the bounty hunter, feels no remorse while doing his job.
The manananggal can’t take it anymore so she throws the chair beside her to Patrick.
The bounty hunter anticipated that this will happen so he instantly dodged the chair and proceeded to counter-attack but he didn’t know that there’s a second attack coming to him.
She used her elongated proboscis-like tongue to attack the bounty hunter in the heart but she slightly missed. Patrick vaguely dodged her second attack by doing a pirouette and her tongue penetrates his right shoulder from the back.
While her tongue is inside of his right shoulder, the spell he chants earlier worked. Her tongue burned so she pulled it out of his shoulder but the bounty hunter pirouetted again and then he swung his strange sword with a fire aura upward to slice her elongated tongue.
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“Aargghh!! Mah thangue, Mah thangue!!”
(Aargghh!! My tongue, my tongue!!)
She cried and cried about her tongue that has been cut by the bounty hunter. The next step she did is to sever her upper torso and then she sprouted her huge bat-like wings.
Meanwhile...
“Did you hear that father? That is the cries of a manananggal! I knew it, there’s something ominous about her when I saw her the time she moved here. Father! Let me help that bounty hunter!”
“Sasama rin po ako kay ate para tulungan yung bounty hunter!”
(I will also go with sister to help the bounty hunter!)
The innkeeper looked at his daughters.
“Hindi ako papayag. Ayokong mawala rin kayo katulad ng nanay niyo.”
(I will not allow it. I dont want to lose my remaining family especially when your mother already left us.)
His older daughter is good at using bow while the younger one is good with sword. He teaches them after they work at the inn. He did it so they’ll know how to protect themselves, he didn’t teach them to kill or fight.
“That bounty hunter knows what he’s doing. That’s why he is one of the best bounty hunters in this world so don’t worry about him. He didn’t get that title for nothing.”
Saelhana and Elanys can’t argue with their father anymore because they know he is right. So they just sat and waited for what will happen next because they can’t sleep in the current situation.
The villagers can’t sleep too because they don’t know if the bounty hunter is going to win or not so they stayed awake the whole night to protect their children and alert themselves. They are also scared because when there is full moon, the monsters become stronger.
The bounty hunter looks calm but deep inside he feels that his energy is slowly escaping from his body so he needs to end this fight fast.
“Yuu wii pay for tis!”
(You will pay for this!)
Rea shouted. Even though she lost half of her elongated tongue, she proceeded to talk.
Then she flew towards the bounty hunter and she tried to stick her claws through his stomach but it failed. The bounty hunter rolled towards her standing lower torso then he smeared the crushed garlics and salts on it.
While Rea is crying for her tongue earlier, he took the garlics and salts from his back pocket inside his robe then held it in his hands to wait for a good opportunity. The bounty hunter clearly smiled while wearing the half ivory mask towards the monster.
“This is over.”
Patrick thought after he put the garlics and salts on the lower torso. This is fatal for a manananggal because the upper torso would not be able to rejoin to its lower torso and then she will be burned when the sun rises.
“Nooo!!! Wat ev yuu dan?!”
(Nooo!!! What have you done?!)
The bounty hunter is losing to his fatigue and he almost fell down but he stands with his right knee while holding his strange sword with both hands towards the ground.
The manananggal didn’t stop, she is very angry, she tried to fly again towards him to attack and stick her claws through his stomach and she successfully did it. While she is holding him with those claws through him, she brings him with her and flew through the window.
Patrick spit out a lot of blood and he almost lost his consciousness and his protection spell is gradually wearing out.
“Hahaha!!! Yuu layk tis??”
(Hahaha!!! You like this??)
Rea’s face is too close to the bounty hunter. She changed a lot when she transformed into a manananggal. Her face becomes wrinkly and her eyes became brightly red. Her hair becomes rougher than before and she also shows her shark-like teeth to him then she licked his lips with his sliced elongated tongue.
They flew towards the sky.
You will clearly see the two silhouettes thats moving upwards in a great speed in the front of a big beautiful full moon. The bounty hunter used all of his energy to lift his right hand to swing his sword on the left wing of the manananggal. Because of the fire spell in his sword, the manananggal’s left wing burned. The manananggal roared in pain and then she released the bounty hunter from the sky.
The bounty hunter is falling faster and faster that there’s no way that he can survive the fall and he lost all of his energy so he can’t move or do anything anymore.