Chapter 71
Binding Fragility
A mere blink away later, Asher found himself in a completely different place. Gone was the rancid landscape filled with death and rot and gone were the skies reddened with invisible tears, all replaced with a rather spectacular marble-tiled floor flanked on all sides by high, white walls of granite upon which misted silhouettes were seated.
The tiled floor formed an arena of sorts, squared, approximately the size of two tennis courts lined side by side. It was all rather bright and blinding, a complete contrast to where he came from, and he had to take a moment to adjust.
There was no natural source of light--no sun above the sky, no any other form of it. It looked fake, almost like a scene staged in a movie or a game where the world was well-lit while hiding what was illuminating it.
A moment later, a flicker of a shadow some fifteen yards in front of him morphed into a figure. It was a man who seemed to be in his late twenties, short though well-built, wearing rather ordinary clothes, just like Asher himself. He was holding an old, rusted dagger in his right hand and was grinning rather broadly. However, neither of them could move just yet and were frozen in space while a window appeared describing everything.
Asher merely glanced over it--the broad strokes of it was that it was a duel to death and that they'd have to use only their own skills and bodies to achieve victory. There would be no external aid or intervention, though a huge investment of Souls could be used to buy something like that rusty dagger that the man was using.
It was a raw brawl, at the end of the day--and those misted silhouettes surrounding the arena were likely the spectators indulgent in the death and pain of worthless humans. Asher smiled faintly and shook his head; it was just about what he expected, yet he still found himself a tad bit shocked at the reality of it.
"What is it? Did you go mad from fear and start laughing like an idiot?" the man shouted at him, and it seemed that that was the point at the moment--they were expected to hurl insults at each other before the fight started.
“How’d you challenge me directly?” Asher asked. What he needed the most right now was information--he didn’t particularly care that they had the ability to challenge him directly, but he at least wanted to know how they did it. Or, rather, the specifics as he could already venture a guess that it was some insanely expensive item.
“Humph, dead men don’t need to know that,” he replied.
“Humor me, though. Come on. I’ll be dead soon, anyway, so it won’t matter.”
“The only thing you need to know,” the man squeezed through a wide grin. “Is this: I told you that I’m not the one to be fucked with.”
“Ah,” Asher chuckled. “Good to know that her Bond-villain performance continues. When will this fucking thing unpause, anyway?” as though it heard his complaints, he found himself capable of moving right after.
While he was getting adjusted to the sensation of moving his fingers again, the man rushed him directly and madly, extending the right arm that held the dagger. He was rather quick, crossing the distance in just a few seconds, raising his right arm and aiming directly toward Asher’s neck.
The latter sighed inwardly, quite disappointed; it was clear that the man was somewhat experienced as he had good core strength, long strides, and good aim. But at the end of the day, these experiences were piled up on top of brawls and fights and nothing more.
Asher ducked ever slightly to the side and kicked out with his right leg, full force, directly at the side of the man's knee. At the same time, he dodged the overhead swipe of the dagger, his leg landed on the man's left knee and immediately shot him to the ground. The latter howled out in pain, likely feeling his ACL tear up like a sheet of paper. For a remarkably resilient and perfect structure, a knee was quite weak to perfectly aimed sideways strikes.
The pain brought him to the ground immediately and he dropped the dagger, his mind overwhelmed with shock. He immediately broke out into cold sweat and began to shudder, his body pumping him full of adrenaline to try and keep him running as it recognized the life-or-death situation. It was fascinating, in innumerable ways, just how enduring a human body could be--even now, with a massive tear in his knee that would likely take months even under optimal circumstances to heal, he was still able to crawl back and stand up, though with a limp.
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The man's dark eyes widened and he stared silently at Asher who didn't move from the position after kicking out. Glancing down, there were already indications of rapid swelling, and bruising wouldn't be too far behind either.
Asher bent over slowly and picked up the dagger, inspecting it; it was quite ordinary, dull beyond measure, and would probably be more of a hindrance in a fight than a useful tool.
“So, Sarah,” Asher said. “Who is she?” he asked, tossing the dagger over to the man who looked at the weapon perfectly landing next to his healthy leg in shock.
“...”
“Come on man, don’t front some fake bravado,” Asher added with a faint smile. “At least give me some information that I can use to eventually kill the person who sent you to die.”
“I--”
"--your knee is done. You've already experienced your second wind, the surge of adrenaline as soon as I kicked you. If you'd taken advantage of the masking of pain it provides, you might have attacked me a few extra times to try and get a hit in. However, adrenaline surge is a short-lived drug. Right now, you are experiencing something called an adrenaline crash. Your adrenaline levels have dropped abruptly and all that masking it did of your pain is gone. At first, it starts as a burning, tingling sensation in the knee, and as the adrenaline wears off more and more, the tingling becomes pain. For a moment, it is centralized--but it soon explodes and pulsates, overwhelming you. As your adrenaline crashes more and more, you will start to sweat and you will start to shake, not to mention the massive fatigue that will overcome you like a tidal wave.
"By now, you can't put any pressure on that leg. In fact, even moving it just an inch in any direction is enough to double the amount of pain you feel temporarily. Your best bet is to somehow bend over, pick up that dagger, throw it at me, and hope that you somehow, some way manage to lodge it directly into my skull. But, well, that ain't gonna happen. So, your time is over. The only reason I haven't killed you immediately is because I wanted to chat about Sarah for a bit. So, the longer you chat about her, the longer you'll live. Consider it my way of giving you a few extra minutes to make peace with everything that you've done and that has been done to you."
“...” mouth agape, the man--just as Asher told him--began to soon shake and turn extremely pale before eventually collapsing to the ground, beyond tired, yelping in pain. “Did... did she know?” he managed to stutter out.
“Probably not,” Asher replied, walking over slowly. “But does it matter? Regardless, you were a test tube of sorts. Whether you won or lost. So, how’d you challenge me directly?”
"... using, using a Hunt Trophy," he replied. "If, if you end the Hunt with the most kills, you are rewarded a Trophy. It's, it's a one-time item that can be used to directly and forcibly challenge basically anyone."
“Interesting,” Asher exclaimed softly, rubbing his chin. “Ain’t that shit quite rare?”
“It, it is... but it’s not bound to a person. So, it can be sold. And it never expires.”
“Right. So it accumulates. How often do these Hunts happen?”
"Some--somewhat irregularly. At most, though, once every four to five months."
“How many has she got?”
“I, I don’t know...”
“Is there any way I can challenge her directly without the Trophy?”
“N-no. As, as far as I know.”
"Ain't that a bitch, huh?" Asher looked down. The man was slowly losing consciousness which was a bit strange; the reason likely had little to do with the knee tear and was more psychological. "Anything you want me to tell her?"
“... t-tell her it was a close duel.”
“...” Asher smirked invisibly before picking up the dagger. As rusty and dull as it was, it could still penetrate skin rather easily. He went around behind the man and as gently as he could pressed against the sides of his neck, suffocating his brain of oxygen until he passed out. Right after, he used the dagger to tear open the carotid artery, causing the man to bleed out rather quickly.
Sighing, he stood back up and looked at the stands. He couldn’t discern anything--whether they were happy with the spectacle or not, whether they were cheering or booing, whether they were even there or just imaginary projections to satiate the primal need for animalistic recognition.
Regardless of which it was, it had nothing to do with him--not anymore. The window soon informed him of victory, the fact that he was given 50,000 Souls and that he now had a total of 1 kill for the Hunt event. There was no active leaderboard as far as he could tell, anyway, so where exactly he ranked, he couldn't say.
A pang of pain and a flash of darkness later, he found himself inside the very familiar walls of the cabin. There was the goblin, sweeping in silence as he always did, and even Qyne, observing him from the other corner of the room. The two merely glanced at him as he appeared, seemingly having expected his return, and continued to ignore him as he grabbed the daily meal and some ale, retreating to his bedroom.
It had been quite some time since he killed another human being--and even though he expected to be ‘fine’... he wasn’t. Not entirely. Ultimately, for better or for worse, he wasn’t a sociopath--perhaps sociopath-adjacent... but that wasn’t good enough. Not within the ultimate expression of violence.
He sat and ate and drank in silence and darkness, filtering out guilt and shame like noise, and reaffirming that he simply did what must have been done. It was either his life or the man’s, and all other expectations were non-starters. And, in the end, that was all that mattered.
That was all that mattered.