Chapter 525: Fighting Monsters [II / Bonus - ]

Chapter 525: Fighting Monsters [II / Bonus Chapter]

The Skitter-Hound’s entire body stiffened violently, its spurs digging six inches into the floor before the tension snapped like a cut wire.

It dropped limp, pinning her forearm against its chest.

"Haah... Haah..."

Aki wrenched the blade free with a wet schlick, planting a boot against the beast’s ribcage to shove the dead weight away.

She stood up, wiping the dark bile from her cheek with the back of her wrist with her breath steady and her azure eyes completely flat.

Up in the booth, the silence was deafening.

Alexander’s face had drained of color, replaced by a dark mottled crimson that crept up from beneath his high military collar as his breath came in shallow furious hitches.

’Ah...’

An Unawakened noblewoman who had spent twenty-five years locked inside climate-controlled penthouses didn’t drop a bow, close the distance, and drive an ice-pick grip into an anomaly’s brainstem with that kind of motion?

’Of course I am well aware that we of the Royal Line are far more stronger than regular people.’ Alexander thought, they were much much stronger which was why she could pull all these movements. ’But isn’t this too much? What’s going on?’

"Sir..." the technician whispered, his voice shaking. "That’s two. Do I... do I initiate the rest interval?"

Alexander slowly rose from the command chair.

The air in the observation booth dropped ten degrees as his Purple Core resonated through his uniform.

He shoved the technician aside, his heavy leather glove slamming onto the console’s master override board.

"Three," Alexander growled. "Release the remaining three simultaneously."

The technician went pale.

"Highness, that violates every safety protocol in the facility! She’s an Unawakened! Three Tier 1s at once will create a cross-flock hunting formation! She won’t have room to reset her stance—"

"I said open the gates!" Alexander roared, his fist slamming through the plastic casing of the console and cracking the glass display. "If she wants to play the soldier, she can fight like one! OPEN THEM!"

BZZZZZT... CLANG-CLANK-CLANK!

The warning sirens in the arena shifted from yellow pulses to a continuous, blaring crimson wail.

HONK... HONK... HONK!

Across the pit, Gates Three, Four, and Five slammed open simultaneously.

Down on the floor, Aki’s ears twitched.

She didn’t look up at the observation glass and she didn’t shout a protest as the shrill sirens and the three distinct metallic slams told her everything she needed to know.

’Big Brotherrrr... He’s angry,’ she thought, a cold calm settling over her chest. ’He realized he lost the bet on the first two and now he wants to break me so he doesn’t have to honor his word.’

It wouldn’t be the first time that he had done so and she was sure that even if he begged, he would let the monsters rough her up a bit.

’...I’m used to it.’

It was like the time when he had let a monster chew on her hand and tear it off...

She reached down, scooping her composite bow from the floor with her left hand, and retreated four paces toward the center of the arena, creating an equal perimeter between all three gates.

From Gate Three slithered a Spined Stalker... a six-legged reptilian beast with overlapping slate-gray scales that absorbed the arena’s fluorescent glare and its low-slung body carrying a tail tipped with three venomous barbed quills.

From Gate Four charged an armored Boar-Beast which was a hulking mass of calcified muscle weighing nearly four hundred pounds, its skull fused into a solid battering plate of bone, snorting gray vapor as its hooves struck sparks against the concrete.

And from Gate Five leaped a second Skitter-Hound that was leaner and faster than the first, already circling wide to take her flank.

Three different monsters with three different speeds.

’A staggered rush,’ Aki calculated, her fingers reaching into the quiver.

She pulled two arrows at once, holding the second between her middle and ring fingers against the riser of the bow. ’The boar has the mass... if it hits me, my ribcage turns to dust and the lizard has the range with the tail. The hound will wait for me to commit to the boar before jumping my blind side.’

ROOOOOOAR!

The Boar-Beast broke first.

It lowered its bone-plated snout, its massive shoulders bunching, and charged in a straight line with the momentum of a runaway locomotive.

The floor shook beneath its hooves, throwing up chips of shattered concrete but Aki didn’t run.

"Fuu..."

She didn’t draw the string yet as she stood directly in its path, letting the distance close.

...Thirty paces.

...Twenty paces.

...Ten paces.

Behind her, the Spined Stalker whipped its tail forward, launching three venomous bone quills that sliced through the air with a razor-sharp hiss.

FZZZT-FZZZT-FZZZT!

’Now!’

Aki dropped her hips and threw herself into a low, forward slide.

She slid directly beneath the arc of the incoming quills with the bone darts whistling two inches above her forehead to slam into the charging Boar-Beast’s thick shoulder plate with a wet thud.

The boar didn’t even slow down, but the momentary distraction made its head tilt a fraction of an inch to the right as Aki’s slide halted right beside the boar’s left flank.

She rose to a knee, nocked the first arrow, and drew the bowstring until the nock touched her cheek.

THWIP! SPLAT!

She didn’t aim for the armored skull, instead she drove the bodkin point straight into the soft unarmored socket of the boar’s left eye.

SQUEEEEEEEE!

The beast let out a deafening, piercing shriek as the arrow penetrated four inches into its brain.

Its forward charge lost all cohesion as its legs locked, and the four-hundred-pound brute tumbled head-over-heels, flipping violently across the arena and crashing into the far perimeter wall with a boom.

KRA-CRUNCH!

Concrete dust rained from the wall as the boar twitched, it was stone-dead.

CRACK!

Before Aki could rise from her knee, the second Skitter-Hound struck.

It had closed the distance during her slide, leaping from the blind spot behind her left shoulder as its hinged jaws snapped wide, aimed straight for her exposed neck.

’Wha—-’

Aki twisted her torso, throwing her left arm up to shield her throat!

TEAR-CRUNCH!

The hound’s needle-like teeth sank deep into the meat of her left forearm, tearing through the heavy wool cloak and sinking into the muscle beneath.

A sharp bolt of agony tore through her arm as the shock made her vision flash white around the edges.

"Ngh...!"

Aki gritted her teeth, refusing to scream as warm scarlet blood welled through the fabric of her sleeve, soaking her fingers.

The hound landed its front spurs on her chest, using its weight to bear her down to the floor, shaking its head violently to rip the flesh from her bone.

’Ah... Ah... I shouldn’t pull away.’ Aki thought, she would use this opportunity to leverage her advantage.

Aki didn’t pull her arm back.

Instead, she shoved her bleeding left arm deeper into the creature’s throat, choking its airway and denying it the leverage to tear.

With her right hand, she drew the second arrow she had held against the riser as she held the arrow like an ice-pick, thumb locked over the nock, and rammed the steel point upward through the soft tissue beneath the hound’s lower jaw.

PUNCH-SNAP!

The steel arrowhead tore through the tongue, through the roof of the mouth, and punched straight out between the hound’s ears.

The beast’s jaws went slack.

The teeth released her forearm, and the hound collapsed sideways as blood poured from its snout as it kicked twice and lay still.

Aki dragged herself to her feet, her left arm hanging limp with blood dripping from her fingertips and pattering against the stone.

Drip... Drip... Drip.

’I’m glad...’

If she didn’t get all that training, she would have been done in by now.

She was breathing in ragged gasps.

Her hair was matted with sweat with several blue locks plastered to her forehead and the pain in her arm was a white-hot iron spike, radiating all the way up into her collarbone.

She turned her head.

The Spined Stalker was eight paces away.

It had spread its six legs wide, clinging to the concrete floor like an oversized toad.

Its tail was cocked back over its head with the muscles coiling to loose another volley of quills. Its lidless yellow eyes tracked the blood running down her arm, sensing that the prey was broken.

Aki looked down at her left hand.

The fingers were twitching with blood slicking her palm so she couldn’t draw a bow. Her composite bow lay five paces away, its string severed by a stray claw during the hound’s tackle.

She reached behind her back with her functioning right hand.

Her fingers closed around the hunting dagger as she pulled it from its sheath, stepping over the dead hound.

’Why am I doing this?’ the thought flashed through her mind, clear and sudden amidst the adrenaline.

She could have stayed in the penthouse... She could have smiled at the tea ceremonies, bowed to her father, and allowed herself to be traded off to some high-ranking heir... She would have had silk dresses, private cruisers, and a life free of physical scars...

Then she felt the cold weight of the star-iron necklace resting against her sternum.

’Ah...’

She remembered the way the morning wind felt at Blessed Land.

She remembered the wolves resting their massive snouts on her boots, treating her not as a useless piece of decorative glass, but as one of the pack.

She remembered Silas looking her dead in the eye and handing her a name that was entirely hers.

’Aki.’

’I am not a nameless asset,’ she thought, her grip tightening around the dagger’s hilt until her knuckles turned white. ’I... I... I’m me.’

HISSSSSSS!

The Spined Stalker whipped its tail forward and two quills screamed through the air.

Aki didn’t duck.

She tracked the angle of the tail’s snap, twisting her upper body just enough to let the first quill graze her right shoulder, slicing through the wool and drawing a shallow line of crimson across her deltoid while the second quill whistled past her cheek, clipping a lock of her blue hair.

Aki detonated forward.

Her silk slippers, scuffed and stained with blood, gripped the concrete with surprising traction as she crossed the eight paces in a desperate, sprinting lunge!

The Stalker opened its wide, needle-lined jaw, snapping its head forward to crush her knee but she leaped.

She cleared the snap of its jaws with her knees tucking tightly to her chest, and brought both boots down hard onto the creature’s scaly back.

KRA-CRACK!

The impact drove the lizard’s chest flat against the concrete, knocking the wind from its lungs with a wet gasp.

’Thankfully it’s Tier 1...’

She needed to put this much power and force into her attacks to wound one when the average Blessed Land soldier could just one-shot it.

Before the tail could swing around to impale her thighs, Aki dropped her full body weight down, driving her right knee into the back of its neck to pin its skull to the floor.

She reversed the hunting dagger in both hands, bringing the steel down with every ounce of physical strength, fury, and stubborn royal pride she possessed.

CHUNK!

The blade severed the spinal cord between the first and second vertebrae.

CHUNK!

She struck again, carving through the tough rubbery hide.

CHUNK!

The third strike shattered the skull base entirely with the blade burying itself to the hilt in the concrete beneath!

The Spined Stalker shuddered once, its six legs extending outward in a final spastic reflex, before going permanently limp.

The arena fell into suffocating silence as only the ragged, wheezing sound of Aki’s breath echoed off the high concrete walls.

She knelt there on the back of the dead beast with her hands drenched in dark reptilian blood and her left arm throbbing with vicious, burning agony.

Her charcoal cloak was shredded, her sky-blue traveling dress stained with bile, gore, and dirt.

Slowly, she lifted her head.

Her azure eyes cut through the glare of the arena lights, locking directly onto the observation window above.

She simply stared at her brother through the glass with a look in her eyes and up in the booth, Alexander stood frozen.

His breath was caught in his throat.

The purple mana coiling around his hands slowly sputtered out, dying into cold air as his guards stood rigid behind him, their eyes wide, completely unable to process what they had just witnessed.

An Unawakened... slaughtering five beasts with... zero magic?

Alexander’s jaw tightened.

Without a word, he turned on his heel and strode out of the observation booth, his heavy military boots striking the metal stairs with a hollow rhythm.

HISS... CLANK.

The staging airlock door hissed open, and Alexander stepped out onto the arena floor.

He walked past the mangled carcass of the goblin and he walked past the dead hound, his boots crunching on the shattered concrete where the boar had crashed as he soon stopped three paces from his sister.

Aki remained on her knee, looking up at him with her chest heaving and blood dripping steadily from her torn left forearm onto the lizard’s scales.

Alexander looked down at her.

His eyes were dark, stormy, and conflicted, torn between blistering wounded pride and an unsettling cold tremor of genuine disbelief.

He raised his right hand.

VUUUUUM!

A soft lilac-tinted healing aura ignited around his palm... it was a refined high-tier restorative mana from his Purple Core as he stepped forward, reaching down and grasping her mangled left forearm.

Aki stiffened with a sharp hiss escaping her teeth as the mana flooded the open puncture wounds.

The restorative energy swept through her damaged flesh like warm water.

The torn muscle fibers knit back together with a strange itching heat as the bleeding stopped, and the jagged skin smoothed over, leaving only faint pinkish silver marks where the hound’s teeth had pierced to the bone.

Within ten seconds, the throbbing agony subsided into a dull manageable ache.

Alexander released her arm, stepping back.

He wiped a drop of her blood from his leather glove as his brow furrowed deeply.

"Where..." Alexander began, his jaw clenching as he forced the words past his pride. "Where in the nine hells did you get that kind of experience?"

Aki didn’t answer.

She slowly stood up from the dead lizard, testing the weight on her left arm.

She rolled her shoulder, letting the shredded sleeve fall back into place, and smoothed down the front of her ruined tunic.

"I asked you a question, sister," Alexander pressed, his tone rising with irritated frustration. "You don’t learn stance control like that from books... You don’t take a beast’s bite to the forearm just to secure an angle for an eye strike unless someone drilled it into your skull with a wooden stave so who trained you? Was it one of the retired Lords? Did you hire a mercenary behind Father’s back?!"

Aki looked at him.

Her azure eyes were remarkably clear.

The lingering fear that had ruled her interactions with him for twenty-five years was completely gone and in its place was a suffocating indifference.

"That wasn’t part of the bet," Aki said softly.