Chapter 420: Tears of the Moon

The Moon Shark crashed to the ground, the grass remaining completely undisturbed despite the half-fossilised beast slamming into it.

Belladonna rose it down to the ground like a surfboard and, just for good measure, gave it one last swift punch to finish the job. The flesh turned bone shattered and the headless beast remained still, not a single sign of the little invader that had burrowed into its now calciated flesh.

Clambering off of the Shark with dagger in hand, Belladonna leaned back and let out a heavy sigh mixed with a laughter of disbelief.

Steam still curled off of her muscles as the spell was still running its course, her boost having reached a current total of 176% between the damage she had taken and the time she had kept it running.

But even if her muscles were still twitching and she could imagine the hellish backlash this would cause, she could not help but laugh and revel in the blissful joy of victory.

A bliss that lasted for all of five seconds before a hateful, venomous voice hissed from the heavens above.

"Wretched creature... Truly, nothing is sacred to you. Or perhaps because it is as such, that your disgusting kind takes such joy in murdering such a pure and innocent creature."

Belladonna took a deep breath, before letting out in a long groan that overflowed with annoyance, before she lazily tilted her body towards the newcomer. Not even sparing him the energy for a proper look and simply giving him a withering glare.

Descending from the skies, floating on a cushion of pompous attitude and ego, was a pale man in plate armour.

Said armour was a deep, dark grey which had a black and white cape that fluttered dramatically behind him as he made his descent. His skin a radiant white, not pale like a corpse, but like a perfect and porcelain doll with skin that Belladonna would describe in no better words than ’Moon-kissed’.

Long, pure white hair flowed behind him like he was submerged in water, completely defying any known laws of gravity just like the man himself.

"Look buddy," Belladonna grumbled as she straightened up and cracked her neck, "I have had a shit day, and I really don’t need to be dealing with your bull-"

"YOU WILL BE SILENT!" The Moon-Kissed stranger screeched, a dash of colour finally gracing his face as his cheeks, which were wobbling with rage, turned a deep red. His eyes burned with pure hatred as he glared at Belladonna, at least the two eyes that were open.

The third eye that was on his forehead remained permanently closed, yet she could feel it glaring at her nonetheless.

The man touched down, the grass bending underneath his boot as he stood proudly before Belladonna.

"You already disgrace this place with your wretched presence, nevermind the blood you have spilled here. Attempt to sully it any further with your feeble attempts at trickery, and I will make your death a long and painful one."

"Yeah... Alright." Belladonna growled, as she cracked her knuckles one by one.

She wanted to blame her attitude on the spell, but unlike its previous version, [Baroness’ Blood Rush] didn’t affect her mind in the slightest. Nor could she blame it on the voice in her head that always demanded and cried for chaos, destruction and blood. Especially blood.

That one was silent too, it had been since she arrived here and since her abilities had been locked away.

No, what was responsible for her current attitude, and what she was about to do, was simply the way this man looked at her like she was worst than shit on the bottom of your shoes. She hated that look, and there was something about his sense of superiority that was truly irritating and beyond familiar.

In fact, the combination of an arrogant attitude and that disgusting look was painfully familiar, and the speciality of the one person that Belladonna wanted to beat bloody the most. This man would just have to be a stand-in for her rage.

How thankful it was that his hair was looking very luxurious, dare I say even... Luscious.

Belladonna burst forwards, her steaming and energy filled muscles sending her shooting across the clearing. She crossed the gap between them faster than one could blink, her perception moving so fast with her that this man seemed to be standing still as her fist screamed through the air straight towards that pompous, pursed mouth.

She didn’t know what went wrong.

Pain erupted through her body in an instant and the sound of bones cracking and shattering filled her ears as her burned back slammed into something solid. It wasn’t the church wall, instead she had somehow slammed into the edge of the Moon-lit clearing, her body smashing against a wall of pure moonlight.

Her ribs were broken, completely shattered in a way that made breathing incredibly difficult and unbelievably painful. A fact that Belladonna did not realise until she tried to suck in the air that had been knocked from her lungs, only to let out a wheezing, nearly silent scream as her own bones pierced into her lungs.

Her vision blurred, doubling the images of the stranger who was now much further away than he should have been, as he lowered his hand and the single finger that had been extended.

He raised his other hand, lifting a spear that had not been in his hands when he landed.

Belladonna didn’t even see him throw it, nor did she get the chance to even land from the first blow, before the spears head pierced through her stomach and pinned her to the wall of Moonlight.

As her trembling hands wrapped around the shaft of the spear that now kept her suspended in the air and pinned to the moonlight like she was a poster on a child’s bedroom wall, Belladonna’s Unique Spell was completely shattered.

She was immediately hit with the backlash, her muscles shrivelling and her lungs burning from more than the shards of bone tearing through them with every wheezing breath. All of her actions caught up to her, and it felt like she had run a thousand marathons in a row without stopping.

But despite her muscles trying to devour themselves, giving her an all too familiar feeling of how her real body consumed itself from her disease, Belladonna could only focus on the spear in her stomach and the steam curling from the wound.

It was not steam from her self-devouring muscles, but from the skin and meat sizzling from contact with the blade buried in her guts.

Now that was Hollonite, and it was even worse than she remembered.