"Don't come any closer! One more step and I'll set this off—we'll all die together!"
Wis'adel held the crude bomb in both hands, pressing it tightly in front of herself as she snarled the warning at the two men advancing on her.
The two Sarkaz men paused for a moment and exchanged a glance.
One of them, a Sarkaz with two broken horns, spat on the ground and sneered viciously. "Who the hell are you trying to scare, brat? With that piece of junk? You think it can blow up anyone?"
They were men who lived with blades at their throats every day. Obviously, they had no intention of giving up meat that was already at their mouths.
At the same time, though, neither of them wanted to test whether the bomb was real.
The other one, tall and gaunt, stared at the hand trembling around the bomb and gave a mocking laugh. "Can't even hold it steady. Watch your footing. Slip on a rock and you'll blow yourself up."
Her heart clenched, and she instinctively glanced down at the ground beneath her feet.
In that very instant, the broken-horned Sarkaz lunged forward and kicked her wrist with all his strength.
"Ah!"
Wis'adel cried out in pain. The bomb flew from her hand and rolled several meters away into the rubble.
The next second, the tall man had already seized her by the throat and hoisted her into the air.
His voice was icy. "Hand it over, or I'll snap your neck right now."
Wis'adel clawed desperately at his fingers with both hands, but they would not budge in the slightest.
Suffocation and fear surged over her like an icy tide. The pain forced tears to gather at the corners of her eyes.
And the hand around her throat only tightened further.
If this kept up, she would die. She was really going to die here...
Just as despair swallowed her whole, she suddenly felt something cold brush against her ankle.
Something slick was climbing up her leg.
Then a weak, hoarse voice echoed through her chaotic mind.
"Will you... accept... power...?"
Wis'adel's pupils contracted.
That disgusting monster—it was still alive?
These past few days, she had been secretly observing the creature. Seeing that it looked half-dead, she had occasionally come back to check on its condition.
She had been waiting for it to finally die so she could see whether it had any value left—whether she might even be able to get a full meal out of it.
Judging from how it had looked last time, it should have been dead ages ago.
"What can you do?" she asked inwardly, struggling for breath.
"Deal with them..." You Yi's voice was hoarse and weak, broken and intermittent, only able to force out short phrases. "But you need to... stop resisting. Otherwise... I can't get in."
Stop resisting?
Wis'adel's heart pounded wildly.
She did not trust this thing in the slightest.
There were far too many strange creatures on this land, and countless people had paid dearly for coming into contact with them.
It could speak. It possessed intelligence. It was almost impossible not to suspect that it had its own agenda.
If she let it have its way, she might only be stepping into another danger.
But the hand at her neck was closing tighter and tighter, and her vision was already beginning to blur.
Forget it. Just lie to it for now. Survive first. Get through this, then worry about the rest!
"Fine, I agree! Hurry up and do it!" she shouted back in her thoughts.
But You Yi did not move.
"You're still... resisting. If you don't let go... I can't help you."
The tall Sarkaz seemed to notice her distraction. With a savage grin, he tightened his fingers further. "You've still got time to zone out?"
Wis'adel was on the verge of blacking out.
There was no time left...
She could not hesitate anymore!
Faced with the terror of imminent death, she forced herself to suppress the wary instinct that survival had carved into her bones.
And in that instant, the dark viscous substance suddenly accelerated.
Like a living liquid, it spread rapidly upward from her ankle, wrapping around her slender calf, her bony waist and stomach, then surging over her flat chest.
Wis'adel felt her face completely covered by a cold yet soft layer of matter. Even her mouth and nose were submerged beneath it, yet somehow she could still breathe normally.
"What the hell is that?!"
Seeing the black substance begin to creep toward him as well, the tall Sarkaz instinctively let go of her and staggered backward in fear.
The pitch-black material rapidly took shape across Wis'adel's body, tracing the outline of her frail frame as though it were draping her in a flowing black bodysuit. The appearance was grotesque beyond words.
Wis'adel steadied herself.
She lowered her head to look at her hands, now wrapped in black. She clenched them, then loosened them, and a raging sense of power she had never experienced before surged through her body.
Then she lifted her gaze toward the two men in front of her.
Even though her face was completely covered, she could still see their horrified expressions clearly.
"Now, you can deal with them."
The hoarse voice sounded deep within her mind. It was still weak, but no longer broken and intermittent.
Wis'adel said nothing.
She simply took a step forward.
She was so fast that even she herself was startled. In almost two strides, she had closed the distance to the tall man.
Her black fist swept across. He did not even have time to raise his arms to block. His chest caved in, and blood burst outward.
The tall man staggered backward, lowered his head in disbelief, and then slowly collapsed.
"Monster!"
The broken-horned Sarkaz turned deathly pale and spun around to flee.
The symbiote covering Wis'adel moved almost on instinct, driving her body in pursuit.
She leapt across the rubble in two bounds and punched through him from behind, the blow carrying enough force to pierce straight through his chest.
The man opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Then he toppled forward onto the ground.
The wasteland fell silent once more.
Wis'adel stood where she was, breathing lightly.
She looked down at her own hands. The black substance was slowly flowing over them, as if alive, as if breathing.
"What exactly are you?!" Confusion and vigilance surged up together, and she demanded an answer inside her mind.
There was no response.
The black substance covering her began to destabilize. Along its edges, it softened and dripped like melting slime.
A few seconds later, it completely detached itself from her body, slid to the ground, and shrank into a puddle of dark matter that looked almost entirely lifeless.
When the wind blew past, Wis'adel suddenly shivered.
Only then did she realize that her tattered clothes seemed to have been corroded away in large part, exposing sections of her thin, bony body.
But she had no mind to care about that right now.
She lowered her head and stared at the puddle by her feet for a long time in silence.
She had thought the thing would be like some greedy parasite—that once it invaded, it would cling to her without ever letting go, suck her flesh and blood dry, or twist her into some monster. That was what power's cruel price ought to look like.
And yet, at the brink of death, it had burned away its own strength just to help her out of trouble, only to peel away from her like this afterward?
As if it had simply lent her its power? As if it had helped her for no other reason than to help her?
The thought was so absurd it almost made her laugh, but the facts were right in front of her.
In all her life, this was the first time anyone had ever helped her.
Even if the one who helped her was not a person at all, but a monster.
An emotion utterly strange and complicated quietly sprouted in her heart, only to be forcibly crushed beneath caution a moment later.
In the end, she bent down, picked up the crude bomb lying nearby, dusted it off, and tucked it back into her arms.
Then she picked up the cloth that had once wrapped the bomb and draped it around herself to cover her body.
After that, she walked over to the two corpses, crouched down, and searched them quickly, pulling out a few pieces of dried rations and a slightly better dagger.
When she stood up again, she looked once more at the puddle of dark matter.
"Hey," she said softly.
No response.
She hesitated for a few seconds, then broke off a piece from the dried ration she had just taken and tossed it beside the black slime.
Then she turned and quickly left the stony area.
The wind swept across the Originium crystal clusters, still wailing as before.
That small piece of ration lay quietly beside the puddle of black slime.
And farther away, Wis'adel's thin figure gradually disappeared beyond the gray horizon.
-------
My : pat*eon*com/RuneA
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