Dominik straightened his silk tie, his eyes flickering with a cold, aristocratic disdain as he looked Mochi up and down. A low, mocking chuckle vibrated in his chest.
"Another worthless demi-human, tell me, do they give out those Luminous Knight uniforms to any stray cat that wanders into the capital? Or did you have to beg like the rest of your kind for a scrap of dignity?"
Dominik mocked while Mochi didn't take the bait. His feline ears flattened, and his amber eyes began to glow with a sharp, predatory light. This was his Agile Eyes, a skill that turned the world into a blueprint of vulnerabilities, highlighting the subtle flaws in Dominik's stance and the gaps in his enchanted suit.
"Talk all you want, Dominik, but dead men don't get to have opinions." Mochi growled, his longsword humming as it gathered golden mana.
Mochi blurred into motion, a streak of silver and gold charging down the narrow hallway. But just as the blade was inches from Dominik's throat, the nobleman vanished into thin air. Mochi's sword sliced through nothing but empty, scented air..
In the blink of an eye, the space behind Mochi rippled. Dominik reappeared, his golden brass knuckles pulled back for a skull-crushing blow. But Mochi's reflexes were superior, he twisted his body in mid-air, the brass knuckles whistling past his ear. As he spun, Mochi's longsword bit deep, leaving a jagged red line across Dominik's expensive silk torso.
"Now!" Mochi shouted.
I didn't hesitate. Leveraging my Pain Manipulation to ignore my broken ribs, I surged forward from the shadows. I swung my jagged Blood Sword in a wide, desperate arc aimed at Dominik's exposed back.
Dominik didn't even turn around. He simply reached back blindly, his hand moving with the speed of a striking viper.
CRUNCH.
His palm caught the edge of my blade. I watched in horror as my blood-steel dug into his flesh, crimson dripping onto the floor, but he didn't even flinch. He gripped the blade tight, his bleeding palm sizzling against my mana. With a savage roar of laughter, he closed his fist.
The sword shattered into a thousand red droplets, the hardened essence instantly liquifying and splashing harmlessly against his boots.
"Is this the best the two of you can do? One flea who can barely scratch me and a hero who can't even keep her weapon solid? You're not a threat. You're a comedy routine."
Dominik mocked, looking from his bleeding hand to our shocked faces. He licked a drop of blood from his own thumb, his eyes wide with a sadistic, manic glee.
"I think I'll kill the cat first. I wonder if he'll land on his feet when I throw him out the fourth-story window."
"Mochi, get back!" I yelled,
My voice cracking as I realized our strategy was falling apart. Dominik wasn't just strong, he was playing with us.
I barely had time to scream the warning before Dominik's eyes locked onto mine. That cold, aristocratic gaze was the last thing I saw before he flickered out of existence.
The hallway fell into a terrifying silence, broken only by the sound of Mochi's heavy breathing. I scrambled to pull the iron from my own veins again, my hands slick with blood as I tried to mold a third blade. My mana was fraying, the essence of my blood refusing to bind as the fear took hold.
"Too slow, little rat," a voice hissed from the empty air directly in front of my face.
Dominik materialized inches away, his golden brass knuckles glowing with a sickening radiance.
"Let's see if you can fly as well as you can crawl! You flea!"
Before I could even raise my arms to guard, he coiled his strength and launched a devastating uppercut. The impact was cataclysmic. I felt my jaw unhinge and my skull rattle as the sheer force of the blow lifted me off my feet. It shattered it.
Stone, lath, and plaster exploded around me as I was propelled upward, bursting through the roof of the fourth floor. I soared into the night air, the cold wind of Tata whipping against my bleeding skin, before I slammed back down onto the jagged slate tiles of the manor's rooftop.
I tumbled across the roof, my body finally coming to a rest near the edge of a steep precipice. I lay there, staring up at the smog-choked stars, my vision swimming in shades of red. My Pain Manipulation was the only thing keeping my heart beating, but even that was flickering like a dying candle.
Down below, through the gaping hole I had just been punched through, I could hear Dominik's mocking laughter echoing from the hallway.
"One down, Now, little cat... let's see how many lives you actually have." he shouted, his voice muffled by the debris.
I tried to push myself up, my fingers slipping on the rain-slicked tiles. I was the hero of the bureau, the sister of Elias, the ghost of the Rynd manor... and I was currently bleeding out on the roof of my enemy's house while my only ally faced a monster alone.
The wind howled across the stone shingles of the rooftop as I coughed up a lungful of dust. Dominik's uppercut had been so powerful it had launched me through the lath and plaster of the ceiling like a cannonball. My Pain Manipulation was the only thing keeping my mind from shattering under the trauma of the impact. I lay there, looking at the dark sky of Tata, my vision swimming.
Below me, the fight continued with a brutal, sickening rhythm.
"You really are a glutton for punishment, aren't you, little cat?" Dominik's voice echoed through the hole in the floor.
Mochi didn't answer. His Agile Eyes were glowing with a fierce, emerald intensity. He saw it, a hairline fracture in Dominik's guard, a momentary lapse in his mana flow near his forearms.
"Now!" Mochi roared. He lunged forward, his longsword whistling through the air.
Dominik, caught off guard by Mochi's sudden burst of speed, didn't have time to vanish. Instead, he crossed his muscular arms in front of his face, his gold-plated knuckles gleaming. Mochi's blade bit deep, shearing through the expensive fabric of the suit and burying itself inches into the flesh of Dominik's forearms. Blood sprayed across the floorboards.
"Got you!" Mochi hissed, gritting his teeth as he pushed the blade deeper, trying to sever the bone.
But Dominik didn't scream. He didn't even flinch. A horrific, wide-eyed grin spread across his face. While the sword was still lodged in his arms, he drove his knee upward with the force of a battering ram, catching Mochi square in the solar plexus.
Mochi collapsed, clutching his stomach and retching as he slid across the floor.
"What... what kind of monster are you?" he gasped, his voice strained and wet with pain. "Using your own arms... as a shield... you didn't even feel it..."
Dominik stood over him, the deep gashes in his arms dripping crimson.
"Feel it? Why would I care about pain when I have the ultimate insurance policy?"
A heavy oak door at the end of the hallway creaked open. A woman stepped out, her presence as cold and elegant as a winter moon. She wore a gown of shimmering silk, her hair perfectly coiffed, looking entirely out of place in a hallway stained with blood.
"I've been casting long-distance healing and fortification magic on Dominik since the moment you entered this wing, it is I, Lara Meyer, Dominik's wife."
As she spoke, a soft, translucent green light enveloped Dominik's shredded arms. Before Mochi's eyes, the muscle fibers knit back together, the skin sealed over, and even the blood vanished as if the wound had never existed.
"You're fighting a losing battle, as long as I breathe, he is immortal." Lara said, stepping to her husband's side.
Dominik flexed his newly healed fingers, the gold knuckles clicking. He looked up through the hole in the ceiling at me, his eyes burning with a sadistic triumph.
"Did you hear that, Roxy? The game! it's impossible."
The cold wind on the rooftop howled, but it was drowned out by the shouts of the archers in the surrounding watchtowers.
"There she is! The maid with the devil's blood! Shoot her down! Make her look like a pincushion!"
I rolled to the side just as a volley of arrows hissed through the air, clattering against the slate tiles. My Pain Manipulation was the only thing keeping me from slipping into unconsciousness. I forced myself to my feet, my blonde Elodie hair whipping around my face. I didn't have much mana left, but I had plenty of my own blood.
I gripped my shattered sword hilt and willed the crimson to shift. The blade didn't just grow; it curved, forming the elegant, lethal arc of a Blood Bow.
"My turn," I hissed.
I drew back the string made of solidified plasma and fired. I infused the arrows with a homing trait, locking onto the heat signatures of the men in the towers. The arrows curved mid-air, weaving through the stone battlements like seeking vipers.
As the arrows found their marks, I felt a sudden, surge of warmth. The Lifesteal enchantment on the bow activated instantly, siphoning the vitality from the fallen archers and channeling it back into my own battered frame. My cracked ribs knitted together with a sickening pop, and the hole in my stomach closed, leaving only a faint scar.
More archers were pouring onto the ramparts, their boots thundering on the stone. I couldn't stay here. I looked back at the gaping hole in the roof, the jagged entrance to the floor below.
Down in the hallway, Mochi was locked in a desperate dance of steel against Dominik's gold-plated knuckles. But now, a new figure stood in the shadows behind Dominik: a woman in white robes, her hands glowing with a soft, green light that constantly mended Dominik's small cuts. Lara, the high-tier healer.
I didn't hesitate. I dove straight into the hole, gravity pulling me back into the nightmare.
"Roxy! The healer! He's invincible as long as she's standing!" Mochi roared, his longsword sparking against Dominik's brass knuckles.
Mid-fall, my bow liquified and reformed into a jagged, two-handed blood sword. I didn't aim for Dominik. He was the wall, but Lara was the foundation.
Dominik looked up, his eyes widening as I descended like a fallen angel of vengeance.
"You again?!"
I ignored his scream. I shifted my weight in the air, tilting my blade downward. I was a guided missile fueled by five years of hatred. Lara looked up, her face pale, her healing chant dying in her throat as the shadow of my blade swallowed her whole.
"The source first, then the monster!"
The transition from the open air of the rooftop to the claustrophobic chaos of the fourth floor was a blur of stone and shadow. Gravity was my greatest ally as I plummeted toward the backline. Below, Lara's hands danced in the air, weaving emerald threads of mana that stitched Dominik's wounds back together as fast as Mochi could create them.
I locked onto her. My Blood sword hummed with a dark, resonant hunger as I swung it with the full momentum of my fall.
"Die, you leech!" I roared.
The blade connected with a sickening thud across Lara's shoulder, cleaving deep into her collarbone. But the expected splash of blood never came. Instead, the wound glowed with a blinding, iridescent light. Within a heartbeat, the flesh pulsed and knit itself back together around my blade, pushing the steel out as if it were a mere splinter.
Divine Regeneration. The same healing magic that my eldest sister, Elicia possessed.
Lara didn't even flinch. She simply looked up at me with empty, tranquil eyes, her skin flawless and unmarred despite the lethal strike. She was a self-sustaining fountain of life force. Every cell in her body was programmed to return to its perfect state instantly.
"You're wasting your time, little maid,"
Before I could pull my blade back for a second strike, a shadow loomed over me. Dominik had pivoted with predatory speed, abandoning his duel with Mochi to defend his lifeline.
"Still trying to play the assassin? You're starting to bore me."
He didn't use a complicated spell. He used raw, unadulterated violence. His fist buried itself deep into my stomach, the exact spot he had hit before. The force was even greater this time, intended to finish what his first blow had started.
I felt my internal organs scream under the pressure, but I didn't let go of my sword. My own lifesteal surged instinctively, a desperate counter-flow of energy trying to bridge the gap between my breaking ribs and the kinetic shockwave of his punch.
I was caught in a tug-of-war between his destruction and my own survival, pinned between the floor and the monster who wanted to turn me into a memory.
"Roxy! Don't let him lock you down! We need to break her focus, not just her body!"
Dominik's grin widened, his fist still pressed into my gut.
"You can't heal faster than I can break you, Roxy. Not in this lifetime."