Surviving Between S-Rank Disasters
Ugh, this is brutal. Rahel glared at Cecilia with eyes burning a fiercer red than the axe she held. The murderous aura pouring from her entire body made the air itself feel like it was drying out and scorching. She looked ready to rip someone’s throat out at any second.
But Cecilia, facing that overwhelming killing intent head-on, simply shrugged.
“While you were gone… for the past year? Ah, it was… wonderful…. Getting to watch our Mujin so closely… the entire time….”
“You filthy voyeur bug of a bitch!”
“What are you even… saying, you vulgar, horny… beast of a woman….”
Cecilia slowly rolled her dead, unfocused eyes and lifted one corner of her mouth in a smirk.
“Oh, and by the way… last night… I saw the two of you rolling around in bed… every single second….”
“What?”
She saw everything? From start to finish?!
Blood rushed to my face so fast I thought my cheeks would burst.
“You really only ever pick the most disgusting shit to do, Cecilia!”
Rahel’s smile twisted into something even more grotesque.
This is seriously fucked. A murder is about to break out any moment.
And as if pouring gasoline on an already raging fire, Cecilia slithered right up to my side and wrapped her arm around me like a snake.
“Anyway… Mujin’s heart… isn’t with that beast… it’s with me, right? Isn’t it? For me… having his heart is enough….”
“Hey! Is that seriously what you say at a time like this—!”
“Get the hell away from my Mujin right now!!!”
Before I could finish my desperate attempt to stop them, Rahel charged in, swinging her massive battle axe.
“Kukuk… So angry…?”
W-wait a second! I’m going to get sliced up too?!
Instinctively I shoved Cecilia aside and threw myself to the floor in a desperate roll. The axe blade split the air a hair’s breadth from Cecilia’s waist, cutting her clean in half.
Of course, the physical strike didn’t work. The blade passed straight through her pale body like it was a hologram.
The real problem was where that savage attack went after cutting through her.
Kwaaaaaang—!!
“Ah.”
The cabin’s front door and support pillars shredded like paper and scattered into the air.
No! I didn’t actually mean to break it!
“Too… slow….”
“You rat bitch! Today I’m going to erase every last trace of you! Hehehe!”
With her eyes completely rolled back, Rahel let out a bizarre cackle and began chasing after Cecilia, who was sliding across the floor like she was trying to escape.
The problem was that Rahel’s merciless axe swings kept missing Cecilia and instead demolished the poor cabin walls and everything around them. A flying fragment even grazed the tip of my chin with a chilling touch.
Hiiiiiik!
At this rate, not only the cabin I’d worked so hard to find, but my own life would be completely obliterated. I had to stop these insane natural disasters right now!
I began drawing mana violently from my core. Even if my lightning couldn’t strike these S-rank monsters directly, I could at least generate enough power to block their vision and force them to stop fighting.
“Fulmina Valde!”
"Darker than night, heavier than fate—"
⟨ Fulmina Valde ⟩
At the chant, storm clouds far darker and larger than usual swirled together in the sky. Luckily, Rahel and Cecilia were too busy to notice the change above them.
One chance. I had to drop it exactly in the middle between them. Timing it carefully… now!
I swung my hand down hard, bringing the lightning crashing down. The trajectory was perfect. The fierce blue bolt left my fingertips and headed straight for the space between their foreheads—
Uwoong—!
Wait, why is it bending?!
Kwaaaaaaaaaaang—!!!
The lightning struck with a roar that shook the heavens and earth. But the direction had gone completely insane. Maybe it was crushed by the horrific killing intent and overwhelming magical pressure the two of them emitted as they clashed.
Kugugugung! Kwang! Tuduk, tuk.
The massive bolt I had aimed so carefully didn’t land between them at all. Instead it scored a perfect hit on the center of the poor old cabin’s roof that had been precariously holding on behind them.
“…Park Mujin?”
“Oh my…. You demolished the cabin… with lightning….”
The miserably shattered wreckage sent up a cloud of dust that swallowed us whole.
Haa… I’m screwed. The problem was that those monsters beyond all common sense were twisting the very flow of mana like it was nothing! What was the point of calculating the perfect trajectory if the damn thing warped on its own the moment it got close?!
“Wow… thank goodness…. My sanctuary… didn’t break….”
Cecilia let out a bright yet skin-crawling laugh, then vanished into the basement like a fading hologram.
The real problem was Rahel, left standing where Cecilia had fled. Breathing hard, gripping the axe handle so tightly it looked like it might snap, she slowly turned her head toward me with an audible creak.
The beastly glare that had been radiating murder while smashing the innocent cabin melted away the instant our eyes met. What filled those empty eyes now was a sweet, bizarre obsession so thick it stole your breath.
With a blood-stained hand, she gently—almost tenderly—stroked my cheek and whispered.
“My pretty little puppy. Don’t tell me you just tried to bite your Master and run away?”
“N-no!! That’s not it! You two were fighting so terrifyingly I was just trying to stop you—!”
“You tried to stop the fight by dropping a giant lightning bolt? Looks to me like you were trying to block my sight and bolt.”
The corners of Rahel’s mouth tore upward in a grin that reached her ears.
“We made a promise earlier, didn’t we? If you run, I get to cut off both your arms and legs nicely. Hehe!”
Aaaaaah, nooooo!!!
Whew. I survived.
Back in my original house, tied tightly to a chair, I let out a deep sigh of relief. Right before my right arm was about to be chopped off, Cecilia had crawled out at the perfect moment to draw Rahel’s attention, letting me barely keep the limb.
Rahel’s eyes had been one hundred percent serious. I’d almost ended up a one-armed farmer for the rest of my life. Without a right arm, how was I supposed to use chopsticks? Till the garden? I wouldn’t even have been able to wipe properly in the bathroom.
Even while bound by rope, I desperately wriggled my fingers, reverently savoring the sensation of my precious right arm still safely attached to my body.
But while my body was intact, the inside of the house was a complete disaster.
“…This won’t do. Cutting off that bug bitch’s arm instead of our puppy’s might make me feel better.”
“Kukuk… Go ahead and try cutting it….”
Cecilia provocatively stretched both arms out in the most annoying way possible. Rahel’s eyes rolled with rage as she swung the axe at them.
Of course it didn’t cut. The blade passed straight through with a whoosh and slammed viciously into my perfectly good living room floor.
Ugh! The sound of the floor shattering felt like my heart was being crushed along with it!
Rahel dropped the axe and ruffled her own hair in frustration.
“God damn it!! Get out of my house right now! Why does this filthy rat bitch keep latching onto someone else’s home?! Go back to being a dead rat like usual!”
“Now that I’ve been caught… I don’t want to…? If you can chase me out, try it…. And besides….”
The stuttering Cecilia slithered behind my chair, wrapped her arms around my neck like a snake, and rubbed her cheek against me. The same body that had harmlessly passed through Rahel’s terrifying axe earlier felt creepily, vividly real against my skin. Her corpse-cold, damp body temperature clung stickily to my cheek and the back of my neck.
“You’re the only one… who gets to taste Mujin…? It’s been so long for me too… I need a proper taste….”
Those dead eyes drew close to my ear and blew a chilling breath across it.
Ugh… Hey, is anyone going to ask for my opinion here?
“Aaaack! You parasitic bug bitch!!”
It never ended. Cecilia kept creepily scratching at Rahel’s nerves, and Rahel kept falling for it and flying into a rage. At least with only the two of them I could still breathe. Back when our old adventurer party had that third member, it was an infinite suffocating hell.
I’d worn my body to the bone running quests just to keep these two from killing each other. In the end my mind had shattered so completely that I ran away to survive—only for them to track me down to this remote mountain valley and start destroying my house.
Aah, my pitiful life! Why does it have to be nothing but endless hardship?!
But I didn’t have the luxury of wallowing while tied up. If I didn’t divert these predators’ attention somewhere else immediately, both my house and my life would be ground to dust.
“I’m really going to tear you to pieces and kill you by any means necessary, Cecilia.”
The moment Rahel adjusted her grip on the axe and prepared to attack again—
Bang—!
Someone violently kicked in the half-destroyed cabin door.
A massive silhouette appeared with blinding sunlight at its back.
“Hey, Park Mujin! Time to pay taxes again today?”
It was the village chief’s thug son, strutting in with an arrogant swagger. Every week he came to extort my precious rare crops under the ridiculous name of “farmland fees.”
Normally I would have wanted to blast lightning straight through his solar plexus, but that disgusting pig-like silhouette looked, unbelievably, like the reliable archangel Michael descending from heaven at this exact moment. A sacred halo even seemed to shine behind him.
O heavens above. What perfect timing!
At the appearance of that sacred(?) uninvited guest, both Rahel and Cecilia whipped their heads around with an audible creak. Their eyes weren’t welcoming a guest—they were the bloodthirsty glares of predators looking at a piece of meat that had dared crawl into their territory.
“Huh? Who are these pretty girls? …W-wait. That vicious-looking axe…?”
The son, too stupid to read the room, kept grinning until his chubby face drained of all color in three seconds flat.
Watching that dumbfounded expression, I cheered internally and gave him a double thumbs-up.
A perfect “special-grade meat shield” with maximum aggro had just walked in on his own two feet to perfectly divert the attention of these rampaging maniacs.