Clash of Flesh and Blood
A chilling quiet descended over the arena, so profound that it was hard to believe the space had been ringing with roaring cheers only moments before.
Those who already knew my condition remained unperturbed, but Nazareth Nemeth, Arpe, and Latipi—who had been kept in the dark—stared at me with wide, bewildered eyes.
"You..." Tsarkhella glared at me, her eyes flaring. "What... is that arm?"
I exhaled a languid puff of cigarette smoke, my expression as unbothered as ever. "Does that really matter right now?"
"Of course it fucking matters! What the hell is that arm?! Are you... are you a demon?! Stealing Alzen's body wasn't enough, so you had to go and pull something like this?!"
"Who are you calling a demon, you crazy bitch?"
The venom in my spat-out retort made Tsarkhella freeze in her tracks.
"Not... a demon?"
When I merely stared back without offering an explanation, she shifted her gaze back and forth between my arm and my face before raising her fists with a grim, resolute expression.
"...Fine. I'll get the whole story out of you. After I beat you into the dirt."
"Hah..." Chuckling dryly, I gave a brief nod and leveled the limb toward her—a grotesque arm bristling with tight black scales and sprouting scattered dark feathers. "As straightforward and barbaric as ever, aren't you, Tsarkhella?"
"......"
"Or are you just pretending to be? You've got it rough, you know. Living among a bunch of uncivilized warriors who aren't even on your level must be a massive pain in the ass."
"Shut your mouth and brace yourself. Here I come."
Electric-blue lightning crackled around her in a blinding burst. Leaving that courteous warning behind, she prepared to pounce. Mentally commanding the Silk of Atonement, I muttered under my breath.
"Rubias."
—Hehehe... I knew you would call for me, my beloved.
As if waiting for the cue, a pair of crimson lips and an eye surfaced upon the back of my hand, curling into a delighted crescent. Fortunately, it seemed Kubel's Soul Totem couldn't suppress this bizarre symbiosis.
...To be frank, this was a card I never wanted to play, but I was out of options. There was no other way out of this corner, so what choice did I have? Even if the Demon King Rubias pulled some incomprehensible trick and warped me into something monstrous—even if, in the worst-case scenario, I ended up siding with the demons—it wouldn't be my fault. Goddess or whatever, they could all go fuck themselves.
"Cut the nonsense and do your job."
—My, my. Putting a Demon King to work without even asking nicely? But alas, what power does a captive maiden have against her captor? Like a tragic heroine drowned in romance, or a faithful lover whose eyes turn only toward you, I shall gladly sacrifice myself in your service... By the way, about that date.
"What?"
—I was thinking of taking you out soon. Wouldn't mind it, would you? A rather perfect window of opportunity seems to be opening up.
"Are you seriously bringing that up right—no, forget it. If you're so eager to die, do whatever the hell you want."
—Kufufu... Gladly. There is so much I want to say, but... it appears we must survive this predicament first.
The eye on the back of my hand rolled smoothly in its socket, fixing its predatory slit pupil upon Tsarkhella. Crouched low, enveloped in blinding arcs of lightning, she bared her teeth in a feral, lethal grin.
—I shall warn you in advance: this will not be an easy dance.
"Didn't expect it to be."
—Khaha, excellent... If your resolve is firm, you might just find a way to win. Ah, but of course, if you were to grant your permission, I could unleash the entirety of my demonic authority, you know?
"Don't try your cheap tricks on me."
—Cheap tricks? How hurtful... Very well. Steel yourself. Here she comes.
The air screamed as electricity flared. An instant later, a vision of the immediate future flooded my mind like video playback cranked to several times its normal speed. At the very same moment, my left arm moved entirely of its own accord, driving forward with explosive force.
"Kh?!"
Tsarkhella, who had closed the distance in the blink of an eye, collided fist-first with my demonic hand. A shocked gasp ripped from her throat as the sheer kinetic recoil hurled her backward. But having already witnessed the collision through the future sight, I wasted no time on astonishment and immediately whipped the Silk of Atonement into motion.
The pristine white fabric wove through the air like a striking serpent, surging forward with a lethal velocity that defied its soft, fluttering grace.
"K-Kh...!"
Just before the cloth could ensnare her limbs in midair, blue lightning detonated around her frame. Twisting her supple body with the agility of a wild beast, Tsarkhella discharged a rocket-like burst of electricity, vaulting clear of the silk's grasp.
"...Tch."
In the future Rubias had shown me, the binding was supposed to succeed. But the future had diverged. My reaction time and physical execution must have lagged behind the vision.
"Seeing a foreseen future change right in front of your eyes is a lot more annoying than I thought," I muttered. "Was it like this for you at the 'beginning,' too?"
—Fufu. A wonderful question, Kang Han-gil. Yes... exactly so. I felt the very same frustration at the dawn of it all.
Recalling her ancient past with a tinge of wistfulness and sorrow, Rubias rolled her eye back toward me.
"......"
—Yet, once you grow sick and weary of all existence, you come to welcome that shifting future above all else. That is precisely why I cannot help but adore you.
"Stop spouting bullshit and focus."
—Hahaha! Fret not! Every single thread of my consciousness is strained to its absolute limit!
A deafening thunderclap echoed, and another vision of the future was violently hammered into my mind.
"...!!"
Tsarkhella vaulted through the air, seizing my blind spot in an imperceptible fraction of a second to drive her knee like an armor-piercing drill straight into my ribs.
That was the reality set to unfold a heartbeat from now.
Naturally, my brain couldn't process the movement in time to command my body, but the Demon King's arm took over once again. Bones popped and creaked sickeningly as the joint twisted past its normal anatomical limits, snapping backward to intercept Tsarkhella's knee.
A dull, heavy shockwave rumbled through my frame, accompanied by a horrifying rupture.
"Kgh...!"
The demonic left arm took the blow without a scratch, but the rest of my body convulsed from the sheer force of the impact.
"Hup!"
Of course, Tsarkhella wasn't about to stop there. Before I could even steady my shaking frame, she unloaded while suspended in midair—firing off eight consecutive punches like a salvo of cannonballs, snapping her waist to deliver a whip-like sweep across my lower body, and channeling the residual momentum into a crushing elbow strike.
No matter how deeply the Demon King's will and power were anchored into my left arm, a single limb couldn't possibly deflect a barrage of that caliber.
"Gaaagh...!"
Even though I had seen the flurry in advance and frantically shifted the Silk of Atonement to cushion the blows, her concentrated aura slammed directly into my ribs and right leg. A gruesome crunch resonated through the arena.
"...That fabric isn't ordinary cloth, is it?"
Seeing that her aura-infused strikes hadn't left so much as a scratch on the Silk of Atonement, Tsarkhella's vigilance skyrocketed, and she lunged once more.
Realizing that pure defense was a dead end, my rogue left arm shot out, its massive, clawed hand clamping down around Tsarkhella's right forearm like an iron vise. It was a grasp that seized the very coordinates of space she was destined to occupy, reading the future to intercept her.
"What?!"
To an onlooker, it looked as though she had deliberately dove straight into my open palm.
"Hah...!"
Got you.
Sensing the golden opportunity, I surged the Silk of Atonement into motion. Part of it lashed out to bind her, while the rest plunged straight into my own flesh.
The unraveling threads of silk burrowed through my tunic and skin, snaking around my shattered ribs and binding the splintered bones together in a tight, unyielding corset. In identical fashion, the broken bones of my right leg were forcibly aligned and lashed shut. Temporarily mitigating mortal trauma—fractures, severed limbs, blood loss, and concussive shock—was one of the divine relic's primary functions.
...To be fair, the regenerative vigor I had gained from the Permanent Flesh was already at work, but there simply wasn't enough time. A bone fracture would take several minutes to knit, and in that span, Tsarkhella could have slaughtered me dozens of times over.
"Kahaaah!"
Agony flared white-hot through every nerve, but with the silk holding my skeleton together, my mobility remained unimpaired. I threw a right punch with everything I had. Lacking any formal martial arts training, it was an artless, painfully honest strike devoid of finesse. Yet, backed by the raw kinetic monstrousness bestowed by the Permanent Flesh and the World Tree's Fruit, the blow carried catastrophic weight.
"Kh!"
Miraculously, even with her right arm trapped in my iron grip, she twisted her joints like a contortionist, spinning her torso with feline grace to evade both the silk's tendrils and my incoming fist. Her agility and flexibility bordered on the absurd.
"Haaah!"
A devastating crack shattered the air. She didn't just dodge—she countered. If not for the precognition flashing in my mind, her lightning-wrapped heel would have pulverized my skull.
"Kahk...!"
Instead, my right arm took the brunt of the kick, the bones mangled into splinters. But it didn't matter. The white fabric slithered beneath my torn sleeve, substituting for ruptured muscles and reinforcing shattered bone. Pain was just an electrical signal; I could endure it.
"What in the world are you...?!"
Tsarkhella's face drained of color as she gasped out in sheer horror, but my ears, flooded with an overwhelming surge of adrenaline and combat hormones, naturally filtered out her voice. My vision narrowed into a razor-sharp tunnel, and the thudding bass of my racing heartbeat drowned out all sanity, giving way to unadulterated violence and primal impulse.
"Hraaagh!"
A heavy thud shook the ground, followed by my choked gasp.
The infuriating problem was that she still had plenty of breathing room. She easily deflected my clumsy onslaught and landed lethal counters, even while my demon-possessed left arm thrashed wildly, trying to wrench her balance and shatter her posture. The unbridgeable gulf in our martial prowess was stark and cruel.
"Kh... Aaaah!"
Lashing my fractured shoulder back together with more silk, I charged blindly forward. The demonic arm clamped down harder, pulling and shoving with immense torque while my right fist hammered out a desperate rhythm, accompanied by a storm of unraveling white threads.
"Tch!"
Lightning erupted like a tempest as Tsarkhella realized the danger. Her hands and feet blurred into a storm of strikes, constantly parrying my thrusts, knocking aside the silk, and battering my torso with relentless concussions. It was a speed beyond my mortal senses. The future sight degraded into a chaotic smear of images that only served to disorient my senses.
"Kah, haak!"
Coughing up mouthfuls of crimson, I clung to my fading consciousness by sheer spite. Forcing my creaking, broken body to move, I thrust my hand forward once more.
"Haaaaap!"
Evading the clumsy reach with effortless grace, Tsarkhella moved in for the execution. An intensely concentrated spear of pure, piercing lightning aimed straight for my solar plexus.
Yet right then, in that precise fraction of a second—at a timing no living soul could have ever anticipated—a catastrophic explosion erupted, powerful enough to swallow the lightning whole.
The detonation began from deep within my own stomach.
"...What?!"
Listening to Tsarkhella's strangled, panicked cry, I let out a bloody, triumphant grin. To think I'd actually end up using my emergency suicide trigger like this—and that it would actually work—was something even I hadn't seen coming.