Fixed-Nick Cutting vs. Buntang Cutting (2)

“Strange.”

Inside the audience chamber of Abandoned Castle Mariaka, Erzsebet tilted her head in bewilderment as she guzzled cola and coffee like water.

“Words... come out well?”

She cleared her throat. The sound felt noticeably smoother, gliding past her vocal cords without the usual grating resistance. Anxious yet intrigued, Erzsebet took another tentative step forward.

“Good. Happy... huh?”

Actual words—real, coherent language—were spilling from her lips! Even if they were not yet complete, eloquent sentences, her speech was finally matching the thoughts inside her head. How had it been before? Disjointed gibberish like oh excitement and excitement had constantly leaked past her lips through that maddening linguistic filter. This change signified only one thing.

“The curse... has faded...!”

The ancient shackles strangling Erzsebet had loosened their grip.

“Sniff. Sniff. Sniff. Finally.”

Even if her diction remained clumsy, this was an astonishing breakthrough. Erzsebet reminisced about the distant past—before the stake had been driven into her heart, back when Mariaka was bathed in vibrant life. Didn't it feel as though she had returned to those golden days?

“Cola. Coffee. It worked. Weakens the curse.”

There had only ever been a single method to relieve Erzsebet’s torment: drinking black water. In the cruel logic of her condition, black water had always meant the vital blood of living souls, and without imbibing it, her flesh would twist in agonizing spasms. Hadn't she forced herself into unending slumbers just to escape that unbearable torment? Now, she no longer had to. The black water had been supplanted by the cola and coffee Judddak provided.

“So... you understand now, yes?”

Flushed with exhilaration, Erzsebet cast her gaze downward. Splayed across the floor lay the imperial vanguard—mutilated, dead, and utterly routed—alongside the thoroughly traumatized Crown Prince Frederick. And before her stood an aged human who still possessed the gall to face her blade.

“Cute, aren't you?”

It was the insolent buntang Judddak had complained about. Erzsebet offered a mocking, crescent-eyed smile.

“Actually, lie. Not cute. Just joking. You know?”

“...Monstrous wench.”

“Yeah, mirror back at you. Your face.”

Amidst the suffocating tension, Erzsebet saw no reason to show mercy. She hoisted her blood-forged scythe high into the air, intent on severing his life in an instant—

“...What is this?”

Catching a glimpse of the forum interface, she saw that the Gallery had organized an active betting poll around her battle—even after she had gone out of her way to lend a hand. A deep, pouty scowl formed across Erzsebet's pale features.

“Judddak-nim, I have no face to show you... myo.”

“I had a feeling something like this would happen.”

“Heek, Judddak-nim! Just a little bit—!”

It had been several days since I settled into the rabbit beastkin village. During a brief lapse in vigilance, an eccentric rabbit beastkin mage had managed to disarm my magical trinkets and abducted me. Just as I sat tied securely to a wooden chair in a secluded storage shed behind the carrot patches, poised to be defiled, Myoran barged through the door.

“Chieftain, you're awful! You're so selfish, waaaah!”

“Some villagers occasionally lose their minds to primal instinct, and I carelessly overlooked it. Myo.”

“Forget it, just hurry up and print the betting tickets.”

The drooling, glazed-eyed rabbit beastkin was promptly dragged off to the millhouse. Her sentence seemed to consist of pounding mortar around the clock to make full moon rice cakes, the sacred delicacy of the lagomorph race.

At any rate, I was granted access to the betting poll. Apparently, even the Head Moderator was permitted to participate in wagers whose outcomes had not yet been finalized. Without a shred of hesitation, I dumped every single Mana Dumpling to my name straight onto Vampire Till I Die.

“Even if a robber held a gun to my forehead, backing the favorite is the only rational choice.”

Could this windfall finally grant me enough points for a system level-up? I revved up the hopium engine to maximum overdrive. As I kept my eyes glued to the forum board, the duel commenced in earnest.

“Wait, why is he fighting so well?”

Staring at the animated GIF capturing their combat, my jaw fell open. The movements were so swift they were nearly impossible to track; gusts of compressed gale-force wind whistled across the stone flags as stone pillars, statues, and debris disintegrated into dust.

Just as that forum user observed, the clash had arrived at its conclusion. Isaac stood heaving for breath, while Vampire Till I Die maintained an eerie, effortless composure. The vampire progenitor detonated what looked like an immense area-of-effect spell, which Isaac evaded only by contorting his body to the absolute physiological limit. Squeezing every ounce of momentum out of that frantic evasion, he bridged the gap toward the momentary opening faster than the human eye could track. Vampire Till I Die made no effort to retreat.

Clang!

Steel and blood-scythe met with an ear-splitting screech.

“Well, honestly, the outcome was predetermined.”

The decisive moment transpired in a fraction of a heartbeat. When the dust settled, both figures stood facing in opposite directions, frozen in dead silence. It was Isaac who moved first. With deliberate elegance, the Duke slowly sheathed his blade.

Thud.

Vampire Till I Die’s severed head tumbled softly to the stone floor.

“Nothing special after all.”

Isaac flicked the traces of blood from his rapier with a sharp snap of his wrist, regulating his breath. Throughout his life, across every single battle he had ever waged, he had never tasted defeat; praise of his peerless genius had trailed in his wake since childhood. Among the foes he had slain were calamitous demonic beasts that ordinary men dared not even gaze upon. It was Isaac's martial supremacy alone that had allowed half the empire to endure this far.

He cast a haughty glance over his shoulder. The headless torso of Vampire Till I Die stood motionless where it had been severed.

“Monsters of your kind are creatures I have cleaved dozens of times.”

The empire would not falter here. He was well aware that Frederick was an unfit sovereign, a petulant coward undeserving of the throne. Yet Isaac had never forgotten the imperial favor bestowed upon him by the late Emperor. He would strike down Judddak—the greatest insolent threat facing the throne—and restore imperial authority atop the heads of all living things.

“So gripped by terror that thou canst barely string syllables together?”

Isaac curled his lip into a mocking sneer as he viewed the cryptic messages Judddak had posted on the Gallery interface.

“Next shall be thy turn, Judddak.”

First, reorganizing their forces took precedence. He would retreat to the northern territories, crown Frederick as the legitimate Emperor, and then hunt Judddak down to end his life. Just as he turned on his heel—

Judddak, who had supposedly been stuttering in dread, dropped a fresh comment.

“What?”

And those were the final words Duke Isaac ever spoke.

Whirl.

His field of vision began to rotate wildly. Thud. The unfamiliar grit of floor dust pressed against his cheek as every sensory input in his nervous system began to flicker out. In that fleeting sliver of fading consciousness, Isaac's gaze locked directly onto the ruby eyes of Vampire Till I Die.

“Ta-da! Fooled you, didn't I?”

How?! His dilating pupils screamed the question in silent horror. The very last image reflected in the Duke's dying sight was the headless body of Vampire Till I Die casually bending down to scoop up her severed head.

The legendary genius who had shaken the empire drew his final breath, his eyes stretched wide in unyielding indignance.

“Huh. She hates blood way more than I expected.”

Following the clash, Vampire Till I Die had gathered the spilled blood into a single orb with her magic. I thought she was about to drink it on the spot, but after tentatively dabbing a single droplet onto her tongue, her entire face scrunched up in visceral disgust.

Without the slightest hint of shame, she opened a direct barter window and brazenly demanded her tribute.

“Ha, unbelievable. Do I look like an errand boy who jumps whenever you say so?”

Muttering under my breath, I promptly bought a bundle of cola and coffee from the system store and transferred it over to her inventory. Then, my eyes drifted toward the dark corner of the room.

Huuuung.

There it sat—the spatial fissure I had casually treated like a pet lava lamp back at the bunker: a Rift. It had finally expanded its reach all the way into the subterranean bedrock.

“It really does feel like it's getting larger...”

At first, it had been barely wide enough to slide an arm inside. Now, an adult could comfortably crawl through if they hunched their back. Unease prickled at the base of my neck. I knew where these Rifts originated, and worse, I knew what horrors nested on the other side. What if the aberrant beasts lurking within suddenly flooded out en masse?

It might legitimately spell the end of this world.

If that happened, everything would crumble. Just as I was calculating whether it was time to construct emergency defenses, the Rift violently shuddered and swelled outward.

Wuuu-huuuung!

“Wait, hey—it's expanding way too fast!”

The dimensional tear ripped wide open, expanding until a full-grown warrior could march straight through with room to spare.

Clack!

I racked the slide of my shotgun and leveled the barrel dead center at the aperture. Whatever dared to crawl its way out of that void, I was fully prepared to reduce it into a fine crimson mist—a creature formerly known as living.

Yet contrary to my grim expectations, the Rift began warping the other world from an entirely unforeseen angle.

A catastrophic, continent-wide famine had just struck the other world.