Out of Body
I had experienced an out-of-body experience once.
It was a very brief moment, right before I slid under anesthesia. I was looking down at my own body lying on the operating table when suddenly the world simply... evaporated.
Everything, my own flesh included, spread out like a panorama film and then folded away in one swift shrug, like a fan snapping shut. What remained — call it consciousness, call it a mind, I couldn't say — drifted through a world of nothing until at last I sank into sleep.
The reason that strange, shivering memory surfaced out of nowhere was the situation I was in right now.
Corpses and black smoke filled every direction. My skull felt ready to split open.
Groooar!
Screams loud enough to burst my eardrums, a sour yet rancid stench, air that stung my eyes... And even amid this chaos, the brood of the evil god Ushutu never stopped baring their teeth.
"Get—off!"
The fiends that had latched onto my limbs were flung away by my desperate thrashing. I drove my blade deep into the gaping maw of the goat-like thing.
Gwek.
Hrunting, having ripped through filthy organs, pulsed hard. Black blood welled up and seeped into the long blade.
Tschok-tschok— The goat monster shriveled and crumpled in on itself. Using the creature's life force as fuel, my body began knitting its wounds closed. New flesh welled up over the calf that had been torn open...
There was no leisure to savor the process — regeneration through blood-drinking, that is.
Guwaooh!
I'd killed, by rough count, a hundred or so of the things, and a similar number had fled south past me.
And still the place was crawling with monsters. The sight of them dragging their bloated bodies along the ground with both hands was reminiscent of a swarm of maggots.
"Khh, you son of a—"
Shake off the ones clinging to me, swing Hrunting and kill one, knock loose the ones that had latched on in the meantime, swing again... The same motion, repeated dozens, hundreds of times already.
Anything else was unthinkable.
If I carelessly shifted my footing, the crushing weight of the fiends would bear me down to the ground. In the end I had no choice but to sink both feet into the pile of corpses smoldering with smoke.
I'd sealed Blood Burst as well. If my blood energy ran dry at the wrong moment, the crimson blade would scatter and I'd lose my means of feeding. This fight with the monsters was an endless cycle of giving flesh and taking bone — if I couldn't fill the flesh I gave, I'd have to give my life instead.
Thanks to that, the mess I was embroiled in was closer to manual labor than combat.
Get bitten, shake them off, stab, get torn, hurl them away, cut... A monotonous, excruciating process.
"Haah, haaah, hoo—"
Black smoke blooming from the corpses coiled into my ragged breath. The mana of the Darkworld soaked deep into my lungs.
And it wasn't just my lungs.
Because I'd pushed Plunder to its very limit, the monsters' blood now coursed through my entire body. Not only my heart but my brain and even my liver had welled up with black mana.
"Ugh..."
My vision blurred. My consciousness grew hazy, as if I'd been dosed with anesthetic.
Then, at some point, my view lifted up and away as if I truly had left my body. It felt as though my battered soul was fleeing the polluted flesh. Like a scene from a long-take film or a game played in isometric view, I looked down on my own body from above...
"Hoooh—"
My body, stripped to instinct alone, was rampaging like a beast. Eyes glinting red, blade whirling wildly — the figure was at once familiar and alien.
How long did I watch like that?
At last, every last fiend collapsed dead to the ground. The torrent of monsters that Queen Anupad had been spewing out had finally run dry.
"Kahhek, ughk, uwegh!" As my body retched up yellow bile, the torso of Ramashta, lying there with its belly split open, shuddered.
No — not the torso.
Looking again, the black hole punched through that belly was weeping. A passage leading somewhere beyond the Middle Realm — perhaps, even, into the Darkworld itself — was spewing out darkness.
What the hell is that now, goddammit.
The darkness stretched out in sinuous tendrils in every direction, like feelers.
The darkness surging skyward blotted out the sunlight lying across the mountain ridge, while the darkness spreading along the ground swallowed the monsters' corpses whole.
Just as the swelling darkness sensed something wrong and my body began to growl a warning, it abruptly deflated.
Gugugung.
And out of that pitch-black passage, of all things, a hand emerged. A massive hand clad in a black-scaled gauntlet.
Thud.
The other hand followed, then the head, then the torso.
When the enormous something in black armor had fully revealed itself, the passage in Queen Anupad's belly vanished without a trace, without so much as a ripple.
And I — that is, my mind, mid-out-of-body experience or whatever this was — was floored by the monster that had appeared out of nowhere.
The colossal frame, the long spear spewing violet vapor, the glossy black armor, the purple gleam flashing through the slits of the helm.
You've got to be kidding me — why is that here?
As in any RPG, Darkworld had its share of monsters that players especially loved to hate.
The prime examples were the so-called "Three Knights": the Death Knight, the Hell Knight, and the Dark Knight.
Though almost no one actually called them the Three Knights — most players called them the "Three F-cks." Shove whatever curse or slur you liked into the X, and the meaning came through.
Occasionally some uncultured player would lump the Blood Knight in as well and push the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" meme...
Wedging a fully playable character class in among a bunch of monsters? Absolutely not. That's absurd.
Right, anyway.
The thing that had materialized so abruptly was one of those Three Knights — the Dark Knight, localized as the Black Knight.
Its violet eyes, sweeping slowly across the surroundings, met the gaze of my body. Of me, that is.
"...Zahark?"
A murmur close to a groan.
Zahark? The Blood King Zahark?
The Dark Knight's gaze wavered for a moment before he sighed in Millanol tongue, sounding oddly stiff with it.
"No, you're not. A descendant, then?"
As if deaf to his words, my body simply caught its breath. Then, all at once, it kicked off the ground and hurled itself at the Dark Knight!
You insane bastard, don't charge him!
"Graaah—!"
As if the shout of my soul couldn't reach it, the body growled savagely and swung its sword. A rather clever strike unfolded — pressing down on the enemy's spear-haft with a cross-guard bind while the blade went for the throat, defense and attack in a single motion.
Just before Hrunting could take the Dark Knight's head, some translucent barrier rose up before the creature.
Vwoomm!
The barrier seemed to split beneath the blade, then deflected the attack with a bizarre sound. Bent off its course, Hrunting shot straight toward its owner's own neck, still carrying its full momentum.
At the instant the blade was about to carve through his throat, my body barely managed to snap its waist aside.
Krak!
"Kgh—" Having effectively hacked into its own shoulder, my body let out a groan and sprang backward. The way it glared at the Dark Knight through gritted teeth looked exactly like a dog or a wolf.
"Devoured by blood, I see."
The Dark Knight murmured in a tone bordering on mockery, then drew his spear through empty air. Space itself sheared away along the spearhead.
"May you thrive as you are — until Zahark's blood is fouled..."
A passage opened between the severed edges of space. The Dark Knight walked through it slowly and was gone.
...Ha. He lived.
For a thing that shouldn't show up until around chapter eight to appear here. I nearly got to watch my own head fly off from front-row seats in the sky.
But — what now?
I couldn't just stand around watching from this out-of-body limbo forever...
And while I was still worrying about that —
"Phoi—!"
With a voice I knew well, a party of riders appeared.
Eight riders in all.
Amid the warriors soaked head to toe in black blood, Ellen alone gleamed like a jewel.
"Hurry, hurry, go!"
At her urging, the freckled Mira snapped the reins. The other riders spurred ahead and behind, galloping toward us.
I recognized every one of them at a glance. Images memorized from a monitor, overlaid with Phoinix's hazy memories.
Blood Knights in black iron plate, and light cavalry of the Twin Royal House...
Come to think of it, the Blood Knights were dressed much like the Dark Knight who had vanished moments ago.
And just as I was about to turn my gaze to the last figure — a woman with black hair and cape-hem streaming long behind her —
"Hrruh—"
My body, still clutching its shoulder wound, exhaled a hot breath. Those red-glowing eyes fixed precisely on Ellen.
My body twitched its nose, sniffed, and then began charging straight toward the riders.
I instantly understood what it — that is, what my own body — was aiming for, and screamed.
Stop, you mad bastard!
The cry torn from my soul scattered, unheard by anyone.
"...Huh?"
Mira, who had been pushing the horses on under Ellen's pressure, caught sight of Phoinix charging head-on and let out a shriek.
"That's enough, put me down now!"
"Huh...? One moment, Lady Ellen."
While Mira hesitated, sensing something deeply wrong, Heila — riding at the head of the column — shouted to the riders.
"Stop Phoi!"
At her command, the riders kicked forward and burst ahead. They barred Phoinix's path with crowbars and longswords raised. However—
"Hroooar—"
Phoinix, sprinting with his black-red eyes stretched long, rolled his body in a single motion and slipped past the Blood Knights' attacks.
Then, deflecting a cleaver arcing for his chest, he stabbed his blade upward.
Kwagak—
The milky-white blade punched through the surcoat and sheared the heavy chain shirt in one stroke. The keen point carved a long line across the man's stomach.
"Khek—"
The man — squire and light cavalryman both — clutched the wound with his left hand and swung his cleaver again. But Phoinix had already passed him by.
"Stop!"
Heila rang out clear and sharp, barring his way. Two gazes, alike and yet not, tangled in the air between them.
"Calm down, Phoi. I can help—"
Heila, still speaking evenly, clenched her jaw and raised her hands — because Phoinix had leapt like a leopard and swung his sword without the slightest hesitation.
She flung up both palms in a hurry.
"O starlight—!" With that cry, her black velvet gloves flashed.
Two of the five diamond sigils etched into the backs of her hands vomited light. Four sigils in all, left and right combined, melted into the glow, and from the centers of both palms a silver shield burst open in a spray of radiance.
KAANG!
The magical shield unfurled from the Gloves of the Milky Way shattered in an instant against Hrunting's milky-white blade. And that wasn't the half of it — the colossal force carried in the blow knocked Heila off her horse outright.
Hihihing!
"Kgh."
One leg pinned beneath her horse, Heila lifted her head with a groan — but Phoinix spared her not even a glance, running straight for Ellen. Her pupils trembled, ever so slightly.
"Uh, uhh—"
Mira fumbled frantically at the reins. Ellen, riding behind her, had also registered that Phoinix was not himself, and her mouth hardened into a line.
Before Mira could even finish wheeling the horse around, Phoinix crashed into them.
WHAM!
Carrying the full momentum of his charge, Phoinix's shoulder slammed into the horse's chest. The fine black stallion went down sideways without even a scream.
"Khhak—"
Then Phoinix seized Mira by the hair and flung her aside, and scooped Ellen up in his arms.
"KYAAAH!"
Drawing Ellen tight against him with his left arm, he roughly tore away the cloth wrapped around her left ear. And then he began to suck the blood from the wound along her earlobe.
Tseup—
"Uhh, nngh—"
Ellen, her face flooded scarlet, couldn't even struggle properly. She only clenched both fists tight and trembled at the shoulders.
While Phoinix indulged in Ellen's blood, the riders dismounted and surrounded him. A Blood Knight hauling a massive cleaver glanced back at Heila, who had just managed to rise.
"I believe we'll need to take an arm and a leg, at least."
"No."
Heila, brushing the dirt from her shoulder and hair, held her tongue for a long moment.
"..."
She blinked rapidly a few times as she looked at Phoinix and Ellen, then drew a small dagger from her waistband.
Strangely, the dagger's blade was made not of steel but of transparent crystal.
Heila pulled off her left gauntlet and drove the dagger deep into the tip of her index finger. Scarlet drops pattered to the ground, one after another. Hot, viscous blood...
Phoinix, still latched to Ellen's ear, went abruptly still.
He had been starving for the thin trickles he was getting. The rich, sweet scent ensnared him in an instant.
"Hrrh."
"Ugh—!"
He shoved Ellen away and turned his head as if possessed. The sweet scent numbing the tip of his nose and the intense mana pulled at his instinct.
Phoinix walked forward with a blank face.
Thud.
When the Blood Knights silently barred his way, the slack expression twisted in an instant.
"Hrraaah."
Phoinix raised the rattling Hrunting — and just as bloodlust came boiling off him, Heila stepped calmly out from behind the Blood Knights.
"My lady—"
"Stand back."
No hesitation. The Blood Knights, exchanging glances, silently gave ground.
"Here."
Heila held up her dripping finger. Then she took the dagger and cut a deeper wound.
"Come here."
"...Hrr."
Phoinix lunged as though collapsing, and began to drink the viscous blood.
"..."
Heila blinked with perfect calm. Watching the beast clinging to her left hand, she slowly drew back her cape.
Shhk.
As the thick broadcloth cape spread over the ground, Heila carefully guided Phoinix down to sit.
The blood streaming through his throat pulled at the vessels all around it. Phoinix's body was being purified. The mana of the Darkworld was driven back and dispersed before the pristine blood of Ellen and Heila.
"..."
Phoinix grew gentle by degrees, like a beast with a full belly.
By the time the scar-mottled soul returned to its cleansed body, Phoinix had drifted off to sleep against Heila's thigh, his teeth still sunk into it.
Guuuuh.
Blade-like mana whirled in from every direction, clashing head-on.
Rage and mockery crossed each other in the air.
Heila looked at Ellen — both fists shaking — and blinked slowly. Then she pointed at Phoinix, and spread her index finger before her red lips.
"Shh."
"Why, you—"
Along with a small hissed curse, the vortex of mana surged hotter still.
But Phoinix, body and soul alike asleep, merely breathed slow and even, in perfect peace.