Stellas Requiem
Sharp fangs sliced through empty air.
Bella ducked on pure instinct, barely slipping past the strike. Cold sweat traced a line down her back.
An attack she would have brushed aside without effort on any other day. But she was far from whole.
Damn it, the wounds still…!
Even a single high-rank monster was nearly too much. Her mana core had not fully recovered. A few swings of her sword left her lungs burning and her muscles trembling.
Yet she could not run.
Far off, Yeon—drenched in blood—fought on while monsters closed in around her. Any ordinary human would already have been a corpse. Whether it was her unique ability or sheer stubborn will, she kept fighting in a way that defied reason.
A child strangely numb to pain. It must have hurt when the blade pierced her heart. Yet she acted as if her own agony meant nothing… a fifteen-year-old who, without hesitation, begged people who hated and despised her to fight at her side just once.
Watching her from the side, Bella finally sorted every tangled emotion into perfect clarity.
She could never have been a villainess.
The rumors that clung to her no longer held any weight. Idle words from people who had never seen her with their own eyes. The only thing that still snagged was the fact that she had kept her sanity even while drowning in Contamination—something that shattered every rule Bella knew. That bizarre unique ability, the power to return from death… and the same inexplicable force that had saved Bella herself two months ago when she stood at death’s door.
Yeon already stood so far beyond Bella’s understanding that there was nothing left to do but believe.
She had to finish the one monster assigned to her. Only then would Yeon have even a little more room to breathe.
Grrrrr—!
The monster growled low and began to circle, a predator toying with its prey, hunting for the slightest opening. Bella tightened her grip on the sword. The wind that brushed her back felt cold as ice. One moment of carelessness and her head would leave her shoulders.
Her mana core had been damaged for a long time. Blows she once would have blocked with ease could now kill her. Even so, flight never crossed her mind.
I just need to buy time…
She leveled her blade and kept her distance. Any thought of striking first was abandoned; her body simply could not manage it. She would defend with absolute precision and wait for the monster to show a gap.
Bang!
The creature kicked off the earth and launched itself. Bella twisted aside, but her reaction lagged by a single beat. Claws raked across her shoulder.
Ugh…!
Blood pattered onto the ground. The wound was deep. She clenched her teeth and raised her sword again. If she kept giving ground, it was over.
The monster resumed its slow, circling dance, waiting for the next chance.
Steady my breathing… watch for the opening.
She tried to call on her martial arts, yet the still-unhealed mana core refused to answer. Frustration rose; she forced it down and reset her grip.
A straight fight is impossible no matter how I look at it…
Her eyes swept the terrain—brush, trees, rocks. Anything that could limit the monster’s speed was better than losing a pure contest of quickness.
Grrr—!
It charged again. This time Bella did not dodge. She deliberately took the blow, used the force to fling herself backward, and rolled behind a boulder.
Good. Distance gained.
She dragged in ragged breaths while the monster lowered its stance, playtime finished, preparing the finishing strike.
One chance only.
She turned the blade sideways, ready to take the throat the instant it leapt. Miss, and she would die on the spot.
Bang!
The monster sprang. Bella drove her foot into the earth, twisted hard, and swung with everything she had left.
Swish—!
The edge bit deep into the creature’s neck.
“This…”
It did not fall.
“Hah… hah. Even buying time isn’t working…”
Her stamina was collapsing. She would not last much longer. Death itself no longer frightened her—but that child…
Bella abandoned the idea of stalling any further.
Nobles. Descendants of the mortals who once stood beside the Transcendents and warred against the gods. The founder of House Staren had been one of them. The story he carved into the world was Starlight.
Here, she would gamble.
Mana began to gather, slow and deliberate. Agony exploded from the damaged core and flooded every nerve. It felt as though her skin were splitting open, yet she did not stop. Her fingers whitened around the hilt.
In this condition… roughly a fifty-percent chance.
The monster twisted in a final thrash and opened its vast jaws. Bella ducked beneath the snapping maw—
—Crash!
Claws scythed in from behind. There was no dodging them.
No—she chose not to dodge.
Estella Swordsmanship
Stellas Requiem
Kwaaaaaaaang—!!
In that instant, fierce starlight detonated from the tip of her blade. Just as the monster’s fangs closed to devour her, Bella drew a single line through empty air.
Flash—!
It was over in a heartbeat. Her sword carved a trail of pure starlight across the sky.
—Kwaaaaaaaaaang—!!!!
The light erupted outward. Along that luminous path the monster’s flesh split apart. Its massive body was bisected cleanly; scarlet blood fountained into the air. With a final, broken scream the creature collapsed.
“…Done!”
Bella stared at the fading glow on her sword tip, chest heaving. Had even a scrap of luck failed her in that near-death moment, only a corpse would remain here now. Strength drained from every limb, yet there was no time to rest. She spun toward the place Yeon had been fighting.
Yeon, soaked head to toe in blood, was being dragged along by another monster. Bella forced herself upright and ran.
“Damn it…!”
She raised her sword at once. The mana core shrieked in protest; the backlash sent white-hot agony racing through her body. She had forgotten that she herself stood only a breath from death. Her legs shook violently, but that no longer mattered.
Not yet… it isn’t over yet!
She wrenched up the last dregs of strength.
Swish—!
She closed the distance in a single burst and cut.
Slash!
The blade sheared cleanly through the monster’s neck. Blood sprayed. Bella covered her face with one hand as the thick copper stench rolled over her. The creature’s body went slack and released Yeon. Yeon crumpled bonelessly to the ground.
“You said you’d finish quick and come help me, putting on all that swagger…”
Thank goodness.
Bella looked down at her and let out a short, dry laugh.
“What a pathetic sight.”
That wasn’t what she wanted to say. Kinder words rose in her throat, then sank again without ever leaving her mouth. She still could not be certain she had the right to approach the girl she had once distrusted enough to stab.
Yeon only smiled weakly.
“Conscience… where… I… six of them…”
Bella took her by the shoulder and carefully pulled her up.
“Hah. Stay conscious for now. I’m at my limit too. If you black out, I can’t drag you.”
One step. Two steps. Supporting each other’s blood-soaked weight, the two of them began to leave the forest behind.
Bella and I moved carefully through the trees, eyes open for any monsters that might still be lurking. We took each step through air thick with blood and dust, picking our way past the scattered corpses, trying to put the forest behind us.
Heuk… heuk…
I bit down hard on every sound so Bella would not hear. My limbs felt heavy as lead; my skin burned as though it were splitting open—and the sensation was delicious.
This is definitely wet, right?
My whole body was soaked in blood, yet the lower half felt especially damp. A wave of self-disgust hit me, but it still beat the pain… didn’t it?
What truly worried me was Bella. She had just fought a high-rank monster that would have been difficult even at full strength, and she had done it with a mana core that was nowhere near recovered. Unlike me, who turned agony into pleasure, she was struggling simply to keep breathing right now……
Kwaaaaaaaaaaaang—!!!
A sudden storm tore through the trees and hurled them skyward. Thick branches snapped; razor-edged stone shards whipped in every direction; the sky blackened in an instant.
“…!!”
I curled in on myself by reflex. Bella did the same, sword already raised, every sense straining outward.
This is…
An alien presence. And at the same time… a familiar one. Even standing amid the reek of monster corpses, a stench so foul it threatened to rot my nose from the inside paralyzed my sense of smell.
I figured at worst a top-rank monster might show up.
I must have been more rattled than I thought. Still—I had taken out insurance.
Crack!
Black lightning split the heavens. Every tree in the forest turned pitch-dark at once. Distorted faces erupted from the trunks and screamed.
“…Ugh!!”
Bella staggered back a step. Breath refused to come. This was no ordinary pressure. It was terror born from existence itself—the sensation that merely standing before it denied one’s right to be.
Wind howled. A black shape took form, darkness writhing without end.
One of the seven monsters the Evil God had forged by shaving off what little power still remained to him. The incarnation of envy that endlessly shifts shape, mimicking every living thing in the world.
A Calamity-class monster.
Kwaaaaaaaaaaaaaang—!!!
I forced my mouth open and whispered to the senior still holding me upright.
“Senior… the pact… remember…”