Chapter 12: Pon Pon!

Mio

She kept running. Not toward the exit. The collapse had blocked it. Tons of concrete sealing the ramp she’d come down.

No way out except through.

Through meant past the knight.

Lightning left her fingertip. Two damage. It didn’t slow.

Two more bolts. Nothing.

Behind a pillar. Its fist came through a second later, not around but through, showering her with concrete fragments. She stumbled. Kept moving.

[Hemorrhage]

The word carved itself into her vision. She didn’t see the backswing, just felt it. Gauntlet raking across her back, tearing through hoodie and skin and muscle.

[-284 HP]

[HP: 416/700]

[Bleed: 15 HP/sec]

Seven hundred max. The hunger had been busy while she wasn’t looking.

The blood was warm on her spine. Her blood. Running down into her waistband.

Keep running.

Another bolt. Useless.

Two strides and the knight closed the distance. Faster than something that size should move.

[Iron Grasp]

Its hand found her arm. Squeezed. The bone creaked.

Then she was flying. Thrown hard enough that she hit a pillar, bounced, and skidded across concrete. The impacts blurred together into one long moment of pain.

Get up.

Rolling saved her. The gauntlet cratered the floor where her head had been.

Three more bolts. Six damage total. The knight didn’t register it.

But the blooms.

The slimes. They were here. Feeding. Dying in the crossfire. Crushed under falling debris. Caught in the knight’s swings.

Blooms manifested. One. Three. Seven.

She absorbed them without thinking. The hunger taking what it wanted. Reservoir climbing.

Green light flooded through her. She healed once, twice, three times in quick succession until the damage closed. The bleed was still ticking, but she was outpacing it now. Absorb, convert, heal. The cycle that kept her standing.

The knight’s helm tilted. Watching her heal.

[Blood Scourge]

Its gauntlet swept through its own blood pool. The liquid rose into tendrils, whips, three of them lashing toward her from different angles.

First one missed. Second caught her shoulder. Third wrapped around her ankle and pulled.

Ground again. The tendril dragging her toward the knight.

Lightning at the tendril, not the knight.

It burst. She scrambled up.

Too slow. The backswing caught her across the ribs, spinning her into a pillar. Two bleeds stacking now. Thirty HP per second draining away.

Blooms. Heal. Blooms. Heal again.

The knight raised its gauntlet. Palm flat, fingers spread toward the ground.

[Crimson Tide]

The blood pools moved.

A wave. Knee-high, black and thick. Surging outward from the knight in every direction.

Concrete divider. Barely made it. The tide crashed beneath her, spattering her legs.

The slimes weren’t so lucky. Dozens of them, swept up, membranes bursting on impact.

Blooms. Everywhere.

[+15 XP]

[+15 XP]

[+15 XP]

[+15 XP]

[Level Up: 5]

[HP: 280/820]

[Reservoir Cap: 62,500]

The jump hit her like cold water. Over a hundred extra max HP.

[New Ability Unlocked: Rupture]

She swiped it away.

[Please choose a designated activation word]

Another swipe. Didn’t read it.

Not now.

The knight’s fist cratered the divider. Concrete exploded. She threw herself sideways, shoulder cracking against a support beam.

Ducked. Claws raked the air above her head.

Another bolt. No flesh to ground into.

[Please choose a designated—]

She swiped away once more. It dimmed, waited at the edge of her vision.

The knight backhanded her into a pillar.

[-140 HP]

[HP: 140/820]

Blooms. Two of them. Pulled in. Healed.

But it kept coming. Kept swinging. Driving her back.

Back toward the blood pool where the Crimson Tide had killed dozens of slimes.

Back toward the blooms.

Tendrils from three directions. She dove, rolled through something wet and cold, and came up in the center of the garage. Right where the knight had been kneeling when she first saw it.

Blooms everywhere. Dozens of them. Hovering over corpses, over puddles, over the remains of slimes. Close enough to touch.

Too many to absorb fast enough.

[Please choose a designated activation word]

The notification pulsed. Patient.

I don’t have TIME—

The knight stepped into the blood pool. Closing the distance.

Fifteen thousand HP. At two damage per bolt, seven thousand five hundred casts to kill it.

She didn’t have five hundred.

[Iron Grasp]

The knight’s hand closed around her throat.

[-60 HP]

[HP: 70/820]

Lifted off the ground.

[-60 HP]

[HP: 10/820]

Feet kicking. Hands clawing at the gauntlet. The fingers were fused solid, locked around her windpipe.

[-5 HP]

[HP: 5/820]

Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. The blooms floated around her, dozens of them, close enough to see the light pulsing inside, and she couldn’t reach a single one.

[-3 HP]

[HP: 2/820]

Get up.

No up. Only the knight’s grip and the pressure building behind her eyes and the grey spots eating her vision.

Get up get up get up—

[Please choose a designated activation word]

The notification pulsed, patient, waiting for an answer she didn’t have.

Nana’s face. The kitchen. Bubble wrap on the floor. A stupid sound effect for a stupid game, her sister’s laugh when Mio said it wrong.

The word left her throat with the last air she had.

“Pon!”

The nearest bloom detonated.

Which touched the next, then the next.

She was in the center of the cluster.

Green-white. Blinding. The world became noise and light and force. Explosions cascading outward in every direction, blooms rupturing in sequence, the chain reaction racing through the mass of corpses and blood and accumulated death.

The knight’s grip vanished.

Ground. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t hear. Just ringing and afterimages and iron on her tongue.

Air flooded back in. Sweet and cold.

She lay there. Breathing. Alive by accident.

The ringing faded.

She looked up.

The knight was standing.

But.

Its armor was gone. Chestplate shattered. Pauldrons blown off. Gauntlets cracked and hanging loose. The explosions had stripped it down to grey flesh and black veins.

And underneath, scars. Old ones. Older than the rot. Blade marks across its chest, healed white and smooth before the corruption ever touched it. A puncture wound above the hip. A long slash across its shoulder.

[Putrid Knight: 9,847/15,000]

Over five thousand damage. From one word.

The knight looked down at itself. The exposed flesh. The scars it couldn’t remember earning.

Then it looked at her.

And charged.

Blooms. Three. Four. Whatever was left. Pulled in. Healed.

[HP: 380/820]

Her throat was raw. But she was breathing.

And she finally read the notification she’d been ignoring.

[Rupture]

Detonates nearest Life Bloom within 10 meters.

Chain Reaction: Adjacent blooms within 2 meters.

Activation: Vocal command

Nearest bloom. Chain reaction.

Thirty blooms. She’d been standing in the middle of thirty blooms.

[Armor Destroyed: Blight can now apply to flesh]

The knight swung. She ducked.

She’d cast Spark a hundred times tonight. Point and fire. The word just a trigger, the lightning just a tool.

This was different.

[Spark]

The word rose in her mind and she meant it. The System caught the intention, registered it, and something answered. Energy gathered at her fingertips, bright and hungry.

Lightning left her palm.

For the first time in a year, she felt alive.

But so was the knight.

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