Chapter 142: What I really am

I advance towards the swordsman while the little girl focuses on the mage, I hear the clinking of the metal blade against my hands.

“Can’t regenerate, can’t you?” The rupture effect drastically affected the regeneration, especially the one done by magic, so the mage could only stop the bleeding of his severed arm but couldn’t regrow it with healing magic.

To regenerate that lost limb would require sacred magic.

But even with just one hand, he’s still a skilled swordsman, and there aren’t many useful openings for me to take advantage of.

’He’s pushing me away from the mage…’ Our strikes and movements are slowly pushing us further away from the mage.

’He’s planning to get serious.’ I decide to press him with speed, I reinforce my body with mana and accelerate my movements while he does something similar.

Now it’s at the point where we’re moving rapidly through various areas, covering dozens of meters instantly, while he maintains a defensive stance.

When we’re far enough from the mage, he strikes with a kick aimed at my belly, but I defend with my tail and take a slight distance from him.

“Quite confident to move away from the mage, don’t you think he’ll die?” Although we’ve moved away from the mage, it’s only about 240 meters or so, we really were moving away, but the swordsman’s movements have just been circling around the area where the mage is.

’Why is he just circling? Can he not move too far from this area? Maybe the relic that allows him to be here is with the mage? Or is he afraid that the little girl will defeat the mage?’ It’s no use just thinking, so I’ll act.

“Yes, I’m confident he won’t die.” The Swordsman assumes a different stance.

’He’s going to use some specific fencing…’ I’ll take advantage of my physical advantages, considering my agile and flexible body, I advance straight on and when I’m very close, I stomp the ground hard, cracking the soil, and change direction completely to the right, causing his attack to miss.

He attacked with a strong frontal attack but missed due to my sudden change of direction, I step on a tree and leap forward, step on another and leap to the left, repeating the process extremely quickly and appearing behind him at high speed.

He turns towards me super fast while trying to use a defensive form of fencing, my fist hits the broad area of the sword, the force of my punch pushing him back.

Repeating the same process, I leap from one tree to another at extreme speed while striking him as he defends, and again I repeat the process, with each punch and each leap, my speed increases.

To the point where I’m now just a white blur jumping from one side to the other and hitting him in random locations at super speed.

He starts being pressured by the onslaught of attacks coming from all directions and is getting faster.

Normal beings couldn’t change direction so abruptly, but my agile, flexible, and adaptable body allows me to change position in an absurd way.

I can also dislocate and reallocate bones in my body to make certain changes if necessary, temporarily making myself more malleable.

My tail also helps a lot in the process of changing direction, and my size, along with my slender body, makes me practically ignore wind resistance.

The swordsman is barely defending the attacks now, the change in position combined with the randomness makes it extremely difficult to predict which attack will come next and where it will hit.

He begins to recite something in a low voice as my movements become faster with each second, now the only visible and audible thing is the sound of footsteps and a slight dust and tree splinters appearing with each new movement.

“!!!” After finishing his recitation, he suddenly obtained a ridiculously high speed buff, appearing in front of me in an instant.

“Arhgg!!” I receive an extremely powerful kick and am thrown against several trees, I see a slight silver trail and am pierced through the back in the area of my heart by his sword.

’D-Deep enough to try to get out… I-I need to remove the blade quickly before he moves.’ My thought process in the midst of such danger accelerates so much that my line of thought passes faster than microseconds.

Everything seems so slow in the face of such danger, I feel the blade moving slowly in front of such a perspective, he plans to move the blade upward, thus splitting my head in two.

His plan is to destroy the two most significant organs in the body, the heart and the brain, thus reducing both mana capacity and thinking ability, such damage is fatal to almost everything, while other monsters that can survive it would be greatly debilitated.

I don’t think I can withstand such damage at the moment, so in the midst of the feeling of death, my passive [Survival Instinct] activates at high levels.

If I didn’t have mana problems, maybe I could survive this, due to the passives I have, but with the damage I’ve already taken and with low mana, such damage could be fatal, and I can’t risk it.

My mind accelerates, reproducing thousands of possible options and results, I’ve never had such a high level of thinking ability before, I didn’t know the [Survival Instinct] passive could do such a thing in the midst of such high danger.

Although my thought process has accelerated so much, I’m still not faster than the swordsman, most of the things I try are slower than this blow, and I don’t have time to recite magic.

However, following my instincts, I choose the fastest approach I can at the moment.

I activate two abilities, as they are abilities, their activation is very fast and I don’t need to say anything.

[Abyss Reflex] [Biological Alteration]

As the darkness begins to spread with my body as the center, I use biological alteration to change my form, the area near my heart distorts and remodels.

Forming a new jaw, with this new jaw the [Devourer] passive activates, by pure instinct I bite the blade while turning my head to look at the swordsman.

All of this happens so fast while the whole world seems so slow.

And the result is that the swordsman’s sword breaks when bitten by my extra jaw, while the entire area is covered in pure darkness, trapping him with me in the [Abyss Reflex].

I see everything so slowly that I can notice every little detail, while I notice how his facial expression changes and he jumps back, even that is slow.

When he finally moves away and I’m no longer in danger, the [Survival Instinct] passive becomes weaker and the world returns to normal speed.

I fall to my knees on the ground, breathing with difficulty, being so close to death was so frightening, but at the same time so unique, the way everything seemed slow was in a way magnificent.

“hahahahaHAHAHAHA YOU BASTARD” I say with a manic smile on my face, it was such a unique experience, but in the end I proved to be superior.

I hold the rest of the blade embedded in my back and pull it back, only 1/3 of the blade remains, so he couldn’t cause me severe enough damage to be dangerous.

I use [Biological Alteration] to fix the extra mouth, making my body return to normal as I regenerate.

Now I’m back to my normal body.

“…Your disgusting aberration, something like you shouldn’t exist.” He says while looking at me with a certain disgust.

“Do you feel humiliated? I bet you do, was this your trump card? Destroying my heart and brain… not bad at all, for a moment I really experienced the fear of death… but it’s no big deal.”

It was more of an instinctive matter. I’ve died once, so my fear of death has diminished, my fear was more of an instinctive reaction of my body, after all the body doesn’t want death and tends to try to live by instinct.

“Trump card? That would never be my trump card.” He says arrogantly.

“You talk too much, you worm.” At the same time that it was incredible, it was also odious, I think this was the first time I really came so close to dying.

It was so close that it’s as if the thread of life had already been severed, the thousands of possibilities that ended in death that I saw were not good at all, after all I can’t die before taking my revenge.

I’m waiting and waiting, I hate waiting, my revenge is so close but so far.

“You know human, I’ll gift you with a terrible death for giving me such a bittersweet experience.” A loathsome yet magnificent experience, that’s why it’s a bittersweet one.

“You seem angry though excited, you know… aberrations like you are what pollute this world, just like that abomination of the demon king.” The swordsman speaks with hatred and disdain.

That same black slime starts dripping from my body, while the hunger increases and a question arises.

[Why are you stalling?]

’I don’t know…’

[Why almost die? Why not eliminate this vermin right away? Why play with the food when we’re starving?]

’I don’t know…’

[Why did we let him almost kill us? Why did we let our advantage turn into a weakness? Why do we limit ourselves so much? Why do we have to accept this humiliation of almost losing to a mere human?]

’I don’t know… I don’t know… why?’ The black slime increases along with the hunger as the questions increase.

[It’s because we’re too human]

’Am I… too human?’

[Yes, we are too human, this is not what we are, something is missing… what are we really?]

’What am I… I am a… monster’

[That’s right, we are a monster, we don’t need to limit ourselves like this, we are a monster, so we should act like one]

’Act like a monster… how do I do that…’ I don’t know, I’ve always thought I acted that way, and soon I obviously find the answer.

[We need to kill, we need to eat, we need to destroy, we need to crush everything in our path, we need to be more brutal, we need more blood and death]

’I need more deaths… such hunger…’ I think I’ve discovered what causes me so much hunger, it’s the forest, something messes with my head in this place.

However, what happens is simple, my more hidden side is slowly released, while my mind gives me the questions and answers I need, but I ignore them.

[What are we really? Why limit ourselves to thinking like humans? Why cling to human sentimentality?]

’I don’t need anything from humanity… I don’t need to be a weak human like I was in the past’

[That’s right, we are not weak, we are strong, so why do we have to submit to the humiliation provided by humans?]

’There is no reason…’

[Exactly, we are what we are, not a weak human, but a powerful monster who will take everything we want for ourselves]

’I am a monster… not a human’ It feels like I’ve had an epiphany, it’s so obvious why did I forget something that’s right in front of me.

[Why are we so blind? Why ignore the obvious? What are we so afraid of?]

’Because I don’t want to lose myself… because I didn’t want to be what I’m not… I’m afraid of not being me…’ The near-death experience makes me think about what I’ve been ignoring.

[And what will you lose? What are you? Why be afraid of becoming something new?]

’I lose…what will I lose?… I am… I am a monster… fear… why am I afraid of becoming a monster completely?’

[Because? We know well why, it’s because you’re afraid of not taking your revenge, you fear losing yourself and forgetting everything you want, you’re afraid your revenge won’t satisfy you, you fear not being happy even surrounded by what you desire]

’…Am I afraid?’

[Yes, but we know the answer to that, it’s stamped on our face, revenge will fill us with happiness…]

’Yes… I’ll be happy to kill them all…’

[And we also know, in the end we’ll be as satisfied with the revenge as with the happiness, we have Zephyra, we have Delphina and we have the power to do whatever we want, in the end even Mikael will be ours]

’I’ll have everything I want… yes… I don’t need to be bound to humanity…’ I finally let go of the little remnant of humanity I tried to keep trapped within me, I free what I am from this mental prison I built to protect myself, finally freeing myself from the limitations I imposed on myself and the remnant of humanity I kept.

The same humanity that has always limited me.

[I want to kill… I’m hungry]

“I want to kill… I’m hungry”

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