Chapter 35: Don’t assume I will be as forgiving as the protagonist

Content Warning: Graphic gore. Viewer discretion advised.

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The man pulled back just a fraction from the embrace with a slight look of disappointment, glancing down at Cheon Areum as he spoke and hugged him again.

“I need to get mind corruption one way or another. That’s the only way to become the strongest.”

Drip….

Drip….

Red blood splattered onto the dark dirt beneath them. Cheon Areum stood there, gripping a sharp knife barehanded—its tip only a breath away from piercing his own abdomen. He held it there by sheer force, fingers clenched tight around the blade to stop it from moving any further. Fresh cuts split his palm and fingers, blood leaking steadily from where skin met steel, staining his hand as it continued to drip onto the ground.

His hand trembled as he held onto the blade, the strain of resisting the control making his muscles shudder. Forcing his limbs to move directly against the restraint by corrupting the unfamiliar energy residing inside his body would have drained far too much of his energy—more than he was willing to waste.

So he chose another way.

Black energy surged outward, coating his body completely, wrapping around him like a second skin. Instead of fighting the control head-on, Cheon Areum redirected his energy outward as a sheer thin layer of his energy on his body that moved his limbs to his liking, tightening his grip over himself. If his body was being controlled from the inside then he would simply control the body being controlled by another person’s energy.

The man had moved in closer again under the guise of another embrace, a knife slipping into his hand unnoticed as their bodies drew near. He angled it toward Cheon Areum’s waist, intent on driving it in at the moment of contact—but Cheon Areum caught it.

His fingers closed around the blade just before it could touch his skin, stopping it cold in midair. Steel bit into his palm, drawing fresh blood, yet his grip didn’t waver. Their bodies hovered a breath apart, the failed strike hanging between them like a frozen mistake. His eyes lifted slowly to meet the man’s, dark energy stirring in those eyes.

“You’re quick-”

The man was about to smile marveling at Cheon Areum’s lightning reflexes when the knife betrayed him. In the space of a single heartbeat the blade twisted upward between their locked grips. At the exact same instant, the black energy already snaking around on the man’s body slammed into his skull like an invisible palm, forcing his head down with merciless precision.

The tip met his left eye.

A wet, intimate squelch—soft as overripe fruit splitting—filled the sudden silence. The eyeball yielded instantly, a warm jelly giving way to steel. Aqueous fluid and vitreous humour welled up in a sluggish pearl, spilling over the lower lid before the socket itself seemed to drink the blade deeper. In less than three racing seconds the point had punched through cornea, lens, and retina, lodging with a faint bony tick against the back of the orbit.

His half-formed smile never arrived.

Instead his mouth opened in a soundless ’O’, the breath trapped somewhere between lungs and throat, while the ruined eye socket pulsed once around the steel like a tiny, obscene heartbeat.

“I keep on telling you to be nice since I’m not. If you want to act like this and don’t expect anything nice from me either.”

Before the scream could claw its way out, Cheon Areum’s energy clamped down like an iron vise across the man’s jaw, forcing his teeth together with a dull clack that echoed inside his skull. His lips mashed flat, cheeks ballooning uselessly as the trapped air hissed through his nostrils in short, panicked bursts.

Cheon Areum’s free hand shot to the crown of his head, fingers twisting deep into sweat-slick hair until roots strained and strands tore free with tiny wet pops. He yanked his face forward at the same time he wrenched the knife backward.

The blade slid out of the ruined socket with a thick, sucking shlurp—like pulling a boot from deep mud. A stringy rope of vitreous gel and blood stretched, then snapped, splattering hot across his knuckles. The empty orbit gaped, a dark glistening crater leaking clear fluid that mixed with crimson and ran in sluggish rivulets down his cheek, pooling in the hollow beneath his shattered eye.

Cheon Areum adjusted his grip in one fluid motion: palm flattening against the knife’s pommel, fingers wrapping the hilt in a full, white-knuckled fist. The steel gleamed wetly under the moonlight, coated in a glistening sheath of ocular jelly and gore. The man’s remaining eye—wide, bloodshot, pupil blown huge with terror—locked onto the point as it hovered inches away, trembling only because his hand was rock-steady. A low, strangled whine leaked past his sealed teeth, more animal than human.

Cheon Areum exhaled once, slow and controlled. Then he drove forward again stopping just before the leftover eye could be taken by the blade too.

“Forget it. You will need to see the dungeon too if you become a hunter.”

With a sharp flick of his wrist, he hurled the knife aside. It clattered across the dirt, trailing a thin red arc that splattered in dark beads. The motion sent fresh fire roaring through his sliced palm—hot, electric, like molten wire threading under the skin. He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to keep from hissing, dropping to the ground in front of the restrained man, folding his legs into a loose cross-legged seat, knees splayed.

The restrained awakener’s ragged breathing filled the space between them as he bowed his head forward, supporting his forehead in the heel of his clean hand. Fingers pressed into sweat-damp hair, steadying the tremor that threatened to spread from his wounded arm to the rest of him. Eyes squeezed shut against the pulsing ache.

“When you go to register yourself as an awakener or a hunter don’t tell them I was the one who did this to your eye.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep