REAPER SCANS
Surviving as a Broken Hero
[Author – Farlight]
[Proofreader – Harley]
Chapter 112 - Hunt (3)
The icicles tore through Alikr’s body, leaving ragged, gaping holes in his torso and leaving him slumped against the boulder he’d been leaning against.
An audible crunch pierced the air, followed by a spatter of crimson drops across the rocks and grass. His head lolled to the side, his chest ceasing any sign of breathing.
Velle and Rhil cast a cautious glance at each other. Was that it?
Alikr had been planning something. What was the purple crystal he’d swallowed?
The two eyed his still body for a moment, Velle raising her staff again in preparation to cast more spells as Rhil tightened the grip on her dagger. The thunderous roar of blood in Rhil’s ears made the moment feel excruciatingly long. She half expected Alikr’s corpse to jerk upright at any second.
Giving her restrictive collar a nervous tug, Rhil thought, ‘Stay dead…’
She may have wanted her powers back, but she wasn’t in such a rush as to immediately try looting Alikr’s body for the key.
Seeing Rhil’s hesitation, Velle nodded. With her staff at the ready, she inched closer to the body as it seeped blood into the thirsty earth below.
The forest clearing was eerily quiet, save for the soft rustling of leaves in a distant breeze. The sun cast jagged shadows that danced around them from the surrounding trees.
Close enough to see the whites of Alikr’s eyes, Velle stopped again.
“What’s wrong…?” Rhil asked, her voice trembling slightly. The expression on Velle’s face filled her with a sense of dread.
“His eyes… they’re… looking at something?” Velle whispered. Not taking any chances, she conjured another icicle.
As gruesome as it was, she aimed the projectile straight at Alikr’s head. Even zombies were said to die after beheading, after all. It was better to be safe than sorry.
The icicle coalesced from the ambient moisture, appearing briefly in front of the gem on her staff. It whirred into rapid rotation before launching forward so quickly that Rhil could barely track it with her unenhanced vision.
A faint whoosh broke the silence. Instead of leaving a hole in Alikr’s skull, the icicle merely evaporated like a drop of water hitting scorching metal.
A sharp hiss filled the air as the ice reverted to steam.
“What…?” Velle’s eyes widened in disbelief.
Purple webs of veins crept outward from the elf’s pupils. The crystal Alikr had eaten was a far more refined version of the one given to Gregor, with all of its benefits and drawbacks amplified to match.
A sickly purple glow traced lines beneath Alikr’s skin as though his blood itself was filling with violet fire.
“Haaa…” A chuckling wheeze rattled out of his mouth as the purple network of veins rapidly expanded. While he still seemed unsteady, each rasping breath expanded the purple network of veins.
Velle didn’t hesitate; she fired off more icicles, though each projectile fizzled into mist upon contact.
“Damn it… Why can’t I do anything?” Rhil lamented. She brushed her hand over the hilt of the dagger at her waist, shaking her head.
‘I can’t… he’s an Awakener. Could I even break his skin?’
“Try something bigger…” Rhil said, her voice hushed. Instead of doing something reckless, she backed away, her collar chafing her neck with every step.
“Working on it!” Velle shot back.
The gem on her staff began to crack under the strain of forming a massive icicle with the circumference of a basketball. The swirling spear of ice rotated in the air, humming faintly as it condensed.
Finally, with a forceful thrust, the icicle shot forward.
The impact would have been enough to bore a hole through solid stone, the ice as hard as steel. Against Alikr’s skin, though, it exploded in a cloud of vapor-like fog. A freezing blast of air rushed outward, rustling the leaves of the nearby trees in a sudden gust.
Swallowing her rising panic, Velle tried to salvage the failed attack by freezing the air around Alikr, hoping to trap him in a growing prison of ice.
No matter how much focus and mana she used, it all evaporated on contact with the elf’s skin. Even worse, the shimmering aura around him expanded as the purple veins did.
The purple veins reached the ends of Alikr’s fingers and toes, throbbing with new vitality. He pressed his palm against the ground, pushing himself upright with an almost casual demeanor, and any remaining blood from his gaping wounds mixed with the soil.
With a slow, deliberate motion, he stood. Ice and frost continued to form and vanish around him as Velle’s magic battled with his expanding aura.
“It’s useless,” he rasped out, his voice raw—like shards of broken glass lingered in his throat.
It was as though the crystal he’d swallowed had frayed his vocal cords on the way down.
His lips twisted into a humorless smirk. “This was made to fight Awakeners, after all.”
Furrowing her brow, Velle replaced the cracked mana gem at the top of her staff and launched every attack she could think of. Waves of water surged forward, quickly turning to steam. Icicles shattered on contact. Shotgun-like blasts of ice pellets scattered harmlessly into a misty spray.
All the while, Alikr advanced at a leisurely pace, not even bothering to draw his sword.
With each step he took forward, Velle took one more step back. Her desperation mounted; between focusing on her spells, feeling her mana draining to a dangerously low level, and her desperation, she barely noticed the tree trunk looming behind her until she felt it pressing into her back.
“Is that all?” Alikr asked, his tone almost bored.
The flesh across his abdomen knit itself back together. The purple glow suffused his wounds, sealing them and leaving purple-tinged skin behind.
Out of mana and space, Velle gripped her staff in both hands and swung it like a baseball bat at Alikr’s head.
Even though she was a mage, she hadn’t completely neglected her physical stats; even an Awakener should have felt the blow, yet the moment staff met flesh, it felt as though she’d struck an iron wall. A jarring shock ran up her arms, her weapon cracking under the strain.
Alikr didn’t flinch, the corner of his mouth twitching into a slight sneer.
“As flashy as all this is, you might as well be an ordinary human now,” he said, brushing away a stray droplet of water from his shoulder. “Years of my life were spent in your species’ shadow. Working as an Association representative? You wouldn’t understand, but that’s a blissful ignorance your species will take to the grave.”
* * *
Reaper Scans
[Author – Farlight]
[Proofreader – Harley]
Join our discord for updates on releases! https://dsc.gg/reapercomics
* * *
When Eve saw Alikr’s ruined body knitting itself back together—holes still visible through his torso—she knew the fight had taken a turn for the worse.
She took a trembling breath, her lungs tight with worry, and began carefully Pulling as much heat as her body would allow. Already without an ear and an arm, how much more would she have to give before the end?
Something strange stirred in that heat.
‘It feels closer…’
Knowledge held that a Cursed being’s power was static. In her case, it was the ability to Pull and Push heat—but something was changing. Heat that would have normally scorched her skin instead felt like a warm caress.
It was clear neither Rhil nor Velle could stop Alikr in his empowered state.
For a heartbeat, Eve closed her eyes and inhaled.
Stepping out from behind the tree, she caught Alikr’s attention. Almost instantly, his attention snapped to her.
Velle, seeing an opening, tried to strike him again with the broken staff. Alikr casually deflected her blow by catching the staff in a sideways motion, yanking it from her grip and tossing it somewhere into the dark forest.
She stumbled, hitting the dirt with a groan, eyes full of panic.
Throughout it all, Alikr never once let his gaze falter from Eve. Perhaps because of the power surging through his veins, he didn’t run.
Or was it that something else looked at her from behind what had once been Alikr?
His eyes flared first with brief recognition, then a flicker of what might have been fear, before settling into a steady, smoldering glare.
“You…” he hissed, voice resonating with a strange echo.
Sweat beaded at Eve’s temple from her scorching aura.
She had a fight on her hands.
For the first few seconds, Alikr simply stood and watched her while Velle scrabbled toward her staff on the other end of the clearing and Rhil stood nearby, looking small and nervously biting her lip as she tugged at her collar.
“Not running this time?” Eve asked. “You should know better.”
Alikr shook his head. “You might be Cursed, but I’ve been given the power to overcome even abominations of nature such as you.”
“That’s rich, coming from someone who betrayed their species and resorted to making a deal with demons.”
Alikr flinched. That word, ‘demons’, held special meaning for them. The Cursed had a history of cleansing demons, even before the Merge, but the demons in their world had been of a different nature.
Perhaps that was why the word struck a chord with him.
“That’s what people call them, but they simply demand the sacrifice of the body, not the soul. Not like our old demons. Your power does the same thing, does it not?” Alikr touched the purple scarring over the healed wounds on his chest and cast a pointed look at her missing arm.
“Don’t you want to use your power without fear of sacrifice? Without fear of death? Imagine what you could do—the power of a Cursed with the body of…” he hesitated, not wanting to say ‘demon’.
Finally, a certain light shone in his eyes, and he smiled. “With the body of a god.”
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