Chapter 90: Dark Stirrings
(General POV)
What Tsubaki followed was an absolute bloodbath as while her speed allowed to keep up with the boy, it was not enough to actually see him kill any monsters. She was only ever able to catch the aftermath of his rampage which would be living monster pieces flying everywhere in showers of blood and gore as the child paid no attention to the monsters he'd decapitated in order to advance to the next opponent.
Ogres, imps, ligerfangs, minotaurs, wyverns, you name it. Each and every monster that Lyze came across was swiftly dealt with as the boy grew more and more accustomed to his newfound strength.
One wyvern made the unfortunate decision of trying to divebomb him. Already having seen this coming, Lyze flew up to meet it and ducked to the side at the last second. He stuck Excalibur into the side of its mouth and dragged the sword along its hide, splitting the monster in half and not even looking back as the two gruesome pieces fell to the floor in a splatter of innards.
The half-dwarf could hardly believe exactly what was going on. For level threes to commit a massacre of this scale on floors such as these was just unheard of. Tsubaki was beginning to understand why Finn had made the odd decision of sending this boy ahead to deal with the middle floor monsters. When on his own, Lyzof Keele was the true monster in this dungeon.
Eventually the boy took the time and notice her and came by to a stop before a pit that led to the floor below.
"Why are you following me?" He asked in a manner that was not accusatory, but rather just curious.
"Told you. I just wanted to see what exactly it was you do down here." Tsubaki replied as she looked back at the utter carnage he'd left behind. "And it seems to me that you do quite enough."
"It's just a drill at this point." He shrugged. "At least until we reach the monster rex."
"Yes." She muttered as she looked at the remains of the wyvern which was slowly beginning to dissipate. "Wyverns have tough hides though. It's difficult to cut through both their skin and the hard layer of scales on top...and yet you cut right through it."
"I owe it to this sword." He held the fancy sword aloft as Tsubaki saw the glimmer of its edge. "Its sharpness is unparalleled."
"Yes, you did explain that to us. A simple iron sword with a fancy hilt that has more durability than a Durandal weapon." Tsubaki deadpanned as she reminisced the expensive piece that Hephaestus destroyed when trying out Excalibur for herself. "Honestly, where did you get it?"
"I told you. My master gave it to me."
"And where would this master of yours be now?" She put her hands on her hips. "I assume he too is a great smith."
Lyze put a hand to his chin as he thought back to all the chats he'd had with Nekros. The man had said to him that he'd also been a reincarnated and a world-jumper himself before he'd ascended to near-absolute power and retired to providing other souls the same experience himself.
And considering that the guy had battled monsters in the apparent billions of years he'd lived with all sorts of different weapons, it wasn't far fetched to assume he was a smith as well. Lyze had not learnt the basics of forging from Nekros himself but from one of the Transcendental's many servants in his world.
"Don't know." Lyze said truthfully. "It was just a gift after all. No questions asked." Of course, Lyze knew exactly where the sword had come from but she didn't need to know that.
He took a step back as he dangled with one foot over the edge of the pit.
"See you below." He said as he pushed back with the other and free fell to the fourteenth floor.
The half-dwarf shook her head with a smile before following suit. Usually adventurers would use hooks and ropes to scale down the side of the pit, but a first class adventurer had no need of such things. Her durability made this fall little more than a hop for her. They both plummeted down into the middle of a tunnel below where they startled a rare find.
What looked to be a giant mantis made out of glass leaped away from them into a defensive position, its mandibles clacking loudly as it fixed them with is glazed eyes.
"A crystal mantis." Tsubaki's eyes widened in shock. "Such a rare find! Honestly, what's with you and rare monsters kid?"
"The dungeon seems to hate me." Lyze said. "It sends all manner of strong monsters to face me. I'm not sure if I should be honoured to be considered a threat or annoyed that it actively gets in my way by slowing down my progress to the next floors." He brandished Excalibur as the Mantis fixed its gaze upon hm, clearly understanding who the challenger was.
Lyze crouched as if to jump towards the beast. He jerked and the monster took the initiative by leaping forwards with a giant spring in its step. But it had only fallen for a feint as Lyze stopped propagating and thrust his arms out.
The torrents of wind magic that exploded from his palms so abruptly created a shockwave and a minor explosive sound as a mini hurricane was sent barrelling through the large tunnel.
The aim had been to trick the monster into jumping into the air, so when Lyze hit it wit wind, it had no place to ground itself.
The cluster of fast moving air slammed into the beast, and the dust mixed in with it smothered the eyes of the mantis. Just like its smaller counterpart, the crystal mantis did not have any eyelids and so it was blinded momentarily as its body was sent bouncing painfully off the bedrock and through the grooves of the floor.
Lyze flipped his sword into a reverse grip and flexed his legs to the uttermost extent he could manage. He seemingly disappeared from sight as he moved forward so fast, not only did he leave a large crack in the floor from where his feet had been but he'd also created a violent shockwave the blew Tsubaki's battle robes around her and messed up her hair.
What the mantis could hear were thundering footsteps as Lyze ran towards the monster and jumped upwards while slashing with Excalibur like he were holding a knife. The monster lifted one of its reflective pincers and met the holy sword just in time as a cascade of sparks showered down from the connection. By this time the giant insect leapt to its feet and towered over the boy.
Lyze flipped Excalibur back into a proper grip and stared it down for a moment before the beast used its pincer like a scythe and brought it down like a cleave of death upon the boy. But it was no reaper as Lyze returned the blow with equal strength and jumped from side to side with superior agility, demonstrating excellent and flowing footwork to the smith woman as he pivoted on his heels, weaving in and out between the sweeps of the mantis's offensive appendages.
'Didn't Baki used to do image training with an imaginary giant mantis?' Lyze thought to himself as he leapt over one sweep and using the spin of his body in the air, brought Excalibur around and lobbed a pincer clean off at the joint. Yellowish-Green blood poured from the severed parts as the mantis screeched in pain before buzzing its giant wings backwards.
They said that the praying mantis was one of the strongest creatures in the world when it came to comparisons because the thing could apparently move a hundred times its body weight. That was why Baki, one of Lyze's favourite anime characters used to imagine fighting a giant mantis.
Because if a mantis where human sized, it would be the deadliest creature alive.
'That being said, this ones falls far beneath my expectations.' He thought as he gestured with a hand and a giant rock fist came out of the ground and smashed into the insect's side as it tried retreating backwards. The mantis was stunned as one of its eyes was damaged and its body slammed into the wall, leaving behind a bloody mess as more damage was dealt to it.
Yet even after that, it still stood on its legs. As big as it was, judging by the strength it had displayed, there was no way it could do the same as its smaller cousin. A bit of a disappointment but fun to practice the sword on in Lyze's opinion now.
The boy flew forwards over its head as it tried to regain its surroundings. Flipping downwards, he used the momentum provided by his legs to strengthen his thrust as he impaled the sword into what looked to most like the mantis's butt, but he knew that it was where it's heart was.
Despite its crystal exoskeleton, it stood no chance against the sharpness of the hoy sword as it sank deep into the monsters flesh and ruptured its beating heart. The mantis screeched in pain as it threw its head back, its mandibles and mouth opening wide as the screams reduced to painful croaks before the monster exploded into a shower of dust and it dropped its wing along with its crystal.
"Only you could make taking down a rare monster like that look so easy." Tsubaki said as she light-heartedly clapped. "She gestured to the drops. "You going to pick them up or what? Actually come to think of it, you haven't picked any up." Tsubaki said as she realized all the monster cores and drops were still lying on the ground on the floor above.
"My job is to kill the monsters and make the journey for my Familia easier." Lyze said as he sheathed Excalibur. "The supporters will pick up the drops when they get here." Lyze frowned suddenly and looked towards another part of the floor. Tsubaki frowned in concern and followed his gaze to a ledge up above a rock formation. Well not really a ledge but a pathway that travelled up the cliff face.
"Something wrong?" She asked.
"...No. Nothing." Lyze replied as he looked back at her but she noticed a serious edge to his tone. "Just thought I felt somebody looking at us."
"Really?" She asked. "Want to go check it out?"
"It's probably just a monster." Lyze said. "I'm bound to kill it anyway. Let me kill all the ones in this area before we move over there."
"...If you say so." Tsubaki said, not entirely convinced that the boy himself was affirmed of his words.
However, right where Lyze had 'thought' a monster was spying on them, something stirred. Something unseen drifted away into a tunnel nearby, taking care to make no noise as it retreated from the area. It had after all, seen more than was needed.
---
A singular bulbous eye opened on the large face of an even larger woman as she lay on a bed in a room lit dimly by candles. The woman, healed of her injuries but not her scars or her missing teeth stiffly moved her head to the side as she sighted a startled and petrified looking doctor.
The woman, whose shaven and burnt head resembled more of an egg than anything remotely feminine narrowed her singular eye as she immediately noticed her lack of vision in one side of her face.
She lifted an extremely flabby arm to one side of her face and felt around the area. To her confusion, then consequent horror, she felt not the presence of her other eyeball but rather and empty place in her head covered by a flappy, flimsy eyelid.
The woman sat up quickly, uncaring that the hospital throw-over slipped off her grotesque body and left her body bare to the open air. Instead she focused her singular toady eye on the now trembling doctor who wished she was anywhere but here right now.
"Where am I?" Phryne croaked out in her grating voice with a harsh edge to her tone.
"Y-y-you're i-in the Dian C-cecht clinic at the m-moment, miss Ph-phryne." The healer stuttered out in terror, all too aware of this woman's short temper and violent tendencies.
"Did you heal me properly?" The toad asked her.
"W-What?"
"DID YOU HEAL ME PROPERLY?!!!"
"YES!" The healer cried out, fearing for her life as she saw nothing but murder written in the remaining eye. "We managed to close every wound and re-attach the severed arm miss. I would advise-"
But Phryne was no longer listening as she suddenly looked over to a table in the room she was in. Upon it was a mirror in which she could see her reflection, and there she could see the ugly truth resting upon her already ugly visage.
Her hair had completely gone, burnt off with patches of damaged skin and obvious marks of large blisters once having been on her scalp. Her ear was back to as normal as it could be, what with it carrying a slightly mangled look. Sure enough her arm had been given back to her, but it also pained to move it as she could feel the pins and needles jolting up her arm...similar to her memory of spasming under torrents of burning arcs of electricity beneath the fingertips of an adventurer boy.
But most noticeable was here face. As expected, one of her eyes was completely missing from her face. Her skin was riddled with nasty scars, most of which were clearly inflicted by a sharp weapon. Where some of her skin had been missing from her ribcage, here now appeared to be some sort of skin graft, and the same scars littered her body, along with burn marks in the lightning patterns that were still red with pain she was only now beginning to notice.
But that could not compare to pain of the loss of this woman's severe delusion as she stalked over to the mirror, tears welling up in her eyes, uncaring of her current state of address. Even in her fear, the healer could not help but want to turn around and retch at how hideous the woman was, especially now with the new additions to her body.
Phryne clutched the side of the mirror as she deliriously muttered.
"No, no, no..." she whispered. "...my face...my beautiful face...my beautiful face...MY BEAUTIFUL FACE!" She yelled as she moaned in mental anguish, even though her voice sounded like two bricks scraping against each other.
The woman stamped her foot, making the whole floor shake as cracks appeared in the stone bricks. She spent the next few minutes raving and moaning as she stared at her new reflection in horror at her 'loss'.
Grief gave way to anger and a ferocious yet toothless snarl appeared on her face as the woman lifted the desk and the mirror up and flung it at the healer. The poor women just barely ducked as the heavy furniture smashed into the wall and splintered into thousands of pieces, sawdust settling over the women as glass shards sprayed out every where from the broken mirror.
"YOU CALL THIS HEALING ME?!" Phryne screeched as she stomped over to the woman and lifted her up by her skull. "WHY DIDN'T YOU HEAL MY FACE?"
"Please be reasonable Miss Phryne!" The healer screamed out as she clutched her head which was being squished in the giant woman's hand. "We couldn't salvage the eye no matter what we did, and the scars did not go away no matter how much we tried using healing magic we did the best we could!"
"THE BEST! THE BEST!!! MY UNFATHOMABLE BEAUTY IS GONE AND YOU SAY YOU DID YOUR BEST?" Phryne's delusions then came back into a spin as she came up with what seemed to her the reason for her new face. "No wait. That makes sense. An ugly tramp like you would obviously be jealous of me." The toad woman muttered as her single eye blinked. "Even Ishtar was jealous of my beauty. It would make sense that any woman would try to sabotage me." Phryne's grip on the woman's skull hardened even further. "I see now...you were jealous of my beauty...SO YOU DIDN'T HEAL ME PROPERLY SO I COULD STAY THIS WAY. THAT'S WHAT IT IS ISN'T IT?"
"NOOO!" The woman cried out as she felt her brain about to explode.
Just then the door slammed open and a silver haired woman came striding in along with a few guards wielding spears.
"You were treated according to how much Lady Ishtar was willing to pay for your treatment, Miss Phryne Jamil." Airmid Teasanare, the saint of the Dian Cecht Familia said sternly. "Put our associate down, or you will be taken into custody."
"Why?" Phryne asked dangerously. "This hag took away my beautiful self because she was jealous. So she used an underhanded method to make me stay like this forever. You think I would let such a crime go unpunished?"
"To begin with, she never healed you in the first place." Airmid said, with no small amount of ice in her voice. "I did, and I only performed however much Lady Ishtar paid for. That woman right there was only assigned to supervise you."
"WHAT-"
"AND UNFORTUANTELY...it will stay that way. Ishtar paid me a small pittance, only enough to reattach the arm and to perform some moderate healing." Airmid cut off the woman. "Your Familia was not willing to go beyond that."
"Ishtar...Ishtar...Ishtar..." Phryne muttered dazedly as she dropped the woman in her hand. The poor healer immediately rushed over to her superior and bolted through the door when given pass. It was understandable she she would not wish to be in the room with such an unstable element any second longer than needed. "It makes sense...I've always been more beautiful than Ishtar...I should have been the goddess of beauty...she set me up...she did this on purpose to set me beneath her." Phryne murmured aloud.
Airmid screwed up her nose in disgust and disbelief. Being a symbolic member of Orario's greatest healing Familia, she had heard her fair share of rumours about the crimes of this woman and safe to say, she had not wanted to heal this woman at all.
Even looking at her now, it wasn't a far fetch to say that the rumours may have been true. But she couldn't believe the things that the toad woman had managed to convince herself of. Even now, she could see one of the guard's faces going green from the disgust of seeing this hideous, naked woman.
"I would suggest not challenging an adventurer of a higher calibre, and not to judge based on appearances either." Airmid said as she looked over to the damaged mirror and desk. "I shall also be submitting a invoice to the Ishtar Familia for damages you've caused. For now, go back to bed and rest as you still have not fully recovered." Airmid said before she turned on her heel and walked out the room, closing the door behind and her and locking it for some extra measure of assurance.
But her words triggered the brute's memories to come rushing back of nearly a week prior as she talked those three children in the dungeon. She'd just been curious about the infamous record breakers in the Loki Familia.
It was after all never a bad idea to clip budding flowers in other Familia before they could fully bloom. Especially if they were from one of the top two. Phryne had been most interested in the boy. She'd not met him beforehand but the rumours she'd heard about him indicated a level of strength and will rarely found in grown men, let alone a boy.
This piece of news set her sick fetishes into motion as she desired to do to him what she did to every other 'strong' male she came across...it was always so much more satisfying when they were pure little boys as well. And this piece of meat was as good and rare as they come, hence why she decided she'd warm up a little with the girl.
They were both two levels below her after all, so what chance did they have? Even if one ran away, she'd catch up in no time. She'd just wanted to corner them in a place where they couldn't escape. But speed was not one of her strong points and so therefore she'd taken more time to reach them, though they were apparently coming back up when she finally did confront them.
Actually meeting the boy himself was a pleasurable experience in itself. His skin was pale yet healthy with no blemishes besides his obvious battle scars. And even at such a young age, his body was ripped muscles she'd not seen on adult men. Beyond a doubt, he would grow to be extremely handsome in the future. Truly one of a kind and it had fallen right into her hands...or so she'd thought.
She'd assumed that he would be weaker than but she been caught by a nasty surprise as he proved to be so much more stronger than his level indicated. Loki had to have been lying about his level because there was no way a level 2 was doing those things to her.
HE...HE DID THIS TO HER. IT WAS HIS FAULT!
He'd been the one to burn her with a strange black fire. He'd been the one to torture her with his sword mercilessly, taking sadistic glee in every time he plunged his blade into her flesh. He had been the one to obviously enjoy disfiguring her face more than anything else in their fight.
He should have been kneeling on the ground, battered and defeated by her invincible hand, or complimenting her fantastic beauty that surpassed goddesses like good little men should do. But instead he'd attacked her, he'd hurt her, he'd wronged her...he'd taken away the most important thing to her.
"He has to pay!...he has to pay!...HE HAS TO PAY!"
Even if she would never get her beloved perfect looks back, she'd be damned before she let him get away with this. When he was dealt with, then she would deal with the rest of her worthless Familia for not giving the money needed to completely fix her.
So what she spent all her money on drink and substance?...she was captain! They should have been honoured to have such a beautiful person as a captain. They should have been giving her money out of reverence and gratefulness that she even bothered dealing with and directing them. But they didn't and they would learn the consequences of their mistake soon enough.
The boy came first...
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