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[Skill-Eater] Chapter 4: Crack
🕑 Added 2024-06-26 17:01:01 +0000 UTC“You’re no fun,” the big man whined. “You never let me finish anyone.”
“You can play later,” the tall man replied. “I’ve been wanting to test the output of my elemental blade ever since I ranked-up the skill. Now a perfect specimen has appeared before our eyes. If there’s anything left after my attack, you can have the rest.”
While they were busy arguing, Edge looked at the floor and froze in place. He was doing everything that he could to avoid attracting their attention. Fighting back never even occurred to him.
These guys didn’t need their skills to kill Edge. With their cycled-up cores, they could take him apart with their bare hands. They’d already proven that he couldn’t inflict more than superficial damage, even if he managed to land a blow.
He’d lost track of the countdown while he was unconscious. But if he could stay alive for just a few more minutes and make it back to the reliquary, then maybe, just maybe, he could still turn this around.
The tall man walked over to where he was lying on the floor. He looked down at Edge like he was vermin. An insect about to be squashed.
“Here’s the rule. I’m going to hit you with my skill. You can try to dodge, but it won’t work. If you survive, you win. No one has yet, but there’s always a chance.”
With those words, the jailbird’s core ignited. Mana went streaming into his hand, which began to glow with a pale blue light that reminded Edge of the heart of a glacier. Wreathed in billowing frost, a flawless blade of ice emerged from the center of his clenched fist, a stark white grip extending past the other side.
Within the span of a breath, the elemental blade was fully formed. A three-foot sword so cold that it put a chill in Edge’s bones, trailing fog behind it as it froze the moisture in the air.
He looked up at the agile prisoner, who radiated a smoldering menace that was even more terrifying than his companion’s cheerful bloodlust. He could tell the moment their eyes met that nothing he could say would stop the man from attacking with that deadly power.
Over the last few seconds, the air around the iceblade had grown so cold that it made Edge shiver from where he sat. Distracting him won’t work. Dodging won’t either. The only chance I have is to deflect or block the blade. The seal should finish breaking any moment.
That was all the time that Edge had to reflect on his situation. Because at that point, the tall man raised his sword of ice and then brought it down in a streaking slash.
Unable to run, unable to dodge, Edge watched as the elemental blade descended toward his body. The moment that it touched his chest, it would freeze his heart and all the blood in his veins, killing him instantly.
Left with no other alternative, he reached out and grabbed his bag, twisting the fabric around his wrist with the canteen in front of his flesh. He brought it up in front of the iceblade with the contents facing forward.
With an impact that reverberated throughout his body, he caught the sword of ice in his fabric-wrapped palm. He had hoped to knock the skill to one side, but it stuck the moment that it touched him.
Weird, I expected that to hurt more. That was when Edge saw the dense layer of ice coating the bag and part of his hand. He realized in that moment that he couldn’t move his fingers. Couldn’t feel a thing past the end of his wrist.
That was when the full horror of what had happened dawned on him. Despite the insulation that the bag had added, three of his fingers had frozen solid, faster than the blink of an eye. I’ll lose half my hand if…
No sooner had that thought crossed Edge’s mind than the jailbird let out a wicked cackle and pulled his iceblade back to his side.
With a sickening crack that Edge would remember for the rest of his life, however short it may be, the frozen side of his hand shattered like glass, leaving rime-coated ruin behind. Only ragged stumps remained where three of his fingers had been, which would start bleeding the moment that ice capping them melted.
“You stopped one. I didn’t think that you had it in you.” The tall man looked genuinely impressed, if no less inclined to murder him. “But I’m just getting warmed up. The next touch won’t be on minimum output. You’ll make a lovely statue, before my friend here starts venting his frustration.”
The jailbird raised his elemental blade in a two-handed grip, ready to bring it down on Edge and consummate the kill. The chill in the air intensified as the iceblade began shining with a wintery wrath, wrapped in a coruscating sheet of arctic energy.
The big man crossed the room with a protest on his lips, ready to argue for his right to beat Edge to death instead.
In the end, neither of those things happened.
As the tall man’s sword came down, something too fast for Edge to track lashed out, gone again before the blade had descended halfway to his head. He had no idea what was going on, but the results were obvious to everyone.
Two bloody lines appeared across the jailbird’s forearms… half a heartbeat before they detached from his body, severed as cleanly as by a surgeon’s scalpel.
Thus, instead of being frozen to the bone, a spray of hot blood engulfed Edge from head to toe.
The stricken convict let loose an agonized scream, jamming his spurting stumps into the cavern’s wall to try to slow the bleeding.
The big man looked like he couldn’t decide if he should help the tall man or finish him off, but was leaning toward the latter.
Edge was judging the distance to the reliquary and the door, trying to decide if he had any chance of reaching either.
Before anyone made their move, a piercing cry rang out. A warbling trill that could never have come from a human throat. Everyone stopped what they were doing and turned as one, looking at entrance to the room as the stench of rancid meat broke over them.
As bad as the situation already was, what Edge saw made him feel even worse. Monster.
Boiling dread rose hot in his throat. A suffocating foreboding beyond that evoked by the men who were trying to kill him.
A sweltering horror that reached a crescendo three seconds later, when the monster walked into the room.
