3-29 Skinwalker

3-29 Skinwalker

Erin resolved her gaze and directed it towards the boy in front of her. The boy possessed a naive demeanour but something did not feel right to Erin. She drew her sword, pivoting her sabre in a show, and pointed the tip at the boy. She wanted to say something but refrained at the last second. Her gaze stayed at the boy but her other means of cognition were split to the werewolf and the invisible viper at her sides.

She had appraised all three individuals. The boy was only level twenty with a set of abilities that wasn’t much to note about save for his Assimilation and Morph skill. The werewolf and the viper were slightly below the boy’s level but the two felt stronger than the bandits she had previously faced. The two weren’t the boy’s familiars like Erin had presumed but the boy’s companions as the two both had names, levels, ages, and set of abilities in their stats’ display. She still couldn’t figure how they eluded her senses but she decided to find out after she was out of danger. Erin also held on to her doubt that there were just the three of them lying in wait considering how the viper and the werewolf escaped her perception.

The werewolf lunged first and the viper sprang at her just a second after. Without giving either a glance, she flourished her sabre in a quick motion. The werewolf and the viper withdrew in recoil as a shallow cut appeared on them.

“W-what…?” the boy muttered in a stutter. “W-what just happened?”

The werewolf and the viper stared in caution instead of lunging at Erin again. The viper was invisible but it knew Erin could perceive its presence without using the visual medium. Had they been mindless monsters, they would have attacked again but their instinct as a human restrained their recklessness.

“You are not aware of your opponent’s strength and yet you issued a challenge in spite of it. Are you truly a fool?”

“D-don’t belittle me!” the boy yelled and coiled his palm into a fist.

Erin immediately understood the gesture as a secret communication sign. At that moment, a threatening presence appeared from behind. She flipped into the air as an ape-like creature lunged at her. The ape creature crashed into the ground as a result of Erin’s quick reaction. At the end of patience, she thrust her sabre out to the ground as she landed, impaling her blade into the ground through the ape creature’s head.

[Experience gained +20% - Level Progression: 105%]

[Erynthea: Level 33 increased to Level 34]

[Skill Points +2 | 8]

[Ability Points +2 | 6]

[Level Progression: 5%]

The boy gasped aloud at the death of one of his companions. The werewolf and the viper expressed a similar gesture of shock and sorrow. The corpse of the ape creature shuddered for a while before stopping and its form reverted to its human figure. Contrary to Erin’s expectation, the ape was a man.

“M-Mance...” the boy muttered, presumably the deceased man’s name.

“You were warned,” Erin reminded him with a sullen tone.

The werewolf and the viper regained their senses and attacked Erin with renewed determination. Erin executed a wide slash but the two dodged her obvious attack and circled to her opposite flanks. She cast Lightning Bolt at the viper and blocked the werewolf’s jaws with her sword. The lightning spell missed the slippery viper and struck the log behind it. The viper lunged again but Erin’s tails swiped at it. The viper did not know what Erin’s tails were capable of but it backed away from the tails on the cry of its instincts.

The three were, without doubt, apostles of a Divine. However, they were inexperienced. They only had their Divine Gift as their advantage. Their fighting experience was so poor that Erin doubted that they had actually fought any opponents that were more than half their levels.

Without the viper interfering, Erin grabbed the werewolf by its throat. The werewolf released Erin’s blade from its jaws in order to gasp for breath. Erin only tightened her grip. The werewolf began struggling to get itself off from Erin’s firm grasp. It lashed its claws on Erin but her maximum level Arcane Armor nulled every ounce of lethality the werewolf’s claws possessed. She slammed the werewolf into the ground by its neck, caving the soil beneath them.

The viper tried to intervene but a sharp glare from Erin stunned in its place. She placed her sword by the werewolf and pressed the blade onto its neck. She glanced at the boy.

“Stop! Please!” a plea was shouted but not from the boy.

Erin turned her gaze to her left and found a girl with black hair that was only slightly older than the boy. The girl could be none other than the invisible viper.

“Please, let him go...” the girl continued to beg.

“And why should I?” Erin asked.

“W-we were wrong!” the boy said. “W-we… we were just...”

Erin narrowed her gaze at the sudden change in their demeanour. Before she knew it, the werewolf she had in her grip had reverted to a boy. The boy in her grasp was shedding tears and quivering.

After some contemplating, she released the boy from her grip and stood up. “You are all so naive.”

“We were wrong, milady!” The girl fell to her knees and planted her on the ground. “Please forgive us.”

“We didn’t know,” the boy in front of her said. “They said you were evil and had to be purged.”

“By “they”, are you referring to the ones who called themselves Guardians?”

The girl and the two boys nodded.

“I see...” she muttered. She glanced towards the man she had just killed. And then she looked at the three. Doubts brewed in her mind.

“Please… spare us...” the girl pleaded continuously.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Erin sighed. Her thoughts arrived at a conclusion. “You truly are naive,” she said and plunged her sabre into the boy at her feet. The other two gasped in surprise at her action. “Do you believe that I’m a fool?” she asked and twisted the blade while still lodged in the boy’s chest.

The boy’s body convulsed as his appearance slowly changed into that of a middle-aged man’s.

[Experience gained +20% - Level Progression: 25%]

“...Fuck!” the other boy cursed in a way unlike a child would. The boy looked at his deceased companion before looking at Erin. His frown loosened and disappeared. He sighed and a grin replaced his meek expression from before. “Well played… Fae...” the boy said, clapping his hands slowly.

The girl also sighed and grinned. “Well… at least we tried,” she said and dispelled her appearance as a girl, revealing her real self to be an aged woman. Due to the lack of care for her body, Erin couldn’t tell her age by appearance alone. Relying on Appraisal, she found out the woman’s age was forty-two and the “boy” in front of her was fifty-one.

“What gave it away?” the boy asked.

“Your ability is shapeshifting yet you two possessed such righteous and forthright attitude. It’s such a mismatch. Your Divine Guardian won’t choose the two of you for such a dishonest ability if you possessed such an attitude.”

The boy laughed. “So perceptive and smart… What shall we do now, I wonder?”

Erin frowned in response to the boy’s tone. They didn’t sound like someone who was cornered. If anything, they sounded assured.

“Not perceptive enough to have ditched her two lovely women behind,” the girl said with a nonchalant attitude.

Erin’s eyes widened. She wanted to finish off the two right here and now but Siv and Lyra’s lives took precedence. She turned and sped off to the way she came from. There was a slight chance the two were lying but as she drew near, she sensed other presences in addition to Lyra and Siv’s. She quickened her pace and imbued her sabre with Arcane Edge, ready to swing at a moment’s notice.

Dread filled her soul as one of the presences disappeared. Sound and smell faded from her recognition in response to her unfounded despair. Fearing for the worst, she poured all her Mana into Fleet Foot and flew through the forest. Her feet began to hurt as a result of overexerting her body but that little pain was not enough of a reason to slow down. She carved through the trees in her way instead of making the slightest turn around it.

Eventually, she arrived back at where Siv and Lyra waited. Wrath was trailing her shadow and her blade was filled with murderous intent. However, the sight that greeted her dispelled her dread and her despair drooped.

“Oh, you’re back,” Lyra greeted with a smile. In front of her lay a corpse.

“What’s wrong?” Siv asked. She was trapping a man on the ground with her knees. Her double-bladed sword pressed against the squirming man’s neck.

“You’re fine…?” Erin muttered.

“Of course we are,” Lyra answered. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

Erin laughed but not of glee. It was an expression of relief and it sounded like a laugh devoid of sanity.

Hearing her laugh, Lyra frowned. “Is everything alright?” she asked.

“Yes, everything’s alright It’s just… I underestimated you two,” Erin admitted, wiping a tear off the corner of her eye. Her gaze turned cold as she turned her attention to the struggling man under Siv’s knees. She motioned for Siv to release the man.

As soon as Siv did so, the man transformed into a leopard and tried to flee— but he was a mere level fifteen. Erin’s level and speed far exceeded his and she easily stopped the man’s efforts by stomping his head to the ground. The brutality shocked even Siv and Lyra.

“Please… have mercy…” the man pleaded.

Erin applied more weight to her foot as she glared at the man with nothing but wrath and murderous intent. She couldn’t forgive the man. It was the angriest that she had been. She didn’t just want to kill the man. She wanted him to suffer. As the man moaned in agony, a strange pleasure arose within her. It felt good. It felt simply ecstatic to see the man suffer. As she put more strength into her feet, a hand grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the man. Erin immediately turned around to see who dared to interrupt her duly punishment but she froze upon seeing Siv and Lyra’s frightened gazes.

“I… I...” Erin tried to explain but she couldn’t find the right words. She was horrified at what she had just done and tried to do.

The man got up in a rush and ran off with wobbly steps, or at least he tried to. Lyra took notice and immediate action by firing an arrow into his heart from his back, instantly killing the man.

“I-I’m sorry… I lost control...” Erin said as she slumped to her knees.

“It’s alright,” Siv said. “That’s why you have us. We won’t let you fall.” She crouched down to Erin’s eye level and held her hands. “You’re not alone anymore.”

“Alright alright.” Lyra barged in between them. She threw arms around Erin and pulled her into a hug. “You’re getting ahead of yourself now, Siv.”

“Right back at you, Lyra,” Siv retorted.

Erin tittered at such a warm sight. “Thank you, you two. I’m so glad I have you two.”

“And I’m thankful that I met you, Erin,” Lyra said, planting a kiss on Erin’s cheek.

“We’re out in the open, Lyra.”

“It’s alright. You can do it too,” Erin welcomed Siv with her other open arm.

Siv groaned in indignance and gave in to her desire. She too then planted a kiss on Erin’s cheek. “This is so inappropriate,” she mulled.

“Which is why it feels so good,” Lyra said.

“So… what happened to our stalker?” Siv asked. “The new one, I mean.”

Erin shrugged. “Probably escaped. I rushed here when I realized you two were attacked.”

“Well then, for their sake, they better run far away and never return,” Lyra said.

Erin nodded with a wry smile. “They better...” she mused in her heart.

****

The boy ran without stopping or even sparing a glance to his back. He just ran. Halfway through his retreat, his spell had lost its effect and his appearance reverted to its original form, an appearance of a man in his sixties but he was only in fact in his fifties. His haggard appearance was due to his life’s circumstances. He led a very dull life and was a nobody. No one would raise any fuss should his demise ever come but that changed when he was approached by a Divine and was chosen as the Divine’s apostle. He was then introduced to his fellow apostles. Under his Divine’s commands, he had committed various kinds of acts regardless of where the needle pointed in a compass of morality.

Some time passed after his turn of fate. An ancient ethereal creature, a Guardian, approached him and his compatriots with a proposal of purging an evil from the world in return for granting whatever his desire. His Divine granted him permission to carry out the quest from the Guardian. The years of being an Apostle had gotten to his head and he couldn’t care less about right or wrong. He just wanted to further elevate his status in this world.

However, his fortune came to an end as his target, a Fox-kin, turned out to be extremely formidable. He didn’t care about the rewards anymore. He even exposed his own companions to the Fox-kin just so he could distract her and run away.

“Bale, are we just going to leave the others behind?” a question came.

Without stopping, the man turned his head when he heard his name called. “Agatha, you’re here?” he blurted out in the blank of the moment. He had run without ascertaining the fate of his fellow apostles, even Agatha’s, the woman who was the viper.

“What do you mean by that?!” Agatha shot back with a grimace. “Are you saying you intend to ditch me along with the others?”

“No, that’s not what I meant all,” Bale quickly excused himself. “I was just—” His attempts at concocting an excuse were cut short as he could no longer feel half of everything below his neck. His world spun at that moment and he seemed to be tumbling across the ground. The moment his eyes laid on his own headless body was also the moment his life came to an end.

“Bale!” the woman named Agatha shouted. She tried to shift into her viper form but a hand was quick to grab her by the throat. A strange sensation seeped into her body as the hand wrapped around her neck. Her body instantly lost all strength to even flail about.

The man who had killed Bale lifted Agatha off the ground. The man bore features that made one doubt his authenticity as a human. A quarter of his face seemed to have melted off, giving him an appearance of a burnt victim but Agatha had seen burnt wounds before this was no burn wound. In addition, her assailant’s eyes were deep crimson red and his pupils dyed black.

“W-what are you!?” Agatha managed to ask.

“Shush,” the man responded. He sniffed the woman. “I smell faint traces of Spirits off of you. Been close to a Fae, haven’t you?”

“I-I can explain! J-just let me go first… I won’t run. I swear.”

The man pressed his finger on his lips. “Shh… I don’t need your explanation,” he said and brought the woman’s head to his mouth. And he took a huge chunk of her head. The woman died without knowing why or how and with her eyes wide open.

The man chewed the woman’s brain, flesh, matter, and bones altogether. He was savouring the taste with his eyes closed. “Hmm… she met a peculiar group of adventurers it seems… A Beast-kin, a Fae, and a human… But no Aera…” After finishing tasting the woman's brain, he spat back out everything he put in his mouth. “Disgusting,” he muttered, wiping his mouth of the blood and brain matter. It was clear he did not enjoy what he did but time was against him and he knew the consequences of failure would be too terrible for even someone like him to imagine. He then looked at the man he decapitated. He picked up the head he lopped off of the man.

“Well, let’s hope you’ll have something more significant in this disgusting brain of yours,” the man with the deformed face, Rayor, mused to himself.