Senna floated down into the depths of the water, the acid clinging onto her face and hair like a leech. Thanks to the strength of her body however, especially with mana further reinforcing it, it couldn’t break her skin. It did cause some light rashes due to her mana being muddled, but it couldn’t harm her skin beyond that.
It was not to be underestimated however, the strength behind this acid was enough to eat away and damage the arachne thread clothing she wore, eating away at the collar area which also receive some of the acid spray. That this clothing was extremely difficult to break or destroy went to show how truly terrifying the acid actually was.
As her senses came back to her, she uprighted herself in the water and found her footing at the base of the small lake.
Stopping to think for a moment, she wiped the remaining acid off her face and shook it free into the water. She then carved off a slice of a stone on the lake bed with her nails before fashioning it into three long chopstick-like needles before walking back to the edge of the lake.
‘So that’s what I sensed… To think I would let myself get hit by such a thing, I’ve truly gotten too relaxed lately.’ Anthony Reeves thought to himself as him mind was becoming foggy from the succubus neurotoxin.
The succubus tail that pierced into the side of his waist retracted as soon as it had delivered its payload.
A succubus neurotoxin was a special type of poison. It not only made someone completely loyal to the succubus, but also made them extremely aroused.
Captain Reeves begun panting as his face became flushed. He also no longer attacked Laurie, his flying swords now drifting around him harmlessly.
Just at this moment, Senna walked out of the lake with her gaze fixated on the succubus. She also saw Anthony Reeves’ situation, but couldn’t care about whether he was alive or dead.
She grabbed her dripping wet hair and quickly tied it up behind her head, using the three makeshift stone hairpins she fashioned.
Her long and pointed ears, still twitching in pain, were fully revealed by this as well as her slender and pale neck.
As if sensing danger towards the succubus, Anthony Reeves begun attacking Senna with everything he had. Laurie wasn’t about to let this chance go by either, launching a full assault of shadow thorns and even shadow beasts to attack.
Senna, true to Thomas’ mockery of being a fae only capable of body strengthening magic, shattered the cultivator’s swords and crushed the shadows.
Laurie was full of deceit and still kept playing Senna, trying to wear her down. Captain Reeves was blinded by the neurotoxin and was not as cunning, attack straightforwardly and easily getting crushed beneath her hands.
“Senna,” Thomas called out in a stale voice, not caring for whether his voice gave away his previously overlooked presence by the succubus, “you are disappointing me. Where has all your training gone?”
His eyes no longer had their lighthearted and jovial glint, instead glaring directly at the fae-girl with a sharp glint in them.
For the first time, Senna halted, even flinching at Thomas’ voice.
All it took was a few choice words from Thomas to shake her emotions and cause her to stop. Within her mind scape, all her years spent beside Thomas flashed through her mind.
From the moment he pulled her out of that cage and she clung onto him in desperation of living, to their journey in which he crusaded against the church to seek out answers from God, eventually returning to America and settling down.
Throughout it all, he not only fed her, he protected her and taught her all that she knows.
As a creature rejected by nature and filled with wrath, it was her fate to be hunted and turn into a monster, either being killed or self-destructing when her body could no longer contain her ever growing power from consumption of blood and bone.
He is lazy.
He lies.
He wastes money.
He smokes.
He is an idiot.
She is filled with wrath and hates everyone and everything in this world…
Except him.
[ 11/10 ]
Thomas updated his small scoreboard and had a smile on his face as he watched the changes in Senna’s attitude an movement.
She closed her eyes and cleared her mind, bringing stillness to her raging emotions.
A deathly stillness came over the cavern, even the water dripping from the stalagmites into the lake doing so without the slightest ‘plop’. The arcing mana in the air stopped appearing, but everyone felt a tingling sensation on their skin that gave them goosebumps.
The luminescent motes of dust in the air also stopped falling, instead freezing in the air before starting to rise back up.
Captain Reeves and the succubus attacked at once, but even with her eyes closed, Senna had a full awareness of her surroundings. She deflected swords and destroyed shadows with simple movements that fluidly tied in with one another, almost as if she was dancing.
The demi-fallen fae opened her eyes once again, revealing a pair of glowing crimson pupils that now had a limpid stillness within them.
She didn’t move faster than before, but her steps caused no damage, and were almost entirely soundless.
Laurie sensed danger and tried to screech again, but Senna hit her jaw closed before she could muster the sonic attack. Anthony Reeves also attempted to take her down, but Senna was an unstoppable force that shattered his main sword before breaking several ribs, his jaw, and knocking him unconscious in a single linked palm strike combo.
The succubus quickly changed strategy and attacked Thomas, intending on taking him as a hostage. This shook Senna’s mind from her stillness, resulting in her mana rampaging once again, but it turned out to be pointless.
Laurie extracted her scaly tail once again and stabbed it into Thomas’ shoulder before injecting her neurotoxin, but the latter just smiled wryly at her.
“Little succubus, this won’t work on me.”
Laurie couldn’t understand and tried injecting more of the succubus neurotoxin, but it was still ineffective.
“You were doing so well, but just this is enough to break the stillness of your mind. I will have to lower your score.”
Whilst criticizing Senna, a black light suddenly shone and the succubus lost all sensation in her tail.
In Thomas’ spare hand was his Seraph Obsidian Winged Spear, his soul weapon with long, curved blades forming the tip. He had swung it and severed the girl’s tail before she could react, leaving her dumbfounded and not knowing what to do.
“Grading time is over. It’s time to end this party.”
The scorecard in his other hand slowly turned illusory and began crumbling, exposing its identity as a soul construct.
Laurie tried to release her screech again, but Thomas’ spear swung around and the butt of the weapon hit her jaw and redirected her attack to an empty wall.
She attacked Thomas with her hands and deadly nails, hoping to take care of him before Senna joined, not knowing how long she was going to remain at a distance brooding, but Thomas was unlike any enemy she had faced before.
He allowed her to hit him with an unfaltering smile on his face. She tore apart his skin, crushed bones, even melted him with her acid, but within the blink of an eye, that damage would be undone as if it never happened.
She felt she was up against an enemy that was beyond her capacity to deal with and opted for her final strategy –– fleeing.
“Even though you are the target of this mission, I really didn’t want to kill you considering your tragedy…” Thomas spoke with sorrow, slowly swinging his soul spear across and causing hundreds of similar spears to appear and float in the air menacingly.
“…but you have turned into nothing more than a mindless monster. A soul weapon is not such a simple weapon, Laurie. I will scatter your essence so you can enter the cycle of reincarnation. Hopefully this time, you will have a better life.”
Laurie felt an impeding sense of danger greater than any she had ever felt before and desperately tried to flee. Those hundred spears however, were faster than the succubus could ever hope to be, impaling her with little difficulty. The first was excruciatingly painful, but by the tenth, she didn’t feel them anymore.
Thomas strolled and stood in front of the collapsed succubus, who looked up at him desperate to live.
With a wave of his hands, the spears vanished, but the succubus had already begun turning to ash and scattering in an astral wind.
He looked down at the disintegrating succubus on the ground, his gaze warm.
“There is no need to be afraid. Life is a cycle. Death is but the beginning of a new cycle for you.”
Whether his words held any consolation to the succubus, or if she could even understand them, was unknown. Perhaps she understood his intent, but she was too weak to show it.
Soon enough, there was nothing left of Laurie Hudson as her soul dissipated and returned to wherever they go before being reborn as new life.
“I thought you couldn’t use your power?” Senna stood beside Thomas and asked in accusation.
Thomas shrugged his shoulders and showed his trademark harmless smile.
“This realm is separated from ours and where the demon on the other end of the contract is. It cannot form that connection so is essentially not working. You could say I am ‘out of service range’.”
“Did you need to hide that?”
“If my good friend here, the sleeping drug addict knew, he would have a bunch more work for me to do~”
Senna rolled her eyes before turning around and hugging him.
“What, were you worried about me?”
Just as Thomas asked that, he felt the beautiful demi-fallen fae’s teeth sink into the side of his neck and start vigorously drinking his blood.
“Ah, of course, you were just hungry~”
Thomas and Senna were heading back towards the rift between Earth and Purgatory side by side, the unconscious Adrian Nikolic being carried over Thomas’ shoulder.
While walking, Senna would periodically send a subtle glance towards Thomas out of the corner of her eye, as if something was eating away at her.
“Are you curious?” Thomas chuckled with a sly grin on his face.
“About what?”
Senna’s response was dismissive, but he knew she was concealing her emotions.
“About why the succubus was tragic.”
“No.”
“Don’t be like that. If you want to know, you can just ask~”
“If you want to talk, then just talk.”
Thomas gave a victorious smirk on his face as he cleared his throat all importantly, adjusting the limp boy over his shoulder to a more comfortable position before pridefully explaining.
“I figured it out some time ago. Her father was an incubus who preyed on her mother, eventually getting her pregnant. Boy it will be an incubus, girl a succubus.”
“Ms. Hudson looked 95 instead of 65 because thirty years of her life essence has been absorbed. Her addiction and desperation towards the incubus is another sign. He must have been hunted though, as they usually teach their children the ways of beguiling humans whilst they suck out the remaining life essence of their prey.”
“And that’s a tragedy?”
“…Laurie Hudson grew up thinking she was a normal human. Attended a human school, made human friends. Eventually though, her succubus nature begun to wake and she never learned to control it nor had anyone to teach her. She ended up unknowingly enticing one of her teachers at the time, unable to control her own powers, resulting in her own terrible fate.”
“That teacher had been infected by the succubus’ charms and could no longer go back. Just like a drug addict, he targeted other children in order to try and get his fix that he previously got from being with a succubus. How is all of this anything but a tragedy?”
“So how is it? Are you ready to praise my detective skills?”
Senna gave him a dead blank stare before answering without a shred of hesitation, “I couldn’t care less about the back story of that succubus. Like I said, your detective skills are defective.”
“Huh? Then what is it on your mind?”
The beautiful fae turned her head to face away from Thomas and her voice became much quieter.
“…When I fall and turn into nothing but a mindless monster, you will kill me too in the same way. If it’s you doing it though, I won’t resist…”
“Hey, what are you saying!? There’s no way you will fall!”
“Can you just promise me one thing.”
“…What?”
“That you will take better care of yourself when I’m gone. You’re an idiot though, so I don’t expect too much.”
“…”
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