“Poor soul?!” He started laughing maniacally. “I’ll show you fucking poor!”
“Ha— Ugh!” His hand was already tightly holding her neck, veins bulging on it. He raised his hand holding her with inhuman strength and began walking away. I gulped seeing what would happen next, I already knew.
“Wai—
“You wait a second, guards take care of her!” He rapidly commanded before I could do anything. It all happened so fast.
The door closed and the guards stood before the door. I was frozen. I was powerless. I was… useless.. I allowed it to happen.
“What’s going to happen to her?” I already knew. Neither of them reacted.
“She is getting disciplined.” Of course.
Shatter
Scream…
“I’LL FUCKING SHOW YOU— Even though his voice was muffled I could perfectly understand.
Creak
Scream…
“IMAGINE DANGLING ON THE EDGE OF LIFE OR DEATH—
Crash
Scream…
“JUST TO HAVE EVERYTHING PLOW DOWN IN A DAY—
The screams — the monologues — the noise continued…
For how long would it last? I wish I knew.
Why did things have to be so unfair? Because that was life...
“HELP M— Her plea of help was interrupted by yet another shattering sound.
I bit my lip. Life was unfair…
Why was it unfair?
I didn’t know.
Why couldn’t I do anything about it?
Because I was weak
Could I really do anything about it?
I didn’t know either...
I… was wea—
“HE— I heard a loud creak, only silence was left after.
I could’ve done something about it.
I didn’t even try to do something..
It was to be expected… There is nothing I could’ve done. I could have tried to save her. In the end, life is simply unfair. And yet I could’ve tried to make it fair. Sometimes it was better to let go, and forget. Become inhumane. Everyone is just as rotten… Everyone was rotten… Everyone was…
I was rotten…
I was fucking rotten…
I was fucking rotten, just like them...
I WAS JUST LIKE THEM! I am sorry… Spending so much time; thinking like an idiot. Only for there to be silence. All it took was to fucking move, and yet I couldn’t. I WAS ROTTEN. I am sorry… if only I could’ve just stopped thinking and acted instead… I hesitated.
It was too late already. I had nothing to do here anymore. It was better to simply tell him — tell him that I couldn’t do it — and be done with it. Sorry, Ri—
“Ughh…” My heart stopped. There was… groaning. Outside the door… She was… Alive.
“STRUGGLE SOME MORE FOR ME, BITCH!” His roar reverberated inside the room, but still. She was alive.
I clenched my fist and drew it closer to my hip. Nothing mattered anymore, being right or wrong, wondering if it’s going to backfire or not, wondering about shit… If nothing ever gets done, then might as well die. I had to act, no matter what.
My hand reached the cold handle of my dagger — it was dry and cold. There was only silence inside the room in spite of the constant sounds coming from the other side. I was going to act — I was going to be smart about it. And for that… I needed to kill both of the guards. I wasn’t strong, and because of that. I had to cater to my strengths.
Ultimate grim reaper… Fatal Penetration… Stiletto Pin Dagger… Feral Instinct… Even though I refused to acknowledge how I remembered every single name — it all came to me. I was strong enough to do something now.
“Where do you think you are going?” One of the guards asked.
“I am done here.” I had my hand near my waist, waiting for the perfect opportunity.
“Nope, you cannot leave.” The other one added.
One held a spear and one held a mace — I took a step forward as my hand stayed hidden inside my cloak. It was now or never. A spear blocked my way.
“You can’t.” He coldly said.
“Fine then…” I took a step towards him instead, he flinched.
NOW— In a split second, I had drawn my dagger. If my hypothesis was correct… I aimed him at his ribcage. There was no time to react.
CRACK.
A horrible breaking sound resounded inside the room. The man did not scream. I had broken his ribcage. The simple action of stabbing his bones in the right place broke it. I backed off from both of them during the confusion — it all happened before they could react.
Spear user incapacitated. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the strength to actually kill him, but I was strong at least in another sense. The mace user blinked for a second and tightened his grip on it. It was battle time.
“You bitch!”
He charged at me, going for a low swing. I could see it. His entire arm bulged with veins, I could tell. It wasn’t something I could stop. He gave his battle cry and swung— barely dodging it by a hair's breadth. I felt a cold sweat. One hit and I was dead.
“Fuck. You are supposed to be poisoned!” He protested. “Just fucking die already!”
I bit my lip — things were always complicated. But I could do it. I had the power to do it now.
I placed my hand in my pocket and broke open a vial — drinking its content. I knew..They also provided a small stat boost temporarily. It did not show up in an icon, or anything. But I still knew, somehow.
“As if I’d let you— A mace was swung at me. I rapidly hit back with my dagger by dropping the vial on the ground. The dagger’s tip collided with the hammer.
Clank! It hurt.
My entire hand was burning with pain, it wasn’t broken. The hammer wasn’t broken either, even in spite of having such a high penetration stat it did nothing to the hammer. There wasn’t much I could do aside from backing off — the only solution before I got pinned into a wall.
“So that’s your weakness.” He smiled. “You don’t have any strength whatsoever.” Fuck. All I did was rely on stats and the effects of them as well as a dagger, no actual strength involved, which is why I didn’t break his hammer either. I bit my lip.
“Don’t worry, I will give you a proper funeral!” he joyously exclaimed. All I did was clench my fist.
I had to end it soon. Re-gripping my dagger once again with my throbbing hand I made my decision. I steeled myself and ran towards him.
I swung towards his head—
Clank!
He deflected it with the mace. Something closed-in into my vision. A bone-splitting pain ran through my abdomen — I went flying through the air and crashed against the wall. Everything hurt — my entire body was burning yet it was warm, my heart was beating faster and faster, my mind was drifting and my vision was getting blurry.
Things had gone wrong, and yet he was nowhere to be seen.
Damn nice. Its show time! Show us the fluff- I mean, feral instincts sleeping deep within you!
So it seems she is still alive. At least from what I understand. But man, she did or does die. Then it will be even worse than my initial guess from the last chapter. The MC would've let her die in front of them while pitying themselves.
I don't mind the MC. It makes sense in reality. A lot of people, especially former bed-ridden cripple that had massive self hate issues. They aren't always a gungho type of person. It makes sense that they would hesitate.
It's something I like about this MC in a way and how you handle this trope that is usually done poorly; I do mean poorly; I do mean usually. Most stories are really bad at having the MC be a regular human being thrust into a new world where passiveness is frowned upon. They will usually say stuff along the lines of 'I can't believe how violent this world is! I can't believe they casually killed that person' then they'll have the MC get over this fairly huge hurdle for people's psyche. It will usually only be brought up for the first couple of chapters then after an event happens the MC will kind of just forget about it.
But you manage to make the character's personality fit well and not make the self-hate be too obnoxious. I do find it obnoxious a bit, but that's just me not being a giant fan of characters like that. At least MC's. The story doesn't feel like it gets too preachy with 'violence is bad m'kay' The MC does have a trait I do like though. That's that they don't see themselves as the hero that needs to intervene at every brawl or every beggar being turned away. Their personality is much more grounded in reality than most MC's you will read.
But in this case. It would absolutely be the MC's fault. (S)he should know what their waiting could do. Especially in a situation like this. I'd say that ought to have prepared before going in. But it is one of their first missions. But the MC would've legit have watched a tormented girl be strangled to death right in front of her. Without even trying to intercept the girl. She could've done lots of stuff such as instantly claiming she'd buy the girl. Demand to 'discipline the girl herself' and so on.
I really couldn't say that I feel bad for the MC's guilt. It would be kind of self-earned at that point. Of course, this is only if the girl dies and the MC didn't intervene. I think she did. But then again, I've been up for about 16-hours and my mind is getting a little out there.
Zzz, characters can be as flawed as a person. I think the amount of unusual circumstances caused the hesitation - people don't like change. Leah won't adapt insanely well, considering she is now supposed to do "whatever she wants" under a command when she expected to be instructed. I like Azrie's consistency though!
You have satisfied my lust for light in Leah honestly.
The whole situation made sense a lot, good job.
I mean looking at the whole situation, she is not some sort of iron will hero... just a barely sane core.
So it's natural to hesitate, actually more natural than trying to act right away.
Darkness eh, I don't feel it closely as bad as the first collector thing, probably because Leah isn't real source of it this time...
About generally... I liked it.
Generally call me weird all you want by the way. I know that for years honestly, nothing new.
More like I embraced the weirdness at this point.
Poor lip, getting bitten thrice.
Time to use hidden move!
Thx for the chap.
'Feral Instinct' in the coming here. Wait to see more.
I want see her tear apart their troat and reap their heart
I get what you're going for and I don't disagree with the angle per se, but I think you could condense a lot of this novel down and still get all your points across clearly. We've now passed 300 pages worth of text in this story and the protagonist is still a largely-clueless traumatised child who lacks even the will to truly understand what they are or what they're capable of.
This is compounded by the fact that, as poignant and believable as the scenes from her previous life are, I don't think they serve much purpose in the narrative because they reinforce the status quo we already understood (which, for me, pushed the recent flashback sequence into painful tedium).
I feel this concept has potential and I'm not against stories that explore the darkness of humanity, but when the first "good" thing to happen is the protagonist getting enslaved by a fantasy version of a GeneCo Repo Man with no real improvement in sight, I have to ask myself if this is the story for me. I'll stick around a little longer if only because it's (sadly) refreshing to see a protagonist who properly finds vile the slavery so common to this genre, but I may stop reading soon.
Well my writing style has a very small issue (it's huge actually). I dislike skipping things too much, so often times it ends up with a lot of "padding" and "filler", because that's just how I write.
Also I run into the issue of liking humane characters. Keep in mind that being a human and a character is completely different. Authors write characters — not humans. Which makes me run into the issue of characters being a bit too "human". I am not one to force the hand of fate on things unless it becomes detrimental to the story. Realistically speaking, any human person would be beyond broken at this point in the story, and would've either not done anything or tried to get out of misery as soon as possible.
The only time I will make things "less humane" is for the story to not get stagnated. Since otherwise Leah would be crying in a corner all day long. No one is truly strong enough — at least not unless they have an objective.
Probably the biggest issue with the story is myself. I like doing weird things (such as totally unorthodox writing style). Probably the biggest highlight of this is how the story plays out. There is no big objective that you know is going to happen — everything is shrouded in uncertainty. I personally love this, but a lot of people hate it.
The novel is not meant to be realistic but I like this aspect of realism to it. The uncertainty of not knowing what happens next and thinking things are helpless — that's an aspect that stems from the fact of how I chose to write. Hopefully in 3 chapters or so people will begin to see "the bigger picture".
Thanks for reading.