Effie was being healed by Sara, but she was strangely silent. Effie never stayed quiet this long. Ever.
Finally, her voice cracked.
"You're… not really going to die, are you?"
Sara opened her mouth to answer, but all that came out was a cough and a spray of blood.
"I'm afraid so," she whispered. "I'm too hurt to even move. If I tried to run, I'd just die slower."
Effie shook her head violently.
"You can't be fucking serious. Tell me you're not going to die like this. Tell me you're joking."
Sara tried to chuckle, but the expression on her face made it obvious she regretted it instantly.
"Sorry, Effie."
"Don't say sorry!" Effie snapped. "You've been my everything in this damned hellhole—my friend, my teacher—so why do you have to die now? Why does it have to be like this?"
"I'm not sure," Sara admitted softly.
"Damnit, Sara. There has to be a way. You can't leave me. Please… come on."
Sara lifted a trembling hand.
"I have six broken ribs… and my spine is completely severed. The only reason I'm even alive long enough to speak is because I'm healing myself, but my healing isn't infinite. And even if it was… I'd be paralyzed forever."
"THEN I'LL TAKE CARE OF YOU!" Effie screamed. "JUST SURVIVE!"
Sara reached up, pinched Effie's cheek gently, lovingly.
"It's cute that you think that… but I know better. It's useless to hope. You're healed now, Effie. You should go."
"Sara… please don't leave me. Sara, please…" Effie sobbed.
Sara touched Beast's head and nodded weakly.
"Can you do something for me…? I want to see Alucard's fight."
Effie carefully lifted Sara, but the moment she moved her a horrible snap echoed through the cave. Sara's spine shattered further. Effie froze in horror.
Sara, somehow still conscious, patted Beast.
Her final command:
"Take her to safety. I don't want her to get hurt."
And Beast obeyed.
He grabbed Effie by the waist and dragged her away despite her kicking, fighting, screaming Sara's name until her voice broke.
Before she vanished from sight, Sara mouthed one last message to Effie:
"Survive for me… okay?"
And that was the last time the two ever saw each other.
---
(Hope everyone enjoyed the doomed yuri.
Now… back to our regularly scheduled murder.)
I stood before the nightmare creature—my eyes glowing red in the cave's darkness. Its single green eye stared back, cold and ancient. It towered over me, a moving mountain of bones.
But behind me rose a mountain just as large.
Not bone.
Blood.
A throne for its monarch.
This was a battle between lords:
The Monarch of Blood vs. The Lord of Bones.
I started first.
I raised my hand, and the blood behind me surged upward, forming a massive armory—dozens of swords, spears, javelins—then launched them forward in a crimson storm.
The Lord of Bones responded instantly, pulling up a colossal shield of bones. My weapons hit the wall, and the moment they touched—
—his bones became mine.
They erupted in a violent storm of blood and shards, blasting pieces off the creature's body.
Skeletons swarmed me from behind, but I felt the marrow inside them.
A wall of blood rose and crashed through them like a tidal wave.
"Sorry, parasite," I said coldly. "No backup. It's just you and me."
I spoke to it like it was beneath me.
Because it was.
My blood spread like a plague, infecting every bone it touched, crushing and detonating them as I advanced. But then the monster screeched—its bones glowing an unnatural green.
My control weakened instantly.
It was using its full power now.
A temporary power-up. I could feel the cost it was paying for it—draining itself.
Good. I just had to outlast it.
A massive wave of bones crashed toward me from the front, and more skeletons surged from behind. I slammed blood beneath my feet, launching myself upward like a cannon. In midair, I shaped a wide sheet of blood—a parachute.
Wings would've been cooler.
Shame I had no idea how to make them.
I formed a barrier of condensed blood to shield me from the barrage below while hurling weapons downward. They shattered bones with direct hits, but it wasn't enough. My fail-safe timer wasn't going to let me drag this out forever.
I needed a decisive attack.
A finisher.
Beast's blood beam.
The one I barely knew how to use.
Didn't matter. It was my last chance.
I condensed every drop of infected blood.
Tighter.
Tighter.
Tighter.
My arm felt like it would explode, but I kept forcing more power into it.
I fell from the air and hit the ground running straight toward the monster, ignoring pain, ignoring wounds, ignoring everything except the glowing eye in front of me.
Face to face with the monster—
—I fired the beam point blank.
The recoil hurled me into a wall. Bones cracked. My vision blurred.
But I didn't care.
Because through the fading red haze, I saw the runes.
[You have slain a Fallen Tyrant: Lord of the Dead]
[You have received a memory]
All the skeletons collapsed at once.
Their power gone.
Their suffering finally ended.
I hoped they all reincarnated into something better.
Except the Lord of the Dead.
I'd make sure his afterlife was pain.
Then I heard a weak voice.
Sara.
"Did… we win, David?"
Her eyes were empty. Lifeless. She had gone blind long ago.
I knelt and hugged her tightly.
"Yes… we won."
"Can you… hug me tighter?" she whispered. "I'm scared."
I felt something inside me tear.
Not metaphorically.
My heart literally ripped as a sword was jammed inside it.
Then I heard the worst sound imaginable:
Anderson's voice.
Laughing.
"Hahaha! I hoped you'd die to that undead bastard, but this is better. I killed you myself—
and I finished that little whore of yours too."