The silence after the City Guard finally left, taking the bodies and their grim efficiency with them, was heavy and unnatural. The inn's common room, hastily cleaned by Rem and Ram with near-supernatural speed (though bloodstains lingered stubbornly on some floorboards), felt cavernous and echoey. The few remaining patrons had long since fled. The innkeeper hovered nervously in the background, occasionally wiping down the bar with a trembling hand.
We ended up commandeering a large table in a corner, furthest from the worst of the damage. Calling it 'dinner' felt like a stretch. It was more like… sustenance acquired under duress. Rem and Ram brought out plates of simple fare from the inn's kitchen – bread, cheese, some kind of stew – serving with their usual quiet precision, though their postures remained subtly alert, scanning the room constantly. They hadn't swapped uniforms; faint smudges, possibly blood, were still visible if you looked closely.
Sitting there, trying to eat chewy bread while the metallic tang of blood still seemed to hang faintly in the air, was profoundly unsettling. Emilia picked at her stew, clearly disturbed by the afternoon's events. Puck floated near her shoulder, occasionally nibbling on a piece of cheese Rem offered him, but his eyes kept darting towards the windows. Rem and Ram stood sentinel nearby after serving, silent statues of deadly domesticity.
And me? I was trying to process the sheer whiplash. Hours ago, I was choking on sushi. Then I died twice, nearly died a third time, acquired combat skills via supernatural means by killing about twenty people, and now I was… having a quiet, deeply awkward meal with a half-elf candidate for queen, a sarcastic spirit cat, and two murder maids.
If this were a book, I thought, gnawing on a piece of hard cheese that tasted like sawdust, this would be the weird, jarring scene after the big action sequence where everyone tries to pretend things are normal but fails miserably. It wasn't chapter seven. It was chapter one, page fifty, and the plot had already gone completely off the rails into WTF territory.
The absurdity of it – the casual violence followed by this forced attempt at normalcy, sitting in a room where bodies lay less than an hour ago – was thick enough to cut with one of my borrowed knives. It wasn't fancy. It wasn't comfortable. It was just… ridiculous. And deeply unnerving. I took another bite of bread, wondering if my 'trial period' included hazard pay, or at least a stiff drink.
The stale bread felt like gravel in my mouth. The silence at the table wasn't companionable; it was stretched thin, vibrating with unspoken tension and the ghosts of the afternoon's violence. Emilia kept casting worried glances towards the boarded-up window, Puck was unusually still, and Rem and Ram stood like coiled springs disguised as maids. My own nerves were frayed, the adrenaline replaced by a low-level hum of anxiety and the persistent, unsettling lack of guilt over the killings. The 'stiff drink' I'd half-joked about felt less like a wish and more like a necessity.
Maybe the universe agreed. Because the 'drink' that arrived wasn't poured, it waltzed in.
It started subtly. A faint click-clack of heels on the floorboards near the inn's main entrance, too light, too precise for the clumsy guards or the shuffling innkeeper. A sudden drop in the already low ambient noise, as if the air itself was holding its breath. My Sixth Sense didn't just flare; it screamed bloody murder, a piercing klaxon of imminent, lethal danger far exceeding anything I'd felt from the thugs.
Every head at our table snapped towards the entrance. Rem and Ram were instantly positioned protectively in front of Emilia, Ram's wind magic crackling faintly around her hands, Rem gripping… was that a serving tray? Gripping it like a weapon. Puck zipped into the air, fur bristling, eyes narrowed into slits. My own hand instinctively tightened around the hilt of one of the butcher knives resting under the table, the other hovering near the Estus Flask. The Idle Trainer partitions kicked into overdrive, simulations running, threat assessment protocols flashing red.
And then she stepped into the dim light filtering through the doorway.
Tall, unnervingly graceful, wrapped in a form-fitting black outfit that seemed to drink the shadows. Long, dark hair cascaded around a face of chilling beauty. Her smile was slow, deliberate, predatory, revealing just a hint of sharp teeth. But it was the sound she made as her violet eyes swept over the room, lingering for a fraction of a second on the lingering bloodstains, then settling on Emilia with unnerving focus, that froze the blood in my veins.
"Ara, ara…"
The voice was silken, melodic, laced with playful amusement that held no warmth, only the promise of exquisite cruelty. It was the sound death might make if it learned to flirt.
Elsa Granhiert. The Bowel Hunter. Here. Now.
The awkward dinner was officially over. The real main course of danger had just arrived.
Elsa's predatory gaze lingered on Emilia for a moment longer, then slid sideways, sweeping over Rem and Ram, Puck hovering defensively, and finally settling on me, standing there gripping my ridiculous butcher knives. Her smile widened, sharp and genuinely unsettling.
"Ara, ara," she purred again, her voice dripping with mock disappointment that quickly morphed into delighted anticipation. "Such fierce protectors." Her eyes gleamed as she cataloged her potential victims. "I was hoping for an easier time, but this… this is much more interesting." Her gaze locked onto me, specifically onto the knives I held. "I'd love to see the guts of someone skilled enough to handle those thugs, especially using such… crude instruments." Her attention flickered to Puck. "A spirit's insides… how wonderfully ethereal they must be!" Then to Rem and Ram, her smile becoming positively rapturous. "And Oni guts! Oh, a rare and truly wonderful sight indeed! The colors must be divine!"
Her words weren't just threats; they were promises, delivered with the relish of a connoisseur discussing fine art. The sheer, casual monstrosity of it sent a fresh wave of ice through my veins. Strike the earlier thought – she didn't just want Emilia dead, she wanted to collect us.
But her monologue, her savoring of the moment, gave me the fraction of a second I desperately needed. Forget finesse, forget strategy beyond 'survive'. I needed power, speed, resilience, now.
Mental Command: Activate 'Step in the Ring'. Target Echo: Wolgram Swarm x??? (Estimate minimum 10). Difficulty Assessment: Moderate (Individually weak, dangerous curses, pack tactics). Objective: Rapid assimilation of speed, durability, curse resistance, and pack-fighting instincts via overwhelming concurrent challenges. Initiate IMMEDIATELY!
Simultaneously: Idle Trainer Partition Four: Activate. Task: Wolgram Combat Analysis & Counter-strategy Development. Input Data: Live sensory feed, ongoing 'Step in the Ring' echo data. Goal: Identify weaknesses, predict attack patterns, develop optimal engagement tactics against cursed beasts.
Priority: CRITICAL.
The moment Elsa finished speaking, the room didn't just erupt into chaos – it exploded.
"GROWWWLLL!"
The Wolgrams surged forward, a wave of black fur, glowing green eyes, and snapping jaws, moving with unnatural speed and coordination. Their growls resonated with a low-frequency thrum that vibrated in my bones, carrying the weight of their curses.
Rem and Ram met the charge head-on. Ram unleashed blasts of wind, trying to scatter the pack, while Rem moved with blinding speed, her fists and feet striking with bone-jarring force, household implements forgotten in the face of demonic beasts. Puck zipped through the air, firing shards of ice, trying to pick off targets. Emilia, shielded behind them, began chanting, gathering mana for a larger spell.
But the Wolgrams were relentless, ignoring wounds that would cripple normal animals, their curse-laden bites aimed at finding any opening.
And me? My mind fractured. One part stayed in the chaotic inn, dodging snapping jaws, the borrowed reflexes and speed boosts barely keeping me ahead. Another part plunged into the Phantasmal Arena, facing an endless, churning tide of virtual Wolgrams. Slash, dodge, bite, curse – the sensory input was overwhelming. But with every spectral Wolgram defeated in the Arena, Right of Conquest poured another jolt of raw, bestial power into me.
Wolgram Echo Defeated. Data Acquired: Enhanced Speed, Agility (Canine), Minor Curse Resistance.
Wolgram Echo Defeated. Data Acquired: Jaw Strength (Anomalous), Durability (Minor), Pack Tactics Acumen.
Wolgram Echo Defeated. Data Acquired: Night Vision (Partial), Scent Tracking (Rudimentary), Fear Induction Resistance.
Kill. Assimilate. Adapt. Repeat. Faster, stronger, tougher with every virtual kill, even as I desperately fought off the real ones. The influx was dizzying, feral instincts warring with human reason, but I needed it. I needed the speed, the durability, the sheer animal resilience to survive this meat grinder. Forget being human; right now, I needed to be a monster to fight monsters.
Elsa watched the chaos unfold from the doorway, that serene, predatory smile never leaving her face, waiting for her moment to strike. The real fight hadn't even begun.
The chaos was a whirlwind of snapping jaws, flashing claws, wind blasts, ice shards, and Rem's brutal, precise strikes. I moved through it like a frantic dancer, butcher knives flashing, relying heavily on the rapidly accumulating instincts and physical boosts flooding in from the Wolgram echoes dying in my mental arena. Dodge, slash, parry a cursed bite, kick a beast away – it was ugly, desperate, and barely effective against the sheer numbers and unnatural resilience of the Wolgrams.
Then, through the blur, I saw Elsa move.
She hadn't joined the fray directly, content to let her pets soften us up. But now, with Ram momentarily occupied forcing back three Wolgrams with a gale, and Rem twisting away from a lunging beast, Elsa saw an opening. Not towards Emilia, surprisingly, but towards me. Perhaps my frantic, increasingly effective defense had finally registered as noteworthy.
Her arm blurred. Something small and dark flashed through the air, silent and impossibly fast, aimed squarely at my throat. A throwing knife.
There was no time to dodge, no time to block with my own clumsy blades. My Sixth Sense screamed, my enhanced reflexes fired, but physically, I wasn't fast enough to react conventionally.
So my body did something… utterly bizarre.
Instinct, raw and primal, driven by the flood of canine and combat data, took over. My head snapped forward, jaws opening reflexively. Instead of trying to evade, I met the projectile.
CLANG!
The sound was sharp, metallic. Not the wet thud of steel hitting flesh, but the hard ring of metal on… enamel? The throwing knife, miraculously, was clamped firmly between my teeth. I hadn't just caught it; I'd bitten it out of the air. The impact jarred my skull, but my teeth, inexplicably, held firm.
Elsa paused, her eyebrow arching fractionally, the predatory smile faltering for the briefest instant into genuine surprise. Even the Wolgrams seemed momentarily confused by the sheer weirdness of the maneuver.
What the FUCK, body?! My conscious mind screamed, utterly bewildered. Catching knives with my teeth wasn't in any CYOA perk description I remembered! Was this some bizarre side effect of Right of Conquest assimilating Wolgram jaw strength? Or just a one-in-a-billion fluke fueled by panic and supernatural enhancement?
No time to analyze. Elsa's surprise was my opening. Again, instinct overrode conscious thought. With a whip-like motion driven purely by neck and jaw muscles – muscles that suddenly felt unnaturally strong – I spat the knife back at her.
It wasn't a graceful throw; it was a projectile launched with violent, snapping force. The knife tumbled end over end, not aimed with precision, but hurled with enough velocity to be dangerous.
Elsa, recovering quickly, sidestepped the tumbling blade with contemptuous ease. It clattered harmlessly against the far wall. But the act itself, the sheer unexpected absurdity of catching her knife with my teeth and spitting it back, had clearly registered. Her smile returned, wider now, sharper, tinged with genuine, dangerous curiosity.
"My, my," she purred, her voice dropping lower. "Aren't you full of surprises?"
Okay. So, apparently, my powers included 'WTF Reflexes' now. Good to know. Also, I had definitely just escalated from 'annoying obstacle' to 'interesting new toy' in Elsa's terrifying eyes. Which was probably much, much worse.
Definitely worse. The thought screamed through my mind as Elsa's smile transformed from amused curiosity into genuine, predatory intent. That 'interesting new toy' look was the precursor to dissection, I was morbidly certain.
She moved with liquid grace, ignoring the ongoing brawl between the maids, Puck, Emilia, and the remaining Wolgrams as if it were mere background noise. With a flick of her ankle, she kicked the knife I'd spat back – her knife – off the wall, catching it deftly in her hand as it spun through the air. Simultaneously, her other hand retrieved a second, identical blade from somewhere within the folds of her black dress. Twin knives gleamed wickedly in the dim inn light.
She stopped a few paces away, locking eyes with me, the playful façade dropping completely, replaced by cold, professional killing intent.
"Elsa Granhiert," she stated simply, her voice low and devoid of its earlier affectation. It wasn't an introduction; it was a declaration, a statement of fact before the execution.
My mind raced. This was it. No more relying on lucky catches or panic reflexes. This was a direct confrontation with someone exponentially faster, stronger, and infinitely more skilled than I was, even with the boosts I'd absorbed. The Wolgram echoes still dying in my head felt like static compared to the hurricane standing before me.
But running wasn't an option. Emilia was behind me. The maids were occupied. And some stubborn, stupid part of me – maybe the Irish blood, maybe the Invictus perk refusing to yield, maybe just sheer terror manifesting as bravado – wouldn't let me back down.
If she got to declare herself, then dammit, so would I. I tightened my grip on the heavy butcher knives, trying to channel every iota of stolen strength, speed, and instinct I possessed.
"Bowel Hunter," I acknowledged, my voice rough, forcing out the title that sent chills down my spine. Then, improvising wildly, desperately trying to project something, anything other than abject fear, I gave my own ridiculous, spur-of-the-moment epithet. "They call me the Feral Knife of Ireland." I paused, then added my name, trying to inject it with a weight it absolutely didn't deserve. "Shamrock Starson."
The titles hung in the air for a fraction of a second – one terrifyingly real, the other utterly fabricated.
And then we MOVED.
It wasn't a conscious decision; it was a simultaneous explosion of intent. Elsa flowed forward, a black blur, knives flashing in intricate, deadly arcs aimed at my vital points. I met her charge, not with grace, but with raw, augmented speed and the desperate, ugly efficiency cobbled together from slain thugs and virtual monsters.
Butcher knives clashed against assassin's blades. Sparks flew in the dim light. The air filled with the shriek of protesting steel. This wasn't a duel; it was a frantic scramble for survival against overwhelming odds. My internal processors screamed, the Arena simulation frantically trying to model Elsa's impossible speed, the Idle Trainer struggling to keep up with the sheer sensory overload. This was it. The real test.
Clang! Shriek! Sparks flew as my heavy butcher knife barely intercepted a lightning-fast thrust aimed at my ribs. Elsa's follow-up slash with her other blade was already slicing towards my neck before my parry was even complete. She was too fast. Unbelievably, impossibly fast. The skills I'd absorbed, the speed boosts – they weren't enough. Not against this level of mastery.
I twisted desperately, the edge of her blade scoring a shallow, burning line across my shoulder as I barely pulled away. My counter-slash was clumsy, easily deflected by her off-hand blade. She flowed around my defense, knives weaving a complex pattern meant to disembowel, decapitate, disable. I was blocking, parrying, dodging on pure, augmented instinct, losing ground with every exchange, seconds away from being overwhelmed.
Need more time! Need to think! Need to react faster! The Idle Trainer partition working on the 'Law of Time' pulsed in my mind. It hadn't progressed far, barely scratching the surface of temporal manipulation, but maybe… maybe there was enough? Enough for a desperate gamble?
My mind flashed back to another world, another story, another wielder of time manipulation – not a hero, but an efficient killer. Kiritsugu Emiya. His signature move. Altering his personal time flow. Could I…?
It wasn't a spell, not a technique I'd learned. It was a raw, focused application of will, pushing against the fundamental flow of moments within my own body, guided by the rudimentary understanding gleaned from the Idle Trainer's passive study. I focused inward, pouring intent into the concept.
Faster! Me! Faster!
Time Alter: Double Accel!
The world didn't slow down. I sped up. My perception, my reaction speed, my muscle activation – everything jolted forward, operating at twice its normal rate relative to the outside world. It felt… strange. Jittery. Like watching a movie on fast forward while still being in it. The strain on my system was immediate, a low thrumming ache, but manageable for now.
Elsa's next attack, another blindingly fast thrust, seemed fractionally slower now. Still deadly fast, but perceptible. Reactable. I parried it cleanly, my butcher knife moving with newfound speed. My counter-attack, a horizontal slash aimed at her wrist, was faster too, forcing her to disengage for the first time, pulling back a step with a flicker of surprise in her eyes.
It wasn't enough. She adjusted instantly, her own speed compensating for my boost. Still too fast. Still overwhelming.
Need more! The internal strain intensified, feeling like my nerves were vibrating. But the image of Kiritsugu, pushing beyond the limit, flashed again. More!
"TRIPLE ACCEL!" I roared, forcing the word out through clenched teeth, pushing my internal time flow even further. Three times normal speed.
The world lurched. The background noise of the ongoing fight – Rem's shouts, Ram's wind magic, the Wolgrams' snarls – slowed to a distorted drone. Elsa's movements, while still incredibly swift, now seemed almost… predictable. I could see the initiation of her muscles tensing, the subtle shifts in her balance, the intended trajectory of her blades fractions of a second before they happened.
The strain was immense now. My heart hammered like a drum against my ribs, blood roared in my ears, and every nerve ending felt like it was on fire. This wasn't sustainable. It felt like I was tearing myself apart from the inside out. But for these precious, accelerated seconds?
I wasn't just reacting anymore. I was acting. My butcher knives became blurs, meeting her attacks, deflecting, countering, forcing her onto the defensive. Sparks flew like fireworks as steel met steel at impossible speeds. For the first time since she entered the room, the Bowel Hunter wasn't controlling the pace of the fight.
I was.
But for how long?
Parry, slash, block, thrust! Even at triple speed, Elsa was adapting, her inhuman reflexes compensating, her skill bridging the gap. I landed shallow cuts, forced her back steps, but couldn't find a decisive opening. The strain of Triple Accel was becoming unbearable, my muscles screaming, vision starting to tunnel. This borrowed time was running out fast.
Need to endure! Need to outlast! Regeneration! The Wolgrams! They shrugged off wounds, kept coming back. They had some kind of unnatural resilience, a minor healing factor fueled by their curses. It wasn't much individually, but combined…
Mental Command: ALL IDLE PARTITIONS - RE-TASK! Target Echo: Wolgram Swarm (All Defeated Echoes). Priority Task: Assimilate Regenerative/Durability Traits via 'Right of Conquest'. Aggregate and Integrate ALL instances. Objective: Maximum possible passive regeneration and damage resistance. NOW!
The Phantasmal Arena partition, the combat analysis partition, the skill integration partition – even the primary 'Law of Time' study partition temporarily suspended its work. Every available internal resource focused on one task: strip-mining the virtual corpses of dozens, maybe hundreds, of defeated Wolgram echoes for every scrap of their unnatural toughness and healing ability.
A new kind of energy flooded me, different from the raw strength and speed boosts. It was a deep, thrumming resilience, a stubborn refusal to break. Minor aches faded, the burning strain in my muscles eased fractionally, and the shallow cut on my shoulder knitted itself closed with unnatural speed, leaving only smooth skin behind. It wasn't Wolverine-level healing, not even close, but it was something. A buffer. A way to endure the self-destructive strain of accelerating my own time.
Fueled by this new resilience, knowing I could maybe, possibly, handle the backlash for a few more precious seconds, I pushed harder. One final, desperate gamble.
"QUADRUPLE ACCEL!!!" The roar tore from my throat, raw and ragged.
Steam didn't just flow off me; it billowed. My skin flushed crimson, feeling stretched taut over hyper-accelerated muscles. The world outside slowed to a near crawl. Emilia's chanted spell syllables became long, drawn-out drones. Rem and Ram's movements against the remaining Wolgrams looked like slow-motion ballet. The motes of dust hanging in the air seemed almost stationary.
And Elsa… Elsa was finally, visibly, slow. Her attacks, previously blinding blurs, were now movements I could track, analyze, anticipate with near-perfect clarity. Her surprise was no longer fleeting; it was etched on her face, disbelief warring with predatory focus.
This speed was monstrous. The power coursing through me, the accumulated strength and skill of dozens of fallen opponents layered onto my own accelerated frame, felt immense. The butcher knives in my hands felt less like crude tools, more like extensions of my will, blurring through the air faster than the eye could follow.
The tables hadn't just turned; they'd been flipped, shattered, and incinerated. The strain was excruciating, feeling like my very atoms were vibrating themselves apart, the borrowed regeneration fighting a desperate battle against the self-inflicted damage. But in this moment, operating at four times the normal speed of reality?
I wasn't just Shamrock Starson, the terrified idiot with butcher knives anymore.
I was, for these few fleeting, agonizing seconds, the fastest thing in the room. And Elsa Granhiert was finally in my sights.
Time stretched, dilated. At Quadruple Accel, the world was a tableau, and Elsa, despite her own prodigious speed, moved through thickened syrup. My butcher knives became silver blurs, driven by stolen strength and impossible velocity.
There was no artistry to it, no finesse. Just brutal, overwhelming speed applied with surgical precision gleaned from countless simulated kills. Elsa tried to defend, her knives moving faster than any normal human could perceive, but to my accelerated senses, they were lagging, predictable.
Shink. Shink. Shink.
Three precise, blurring strikes, executed in less than a blink of an eye.
Her right arm, wielding one knife, flew from her shoulder, severed cleanly at the joint.
Her left leg detached just above the knee, sending her stumbling.
Her right leg followed suit, severed at the same point.
She hit the floor hard, not with a cry of pain, but with a gasp of shocked disbelief, her violet eyes wide with something that might have been fear, or perhaps just profound confusion. She was dismembered, helpless, grounded. Victory.
Or not.
Even as she fell, the severed limbs dissolved into faint black mist before they even hit the floorboards. And where they had been attached? Flesh writhed, knitting together at an impossible rate. Tendrils of darkness coalesced, reforming bone, muscle, skin. In the space of a single slowed heartbeat, her limbs grew back, perfect, unharmed, as if they'd never been cut.
The sheer, blatant impossibility of it slammed into me. Regeneration. Not like the minor Wolgram resilience I'd absorbed, but true, high-speed, bullshit-level regeneration.
And the strain of Quadruple Accel hit me like a physical blow the moment my attack sequence ended. The unsustainable speed tore at my insides. The borrowed regeneration fought valiantly but was overwhelmed. Agony flared through my system. I gasped, stumbling back a step, the world lurching sickeningly as my internal time flow forcibly dropped back.
"TRIPLE ACCEL!" I grit out, forcing my body back into the slightly more sustainable, but still excruciating, boosted state.
Steam still rolled off me, but less violently. The world sped up slightly, no longer a near-frozen tableau, but still significantly slower than normal. Elsa pushed herself back to her feet, her expression no longer surprised, but filled with a chilling, almost ecstatic glee.
"Oh, wonderful!" she breathed, flexing her newly regenerated limbs, her smile wider, sharper, more terrifying than ever. "Regeneration and such surprising speed! You truly are a fascinating toy!"
She hadn't just healed; she seemed invigorated by the damage. Dismemberment hadn't stopped her; it had just confirmed my attacks were ultimately meaningless against her core ability.
My heart sank. Even at Triple Accel, even with my accumulated skills and minor regeneration… how do you beat someone who simply regrows? This wasn't a fight I could win through speed or force alone. Crap.