7 - Blood And Ice, pt2

Ichika looked at the creature in front of her. She still couldn’t get rid of the feeling of familiarity, that hair color and those eyes, they both looked familiar to her. Almost as if she had already fought against them once. But at this point, she had no time to think about it.

“She survived...abyssal frostbite?!”

“No way...that means nothing I have is gonna hurt her, right? Fucking damn it...”

She heard another pair of spears fly her way, these two were much more destructive than the other two. It seemed that Gamma continued to pick up lessons, including the cluster projectile type attack in her arsenal, which, in theory, would be an extremely efficient way of delivering the poison. And it worked as just that.

Shrapnel of the blood pierced Ichika’s skin and started to dissolve inside. Since there were multiple spots Ichika needed to take care of, she was forced to destroy a little more of the wounds to get the poison out completely. Gamma’s damage was minimal, most of the physical damage was done by Ichika herself.

“Think about it...what point is there to attack her with Abyssal Frostbite if she’ll just glue herself back together with her blood?”

“What’s the point of attacking her in the first place in that case?!”

“...”

“What’s the point of...”

“I get it now.”

Gamma’s divine acclamation was never one that simply granted her a certain ability or increased her overall prowess. It was, in actuality, a phase-based acclamation. The first phase would be the enhancement in her abilities. The second phase would come only after her body was physically destroyed - she would equip the ‘blood hunter form’ as not just a means to survive, but to also unlock her extraordinarily powerful regeneration and enhance her blood manipulation to its absolute limit.

Faced with such a seemingly unbreakable enemy, Ichika had found the only effective solution.

“I need to somehow destroy her physical body with either flash freeze or just with my soul expression. I need to get her to spill her fucking guts out.”

“I’ll need to save up my Abyssal Frostbite for a different purpose.”

Gamma suddenly rushed at Ichika, and Ichika, without a hint of fear or hesitation in her eyes, fought back. Who could’ve guessed that having someone embrace you all the time does such wonders for your combat performance. Ichika swiped at Gamma like a ferocious animal, and Gamma tried to fight back with her many tentacles and blood-made weapons.

Ichika kept trying to land as many swiping attacks as she could on Gamma, but the latter’s own pressure was dangerous enough to force her to start playing safe. She flung herself back, but Gamma, quickly launching a tentacle at Ichika, managed to grab her by her left foot. Ichika quickly terminated that limb and kept on opening the distance up more and more, while avoiding a barrage of ranged attacks.

She manifested a giant frozen spear and chucked it at Gamma, who took the attack head on and simply regenerated from it. She calmly launched another round of cluster projectiles, all of which had the same result - the shrapnel found their target, and the damage was quickly healed off. Once Gamma tried to charge at her, she used an ice blast to knock her away, but Gamma powered through it.

“So damn persistent...you’re a mindless killing machine, aren’t you? No emotion, no independent thoughts in your mind, mindwashed and reset like a true disposable unit. Just like what you turned Oskar into.”

“It’s easy to do only one job if that’s the only thing you care about, is it?”

“But you’re not a human being. As much as I want to believe that you are one, you’re not a human. You’re the opposite of a human.”

Gamma remained still for a bit, and Ichika, on the rooftop of one of the buildings, noticed Gamma’s wrists almost explode. Ridiculous amounts of blood poured out of them, all of it conjuring up in one single point in front of her.

Ichika quickly launched a pair of larger cluster bombs. Gamma expected them to detonate before they reached her, but instead, they shoved themselves into her wrists. Turns out, they weren’t actually cluster bombs - just ice projectiles meant to act as plugs. And for a while, that actually worked out, and it seemed that whatever attack Gamma was preparing was halted, and the accumulation of blood started falling apart.

Ichika prepared to attack again, but the plugs that she used to shut down Gamma’s blood supply were launched out of the holes in Gamma’s wrists at incredible speeds. Even more blood poured out of them, and the blood in front of her grew to a tremendous size. Ichika knew what could be coming. She braced for impact while thinking of what the hell to do. The orb grew larger and larger and it seemed that it had hit its limit of size.

“Come on...think, Ichika.”

“Dodging could be dangerous, I don’t know how much I need to fling myself. And what if he predicts my ice blast usage?”

“And besides, I need to focus on the killshot. Otherwise, I’ll never get anything done.”

“Damn it...”

The org was transformed into a giant beam of blood. And Ichika, just as her time allocated for decision making ran out, conjured a giant ice shield, big enough to stop the powerful blast. The shield began cracking and weakening, large shards were getting destroyed, and Ichika had to step back again and again, and keep pouring her efforts into maintaining the defense. But even here, when it seemed like her only task would be survival, she had another objective.

The blood pierced through the ice, but logically, it would pierce the weaker, less reinforced areas first. Ichika set up such an area, more specifically -she set up a pocket inside the shield where the blood would pour. All she needed to do was to touch the liquid. Now, it did destroy her finger, and she would need to remove her hand afterwards, but she managed to use it to channel her second most dangerous attack through it.

“Flash Freeze!”

The flash freeze instantly overtook the beam, freezing it still within seconds. It was en route to attempt not just the beam, but its source of blood. Gamma, seeing the ice, quickly stopped the beam for as long as was needed for the flash freeze to go away. Ichika, destroying her left hand and seeing the distracted Gamma, sent a large flying slash aimed directly at her neck.

Gamma’s neck was sliced in half.

“Now! Before it’s too-”

And almost immediately, thanks to the blood, it was reattached. More and more blood gushed out of her veins, and another beam was fired, this time, it was much less powerful, but still posed a serious threat. Ichika was forced to jump off the building, and start running around, hoping to evade it. The beam was like a solid at first, but overtime, it looked more like a stream of poison fired from a hose. The poison was all over the ground below, and parts of it began to form into spikes to try and catch Ichika off-guard. A few moments of inefficiency later, the stream wobbled a bit and transformed itself into a slicing thread, circling around a large portion of the district and destroying all the buildings in sight, cutting them down.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

The remnants of the blood were recollected in the air and launched into the sky as one massive cluster bomb. The magnificent explosion looked like another one of those fireworks. It started raining blood.

Ichika was relatively safe from the beam and the slicing attack, but the rain posed the real issue. The dozens of sharpened bits of blood that fell down from the sky each posed a threat to her. She ran inside one of the half-destroyed buildings for shelter, but Gamma caught on and sent a large pair of explosive blood spears her way. Ichika escaped to another such building, having to be outside for a few seconds, and as a result, taking in a lot of damage and having to destroy chunks of her own body. Once her new hideout was destroyed too, she would manage to find a solution to her predicament.

She held a neat little umbrella made out of ice, which was constantly being reinforced with soul prowess and more ice. It did the job just right.

“I can’t get a killshot without getting close, and I can’t get close without taking a risk. The fact that she’s an airborne target is the main pain in the ass.”

“Sakuto would’ve just adapted to the blood. Hayk would just stop time and rip her head off before the fight even started. Ausra would just blow her up so hard that her body parts wouldn’t stick back together. I’m the one who has to take the longer route...”

“But at the same time, there’s no room for me to hesitate to go for it. As if Sakuto himself isn’t risking his own life fighting the monster responsible for this amalgamation of a soulful.”

She smiled.

“But he’s true to his word. I know I won’t be left alone.”

“Either we’ll meet up once this is over, or we’ll meet up in hell.”

With an ice blast and an expression full of confidence, she charged at Gamma. She managed to swipe at her, ripping a rather large chunk of her chest and neck off. Gamma, at the same time, was more than ready to strike her down with a well-timed counter-attack.

Ichika let go of her and avoided a sharp blood blade aimed at her neck. She latched onto Gamma’s foot, and quickly pulled herself back, conjuring an ice platform right beneath her. Now, she could properly partake the joyful activity of beating the life out of Gamma, who had already technically died once.

Of course, she couldn’t stand on the platform for too long. Not only because Gamma’s own erratic movements disrupted its balance, and because eventually Gamma would figure out to quickly break it away, but because of Gamma constantly launching blood daggers at Ichika from up close. Ichika had to quickly manifest another frozen shield and keep pushing forward. The umbrella was transformed into a larger shield, protecting her back and sides from the bloody rain.

Once she got close enough, however, she came to a problem, she had nothing to attack Gamma with. Both her hands were busy, and she needed to be quick, otherwise a flanking projectile or tentacle could stab her from any side. So she remembered what Sakuto showed her, lowered her shield, and spat out an icicle aimed directly at Gamma’s eyes.

The sudden attack knocked Gamma back a little, disrupting the platform, and resulting in a distorted scream of pain coming from her. The blood rain stopped, and most of the blood in the area recollected right next to Gamma herself. They entered freefall, and Ichika grabbed onto her. Gamma fired off a smaller beam of blood that ripped out a small chunk off of Ichika’s stomach, and as they fell onto the ground...

“Soul Interpretation-”

“Flash Freeze!”

At last, Ichika managed to land that attack. Gamma’s body was frozen, and due to her insufficient natural toughness to withstand it, it broke apart. She still wasn’t dead yet. The ground shook with their fall, and Ichika, despite her injury, quickly tried to get back up and get further away. But Gamma grabbed onto her foot with a blood tentacle and threw her into the wall of the building she used to stand on top of.

There, a pair of bloody spears pinned her, each of the spears impaling her wrists and sticking into the wall. The poison’s effect could effectively be seen slowly spreading from her wounds. A bunch of other sharpened spears were on their way to pierce her, but Ichika, placing her foot against them, managed to create an ice shield large enough to withstand them. The shield dropped on the ground and shattered.

Ichika, with a slightly unhinged expression, dragged her hand out of the spear’s pin, despite it resulting in a much more serious wound being carved on her hand.

“Look at you, a bloodied mess on the floor.”

“You’re just gonna try and stick yourself back with your blood, aren’t you?”

The reason behind freeing her hand was to make a finger gun and point it at Gamma.

“ ✦ Befall. ✦ "

“ ✦ Abyssal Frostbite. ✦ "

The attack struck Gamma, and nothing happened. Even Gamma looked confused, and it began reassembling herself, using the blood as glue...but she couldn’t.

“Abyssal Frostbite’s ability to target the soul is what makes it special. It allows it to bypass any toughness and strike the soul and, in return, the body with no issue. Using Abyssal Frostbite not on the soul, but on a material, is an extreme waste...”

“But in this case, it was the only solution.”

Gamma’s magical glue began to freeze up, and her blood started shattering into pieces. Her body parts seized a little and, after having parts of them blow up from the inside, stopped moving completely. Only her head was intact, for long enough to see Ichika.

“I didn’t target your soul with Abyssal Frostbite, I targeted your blood. Your body was already destroyed by flash freeze, there was no resistance dangerous enough to cause Abyssal Frostbite any problems since all your blood was exposed. That was my solution to putting you down.”

“Enjoy seeing your only lifeline get turned into a popsicle.”

“There’s no getting out of this, you heartless fucking bitch.”

And rightfully so, the blood strings connected to her half-severed head would freeze, expand and erupt too, leaving nothing behind. Nachtvessel Gamma was dead.

Ichika fell down on the ground, and quickly got rid of all the potentially poisoned parts of her body. But perhaps she bit off a bit more than she could chew. She started losing a dangerous amount of blood, her dizziness came back, and so did her nausea and headache. She barely kept herself standing.

“Haah...”

“I did my part, now you do yours, Sakuto...I gotta call Rin, she knows what to do if I’m low on blood...”

Her vision was getting a little dimmer. She quickly dialed Rin’s number, and picked up the phone.

“Rin, I’m low on blood, I’m dizzy...”

“Seal your wounds shut, focus all of your regeneration on regaining the blood back, and only then recover your injuries. And never call this number again.”

“Huh?” Ichika wondered, confused as the call ended. She laid down, made a pillow to put her feet on, making sure all the blood kept flowing into her head. And she started the slow process of recovering from an exceptionally lethal battle...

“So, this is the place? We just wait in this cold room until they call out your name? You came all the way from Paris to here for some extra cash?”

“I brought you along too, so don’t complain.”

“I’m not complaining, just...why did you come here? Because of your brother’s death?”

“It’s a soulful research institute, right? And I’m a soulful. It’s not that I wanna earn cash, I just wanna, how do I say this...get stronger.”

“...”

“I wanna become strong. Stronger than the guys that killed my brother, at least. There’s probably people here who know everything about soulful stuff.”

“Why do you wanna get stronger though?”

“So I can get revenge for my brother. Sounds a bit childish and manga brained, but I don’t think revenge is childish at all. My brother took a big risk, he risked a stable life to hit it big in show biz and eventually became the most well-known soulful in the world. He sometimes visited me, and when we were in private he told me about his struggles and how hard he has to work for everything and how draining and dangerous it is.”

“I...I see...”

“There was only one free slot left here, the other two were taken. They took an interest in me once I told them I could control blood. Sounds like a pretty combat-attuned ability too...”

“Well, I...don’t know what to say. Good luck on your revenge quest, I guess.”

“Don’t worry, after all, if I really do take after my brother, I’ll be as strong as him. I have his eyes, so I have his resolve too.”

A rather loud announcement rang throughout the place

“Lucia Solano, please proceed to room 2 to finalize your registration to the Soulful Research Institute’s special soulful research program.”