The grinning statue surprisingly did not step forward and looked at Elias, faint whispers emerging all throughout its body like the buzzing of bees. Elias frowned and took a step back, the inconsistency he had noticed in the actions of these statues taking a central position in his mind once more.
How is it that some of these statues seemed smart, ambushing him from a distance, causing him to lose his arm, or the second statue that slowly reached for his head without alerting him?
With a few moments to regain his cool, his mind rapidly went through all the details of the past few minutes, and Elias's eyes widened when he saw the simple truth in front of him.
He had calculated that in this tunnel, there had to be between 6,000 and 8,000 statues of Asulon, made over decades from when the project was first approved by the Lord of the City. Elias had been responsible for the creation of 215 of these statues, and with his eidetic memory, it was not hard to trace the fact that the statue that had silently reached for him was one of the statues he had created, more specifically, one of the 97 statues in which he buried the bodies of his prey.
Something of his realization must have shown itself in his eyes as the grinning statue whose flesh was exposed suddenly stopped smiling, red light began shining from its eyes, and it spoke in a voice that Elias found familiar even though it sounded like the cries of a crow being tortured to death.
"So, you now remember me, Elias, you evil little shit, you killed me when I had done nothing but be your friend for six years. I knew I should never have trusted you. Why did you kill me? Was it just to fuck my beautiful wife and daughter? Oh, yes, I see the way they look at you, little shit, don't worry, after I kill you, I will wear your skin, and fuck them with your little cock."
Elias exhaled in astonishment, "Josef?!"
"You cut me open, Elias, you drank my blood and took my soul, don't you think you deserved to be punished?"
Anyone else may be frozen in shock at this moment, but Elias calmly spread open his arm while he took three steps backward, "Then come and deliver your punishment."
The statue bent its head to the side, in a motion that was entirely unnatural. It looked at Elias and bent down to touch the oil on the ground. Standing up to its feet, it brought up one massive bloody finger and waved it side to side,
"Little shit, I know you are as tricky as a fox. Why would you ever think that you would be able to deceive me even in death?"
The statue stepped back while looking at Elias in the eyes, and before long, its body was swallowed by the darkness of the tunnel, leaving its voice behind: "They would break you, but I can see that you are hard to kill. Don't worry, it would only make your death more fun."
The howls of the dozens of crazed bleeding statues burst out of the cave, and Elias noticed that although these statues were cracked and bleeding black blood, he could not see any flesh underneath the cracks, just more stone colored by their foul blood.
They did not walk like the previous statue; they ran and howled like beasts, and the distance between them was erased as if it did not exist. Elias responded without any hesitation as he grabbed the spark rod and struck it once.
His motion was smooth and precise, and although there was always a chance that a spark rod would fail to produce a spark, Elias had come to the understanding that if you used the proper motions when using a spark rod, the chance to generate a spark was always one hundred percent.
There was a slight fear that the tools he had in this Fragment would not work the same as they did in the real world, and he did not have the time to test for their effectiveness, but luck, it seemed, remained on his side, and a bright spark like a little bolt of lightning, leapt from the spark rod and fell through the legs of the charging statues and touched the oil on the ground.
This oil was not the normal oil used for fires, and Elias did not know how it was made. It was specially allocated to him to use, and every drop of it was precious due to how hot the flames it could produce when it was ignited.
Elias rarely used it because his work was usually precise, since the oil was needed when the Alchemistry Crystal was going haywire and not following the proper design. Only a flame with this temperature was able to shut down the crystal.
The spark fell on the oil, and it ignited with a loud whoosh that sent a plume of hot air that pushed Elias off his feet. He did not fall on his back but landed back on his feet like a cat. All the bones in his limbs had healed, faster than before, and he was getting all the benefits of his increased attributes at the moment.
Loud shrieks like the voices of children suddenly erupted from the dozens of statues, and Elias had to press his hands against his ears to block out the cries that would have surely deafened him again. He saw that the black ichor coating the bodies of the statues seemed to be especially flammable as they boiled and exploded, showering the cavern with flames that reached back and spread through the tunnel, causing cries of pain to explode like an earthquake, and Elias was nearly crushed to the ground.
Well, he had not expected that to happen. It seemed that, coincidentally, he might have discovered the weakness of these statues… and it was fire.
The heat had become so great that Elias had to move to the back of the cavern, abandoning his other preparations as the metallic wire heated up until it was red, and it melted into a puddle.
He watched as the statues flailing around in the flame began to fall apart. First, the existing cracks in their bodies expanded, causing more black ichor to bubble up and ignite.
Elias watched for one heartbeat longer and retreated further into the back of the cavern because he knew what was coming next.
While he was glad that the weakness of the statues was flames, it was not the reason he had chosen fire as his first weapon, because the greatest reason he had become a hunter… was the living poison he had placed inside his veins.
His Status screen had called them the Vessel of Hunger, and they had been the reason that Elias, as a morta, could kill so many Siphons.
There was a reason he always carried a source of fire during his hunt, be it candles or a lamp. It was a means to not only tame the poison in his blood, but in the right circumstances, he could summon them.