Myles drew his weapon and the blade itself seemed to respond. The black blade pulsed faintly, veins of red light crawling across its surface as though drinking from his intent.
It wasn't just steel like a normal blade. He felt it deep in his heart that the short sword wanted blood, and when he gripped it with the will to kill, that hunger became his strength.
Nia's body convulsed again, her spine snapping backward at an impossible angle.
"AAAAAA!!!"
A scream tore from her damaged throat, so raw and broken that it scraped the inside of every ear that heard it.
The parasite was no longer hiding but it was reshaping her from within.
Her muscles ballooned beneath her skin, tearing fabric apart with sick cracks and pops sounds. Her clothes split down the seams, scraps falling away as her body grew, stretching past two meters in a grotesque surge.
Her veins bulged black beneath her flesh and her face changed around the chitinous tendrils sprouting from her mouth and eyes.
What had been Nia was now only a nightmare.
"No! Nia!" Ryan's voice cracked, useless and desperate.
Myles's gaze snapped to him with a sharp and cold look. He didn't need to say it aloud but right now Ryan couldn't fight.
His heart was still tied to the girl who no longer existed.
"Get back! Save yourself!" Myles barked.
The nightmare's head twisted toward the source of Ryan's cry. Her jerking limbs spasmed, then locked onto him.
She moved with a single lunge that split the floor tiles beneath her, her speed was unnatural for her hulking frame.
"Shit!" Myles roared. His palm flared with mana.
He using Fireball.
A blazing sphere erupted from his hand and crashed into her chest. Flames burst outward and washed the aisle in a burning glow. The smell of scorched flesh mixed with the already rotten air.
The creature shrieked, let out a piercing layered sound that scraped like metal tearing apart.
Flames crawled along her mutated skin, forcing her to stumble and thrash.
Myles clenched his jaw. He couldn't stop attacking.
The blade in his hand throbbed with power as he dashed forward.
His weapon whistled through the air, black arcs carving into the flailing tendrils. The strange weapon amplifies its damage with every strike on the same target with its special skill.
Myles feels the power flickered across his hand with every cut, his momentum building into a brutal rhythm.
While the monster burned, Myles attacked again and again, his blade hungry for more blood.
The more he attacked, the more it felt like the weapon itself was guiding him and urging him to kill her.
Myles paid no mind to the sinister hum of the blade in his hand. The sound pressed against his head, alive with hunger, but he ignored it.
His arms moved on instinct, slashing and slashing again and spilling more of the black ichor that hissed as it hit the floor.
From behind him Nadine stepped forward, her expression firm.
She could see the way the monster reeled under Myles's relentless assault and it was her change.
Even if she didn't deal the killing blow, her attack mattered. If she joined, the system would still recognize her effort and grant her the Exp.
Her crowbar gleamed as she rushed in and stabbed at the flesh from behind.
The nightmare that had once been Nia screeched again. More chitin burst through her skin. Jagged tentacles snapping out from her arms and torso. The sound of flesh tearing filled the air, the sight was so disgusting that it made her seem less human by the second.
Her burned torso sizzled and the fire died away as black tendrils oozed over the scorched patches, sealing and reinforcing them with writhing armor.
Her gaze now nothing but pits of crimson light and locked fully on Myles.
She lunged forward with terrifying speed.
Myles braced himself, his blade swinging up to meet the attack.
BUAGH!
Tentacles slammed against the weapon with incredible force, pushing him backward across the shattered tiles.
His boots dragged, his arms strained, but he didn't worry. The weapon's skill had already built to its limit now.
Twenty stacks of compounded damage of the blade's passive skill burned through the monster after Myles landed so much slash to it. Plus, he have the passive skills called Bloodthirsty Slash which was also a form of damage stacking when he caused wounds to his enemy.
Then power surged from his core into the black blade. He inhaled sharply and called the other skill of the blade, Shadow Rend.
The blade cut downward in a vicious arc, releasing a crescent slash of black energy that howled through the air.
It struck the monster square in the chest. The impact tore open chitin and flesh, a deep wound spilling black ichor.
At once, the effect of the skill which was 'bleeding' was activated. A steady drain of vitality that sapped at the creature's strength with every passing second was happening.
The nightmare staggered but did not fall. Instead, its body convulsed harder, the rage inside it twisting into blind frenzy.
It lashed out wildly and turned on Myles again. One strike from its massive clawed limb caught him across the chest.
Myles body lifted from the ground, hurled like a ragdoll through the broken entrance of the supermarket.
He crashed against the pavement outside with a sickening thud, blood spraying from his mouth as he lay sprawled across the concrete.
The nightmare staggered out from the ruined supermarket, its hulking frame dripping with black ichor that hissed wherever it touched the ground.
Each step left a wet trail, the wounds from Myles's blade still tearing it apart from within with staggering damage but it wasn't dead yet.
It shrieked louder with sound so sharp it rattled the shattered windows around them.
Chitin jutted from its limbs, black armor twisting over flesh, sealing what should have been fatal.
Myles wiped the blood from his lips and forced himself up, his vision swimming.
That thing wasn't the usual monster. Nia had turned into something closer to a B or maybe even A-rank monster.
—