Rise Online: Return of the Legendary Player

Lucia’s dark and frightening aura continued to emanate, leaving both Kaizen and Linus somewhat disoriented. It was as if they were fighting a supernatural force that could not be explained by physics or known magical abilities alone.

Kaizen felt as if the Eye of Storm in his hand had grown heavier, but he had a plan and could not fail. With that in mind, he moved towards Lucia.

The macabre little girl noticed Kaizen’s advance and shot a black beam in his direction with a single magic circle, but he managed to dodge it and came even closer, trying to attack her with his sword. But the girl was agile and dodged.

However, Kaizen’s real goal was not to hit her in the first place. His will was only to distract her.

At that moment, Linus appeared from behind Kaizen and used the Næġling Falske to attack her head-on. The girl had heard their plan and realized that Kaizen was handing a sword to her colleague, only she was waiting for a signal from Psyker for the man in the hat to act, which didn’t come, catching her off guard. Still, she managed to block the attack with her bare hand, breaking the Næġling Falske as if it were an ordinary sword.

Kaizen heard the shattering of his sword, and at that moment, recent memories of forging it surfaced in his mind. Losing it like that was undoubtedly a great loss, but he was focused, so he took the opportunity to spin around and attack Lucia from behind. The Eye of Storm sliced from point to point in a straight line, cutting the golden threads that ran down Lucia’s back.

Lucia fell to the ground, and Kaizen moved immediately. With all of his remaining MP, Kaizen used <Psychokinesis> and slammed her to the ground.

Looking into her eyes, he said:

𝒪𝑣𝐿xt.𝑪𝚘𝗆

“You are strong, Lucia. Much stronger than I thought. But you’re too naive if you thought you could defeat both of us alone.”

She looked at him with a surprised expression on her face, as if she couldn’t believe she’d been caught in such a simple tactic just because she’d underestimated it.

Kaizen stepped back a little, and Linus approached with the rest of the Næġling Falske in hand.

“Now, Linus, hit the teddy bear.” Psyker ordered.

His words shocked the girl even more than before, and with a lot of anger in her voice, she screamed:

“NO! YOU CAN’T! HE IS MINE! ONLY MINE!”

Through no fault of his own, Linus took advantage of the fact that Kaizen was holding her back for those few seconds, snatched the teddy bear from her arms, and with the remaining half of the Næġling Falske, pierced through the teddy bear, causing the girl to scream in pain at the same time that a massaroca of black slime began to ooze from inside the stuffed animal.

Lucia began to shake, her body contorting in strange ways. Her eyes widened in terror and her mouth opened in a loud scream. Then her skin began to wrinkle and contract, like dried fruit being squeezed. Her clothes began to bulge and hang loose from her shrunken body as she seemed to age years in a matter of seconds. Her blonde hair became gray and brittle, and after a moment, much of it fell out. Her skin became so wrinkled that it seemed to cling to her bones.

The Seventh Bishop of the Eye of Hermodr’s eyes, once blue and bright, were now empty and dull. The air around her seemed to freeze as she crumbled into dust, leaving only a skeleton of dried flesh and clothes.

Lucia’s nearly mummified human body remained on the ground, motionless and lifeless, a grim reminder of the innocent-looking little girl she once was.

Kaizen and Linus looked at what was left of Lucia’s body, expressionless. They were silent for a few moments, processing what had just happened. Finally, it was Linus who broke the silence:

“There was no way to save this girl anyway. She had already chosen the path of destruction.”

eαglesnᴏνel Kaizen nodded, but his expression was still serious. He had never fought a child, so this was not a very nice scene for him, especially because of the macabre aura.

“What are you going to do with that?” He pointed at the teddy bear in the man’s hands.

Linus crouched next to the girl’s body while he analyzed it with his eyes and said:

“This toy somehow maintained her powers and her life force, which for some reason was practically stagnant. So I will take it for further analysis, because this is a kind of black magic I have never seen before. By the way, you’re good at deductions, young man, even though you don’t have much experience. I believe that no matter how hard we try to defeat it in a normal way, we will not be able to defeat it. I noticed that you looked at the teddy bear a lot when you threw your sword at me, so I immediately knew what your plan was.

“I was lucky to have such an experienced person by my side. She was naive, but she wasn’t stupid, I’m sure she would have figured it out if I had to explain my ideas in words.”

“I don’t want to take anything away from you today, Psyker. You were clever. Now we have to think about why she was here.” Linus said.

“What do you mean?” asked Kaizen.

“Isn’t it obvious? Their real goal was not to capture the Minotaur, as our intelligence deduced from their presence in this region.”

“Then what did they want?”

“I don’t know, but something tells me the answer lies on the other side of that door.” Linus pointed to the huge stone door at the end of the corridor.

…

Edited by: DrHitsuji

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