Chapter 334: The Girl Who Wouldn’t Fall

"...Hah... who?" she managed to rasp out through the blood in her mouth.

The fog in her vision didn’t lift all at once. It thinned in uneven patches, smearing the grey sky into streaks of pale white and dark indigo. The dark shape standing over her stopped moving.

A shadow shifted, and the heavy leather folds of a coat came into focus.

"Woah, Alice. You really are daydreaming here. I thought you were done for after that one did you dirty."

The shape cleared. Roan stood there, looking down at her.

Alice blinked through the crust of blood on her eyelashes. Instead of answering, she shifted her weight and raised her middle finger straight up toward his face.

"Fuck... off, bastard," she spat, her voice a low rasp.

Roan let out a dry, humorless snort, shaking his head. "Yeah, you’re alive. If you had any strength left, you’d have thrown a rock."

She tried to push herself up on her elbow, but the moment her weight shifted onto her cracked ribs, a sharp, burning pain shot through her chest. Her breath caught, a sharp groan tearing past her teeth as her body folded back onto the frozen snow.

Damn it...

The hit had cracked her ribs. Every breath was a struggle. Every movement sent a sharp spike of pain through her chest.

Footsteps crunched behind Roan, and Leo stepped into her view. He glanced down at her, his face unreadable. He dropped to one knee beside her.

"Hey, Alice," Leo said, his voice cutting sharply through the whistling wind. "Are you okay?"

Alice didn’t answer right away. She lay flat against the dark rock where she had rolled, her chest rising in a jagged, uneven hitch. She swallowed hard, tasting the metallic copper of her own blood, and forced her head up a little.

"...Yeah," she rasped, her voice low.

"Good... we cleared the wave," Leo said, his eyes scanning her pale face. "All the monsters are dead. Only the boss left."

Alice stared at him. For a second, the noise of the ridge faded into a low, muffled hum.

"I see..." she muttered.

She caught her breath, her fingers clawing weakly at the slick ice as she tried to push her weight onto her right elbow. Her broken ribs screamed, a blinding flash of burning pain shooting straight up her spine, but she gritted her teeth.

Slowly, painfully, she pushed herself upward, scraping her knees against the rough rock until she was half-kneeling, leaning heavily against the uneven ground. Her heavy longsword lay just a few paces away in the snow.

She looked from the sword to Leo, her amber eyes burning with a stubborn look.

"All..." she wheezed, her chest heaving as she tried to pull in enough air to steady her voice. "All I have to do now... is kill that thing, right?"

Leo didn’t blink. He reached out and put his hand firmly on her uninjured shoulder to stop her from standing. "Stop right there, Alice. Look at yourself, you know your condition better than anyone. You don’t have to fight like that, you know?"

"Get your hand off me," she hissed, slapping weakly at his wrist with her hand. She glared up at him, her face twisted in a snarl of pure exhaustion and spite. "I’m not done. I can still fight—"

"Why are you pushing this hard, Alice?" Leo cut her off, his voice dropping into a hard, firm tone. He looked down at her with a complicated frown.

"Are you doing this because you feel like you’re falling behind? You don’t have to prove anything to us. You’re already stronger than most students. You don’t have to break yourself trying to keep up with a standard you set in your own head."

Alice stared at him, her chest burning. A bitter, sharp laugh broke from her throat, ending in a wet choke.

"You... you really don’t get it, do you?" she whispered, her fingers clawing weakly at the frozen dirt. "I’m not doing this for you. I don’t give a damn if I’m behind you, or ahead of you, or standing on the same level."

She paused, drawing a shallow, painful breath that rattled her broken ribs.

"I know how unfair things are. I know how wide a gap talent can make. But that doesn’t mean I have to stop moving. I’m not trying to be you, Leo, or that idiot elf. I’m doing this because if I stop... if I let a wall tell me I’m done... then I’m just that hopeless, weak child again, who couldn’t do anything. "

"..."

Leo went completely silent.

The wind roared around them, whipping his white hair across his face, but he didn’t move. He knew that fear. The suffocating, empty feeling of being left behind, of realizing that no matter how hard you run or try, the world has a habit of treating your limits as a joke. That feeling was painfully familiar to him.

But he was a leader, and they were in a simulation.

Every second they wasted here burned their objective timer down. If he gave her time to recover properly, they might never clear the Gate on time and be the first to clear it. And that also meant Morgana might skin him alive for not winning first place.

He had a choice to make.

Leo let out a long, slow breath, his shoulders dropping as he weighed the reckless stupidity of it against the dangerous, firm fire in her eyes. He knew it was a terrible decision. He knew any sane person would have pulled her off the field ten minutes ago.

"...Fine," Leo muttered, standing up slowly and stepping back. "If you’re going to stand up, do it yourself. But listen to me, Alice, you have to make it fast. If you stand out there and just let it crush you, I am stepping in and ending the beast. Understood?"

Alice didn’t bother answering with words.

She planted her right hand hard into the ground, her fingers digging deep until her knuckles turned white, and used the strength of her legs to force herself upright. Her whole body shook like a leaf in a strong wind, her left arm swinging uselessly at her side, but she stood.

She took one staggering step forward, her boots crunching over the ice, and made her way toward her discarded longsword.

Leo watched her go. He turned back to Roan and the rest of the students who were now gathering near the narrow point. Roan stood leaning slightly on his spear, shaking his head.

"You’re an idiot for letting her go back out there, you know that, right?" Roan muttered, wiping a streak of black monster blood off his forehead with the back of his sleeve. "But hey... who cares anyway? You’re still our idiot leader. Whatever you say goes."

Leo’s brow furrowed, his nose wrinkling in instant disgust as he glanced sideways at him. "Eww. Shut up, bastard, that was so cringe."

Roan burst out laughing, a sharp, coughing crackle that ended in a wince as he held his bruised ribs. "Bahahaha! Yeah, yeah, scoff all you want. But honestly... you did a good job."

Leo didn’t answer, but the tension in his shoulders dropped a little as they both kept their eyes locked on Alice’s back.

Huff... huff...

A few minutes had passed since Alice stepped back into the fight, and every single second had felt like a slow walk into hell.

The sound of her breath was rough, wet, and heavy, echoing directly inside Alice’s head. Every breath felt like broken glass. Her cracked ribs ground together with a sickening crunch every time her chest rose.

She reached the longsword, dropping heavily to one knee to pick it up with her right hand. The moment her fingers closed around the familiar leather grip, a tiny, weak flicker of mana scraped across her palm, just enough to remind her that her core hadn’t completely turned to ash.

She pushed herself back up, using the flat of the blade as a cane, and raised her head.

A few paces away, the Rift-Scourge Behemoth rose out of the swirling snow. Its massive, head was battered, its spine cracked open from her earlier strike. Thick, foul-smelling black blood leaked from the wound in a steady, rhythmic drip, hissing against the ground and filling the air with the smell of rot.

It wasn’t fast anymore. Its movements were clumsy and slow from the sheer amount of damage it had taken. But its remaining eye slit flickered with a dull, vicious hatred as it caught sight of her staggering forward.

Alice didn’t run. Every muscle in her legs screamed in pain as she dragged her left foot across the uneven ground.

Just one more time, she told herself, her vision swimming with dark, dancing spots.

The Behemoth let out a low, rattling rasp that shook the loose snow off the nearby rocks. It lunged forward, its massive front paw sweeping outward in a wide, clumsy curve meant to knock her off the mountain.

Alice didn’t try to dodge. She didn’t have the speed left.

Instead, she dropped her weight, letting her knees hit the hard ice as she slid under the sweeping limb. The massive leg hissed right over her back, the sheer wind pressure tearing the remaining fabric of her shoulder guard and driving the freezing air straight into her cracked ribs.

"Ah—!"

A fresh wave of blood spilled from her lips.

Before the monster could pull its leg back, Alice planted her right hand, gritted her teeth until her gums bled, and lunged forward from the snow. She didn’t use fancy footwork or a clean form. She scrambled through the bloody snow, right between the monster’s massive front legs.

The Behemoth snapped its heavy jaws downward, missing her by inches as its teeth slammed shut on empty air.

Alice pulled her upper body off the ice, wrapping her right hand tightly around the grip of her longsword while using her broken left arm only to brace the handle. She didn’t have the mana left for a magic burst.

All she had was her own dead weight and the raw, stubborn momentum of her body. Her amber eyes locked onto the exposed violet core pulsing beneath the shattered bone armor of its chest, raw, cracked, and open.

She didn’t waste her breath. Her jaw locked tight, her blood-stained teeth grinding together as she threw her entire body weight into a brutal, straight two-handed thrust. The tip of her wide steel blade struck the center of the glowing core.

Crack!

The hit shattered the outer crystal shell with a sharp, deafening snap.

The shockwave slammed back into her arms, wrenching her wrist and splitting the skin across her palm, but she didn’t let go. She drove her weight forward, shoving the blade into the pulsing center until the crossguard slammed flat against the creature’s chest plates.

The Behemoth froze mid-step. The sickly light in its eye slits flared once, a blinding, angry flash, and then shattered completely, going out into total darkness.

A heavy, sickening crack echoed from deep within its chest as the core shattered into useless grey dust. The monster’s massive body went completely stiff, and with a thunderous, earth-shaking crash, the twelve-foot beast fell forward, sliding face-first into the snow just inches from her boots.

Alice didn’t celebrate. Her legs simply folded beneath her. She fell forward, hitting the ground hard before rolling onto her back and sliding a few feet down the slope of the ridge. Her longsword slipped from her fingers and clattered softly against the ice.

She lay flat on her back, staring straight up at the swirling grey sky, her chest rising in one last, shallow breath before going completely still. A dark pool of blood soaked into the white snow beneath her head. Every inch of her body burned with a sharp, blazing fire.

For a long moment, there was only the sound of the wind. Then, a rough, breathless chuckle broke from her bloody lips. It started as a low, dry wheeze in her throat and bubbled up into a cracked, wild laugh that echoed off the frozen cliffs.

"I... I did it..." she muttered to the empty sky, her shoulders shaking weakly as she laughed through the pain. "I actually... killed the bastard... with my own hands."