The Dark Rebirth of Pandora: Revenge of the Abyss

Chapter 624: A Little Monster

"..." I leap, using the trees as springboards to cut the distance, and then I kick out again to shove the tree even further away from Lycoris. At the same time, I cast an active tracking spell to signal Lycoris’s location so Calypso can come rescue her.

"You freak!" That stupid elf somehow manages to keep her balance on the tree that’s currently flying above the ground from the throw, its speed bleeding off by the second.

She fires arrows at me while I dodge, leaping from one tree to the next. Elena told me Mama Pandora fought a lot using speed. I’m not as fast as Mama Pandora was, so I rely on brute force, basically hurling my body with every jump.

"!!" I snatch an arrow that nearly takes me in the face just as the tree crashes to the ground. We’re far enough from Lycoris now, so we can fight without that worry.

"You think getting me away from that other freak will be enough?" she taunts, springing up onto another tree.

"Grande Dragão de Água." I use my magic to unleash a magical attack against the entire area.

Grande Dragão de Água — Water magic that forms an immense dragon, which explodes into a massive wave of water, flooding everything around it.

The dragon slams into the trees, flooding the whole place and leveling nearly every tree in a relatively large radius. The elf falls to the ground, which has turned into mud, trying to jump away, but now the area is practically a swamp. The water saturates the churned soil, creating several inches of mud that reaches all the way to my waist.

I close the distance fast and swing a punch at her. She blocks it with her bow and whips out a dagger, trying to stab me. I dodge, sweeping her legs and dumping her into the mud.

But she twists her body, managing to spring backward. With some strange magic, she fires dozens of arrows at once. I weave through them all, shifting side to side as I close in on her.

I slam my tail into the mud, splashing the muck right into her face. Before she can react, I’m already on top of her. I stomp down on her foot to pin her in place and start punching her face repeatedly from every angle.

A heavy impact sound booms with each hit. It’s obvious she has more raw power than I do, but she doesn’t have a fighting style suited to dealing with mine. Trying to escape the barrage, she shoves an arrow into my gut and tries to smack my face with her bow, forcing me to duck back.

"Ghmmm—" She lets out a pained groan, trying to pull away, but the mud hinders her while I yank the arrow out of my own stomach.

"Is that it? Can’t do shit without a cheap shot?" I snarl, licking the tip of the arrow before snapping it in my hand and tossing it aside.

"[Quebrador de Muralhas]." She gives up on finding a good position and attacks from this range instead, using a spell. A glowing golden arrow flies at me, swelling in size until its head is as big as a house.

But I catch it with my bare hands. I’m pushed back, sliding through the mud as she fires regular arrows at me.

"La, la, la... lala la... la." I start humming. As I crush the massive arrow with a tight squeeze, the sound of my voice begins to affect everything around us.

The nearby trees start to disintegrate into biological dust, and the elf’s eyes begin to bleed. She realizes my voice is the problem and tries to land a hit, but I start advancing on her, still humming.

My voice echoes through the silence, creating a sort of morbid, unsettling atmosphere. The tone is sweet, yet dripping with immense murderous intent in soft notes. I don’t necessarily need words for the ability to activate; just humming a tune at the right rhythm works.

"You bitch! Don’t underestimate me!" She literally has blood in her eyes as she desperately starts firing arrows in my direction. But still humming, I shift the melody, generating a barrier.

It blocks every arrow she fires. With another shift, I boost my speed, appearing behind her and slamming a flurry of punches into her back, changing the pitch for physical reinforcement.

Using what I learned in the academy classes, it takes me only a brief moment to find the artifact where she stores her arrows. I rip it from her and shatter it completely, reducing it to splinters with a musical note so sharp it even cracks the ground beneath the mud.

But Elariel is still an experienced elf. She uses the moment to spin around, pulling a mid-sized blade and slicing across my throat. My head is nearly taken clean off as she leaps backward to gain distance and recover.

"Grhhhh—" I growl at her, touching my slashed throat. I have low-tier regeneration, so it’s a nasty injury I can’t heal because I can’t sing anymore.

"Hahaha! Guess you’re not so tough after all! In the end, you’re no match for me, the mighty princess of the elves!" Even though she’s lost her arrows, she conjures one with magic to replace the physical projectiles.

But Elariel just made a fatal mistake. The taste of blood and the intense scent flooding my senses stir something deep in my instincts. I dive under the mud, using magic and my tail to swim through it.

"...!?" Like a predator, my swimming is perfectly silent, creating only faint ripples on the surface, giving Elariel no chance to notice me. My magic signature is nearly completely hidden.

"Wh-Where are you? Hiding? You cowardly little whore! You’re just like that damn mother of yours!! When I find you—"

Before she can finish, I’ve gotten close enough.

I erupt from the mud at extreme speed, sinking my teeth into her thigh. She screams as I bite down harder. The taste of her blood really fucks with my biological instincts.

Like a shark, I thrash my head violently to tear, using my tail and hands to twist my entire body, wrenching her leg with extreme force until I hear the bones grinding, snapping, and breaking.

With that, I dive back under the mud with her entire leg in my mouth. My instincts are screaming now, rationality fading. Beneath the surface, I chew the leg, my teeth sawing and grinding through meat and bone.

I hear the sounds of Elariel’s crying and pained moans, and I feel the vibrations in the mud as she tries to drag herself away. Her blood stains the mud puddle red. Since the depth reaches just above her knees and I’m on the shorter side, the mangled stump of her thigh stays submerged in the muck.

My vision begins to lose color, turning monochromatic and grayish. In exchange, though, my sense of smell expands immensely—not in range, but in detection capability.

As soon as I finish devouring her leg, my body instinctively wants to return to its prey, eager to continue the job. At this point, my rationality is completely gone. All that’s left is prey that pissed me off, and I want it to suffer.

...

...

...

"Lycoris, what happened?!" I ask Lycoris, who’s gasping in pain inside a barrier. I dispel the barrier, worried.

"C-Calypso... A-Aqua... g-go help her..." she says, and I catch a familiar scent.

’High-Density Alchemical Poison... royalty?’ This is an anti-monster venom used by elven royalty to specifically kill monsters too strong to die from normal wounds.

"One moment!" I tell her, touching the wounded area. Using magic, I summon large, dark-green flames that begin to burn away only the poison. The flames cover her entire body.

It’s not a cure, but Lycoris already has high healing power. If I remove the poison, she’ll get better on her own.

’Their hybridization really nerfed their adaptability...’ A weakness Pandora would never have had. Handing Lycoris off to Kaelith, I begin rapidly slithering through the trees, rushing toward the largest fluctuations of magic I can sense.

’This is bad. I can’t believe those two ran off to fight in secret!’ Elves aren’t usually a problem, but any member of royalty carries this damn poison. Those two weren’t ready to face royalty.

"Mud?" I look down at the area that’s become some kind of muddy swamp with felled trees. This isn’t natural; the elven forest is tropical.

"Aqua?" I search for Aqua, but I can’t sense her magic signature. I grow extremely worried. I can’t believe I failed one of Pandora’s daughters like this.

"Aqua?" I hear a low sound and smell blood, so I rush toward it, only to hear crying. I use every ounce of my speed, dreading the worst. But what I see when I finally get close enough isn’t what I expected.

"..." I turn my back. I don’t want to see any more.

"A-Aqua... glad you’re okay..."

"Go away. I’ll come back when I’m done," she says sharply. I can hear the elf crying. By the look of her, I’d say it’s the princess of the elves—the one who briefly studied at the human academy when Pandora became a teacher.

"O-Okay..." For the first time, I feel genuinely intimidated by someone weaker than me. Aqua completely tore off the girl’s limbs, and judging by the damage, they weren’t clean cuts.

They were bites followed by pulling and twisting to rip them off. Horrible wounds that make any recovery difficult and incapacitate movement. But that’s not the most disturbing part.

’Aqua is fucking with her... I knew Aqua was intense... but this is kind of sick.’ I’d completely forgotten. Aqua is still a monster.

And like any monster, her instincts will always boil down to killing, destroying, surviving, and reproducing. Simple, logical, and immutable. Because they’re both hybrids, they’d never shown this side of their attitude so openly.

’She looked at me like I was prey...’ That elf looked desperate for help. Honestly, it’s pitiful she has to be subjected to something sexual in that state.

’Aqua really got pissed about Lycoris getting hurt...’ I don’t know if I should be happy she’s okay or worried that I can hear the words Aqua is saying to the elf.

’Aqua is extremely misogynistic... so weird... she always seemed so much calmer.’ I wonder if Pandora and her family are trying to break every category of crime that exists.

"Why do I have to stand here and listen to this..." Since I can’t leave without her, I stay nearby, but I end up overhearing Aqua’s words, and honestly, as a woman, I’m uncomfortable.

’Does Aqua really think this about women? Or is it just momentary rage?’ Every word she says is worse than the last, and as a woman, it makes me feel small to see she has this deeply warped image of what girls are.

It’s true that futanari are beings proud of having both "genders," so to speak. But seeing Aqua consider that factor something that puts her on a pedestal is extremely disconcerting.

’A Cold Yandere, An Extreme Masochistic Predator who likes Torture, An explosive and impulsive girl with too much power, and a misogynistic, patriarchal, narcissistic predator... what a weird family Pandora built...’ A perfect assessment of her daughters.

"..." Aqua stops talking and starts humming. The effect washes over me, and I recognize it as mild healing and anti-hemorrhaging magic. Looks like she really wants this girl alive so she can keep abusing her.

’Maybe I should retire... I’m too old to deal with girls this chaotic... yeah... I need retirement. Once the war with the elves is over, I’m handing in my resignation and trying to retire...’ I start making future plans following this bizarre encounter.

’I remember hearing Pandora and Delphina talking, saying Aqua developed her worldview based on women being inferior and futanari being superior, with only two categories existing: submissive and dominant... I didn’t know it was literal...’ Her patriarchal misogyny has logic to it.

But it’s wrong logic. Because Pandora is the one who really controls the relationship, not Delphina. I wonder... what would happen if Aqua found out that her worldview about women and about her two mothers is completely wrong.