In order to do that, she ran. Past the walls of Asteria’s manor, past the neatly trimmed backyard arranged by Gunther, past the wooden fence that separated the properties on this side of the street from the small forest behind them, and into the fancy hunting grounds for the nobility who lived in the proximity. Why were there a bunch of trees in the middle of a sprawling city, when there was a forest not that far from the gates? She didn’t really know, nor had she any desire to learn. All that mattered was that this grove was quite possibly the most convenient place to exist behind all those houses, since they allowed her to hide amongst the trees, while also making life that much harder for the chunky search party that was undoubtedly still after her. And, best of all, if a fight did start, it would be impossible for all of the knights to attack her, giving her at least a small chance to survive to see the rising sun on the morning. But that was a big if, followed by a bazillion more ifs. Everything depended on if she would be able to fend the knights off if they managed to fight her if they managed to make their way into these woods if they were able to follow the trail she had definitely left behind. It was ifs stacked upon ifs stacked upon ifs. But Kary didn’t matter. As improbable as it was, there still was a chance that she would survive, and she would fight her hardest to ensure Asteria wouldn’t come back to a grave.
Once she had reached deep enough into the hunting grounds for the rich, she finally allowed herself to stop for a moment, to catch her breath, even if only for a split second. It had been a long time since she had been forced to run at such outrageous pace, and she was not prepared to a second round of tag after that unfortunate first encounter right after she had been dropped into those ruins a few months back. Back then she ran for her life to the point of exhaustion, and that had almost coated her life, though, since she was still here, alive and kicking, it was safe to assume that everything had worked out okay in the end. She was so high in adrenaline at the time that she couldn’t even remember how she had managed to defeat the beast that had lunged at her under the cover at night, only that she had managed to subdue it before fainting from exhaustion. Through pain and desperation, she had learned that pushing her body to its limits right at the start wouldn’t be a smart idea, so this time she decided to think a little bit more about what she was doing, getting the brakes she needed and readying herself for the worst. Wiping the sweat off her brow, she leaned against a sturdy tree close by, closing her eyes and trying to filter out any sounds that she didn’t care about, from the ruffling of the leaves to the screams of fear in the distance. Those were the things she didn’t need to worry about, the stuff that wasn’t actively hunting her down at this very moment, and so there was no need to spend her gray mass on thinking about them. What she wanted was to hear the knights approaching, their heavy footsteps on the ground, their bold march breaking branches and scaring off animals, the scraping sounds of the many parts of their armor interacting with each other, those were the sounds. she needed to pay attention to. Anything else was better of just gone from her mind.
For a good while, she heard nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that she wouldn’t expect to hear deep into the woods at such a late hour. Animals slept in their covers, insects buzzed with energy, and trees shook with the wind. Kary wished the entire rest of the night would remain just as peaceful, but alas, it was obvious that such wishful thinking would bear no fruit. Just as she was starting to regain her breath and her anxious heart had begun to settle down, just as moon far up above graced her little spot amidst the trees with it gentle pale, light, she heard it. She heard . Marching through the little forest without a care in the world, their hard boots compressing the soft dirt beneath their feet, their faces still hidden beneath their metal helmets, cold eyes sweeping through the same-y trees and canopies, searching for the one person they had been following for the past twenty minutes or so, swords at the ready, their sharp ears keen to the myriad sounds going off all around them, just waiting for Kary to give them the slightest hint about her location. If she just touched the bark of a tree slightly wrong, if she stepped on the wrong spot by the slightest of margins, if she breathed too hard, if she scratched her body, all it took was one singular sound for the squad of five knights to immediately flock to her location. That was how they had managed to follow her all the way here, after all, and that would be the way she would inevitably die. And so, patiently, coldly, they waited, staring into the void in front of them, sitting completely still while they waited for their opponent to eventually make a fatal mistake. They knew it would happen, give it enough time, it was just a matter of when, and when the seekers have no knowledge of human concepts like hunger of tiredness, the only option left for the hider was to pray to any number of gods they believed in.
Credit where credit is due, however, Kary had been doing a pretty good job on not outing herself right off the bat, instead trying to remain as quiet as possible as she regained some of the strength she had temporarily lost after that sudden burst of energy that had allowed her to even make it this far. To put it mildly, she was tired, although far from exhausted, though this little break she had earned herself was very much appreciated, giving her time not only to regain her composure, but also to think of ways to use her abilities and strengths once a fight broke out. And she knew a fight would break out before morning arrived, it was just a matter of how much time she would be able to buy for herself before the big confrontation. Ideas swirled through her mind, the good, the bad, and everything in between, just a swirl of nonsensical and disjointed ideas flooding her system, her brain working on overtime to give her something that would allow her to keep her head right where it currently comfortably sat. She brought up her stats, analyzed what she had improved on what she could use, reading her skills over and over again in a futile attempt to stumble upon something that she could use right now, with no practice at all. There were some good contenders, skills that could be very powerful should they be properly applied, but that was exactly the problem the girl was now facing: she didn’t know how to use her skills. She had never taken the time to properly study them or even try them out. While she did menial tasks for the guild and trained with her sword diligently day in and they out, both the seemingly very powerful skills she had been granted from the get go, and the not-so-impressive skills she had gotten over time had been gathering dust in the corner, neglected so badly they might even reject her should she try to use them just out of spite.
Staring into the nothingness, she reflected about the poor decisions and completely unreasonable and unavoidable things that had led her to this very place, at this very moment, completely unprepared to what would probably be the hardest fight she had so far where she actually had a shot at winning. She was shaking, her palms sweaty, eyes wavering as she fought to keep the emotions threatening to overflow at bay. With Death hanging its scythe just shy of her pale neck, the temptation to just give in to the despair of knowing of her own inevitable death was strong, but she hadn’t gotten all the way to this point to just give up like this, without even trying to put up a fight. She hadn’t fought weird monsters right after arriving in this world, or trained like a maniac while she had the tutoring of the best, or continued to train even after parting ways with them, honing her abilities and improving what little confidence she had in herself, just to die a dog’s death. No, there was simply too much she had achieved already, and too much, way too much that she still wanted to achieve, for her to simply sit there sailing for the blades to close in on her neck, thinking self-pityingly that she had already tried her best. That simply wouldn’t do. Even if it meant prolonging what had been already set in stone, even if it meant she would have to experience pain, even if it meant that she would be unrecognizable by the end of it all, she would pick up her sword and fight till the bitter end, knowing truly that she had done everything she could.
With newfound resolution, she gripped her sword as tightly as she could, staring into her own reflection on the blade, trying to calm her racing heart, her fluttering eyelids, her twitching cheeks, her trembling legs, the many instincts that simply told her to get away from this place. It was not that she didn’t want to, but it was simply that she knew that it wouldn’t matter whiter she ran or not, those bastards would catch up to her, eventually. She had seen them on the street, knew how unnatural and inhuman they were, knew intrinsically that those roaming the forest were, in fact, just as human as the Pinchers she had pierced with her blade, and just as cunning as the remnant she had first fought. She could hear them in the distance, searching for her, narrowing her position down, getting closer and closer. From where she stood, she could hear the faint sound of metal in the distance, the dull thud of footsteps still far away, barely audible over the sound of her own thumping heart. Taking slow, deep breaths, ever so slowly she came up with a plan that might work, though it would require no small amount of luck. It was her best bet, and, as such, she had nothing to lose going for it… well, nothing except her own life, though she had already come to terms with the fact that there might be no more Kary when the Sun rises, and thus had reached the conclusion that continuing to stall for time would only leave her more anxious, while at the same time probably not causing any serious impediments to the search party.
Meanwhile, the five knights tasked with finding and ending the little noble who had fled before they could reach her continued their search without a single word, walking as a single organism through the woods, unimpeded by the rough terrain and poor visibility, in a scene akin to something one would find in an old oil painting from a time long gone, the group marching through the night with their helmets hung low, signaling each other without uttering a single thing, ears on the ready for anything that might direct them in the right direction. After quite some time had already passed without a lead for them to follow, a reasonable person might conclude that the knights would be giving up soon, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, for they had orders to follow, and orders they would follow till their dying breath, even if it meant aimlessly looking for a small target in the middle of the night amidst the trees. Eventually they would get their chance to get things done and return to the main crowd of dissidents, their jobs done to perfection, leaving them with enough energy still to help overthrow the oppressive government that had repeatedly refused to listen to the rationale of the more able-minded people within nobility, instead choosing to coop inside their estates, refusing to engage with the progressively more aggressive empire next door, raising razes with no stopping in sight, trampling on the people in order to keep things just as they had always been, scheming their maleficent plans to squeeze each and Evey single copper coin from every person and every service they could get their grubby hands on. It was to put an end to this endless list of atrocities attached to these trash-like beings who liked to waltz around town as if they owned the place that the knights had gathered up their swords, and it was for that reason they had no qualm about squashing these men and women, much like they had squashed anyone who might have posed a threat to them and their wealth. It was only a matter of time before the piling garbage needed to be taken out, a natural development of the way things were going, with the growing dissent of every parcel of the population, and these knights would ensure everything went according to the plans. Everything they needed was a cue, a slip up from their target, a little sound in the silent forest, a little mistake that, going by the human nature of the noble they pursued, was bound to happen sooner or later.
It would be gleeful to them, had they any emotions left to display, then, that the moment this hunt was decided came without the need for them to force it into existence, in a fluid and quaint manner, just like they had predicted, for the enemy had made its move, and, with that, revealed their position for all to see… or, should I say, hear, in this case. Like moths attracted to a particularly bright flame, the heavily armored soldiers hastened their steps, moving in as straight of a line as they could to get to where the sound of their target had come from. The trees were barely a hindrance to them, the thin and sharp branches inoffensively scratching their shining armor, its silver gleam partially obstructed by the trees’ canopies blocking the moonlight unadulterated by such small things. The group walked in perfect formation, their pacing perfectly synchronized even with the coarse and uneven dirt beaten their feet, a truly mesmerizing display. Such a shame that the only other person who bore witness to their inhuman coordination was currently much too concentrated on not getting caught while jumping from tree to tree like a monkey, taking great care to be as silent as she could, choosing the sturdiest and biggest branches she could find to make her way through the densely packed woods, using the exact same strategy as the group of knights to make her way to them before they could take the initiative. After all, if they were going to be this loud in such a quiet forest while trying to kill an innocent person, they shouldn't mind getting ambushed too much, right? At least that was what Kary thought.
Wiping the beads of sweat forming on her face, she watched from a safe distance as the knights mechanically moved through the forest, almost like robots who had been given specific paths to follow to a specified destination, that is, the place Kary originally had stopped to rest. It was terrifying to think what would have happened to her should she not have enough awareness to get the hell out of there, the many ways she could have been killed by these fiends, the many atrocities they seemed capable to commit in order to justify their own existence. She might even think of them as pitiful, were they not trying their hardest to end her life. But that wasn’t the time for speculation, for these useless thoughts could wait until she was out of danger… either that, or she would end up dead in a ditch somewhere. Her chances didn’t look particularly good, with the fight being five against one and all that, but there wasn’t really another choice for her to pick, now was there? She could only fight to the bitter end, and that was precisely what she would do. Patiently, silently, trebling slightly out of fear and maybe something else, she waited for the knights to get closer, like a mother awaiting her sons arrival just behind the door, a warm hug ready for their arrival, though in this case it might be more appropriate to cold blade of iron in her hands instead. It felt heavy and slimy, a completely alien object standing right before her eyes, despite Kary having spent almost her every waking moment close to this weapon after she had been gifted it. Now that she had to actually fight with it — not just fight, but struggle to the death no less —, though, it felt… wrong. Very, very wrong. How could it not feel out of place, when the girl knew what she would have to use it for? Just thinking about taking a human life was enough to make her sick, even if she had already shoved the bizarre knights approaching her location into the same category as the monsters who had previously tried to kill her, it was impossible to think of them as anything other then humans, at least at a subconscious level. They still looked human, and that was enough to snuff out what little bravery she had.
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Not that it meant that she would halt her attacks. After all, she couldn’t simply offer her head just like that. No, no, that wouldn’t be right, now wouldn’t it? If she was going to go down, then she should at least keep her dignity while doing so, which simply meant giving it her all in the inevitable fight. And that was exactly what she did. With her sword in hand and a small pebble she had gathered from the ground on the other, she observed their march from up above, intently staring at their armors, looking for any vulnerabilities she could explore. After all, just because she had some probably flashy skills under her belt and some amount of training, that didn’t mean she was able to freely cut to whatever type of metal had been used to craft those plates. She would need to be as precise as a neurosurgeon if she wanted to live. Well, not like dwelling on this for too long would help, anyway. It was better to just try and see. With a shallow sigh, she crouched low, gripping tight her sword, her ticket to safety, as she readied herself to throw the little stone in her other hand. Just as the group of knights began to turn around in search for the sudden sounds from close by, it flew through the air, much too fast for the almost zombified men to comprehend, hitting the closest one square on the head, making quite the nice sound and leaving a small dent on its big, almost oversized helmet. Everything from this point on would be a battle against time and against Kary’s many imperfections, a struggle to end these monsters before they could end her.
As the knights were all looking around, confused as to the origin of the sudden stone, Kary very carefully sneaked until she was on what she had judged to be the best position for a drop down, and, of course, dropped right onto the ground, right on top of the knights who were still looking for her. Feet landing square on the helmet of the same guy she had pelted moments before. For a brief moment, the world stood at a standstill, neither the knights nor the fallen girl making any moves, wholly ignoring the state of the world behind them, back at the streets, where chaos still reigned. Right then and there, in the middle of trees arranged to make a nice environment for rich people to play in, it almost seemed like this conflict could just be solved through diplomatic means. With how calm and collected the knight were at the sudden appearance of their target, it almost seemed like they would be open to talk. Maybe express their surprise, their contempt, maybe wonder if their parterre in crime was okay, or if the girl standing with one foot firmly planted on one of their comrade’s head, sword in hand and an expression capable of sending even the deadliest of monsters scattering back to their hide-y holes, was really going to fight with all of them. For a snippet of time so diminutive none of those taking part on it could have ever realized the potential for negotiations, the option was there to be explored. And then things devolved into pure, primal chaos, the knights most basic instinct overwritten with orders to attack and neutralize the threat that had come crashing from above. Self preservation mattered little if actively ignoring it meant their mission would be successfully completed.
In a time frame shorter than what took Kary to reorient herself after her fall, the four still standing knights were already lunging at her, swords in hand, ominous bloodlust emanating from the empty shell that were their bodies, their run robotic and almost mesmerizing, in a messed up way. Whatever these men had gone through, it had quite clearly affected their whole being, though the girl in the middle of all of this didn’t quite have the time to think about such things. No, right now, she was simply trying not to be turned into a pincushion. Although the knights moved and acted like soulless machines, they were still pretty damn fast, so much so that the one singular moment of miscalculation that forced Kary to take an tiny little bit of extra time to get back into the action was more than enough for the hunks of steel to force her into a purely dodging position, not even giving her the opportunity to defend or parry the incoming strikes. After all, when surrounded like this, how in the world is one supposed to fend off one attacker without being immediately mauled by the rest? The answer was to simply not try to engage at all, simply dodging left and right, up and down, trying to find an opening in which to make a move. As Kary frantically moved her body to save her life, she could feel the sharp swords swooshing past her, her whole body operated solely on instincts as her eyes tried to find any way to break the perfect formation they had formed around her.
That was not the visitation she had predicted she would be in at all, but by now her only choice was to roll with it and make adjustments on the fly, something made that much harder by the quartet of knights cooperating to bring about her end, with the space to play along limited not only by the encirclement made by them but also by the big pile of metal scattered on the ground. In the bride moments she could focus on anything other than staying out of their reach, her mind failed to find anything she could exploit. There was the terrain, the gaps in the armor, the laying man on the ground, all of which could be used to strategist should the enemy be a human susceptible to human feelings and sensations. She could try to throw dirt at the gap in their helmet to throw them off, or try to aim for the gaps in the armor, or to try and threaten to crush the knocked out man lying on the ground, but she doubted any of these would actually work, either because she wasn’t proficient enough with the sword or because the men standing in front of her simply didn’t care about the needs of the flesh or the feelings of camaraderie a normal soldier might harbor. Such things were needed for the completion of their tasks, and thus discarded. She needed to think of something else, something that would work with these husks of metal and killing intent, all the while desperately dodging their attacks, something that she could not keep doing forever. She could already feel her movements becoming more sloppy, the number of scratches in her leather armor increasing in frequency as the time passed. If she didn’t manage to find a solution in the near future, then all of this effort she had put on this fight would have been for naught, and she couldn’t have that, now could she?
Fueled by sheer adrenaline and a increasing desire for survival, her gray matter worked overtime, going through her skills and the knowledge she had acquired over time in order to find anything that would grant her an opportunity to snag victory right from the hands of these undead knights. These multiple disjointed trains of thought being processed simultaneously kept burning her brain matter until she finally experienced the bitter taste of steel with her pale flesh. Pain flared up almost immediately, her still unaccustomed body flinching away from the blade digging down at her arm. Tears piling in front of her eyes, she stumbled to the side just in time to not have her head separated from her body by another sword strike, her blurry vision barely managing to keep up with the constant barrage of ill intent directed at her. All it took was one small mistake, one little misstep, for the cuts and scratches to amp up in number, the sharp edges digging deeper and deeper into both her limbs and whatever was left of her armor, already a tangled mess of leather cut and minced together in an incomprehensible manner.
Kary was afraid. She wanted to just fall onto the floor and cry in fetal position, as if that would make all her problems disappear in the blink of an eye, though they probably would, for the split second she would remain alive and breathing. Although she wanted to question the gods laughing at her from up above what in the world she had done to deserve such a fate, her desperate mind didn’t allow her, her body much too busy following its natural stints in order to keep on living. In a way, her own subconscious rejected her desire to let go of everything, still clinging to that last bit of hope that had yet to be extinguished, a fading flame amidst the strongest of winds, holding on to its source in a final attempt to keep on shining, burning itself alive to keep on going for just a moment longer. It didn’t matter that she was going to die, it didn’t matter that it would probably be the most painful thing she would ever experience, it didn’t matter that she would never see Asteria again, it didn’t even matter that she wouldn’t ever realize the dream she had begun aspiring towards once the realization she was in a new, ripe to be explored world settled in. All she needed was to keep on moving, even if it consumed her whole, even if there would be no future for her afterwards, she would give her all… no, she would give much more than her all to kill everyone in this forest, regardless of how much of their humanity still remained.
In a last act of defiance, she tried using her skills, the ones she had been given as soon as she been unceremoniously dropped into this messed up land, before immediately neglecting her up until the moment she had been forced to flee into the woods. Had she not decided to check what skills she had and what in the world they did, awl… let’s just say that whatever resolve she still had left wouldn’t have had the chance to be born. She didn’t even remember if she had ever actually used any of her active abilities, or if they had just been piling dust in the corner all this time, waiting patiently for her to decide to use them. Well, that moment had arrived, and her complete lack of understanding of the magic system had come back to bite her in the ass. Running through the hail of swords and momentarily breaking the formation around her, Kary rushed to the fallen knight, crouching just behind him while keeping an eye for the approaching four knights, in much the same way what she presumed to be their eyes were locked dead on onto her. From the top of her head, she tried remembering the names of the skills she had revised just earlier, and, even though she remembered they were pretty… well, not easy, but definitely not hard for her to remember, she could not for the life of her (quite literally, one might add) remember what they were called. Heart beating faster and faster, she focused both mind and body into recalling at least one of the many skills she had been granting, her whole world disappeared as the seconds stretched into endless infinities, the whole world grinding by painfully slowly, her own forgetfulness getting her angry at herself. She could see the knights approaching, their bloody swords ready to strike her down,, uncaring about their comrade lying in front of her, protecting her while she stared into the void, eyes wide open, directed straight to the knights and yet going right through them, as if they were never there, a mere inconvenient at best in her efforts to remember something that she should, for all intents and purposes, have already memorized.
It sure took a while, at least compared to what it should, but just before she became minced meat, a little word popped into her mind. Two words, in fact, that when combined made what probably was her most busted ability, the power to shape and toy with one of the components at the bey core of a human body. Their bones, the thing that kept everything neat and straight and not collapsed into a pile of flesh and organs. Had she the time, Kary would probably take her time thinking about whee to strike in order to be the most resource-efficient, but, in front of the cold steel approaching her neck as if it was controlled by a higher being with a particular taste for blood, the only thing she could think of was to kill the
coming for her as fast as she could. And so, she concentrated on herself, deep within her body, calling forth whatever the heck Mana was, going by both her gut feeling and whatever little she could remember of her impromptu lessons with that one mage girl she had befriended during her journey to the capital. Reaching for… something hidden withing herself, the world seemed to fade into the background, time once again grinding to a halt as the only thing Kary could see and perceive was something amorphous, flowing through her body like blood, and yet possessing no physical appearance, its course unperceptive to the human eye. Although she could not confirm anything, she had a hunch that these were exactly what she needed, the final piece for her to be able to finally be able to make use of the abilities she had been granted the opportunity to make good use of. Without putting too much thought into it, she tried to concentrate on the image of the knight lunging at her, its form, the body hidden beneath the carcass of metal, the bones further hidden within, protected by both steel and flesh. She pictured his skull, more notably the back of it on the inside, the bone extending like a pike, perforating the brain, meeting with the frontal part of the bone while branching out to cause more damage. If she could do that, then there might be a chance… nah, scrap that, she needed to do it.
Gushing out Mana at every direction with almost no care in the world as to how much was spent, Kary was all of a sudden thrown back into reality, just in time to take a peek at the insides of the helmet the knights were wearing, his sword so close now she could feel her body involuntarily trying to move back and the side, the tip of the monster’s sword kissing her neck, just before the mass of steel to suddenly fall forward, momentum carrying it past the distraught girl, the heavy armor hitting her on the shoulder, the sudden jolt of pain making the girl let out a screech of agony as she was sent tumbling back together with the armor. It hurt. Way more than she thought it would, way more than what she had thought was the limit for her before blacking out, way more than past her would ever presume her to be able to endure. It hurt. In a way unimaginable for her, as if her whole body had been set on fire before being thrown into a shredder, a sensation much to painful for it to have been caused solely by the dying knight. It felt as if she had never truly experienced pain until this very moment, her entire body screaming for her to do something, except… she didn’t know what to do, what was causing all this pain, what could she do to make it stop. All she could do was let silent tears flow through her wounded face, the salt flaring up the cuts she had received during the fight, a fight, mind you, that was still not over, with the three other knights all getting within strike distance. Amidst the severe pain that plagued her, breaking her concentration and threatening to send her once and for all to the realm of dreams, she tried doing the same thing to the other three knights, only to receive no feedback at all.
Eyes wide in terror, she tried rolling away from the knights, her brain racing to understand what the heck had just happened, and, while she successfully managed to fend off one of the strikes, the other two still found their mark, awkwardly puncturing her lower back and backside of her leg, sending renewed pangs of agony through her nervous system, making it harder and harder to keep track of the fight. Her vision was blurry, though if it was due to tears or the eminent fainting, Kary didn’t know, nor had she the brainpower to keep track of. All she knew was that she either killed these monsters standing in front of her, or she died. No sugarcoating, no euphemisms, either she killed, or she died, and she wasn’t quite so sure about the latter option anymore. Although she had anticipated her eminent death, now that things had reached this point, she was quite sure she wasn’t ready to leave the mortal realm once again, and, as such, she did one last gamble, with her life on the line. Closing her eyes for what might very well be her last time, she reached deep within her, past all the pain, all the blood painting her fair skin red, all the metallic sounds of the knights reaching out for her, she tried to once again get into that mental space she had reached before, staring into the abyss of magic she could not understand, drawing out whatever power remained yet untapped, bringing forth everything she had the right to, and some more that she didn’t have, overclocking her systems in one last, desperate attempt at survival. She could feel her lungs burning up, her skin itching and flaring, her insides feeling like they had been filled with acid until her body was left bloated, her five senses failing in quick succession. The last thing she saw before promptly passing out from… well… everything she had gone through, was the onslaught of system notifications at the bottom of her eyes, its contents much too blurred for her to interpret, though she instinctively knew what they meant.
Whether she lived to see the next day or nor, whether her injuries would cause more problems down the line should she survive, whether she would be able to adventure again in the future, in that moment, none of those things mattered. Just the satisfaction of winning hits struggle was enough to leave her contempt, although not quite happy. For tonight, she allowed herself to sleep without worries, without dreams, just her and the night blending into one singular being.