Dante's voice slithered through the silence like smoke in her ears. "Look at it, Beatrice. A masterpiece of failure… no, your failure. Tell me, does your heart still remember the taste of its teeth sinking through your ribs?"
Beatrice's breath trembled. Her bare feet slipped slightly on the steel cold floor as she adjusted her stance.
The thing before her was quivering in excitement, its ragged chest convulsing with a hiss that sounded almost like laughter. But in reality that was just its twisted biology. Each time it inhaled, you could hear the air whistle through torn lungs.
She didn't answer Dante. She couldn't afford to.
The last time she had tried to talk during this fight, it lunged mid-word and tore her throat open.
And Dante had laughed at their suffering.
The rat's back arched. Its jaws split wide, revealing a spiraled tongue lined with thorn-like teeth.
Then... The world blurred. It leapt, faster than a creature its size should ever move. The air screamed between them, it's claws outstretched.. and Beatrice forward to the size.
Metal scraped her knees. Pain course through her from the fresh wound. The claws missed her by inches, carving three deep gouges into the floor. Causing sparks to danced upwards. The rat slammed into the opposite wall, bones crunching on impact.
"Good. You remembered that one." Dante's voice came again, smooth, dripping with amusement. "Reflex over reason. Instinct over intellect. That's how humans survive. But tell me, Beatrice... His tone darkened. "...how long before instinct gives way to fear again?" She knows what he means. But for her own safety as she has come to learn. She began ignored him, forcing herself to focus. The rat was already turning, dragging its claws free from the wall. One of its shoulders hung lower now; she must've dislocated it when it hit. This was good. It was fast and strong but it's body was heavily disfigured and and unstable, the blight it's barley kept it together... This was one weakness common among Type-A Munduses...and one weakness, Beatrice would take full advantage of.
As such Beatrice began to Sprint Dante Voice I her head."Ah yes run away, but something on four legs will always be faster than something on two. Alas you learned this the hard way on your second playthrough, you can't run, you can't hide, so you took advantage of the beast leap, and dodge last minute position yourself just right to injure it before hand, now it follows fast yes, but not fast enough to keep up. But your not a coward are you, your legs take you to a familiar place up the hall, and there it was a closet door open already. Glinting in the light of it you see a tool box, various weapons to use, alongside brooms and mops, among others things too. So you aim for the most effective thing inside of hit a metal pipe with good curve, and heavy weight." Beatrice darted for the fallen pipe at the size of it. Her hands seized it, ignoring the burn of cold metal against her palms.
"Improvised weaponry." Dante narrated with mock reverence. "Ah, humanity's greatest illusion of control. A stick against the inevitable. A toy against extinction."
"Shut up." Her voice was low, shaking, but real. She appreciate D, but when he becomes the Narrator, the story always takes a dark tone eventually and at any given moment. The rat screeched, its single red eye narrowing. Then it charged again, a blur of muscle and rot, as it jump for Beatrice's face.
Beatrice waited until the very last heartbeat. Then she swung with all her might, and anger put into it.
CRACK!!
The sound echoed like thunder. The pipe collided with its jaw, shattering bone and spraying red blood thick and putrid, with it's saliva across the wall. The monster reeled back with a garbled shriek.
Beatrice didn't hesitate though, she knew showing Mercy to these things gets her kill, a such like mad man she swung again, striking the exposed ribs this time, again, again, until her arms screamed and the pipe bent from the force. "AHHHHH FUCKING DIE ALREADY!!" The creature collapsed onto the floor, twitching violently. Her eyes focus health bar above it's head.
[Enemy Health: 70 / 220]
But it wasn't dead. Not yet atleast, but heavily injured nonetheless. A hiss of static filled her ears a she heard expose wires. Then Dante's voice went off again. "Oh, Beatrice… how fascinating you are. That same fragile resolve every cycle. Always breaking, always standing back up. Why do you fight so hard to survive in a world that was built to erase you... Wouldn't death be there easier." She gritted her teeth. "Because you fucking told me to you sadistic contractor."
"Did I?" The voice smiled inside her skull. "No, no. I only gave you instructions. You don't need to follow it you know, freedom is a thing I give willingly. However who wants to play a game where everything comes easily." The rat twitched, and then it lunged again, half-dead but feral. It barreled forward, slamming its mass into her chest.
Beatrice fell back, hitting the ground hard. The pipe clattered away. "Damnit he I fell for his distraction." Hot breath...rank with decay, washed across her face. Its tongue lashed at her throat as she fell back and hit head hard on the metal ground. "NOOOO!!" She screamed, shoving upward with both hands. Her fingers dug into the creature's neck, feeling its sinew thrash beneath her grip, flesh beneath her fingers nails. The claws raked her side. A flash of pain split her body open like lightning.
[HP: 56 / 100]
Dante sighed theatrically. "You're bleeding again. Not that it will be anything new, the more you go and progress, you will come to realize you will bleed alot in this fucked world, Ahhh yes, Always bleeding. Always at the mercy of something bigger till it isn't anymore." Her arms trembled. Her vision blurred. But she didn't let go. She reached deep, pulling every ounce of rage and fear she had left, and twisted. And then that's when everyone heard it, even the rat itself
CRACK!!!...
The rat's neck snapped with a wet crunch.
Its body spasmed, then went still. Beatrice lay there for several seconds, gasping. The air was freezing, but her skin burned with adrenaline.
[Enemy Defeated: +3 EXP]
[Progress: 1 / 30 Munduses Eliminated]
A metallic chime echoed in her mind, it was her voice again, the voice Virgil. Her breath came out in heavy bursts of steam.
Slowly, she pushed the carcass off her chest and sat up, hands trembling.
"Beautiful." Dante murmured. "There it is, the survivor herself, you always had it in you, no all creatures does, the primordial, the feral, the primitive the voice of instinct. That fragile, hollow victory that crawls up on you when blood needed to be shedded the most. The same look as a dying animal that doesn't yet realize it's has cross the road of death, but took a U-Turn just in time." She spat on the floor. "Your are an absolute asshole D.... Ahhh, what kind of fucking toturial is this!?"
She said with trembling hands, and Dante replied. "Me and asshole, no, nooo, NOOOOO!! I am merley the narrator, the will of the world given form, as the will it is my job to lead events forward, just as you want kill to survive in this world, all living things is also given the right to turn the tides. Alas you are still green behind the ears, soon though, the more your progress, you come to learn that struggle is a gift most need but never get in abundance. But here there is nothing but struggle and strife. Suffer, bleed, cry, and despair, in the end every scar will dutifully rewarded. You can feel can you, the power surging within, small yes, but it was power earn from the death of the oppress." Dante voice rippled with delight. "I feel your pulse slowing. I feel the ache in your lungs. I feel the little tremor in your fingers that says you know this isn't over. There is something poetic about the illusion of progress is it not!?." He continue.
"Or is your pride so shallow and weak that you want to give up now, go ahead, say the words I give up, prove your siblings right, that you are and will always be a nobody. A stein to the earth, a blight to their reality. Or will stand, will you continue, prove them wrong, prove me wrong, embrace progress at the cost suffering. So what if you lose, so what if you die, is it truly a lost if you know you eternal do-overs, even without a proper save-point!?" At these words, Beatrice stood. Her knees wobbled, but she forced herself to walk. "Shut up, no one tells me what my limit is, not even you." The hall ahead stretched into darkness, the red lights dimming as if consumed by the shadows.
She stepped over the rat's corpse, its body already bubbling with black rot. Within seconds, it melted into a tar-like residue that sizzled on the floor.
[Environmental Hazard: Blight Residue Detected]
The air grew thicker. Breathing stung. Each exhale echoed, lonely and small. "You see." Dante continued, his tone taking on the cadence of a sermon. "This is not a world of easy reward." But despite the pain Beatrice fought true it."
"aaaAAGHUUAAAGGGAAAH!!... Her scream echoed into the hall's the blight...the rot...the abominable corruption that steins this world and all that lives. By default she should have fall, but that is not the case for her, she is special, unlike those who fell to the rot before her, as her constitution was unique, an anomaly.
Genetically all thing's of the flesh seek compatibility, and all living things have certain computability and reaction to the Blight.
Type - A infected, Feral Class Munduses with less than 5% compatibility as such they as feral and mindless, and extremely unstable be the rot like parasite that is within them.
Type - B infected, Angel Class Mundus holder with over 15% compatibility but peaked at 35%. They are usually mutated heavily, a such really gigantic and Amorphous looking, as such more blood thirsty for the flesh of the living. They can control lesser Type - A Munduses.
Type - C infected, Special Class Mundus with more than 35% compatibility but peaked at 55%. These Mundus are special, they have power that defy all reason and logic of order. Not only are they intelligent, but have special abilities and can control both Type A's and Type B's. They can even merge with lesser Mundus and create a Hive mind with them in charge in utter control. As such extremely dangerous, one should run if encountered.
Type - D infected, Demigod Class Munduses, with than 55% compatibility, But Peaked at 99%. The most rarest Munduses to date that is known. So far they are only 10 in existence. Each a holder of the Fragments of God. As such Each Holds 1 of God's ten Authorities that bend and manipulate the cosmic order of the world. Not only are they highly intelligent their Hive Mind is so complex they can control and spread the blight and mutate it in such a way that can cause thing's know as Zones. Mini living pockets in reality that represent their will and touch upon the world.
And then there is the finale... The Ultimate...
Type - F infected, Divine Class Mundus. With a perfect compatibility. As of now, she has been born. Gods replacement, a being that is one of a kind, a being with perfect compatibility. God has been fragmented, his glass shatter, his essence poured and leaked into the world like great ocean covering the surface. As such God needs a replacement. She is his Apostle chosen yet incomplete. A Mundus that can absorbed Blight Rot passively after death, after killing the Blight taking all their powers, and memories. If the world is now distinct she is the void that most cleanse it.
"The Heavenly Blight...the Cosmic Void given flesh. The Goddess of Rot Beatrice... Shudder in pain, take in all that distinct itself, and go towards perfection."
[Type - A Mundus essence has been absorbed, you have gained (Slow Healing) as a trait]