The child stared at Audrey and raised his blood stained hand towards her.
"I am here to take you back to the estate".
Audrey's brows furrowed as she clenched her fists, this wasn't the first time she had seen blood, not even a dead body could phase her. She stepped forwards confidently, preparing to fight.
"Don't do anything Audrey, I was tasked to be your bodyguard, I can't let you get in danger".
The child tiled his head, his stitched arms dangling unnaturally as the mangled corpse hit the aquarium floor. His lips didn't move and his unnatural eyes bore holes into her. A voice managed to crawl out of his throat, layered, metallic and echoing as if two children were speaking at the same time.
"You're not supposed to be here, miss Audrey".
Audrey froze as she took a good look at the scars of the child, they seem hastily attached together, pinned together with nails.
Hoshimi stared at the body, his hands twitching as the tip of his fingers started to slowly disappear. [He has a lot of mana, too much for a small child]
His eyes narrowed, as a violet glow pulsed in his irises, the child's aura became more visible, like a large flame enveloping his entire body.
Without warning, the child blurred forwards. Like the world itself skipped frames. His small hand whipped at Hoshimi's face. His eyes widened, immediately reacting to the sight and raised his forearms to block the strike.
Impact detonated. His body skidded across the slick tiles, ribs rattling and air crushed from his lungs. [The hell is this power!? No normal human can withstand this much mana forced into their arms, this must be a mutation that strengthens the body]
His arm burned where the child touched, a gaping crater that had gone through his muscles and almost reached his bone.
[Vitae Core]
Hoshimi's arms started to heal back, slowly by slowly, as his tendons started to reattach and his skin started to regenerate.
The child's eyes glowed, green and maroon flaring. His other hand clenched and the corpse on the ground twitched as if it was still alive.
[My spell may not be as potent as Lucy's but at least I can heal myself]
Hoshimi's eyes narrowed at the sight of the boy, his hands stretched out in front of him
The child's stitched frame lurched forwards again, swinging his arms down towards Hoshimi. His joints cracked as he moved, each step sounding wet and wrong.
Hoshimi barely dodged each strike by a single hair, mana burning violet in his eyes as his entire body began to fade away from view.
The boy's head twitched, confused, one eye rolled to stare at Audrey while the other searched for Hoshimi's presence. His lips didn't part, but the layered voice came again, sharper now, words grinding like metal dragged across stone.
"Come with me, miss Audrey, we'll return you to where you belong".
Hoshimi vanished, a violet afterimage snapping through the darkened hall. The air crackled with mana. He reappeared at the boy's side, a cold steel barrel pressing up against the boy's throat.
"Kira, close your eyes".
"Uh-h".
She stumbled on her words as she clenched her fingers and looked away.
The child didn't flinch at the sight. The steel barrel dug into his pale throat, but his maroon-green eyes only widened, rolling in opposite directions like broken compasses.
"You think that will work?" the voice rasped, doubled, metallic. His stitches stretched as his lips twitched into something resembling a grin. "Guns are for men. I am not…men."
Bang
A crimson red color dripped down from the boy's neck, as his body dropped down to the floor with a thud.
Hoshimi stared down at the boy's body with a blank expression.
[I don't care if he's a kid, he killed someone]
The boy's corpse started to twitch, the head lolled, his mouth opening to release a low, animal groan.
"Huh…. isn't that interesting"?
He fired more bullets into the boy's neck, making the hole in his neck wider, as more blood pooled beneath his feet.
"You're barely keeping your brain stem connected with mana".
The boy's hand snapped up faster than sight, reaching out for his gun.
Bang
Bang
Hoshimi pressed his heel into the boy's neck, completely decapitating the boy with a straight face, his head twisting as he stared at Audrey.
"Come on Audrey, let's go back before more of these Frankenstein's monsters keep coming".
Audrey's eyes widened.
"There's more than one"?!
"Yea".
"The hell do you mean there's more than one"!?
Hoshimi swirled his tongue around in his mouth as he looked away from her, acting ignorant.
"And how the hell do you know that there's more than one"?!
Audrey got closer to him, digging her finger into his solar plexus.
Kira sat down in the corner, holding her legs together as her eyes shook, whispering to herself, "When time is slowed to a crawl and every monotonous day bleeds out in unity, we are held hostage of eternity".
The deep blue light peered through the darkness, lighting up the left side of Hoshimi's face. "There was a basement located underneath the estate, a place where your father was probably experimenting with the souls of children".
Silence….
Audrey didn't really look surprised at all.
"You don't really seem… the slightest bit startled".
She held onto herself, her eyes narrowing slightly, looking slightly somber.
"I don't, I always knew there was something wrong with father, I always wondered where these scars really came from", she unbuttoned her top button, the blue shine reflecting off her collarbone. The bottom of her neck had stitches going along it. "I guess I knew deep down that I was always an experiment". Her emerald green eyes shifted into a deep black.
"I wonder"..... Audrey's fingers lingered on the collar seam, tracing the line of the crude stitching like one might touch a memory carved into flesh. "I wonder what father wanted from me".
She looked up at him, staring confidently at him, her eyes glimmered green.
"So tell me, Hoshimi. If I'm stitched together like one of those things… what makes me different from them"?
Hoshimi shrugged, staring at the bright light coming from through the water from the aquarium. "Don't ask me". The tanks hummed in front of him, Hoshimi's eyes reflected off the glass surface. "It's for you to figure out".
"Man is known as the animal that doesn't sleep". Kira rocked in the corner, clawing away at her own skull. "The primordials are necessary, and therefore must exist..But I know that they do not and cannot exist".
The corpse of the child twitched at Hoshimi's boots, headless but not lifeless. His limbs jittered like a puppet yanked by tangled strings. The pool of blood spread wider, seeping into cracks of the tile.
Audrey didn't look at it. Her gaze was locked on Hoshimi. "If you ever find out that I'm like him–like them–-what would you do"?
"I'd shoot you".
Audrey looked down, a faint smile spread across her face, "I thought so".
The boy's mangled hand clawed upwards again, spasming towards Hoshimi's ankle.
"You sure that she will be okay"? Audrey asked, pointing towards Kira.
Hoshimi bent over, patting Kira's head, a soft smile spread across his face as he stared into her eyes.
"Don't worry Kira, it's not your fault. We'll make it through this together".
Kira wiped away the tears on her face, as cheeks still flushed as she clung to him, slightly pulling on his sleeve. "A-are you sure"?
"Of course".
Hoshimi held her hand and pulled her off the cold floor.
Audrey had her arms crossed, looking at him as she narrowed her eyes. "You're feeding her fake lies". She slapped the back of his shoulder and walked past him, making a sudden stop and looked back. "I can't fault you for it either, at least you managed to comfort her, like how you did for me".
Kira yelled out,"HOSHIMI, BEHIND YOU"!
He felt a burning sensation go through his stomach, like boiling hot water was being poured all over him. It felt scalding hot, his pupils dilated as he stared down, a blade stuck out of his stomach, his own blood splattering onto the floor.
Kira's face started to disfigure, her eyes as wide as they could possibly be, almost bulging out of her sockets.
"I-I'll be fine"...
Hoshimi bit onto his lips as he smashed into the person behind him with his elbow, the blade coming out along with the figure.
"Shit, that burns".
Hoshimi pressed his hand onto the wound, preventing any blood from spilling, crimson red spilled out from his mouth.
[Vitae Core]
The injury on his stomach was healed but the scar remained on him, a slightly bulging mark of where the blade once was.
The figure stumbled back into the glow of the tanks.
It was another one. Smaller, thinner, its body warped and bent like it had been broken and reassembled wrong. Its spine jutted at sharp angles beneath too-tight skin, its arms longer than natural, dragging on the slick tiles. Rusted nails jutted from its joints as if hammered in by a cruel child.
Hoshimi immediately lifted his gun, pointing towards the figure.
But the figure already got close to him, grabbing the barrel of the gun, ripping it out of his hand with surprising strength and throwing it to the floor.
Hoshimi flinched slightly, his composure slightly off as he wiped away the dried blood that remained on his lips.
Its head tilted, neck jerking with insectile twitches. No eyes, only sockets stitched shut with crude black thread. Still, it tracked them, sensing.
Hoshimi dashed towards the figure, repeatedly landing blows onto its throat, as it leaned backwards, dragging its blade–a warped, jagged shard of iron embedded within its arm–across the tiles, flying straight towards Hoshimi from below.
He barely dodged the strike, the blade slicing through the top layer of skin on his chin. "This thing is way too fast".
[Must be another mutation]
The creature shrieked. A sound like glass grinding against glass.
It lunged.
Hoshimi vanished, violet afterimages scattering across the hall. The creature's blade cleaved through water-filled glass, splitting a tank in half. A torrent of seawater exploded outwards, fish thrashing, the lights flickering and shorting.
Kira screamed, shielding her face from the deluge.
Hoshimi reappeared above the creature, coming down onto it with a long thin cord in his hand, jumping onto its broad shoulders and strangling it with the black rope.
"Don't get too comfortable".
The creature clawed away at its neck, it staggered, reaching out for breath. Its eyes bulged out, its long arms reaching for Hoshimi. A flame bursted forth from the tips of its fingers.
[Two mana types?! The patriarch is a madman. He's merging souls together, forcing children to have a copy of a reincarnation]
Hoshimi pulled harder at the cord, piercing through the creature's throat, as the large and lanky creature dropped to the floor with a thud.
He walked past the creature and grabbed the gun that sat on the floor.
Bang, Bang, Bang.
Each bullet punched through the creature's neck. It laid on the ground motionless. The stench of rot and rust filled the air.
"Come on, let's run out of here".
"Hey, Hoshimi, since they want me to go back to the estate so bad, why don't I just follow them"?
His eyes narrowed at her question. "What makes you so sure that they're not just going to tear you apart instead"?
He grabbed Kira and Audrey by the collar, easily lifting them up, mana gathered at his feet, every step he took, the mana acted like springs, propelling him forwards even faster.
The wind rushed past Audrey's face, it was like riding a sports car, the aquarium around them started to blur as he got faster and faster.
Then he suddenly stopped
A wall of creatures blocked their path, like a blockade.
Audrey landed onto the floor, puffing up her chest, swallowing as much air as she could possibly gather into her lungs.
Hoshimi looked back at Kira.
"Close your ears".
Then a loud scream came out of her mouth, like a wave came forth, knocking all the creatures back into the wall, the glass started to crack.
Audrey smiled a little, like she was having fun for the first time.
[It's still impressive to see how the Shaw family's technique gets interpreted by different people, I still wonder how someone who isn't from the family even learnt it with just looking. Unless you're a prodigy like Lucy]
The glass shattered in a storm of shards. Water poured down like a collapsing sky, schools of silver fish and sea creatures thrashing around their ankles as if the ocean itself had been released into the hall.
"Move!" Hoshimi's voice ripped through the roar, his grip tightening on their collars.
He surged forward again, violet afterimages scattering like ghosts behind him. His boots hit tile, water, broken glass, and still the spring of mana kept him balanced, every step a cannon blast.
[Shit, I can't outrun them, I don't have a mutation mana type like they do]
Behind them, the creatures clawed their way upright. Some had bones bent at impossible angles, others had heads half-severed, dangling like marionettes—but they all ran. Their feet slapped the tile in unison, wet and frantic, a chorus of meat and metal.
"How about the other people in this place"!?
"Focus on getting out of this damn place first".
Audrey's chest still heaved from her scream earlier. She wiped water from her eyes, set her jaw, and yelled, "Hoshimi, break the glass!"
"What—?"
"Break it!" She twisted in his grip, pulling free before he could stop her. Her shoes splashed hard into the rising tide of seawater. She turned back, lungs inflating like a furnace. "Sound travels faster in water".
Another scream burst from her throat, sharper this time cracked the glass, creating a rush of water that chased behind them, she screamed again, another burst rushed through the water, throwing all of the creatures backwards, her voice honed like a blade instead of a wave. The glass in the next hall ahead spider-webbed, cracking open into an exit.
Then the morning sun came into view, people rushed past them like a blur, Hoshimi couldn't really make out the people's faces, just the two of them.
He wiped the sweat off his forehead, the sound of people screaming drowned into the background. "Damn it, I'm tired".
A buzzing came from Audrey's pockets, an annoying ringtone, as she pulled out her phone and pressed it against her ear.
"Miss Audrey, where have you gone"?
It was the sound of Tian, the head butler.
Her eyes looked around the panicking zoo, wondering what she should tell him.
"I'm at a shopping mall".
"Well, there may be no polite way to say this but your father was just murdered".