Much scarier

You feel 5 claw marks appear on your back, the wound searing into your very core as Fenri slashes at you, twisting midair and landing on the wall in front of you. Time seems to slow as you take in her current appearance, her current state equal parts beautiful and horrifying to you. Your monster senses view no major change to her physically aside from her muscles tightening and her canines extending by a hair. Your human eyes, however depict a different scene, the holy power wrapped around her altering her attire completely.

You see a pair of white glowing wolf ears resting atop her head while her arms are now clad in white fur, her hands ending in paws with holy claws extending out from them. Most of her clothes have burned away from the white flames, instead replaced with fur pelts giving her the appearance of an ancient hunter from the neolithic era while a long wolf tail of pure holy magic flows out between her legs. Whatever skin she has exposed softly burns with translucent white flames, yet you see no signs of damage to her from her own magic, the flames serving as a defensive coat against any dark type monster that dares touch her body.

You want to scream.

This mess was the result of your show of mercy, opting to keep her **** instead of dead. Rather than having Fenri's true self wake up after you knocked her out, you'd inadvertently released what little resistance the spell controlling her had on her body. Now in complete control, the mind control spell had forcibly activated a skill you doubted Fenri even knew about to fulfill the orders given to it. Every inch of her body was clad in magical armor, her claws burned your skin worse than Elmeria's voice, and you were already tired out. Despite that, your eyes are fixated on her legs, the two of them being the most eye catching thing about her power up.

Your monster senses could detect when she leapt at you. She propelled herself forward using nothing but her arms and you could sense both her legs were still crushed by your previous spell. When she struck you, you could sense they were still broken. It was only when she landed on the wall in front of you that you saw the mangled humps of meat that were her legs set themselves in place faster than even your body. You shudder, realizing the worst case scenario has arrived.

Fenri's new form had regenerative abilities.

That previous jump was faster than when she was earlier, and you have faith her speed was even higher now that her legs were healed. The absurd pain tolerance that let you tank any injury without flinching was gone, the searing pain of holy magic enough to give even you pause. She was no longer holding back against you now that you were a top priority target. Nothing you could say would stop her with her main consciousness gone. You had a tenth of your magic left, and one of your arms was still dismembered.

This was bad.

Time no longer stalls as Fenri leaps off the wall and slashes at your newly regenerated arm, 5 long gashes running from your hand to your shoulder as you howl out in pain. You thought you could handle it, but it seems direct application of holy magic was far worse than passive application from Elmeria's voice. You're in too much pain to even counterattack as she lands next to you and swings at your back just as your arm heals. You can't even do anything as she suddenly appears in front of you, her claws slashing from your left hip to right shoulder in a broad stroke. How fast was she?

The cuts were too shallow to kill you and healed in a second, but the pain left you too stunned to even cast a spell while your body was too sluggish to dodge. She only gets faster as she slashes at your body, applying a new cut to your body before the first can heal. You clench your teeth and shout in exasperation, using instinct magic to reshape the fog around you into spikes, forcing Fenri to leap backwards. You're puzzled why she'd even bother to dodge, only to realize that her mind controlled body was probably erring on the side of caution. You defeated her once because she lowered her guard for a second. She wasn't going to underestimate you again. Maintaining her distance, she studies you while you try to calm down, the pain of holy magic still fresh in your mind. She tenses up on all fours as she readies another flurry of blows.

You form an ice wall in front of you, hoping to at least slow her down as she contorts her body midair. You watch as she kicks around, spinning upside down as she grabs the ground, using her new claws to grab ahold of the ground as she instantly halts her momentum and throws herself to the right. Spinning yet again midair, she lands on her feet and leaps forward, completely bypassing your ice wall as she slashes at you a second time, 5 more claw marks appearing on your body. You heal over it in a heartbeat, her attacks far too shallow to cripple you. As long as you could resist the pain, you could think of a plan to take her down. You just needed to get used to the pain.

As you think this, she squats down and grabs you by the ankle. When did she get there!? Was she too fast for your eyes to keep track of now? Using her absurd strength, she throws you to the sky, your body spinning around like a ragdoll as you try to gain your bearings. Your mind is in disarray as you flail about helplessly, the hero taking a note from your book and leaving you midair with no way to defend yourself. You think about producing ice to block her, but you know from experience that instinctive magic was too weak to block her attacks while formulaic magic required immense focus and magic power. You needed a plan before you could waste your magic power on anything. Panicked magic use would kill you.

She dashes at you, 5 new gashes appearing each time she passes by you and sends you a few inches up in the air. You spin another direction as Fenri attacks you again, leaping off the walls of the nearby buildings and repeating the attack. Soon, you're being slammed around in an infinite combo, Fenri's monstrous speed leaving you in the air and spinning too quickly to gain your bearings. You end up closing your eyes, using your monster sense to detect her as you fire a formulaic spell to block her next attack. She ends up punching through your spell and hitting you. It seems she's realizing you're now panicking and isn't afraid of being more aggressive.

The combo repeats as you scramble to think of some way to counter her. Despite how aggressive she was, you just heal over the attacks. The issue was that you couldn't think of a plan. You try to endure the pain to think of a way out of this mess, but it's messing with your focus. You end up using your main body to think, the separate body unaffected by the pain clouding your secondary body. It gives you an answer.

Thinking quickly, you use your monster senses to predict Fenri's next attack, forming an ice block directly where her face would be the second she leaps. Even she can't dodge midair as you slam it into her face. She's unharmed, but you use the ice block as a foothold, stabilizing your body and letting you send a tendril of ice to the ground and raise a platform for you to land on. Meanwhile, Fenri is flailing about in the air, the lost momentum from you kicking her in the face preventing her from reaching another wall to jump off of. You feel warm blood trickle down your body as you pant atop your platform, still disoriented from the combo. She'd been beating you for the past 3 minutes, spinning you around, while burning you with holy magic. You weren't-Wait.

Why were you bleeding?

Something was wrong.

Your wounds took less than a second to heal over earlier, and you know holy magic doesn't halt healing. Now they were taking 2 to 3 seconds to heal. You cast god's eye on yourself, hoping to identify the issue. Your level was a bit higher than the last time you tested since you'd been brewing potions, but your status effects were concerning.

This was bad.

Name: Verdi

Class: Alchemist (lvl22)

Race: Human

Skills: Horticulture, intermediate alchemy, Intermediate ice magic

Status: Sinner upon the Saint's Land (Hidden) , Victorious Prey, Thousand Cuts x325,

Mood: Terrified

Sinner upon the Saint's Land: Decreases all attributes by 99%. Effect lasts until target leaves afflicted location (Effect hidden from observation and diminished by secondary skill Humanity).

Victorious Prey: Target has the privilege of stealing 10% of any stat from the caster as a reward for besting them in a Hunt.

Thousand cuts: Target loses 0.1% of an attribute to caster with each stack. Lose 10 stacks every 3 seconds. Upon reaching 1,000 stacks, all lost stats are lost to the caster for 72 hours. Upon **** of target, all lost stats permanently remain with the caster. (Current attribute lost: regeneration)

The situation was exponentially worse than you could have imagined.

You lost the second she landed a single attack on your body.

There wasn't a way for you to beat her now.

Your human form had only a fraction of your monster form's capabilities. Regeneration, for one, was severely decreased due to the nature of your defective hybrid body. Fenri's new form stole attributes that weren't debuffed. Even a fraction of your body spanned several acres in size and weighed far beyond any other living creature in this world. You could heal more than 300% of your body an hour. For a human, this meant even 0.5% of your regenerative ability would make them heal faster than anything could harm them. It was truly an imbalanced ability worthy of a hero. No, that wasn't important. What was important was your one trump card of regeneration was being whittled away. As you scramble to think of a counter play, you spot a pair of glowing claws heading towards you. Still too dizzy and disoriented to respond, you can't dodge or react properly.

By the time you process what was happening, the once blinding light fades as Fenri gouges out both of your eyes and sends you falling off your ice platform. You feel her dig around in your skull with her fingers as she swings downwards, ripping off most of your face and sending your jaw flying off you. Her hands quickly swing around, her open palms slamming into both sides of your head and rattling your brain as you feel your ears bleed. At that moment, a strange phenomena hits you.

You're screaming.

You scream at the top of your lungs from the pain. You're screaming like a child. It hurts so much. It felt like you were being hacked apart, burned alive, and electrocuted at the same time. Even your high pain tolerance was nothing before such tortures. You're screaming at the top of your lungs. Everyone in the city could probably hear you.

So why can't you hear anything?

You get to your feet and try to run away from her, your will to fight gone only to feel her slice your Achille's tendon open. The screaming continues as your tendons knit themselves together. She stabs into your back severing your spine. You scream again as you feel your vertebrae snap back into place a breath later. She breaks your arm. You scream louder as it sets itself. As your eyes grow back, she gouges them out again. You scream again. She continues to slash at your body as you huddle into a fetal position to protect yourself.

She was too fast for you to hit, her defense was too high for you to harm, and too experienced for you to fight directly. The ice you make is too weak for you to block her blows. Even as you lie there cowering, she continues mauling you, throwing you on your back and slashing away at you. It's pointless to play possum. She wasn't underestimating you anymore. She was going to make sure you couldn't resist in the slightest. You can only scream as she repeatedly rips your face off to keep you too focused on the pain to counter her like earlier. Your can't even think, the terror your secondary body was feeling spreading to all 8 monster cores. This continues for what you believe to be an eternity, no longer resisting her as she focuses on mauling you.

You can't see her attacks. You can't hear the blows. You can't smell the blood in the air. You can't taste iron. There is nothing to distract you from the sensation as she keeps ripping your face off. The pain. The screams just keep coming. You don't even bother using ice magic to shield yourself anymore despite having a full 8% left. You can't think. You can't resist. You scream. You pray she kills you and ends the torment, but the mind control demands she do no such thing, compelling her to torment you to the point that you can't even hope to resist her. You can only scream.

Your body stops healing. You're screaming. Your spine was shattered. You're screaming. Both your legs were broken. You're screaming. Your one arm was broken. You're screaming. Your face was just a tattered gaping hole. You're screaming. You can't hear anything. You're screaming. Most of your skin was gone. You're screaming. You don't even have a mouth anymore. You're screaming. The only physical thing you could do in such a state was one thing. You can only scream.

Fenri finally stops hitting you.

You scream.

Fenri squats down next to you.

You scream.

She picks you up.

You scream.

She walks over to Citrinas with you in tow.

You scream.

Fenri extends her arm to her.

You stop screaming.

The pain. The sensory deprivation. The terror and helplessness at the indomitable odds against you. All of it comes together to give you a revelation. You've been delusional this entire time. You'd done everything in your power to deny it. Your time with Citrinas only worsened your delusions. Now, with your will broken, your body shattered, after having everything ripped away from you despite how hard you tried to resist, as you hit the definition of rock bottom, you could accept it.

You hated every minute of your existence from the moment you woke up in this accursed world. Every moment of your life was misery with the world happily reminding you just how worthless and disgusting you were. Everyone and everything seemed to rub dirt in your wounds at just how useless and weak you were, whether knowingly or not. You weren't the hero. You weren't the villain. You were just some chump used as an experiment to be disposed of at the leisure of higher powers. Almost nobody expected anything from you.

Almost.

You thought life was tolerable with Citrinas, the past week of just spending time with her fun enough to forget reality. Your stupid conversations, the magic lessons, and just messing around with her were the only moments you had fun here. So far, she was the one thing in this accursed world that didn't twist the knife in your gut. Unlike those gods who made you, that accursed angel, and the world itself who took relish to remind you that you were the lowest of the low and expected to achieve nothing, not one time did she think you were useless. In fact, she'd literally gone out of her way to drag you kicking and screaming from that fact and did everything in her power to tell you the opposite.

Despite having enough magic power to destroy cities, having a casting time in seconds without having to cheat, and a mastery over alchemy and magic that you could barely grasp, she thought you had potential. When it came to lessons in alchemy or magic, she never scolded you for your incompetence and was always praising you despite your subpar performance compared to her. She said you were weak now, but you'd be strong one day. These weren't idle words or pity. She took you along because she genuinely believed you had potential. Now that you saw her getting taken away, you couldn't be delusional anymore.

You couldn't betray her trust in you.

You truly forgot... No, you never forgot. You just didn't want to accept it. You said you accepted it aloud, but it was only now that you could truly say from the heart you accepted this fact. You could accept reality now. Your ego was broken. Your pride was gone. Everything had to be torn away to make you learn this lesson.

Your humanity was gone, and you'd never get it back thanks to those damned goddesses who did this to you against your will. You weren't a human that could heal quickly, you were a hybrid wearing a defective human suit, two bottom tier monsters with a host of flaws and weaknesses. You were a monster now, and it was time to accept reality. If you didn't, the one person who didn't look down you from the start was going to disappear.

You stop screaming.

You start fighting again.