No (Citrinas POV)

Suddenly, Fenri grabbed her by the shirt and lifted her up, her legs helplessly dangling beneath her as Fenri's muscles tensed up. She looked down to see Fenri's eyes filled with ****, as though she were ready to rip Citrinas' throat out then and there. She had nothing obstructing her airway, yet she couldn't breath as she began hyperventilating from fear. Close combat wasn't a mage's domain. Running from her was the only smart move, and this only vindicated her assessment of Verdi's actions. No sane mage would fight Fenri in close combat. It was suicide.

"You ungrateful bitch!" She shouted while holding Citrinas up higher, causing her to weakly kick at Fenri's chest to **** her to let go. Her attack power did nothing, the hero's defense outpacing her offensive power. She tried thinking of a spell, but she was too panicked to even cast anything or think of a spell to shove her back. "This guy got fucking destroyed protecting you, and you have the gall to call him a fucking coward!?" She roared as Citrinas continued to kick at the hero, her eyes wide with terror at just how helpless she was.

Citrinas' panic attack only grew worse, her head spinning as she suffered a case of tunnel vision. The only thing she could see was Fenri's enraged face, her green eyes seemingly glowing underneath Citrinas fear. There was nothing she could do. Her life was no longer in her own hands. Fenri seemed to strengthen her grip on Citrinas shirt as though it was the mage's throat she was grabbing. Just when Citrinas was ready to black out, Verdi's body began convulsing. Dropping Citrinas, she ran to his side as Citrinas gasped for air, only to take her elixir potion and pour it on his body. Nothing happened as his convulsions continued, unabated as his breathing grew more frantic. He began bleeding again, his violent convulsions agitating his wounds even further while Fenri tried to restrain him, serving to only worsen his injuries.

Citrinas entered her domain and went through her inventory. Nothing could help. Her healing potions did nothing. Status cleansing potions didn't work on holy debuffs from the divine. She went through everything she had before stumbling across an old rack of bottles filled with orange fluid from her youth. It was one of the first potions she'd ever mixed, before she was sent to fight in the war. They were useless things now that she could mix proper healing potions, but now they were her only chance at saving his life. She grabbed the bottles and returned to find the blood now stained with poison and blood, his convulsions opening almost every wound on his body. She uncorked one potion and threw his bandages away, merely touching them causing her fingers to go numb from the poison. She poured the potion on his wounds, the orange fluid adhering to his exposed flesh and solidifying in a crude resin membrane.

Fenri did the same, grabbing the bottles and pouring them on his wounds, staunching his bleeding as he continued to convulse. He was ****, but it looked like he was in visible pain. She wanted to give him something that would halt the pain, but his constitution meant that anesthetics did nothing to him. The two of them could only wait as his convulsing died down, his body dormant once more as he returned to softly gasping for air. Standing up, Fenri looked down to see just how many bottles she had used to treat him, then at the elixir potion she had brought to treat him. She seemed to be doing some math in her head before looking to Citrinas and bowing.

"I'm sorry. I lost my head. Won't happen again. I'll be waiting outside." She apologized, opening the door and shutting it behind her as she left. Silence fell over the room as Citrinas sat on the floor next to Verdi, looking away from him. His breathing was more **** now, the lost blood causing his condition to worsen. He sounded like he was **** to **** with each breath. She clutched her ears. She wanted to leave, but she couldn't get the strength to stand up.

This wasn't her fault.

He didn't get hurt because of her.

It was bad luck.

That was it.

She decided to cast God's Eye on him in the vain hopes that it would tell her why he was **** and give her a method to calm him down. A small status screen popped up in front of her face as she scanned over his information. His level had gone up since they'd been doing alchemy together for the past week. His novice ice magic evolved to intermediate as well. It seems he had a talent for it. The thousand cuts had a timer. He still had more than two days left before he could heal. Considering how much blood he lost and the rapidly expanding necrosis devouring his body, she was unsure if he could last that long. It was only when she saw the last portion of his status card that she began hyperventilating, both of them now **** up. She's used God's Eye on him in the past and remembered most of his info. There was no way she'd miss something like this.

No, it wasn't there.

She was seeing things.

She casted God's Eye on him over and over again, hoping this was a mistake. Her head swam. Her heart began thumping in her chest as she saw a faint silhouette of a man reappear in front of her, no longer content in staying at the corner of her periphery. He was joined by two more men, both of them familiar to her as well. The men continued to appear in the room, appearing with every blink of the eye as her breathing grew more frenzied. Before long, the room was filled with hundreds of men, all of them encircling the bed like hungry lions eyeing their prey.

Some of the men were old. Others were younger than Citrinas, being only 14 years of age. Many were hidden behind thick plate armor, hiding their appearance to her. The only thing that unified them were the severe injuries they suffered. Some had been dismembered or had their throats slit. Others were mere chunks of meat reshaped into human shapes, blown apart by her own spells since they were too close the enemy soldiers during the war. The wounds they suffered varied, but they were all dead nonetheless. Her head throbbed as she saw them, each man bringing up a horrific memory.

It had been years since she last saw them appear before her. She'd tried to forget about them, but her enhanced memory from years of magic practice bled into her personal life. She physically couldn't forget these men or how they had died. She repeated the lessons Tomoko and the rest of the girls had taught her to cope, praying they would help. It never helped. She said it helped, but it didn't. Regardless, she repeated their advice under hear breath.

They were illusions. There was nobody there. It was time to move on. Ignore them. They grew closer to the bed. She squeaked, expecting them to ask her why she let them die like her nightmares. They were silent this time. It was only when she saw that their eyes were focused not on Citrinas, but on the person lying in bed that she lost her composure. It was happening again.

"S-stay back." Citrinas whispered, realizing why the dead men had returned to her after years of dormancy: they had found a new comrade to join in their ranks.

She didn't know what she did wrong. For years, she'd been emotionally distant to everyone she met to keep them at arm's length. She'd spoken the bare minimum, avoided social activities, and worked to stay as isolated as possible. Every moment of her life, she avoided people since she knew what happened when they grew too close. She thought Verdi was someone that would avoid suffering the same fate as the others. He was a monster, he was nigh immortal, and he wasn't interested in befriending her either. She assumed he'd never grow close enough to her to end up dead like the rest. Now he was going to die because she couldn't stay away from him.

They weren't there. The war was over. She was moving forward. She had friends she could rely on. It wasn't her fault. She repeated what Tomoko and the rest of them taught her under her breath like a mantra, yet it did nothing to dispel the hallucinations. If anything, her words empowered them, their once translucent forms now becoming very corporeal. She could no longer see Verdi on the bed, his figure now obscured by the phantoms. The only thing she could hear was his now frantic breathing, his body shutting down with every passing second.

She looked back down at where Verdi's body was supposed and repeatedly casted God's Eye, his status screen appearing in front of her again and again. God's Eye didn't work on corpses, so it was proof that the things encircling her were just delusions. Rather than calm her down, this only served to worsen her panic attack as she saw his status card again, rubbing her nose in another **** she had caused. She wanted to believe that his **** wouldn't be her fault, but she had undeniable proof that wasn't the case. He'd fought a losing battle, ended up tortured to the point of madness, and **** to keep fighting in such a state until whatever remained of his body broke down and slowly rotted away. Now the person he'd been protecting was just watching him slowly die.

She casted God's Eye one last time on him, but she knew nothing would change as the legion of the damned prepared to claim another for their band of tortured souls.

Name: Verdi
Class: Alchemist (Lvl 22); Knight (Lvl 1)
Race: Human
Skills: Horticulture, intermediate alchemy, Intermediate ice magic, Taunt
Status: Thousand Cuts x1000, ****
Mood: N/A
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)

One needed to fulfill specific requirements to gain a new class. Sorcerers require you defeated a thousand enemies with magic. Assassins required one thousand enemies killed in a single blow without detection. Priests required the favor of a god. Barbarians required the **** of a thousand foes in a frenzied rage. Monks required one kill a thousand lives with your bare hands. Blood Hunters required one drink the blood of a thousand beings stronger than one's self hunted with their own hands.

And knight classes could only be attained by taking a thousand lethal blows while defending a trusted ally. They could not arise in a safe, stable environment like in training. They had to fight with their lives on the line with very few succeeding in attaining it in their entire lifetimes. Verdi acquired his class in a single fight.

Upon seeing his new class, she could only look down at his comatose body, the legion of the dead now parting open a spot for their newest member when his life expired. She couldn't stop them. She couldn't say anything to sway the dead. There was only one person she could still talk to that would stop this. He was ****. His status screen said as much. He couldn't hear a word she was saying in his current state. Her mind knew talking to him was a waste of her breath, that he'd done above and beyond what was expected of him. Despite that, she spoke to him in the vain hope he'd hear her and fulfill her greedy request.

Three words escaped her lips.

As she spoke them, the legion of the damned faded away, her words akin to a holy prayer. As the illusory phantoms faded away from her sight, Verdi's frantic gasps of air abruptly calmed down as his condition stabilized. The room went silent as she sat next to him, the words she spoke still lingered in the air like a protective spell, warding off the demons of the past at their incantation.

"Don't leave me."