Chương 127: Closed Casket

Oni whipped its arm along with June, sending him crashing unceremoniously into mud. He haphazardly righted himself, ignoring bruised skin and torn flesh alike as he lunged back towards his indomitable threat once more. The torrenting rain made spirit maneuvering a difficult task.

Taking and weaponizing water from a stream was a consistent hurdle, but the wailing rain added both a constant and inconsistent mix of external pressures like the force of falling rain and the mass of water constantly absorbing into his control. Still, the odds were against him either way; it was the perfect time to test water spirit maneuvering in combat, especially with the harsh conditions the battlefield provided as a caveat.

June planted his foot into the mud after closing the distance with the Noble and formed a crescent with both of his arms. He recalled his time meditating in the rapids and tried to lull himself into a trance of fluidity. Falling water gravitated into a long ovaloid that hovered nearly hand to hand and over his shoulder. He did his best not to tense his muscles in fearful anticipation of his own ability and slowly, but with a quickening pace, guided the water around his body.

The rain caused the ovaloid to shudder and break off into pieces at times; the occasional stray discharge of flowing water shot off into a random direction with deadly force, and all June could do was guide and pray that his own power didn't peel him. The rippling water still maintained the illusion of stillness despite its outer shapes shifting and constant movement, but within the blob of water, torrents and whirling force rotated to dangerous speeds.

A single touch to an enemy would instantly twist the skin from flesh and peel the flesh from bone; a single moment would be all it took to turn a human into chum. A bead of sweat rolled down his face; controlling water with spirit maneuvering was uncharted waters for June, not to mention the power derived from control of the technique he developed by hand.

A single mishap would spell disaster; he needed to keep a consistent pace, a consistent mind, and a consistent heart, or his control would mirror his inconsistent parts. The most worrisome part, however, was that Oni stood inactive. This was the battlefield, a second bled into the next, while the combatants acted past mundane perception. The distance that the samurai stood from June was easily crossable; the speed that the samurai had over June felt just fast enough to react, but too fast to act.

Meaning, if the Noble decided to decapitate him at any moment, June's only response would be whether to stay still and let the blade cut through the rest of his neck or to move into the blade and finish the job faster. June gritted his teeth and lunged once more. With the maneuvered water in front of him like a cutting reel, he hoped to at least draw blood, while praying that the water wouldn't rebound back onto him.

Within the split second of contact, sparks flew, and as if time slowed further, June realized that one side of his vision went dark. In the next moment, he realized that his head was uncontrollably being pulled to the side, and in the final moment in which he realized what was going on, he flew through the mud once more, clutching his head. Oni had struck June with its blade's pommel, and the force nearly, and technically, caved in his skull.

One eye ceased functioning; he couldn't tell if that side's ear was the one that was ringing or if it was the other; blood seeped from cracks in the skull, and his head held in place like soggy papier-mache sticking its solidified counterparts. Parts were squishy and moved along with the slightest of movements, while other parts remained rigid, making it feel like a sort of meshy meat wall holding chunks of coagulated flesh up.

The slightest force or even the slightest turn of the head could have caused his skull to collapse in on itself, or for the sinew holding the mesh in place to tear underneath its own weight. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. Unfortunately, June was a flesh-shaper, the gift of pain and life lived hand in hand, and the curse of living through the impossible came as a bonus.

He swayed standing up, and brought a thumb, index, and middle finger to his eye before slipping them into the socket and around the nerve before firmly tugging his eye and snapping it off the nerve like a cherry ripe for picking. His eyes were full of Will, courtesy of his unknown connection to the mysterious main body. A crude and useful power for a flesh-shaper, and a unique one to him at that. He crushed the cherry-picked eye, and golden wisps petered out between his fists and into his body.

The caved-in skull weakly took form once more, and the torn-out eye… was waste. June tossed the mushy waste to the ground before attempting to gather his mind together; then again, he didn't realize that his stomach was impaled by a long and gnarly finger. Before his body could react, and before the signal of pain was sent to his thalamus, his remaining eye looked upon the long finger as it dragged up, tearing his stomach open with a seamless motion similar to opening a resealable plastic bag.

The moment that he felt the pain, his monstrous opponent reached into his stomach and firmly grabbed his intestine, before delivering a thundering kick. 25 to 30 feet or 7. 5 to 9 meters is the average length of a human's intestines. June marveled at the lengthy organ that somehow crammed itself into his body as it was continuously unravelled as he was launched back by the kick's force.

His chest was caved in, his woven organs turned to putty from the sheer force, his nerves noticeably lagged behind compared to what his eyes beheld. Then, with a messy squelch, his intestines grew taut, and with a minor hindrance to his flight path, he was sent tumbling through the mud as both his strings and liquefied organs spilled out endlessly. He lay helplessly on the ground; his eyelids grew heavy, his jaw felt loose, his arms burned, and his legs were numb.

His blood drained out, making way for the deep mud and rain alike as they crept into his laceration and mingled with his internal membranes. The cold, frigid air entered through his stomach and out of his mouth and nose; thoughts scattered, and pain, sound, and sensation mingled in mixed signals.

The torn eye finally reformed, but his weakly fixed skull was now deformed; his new eye's vision was sunken within his head, and shifting his eye alone made a sound akin to a cleaver gliding against a succulent venison cut. Despite the lull in thought, he jokingly understood why people viewed flesh-shapers like himself as fairy tale monsters; if he were given sufficient time, he would survive his injuries, and with further time, he would be able to fight again.

Though he and the one other flesh-shaper he knew weren't anything like the fairy tales other than their ability to survive the impossible, their minds were still intact, but to June's unfortunate luck, it seemed that he wasn't the only one on the battlefield who knew that fact. The soft step of boots crept within earshot; his ears misfired in succession, making it impossible to tell if the footsteps were approaching or if they were fading, but in time he received his answer.

A boot gently raised and dropped onto his head, muck and blood… his blood dripped from the boot onto his face and into his ears, tickling the follicles on the way down and into the ear canal, congealing and amassing in a deafening glob. The boot placed a little more pressure on his skull. June could tell that what was to come would be an unpleasant experience.

A little more force went down onto his skull, and the bones he placed to keep his head in shape slowly creaked, sounding like a timbering tree; his bones screamed under pressure, splintering, bending in hopes that the force didn't grow, yet it still did. The boot placed more pressure, and the tensile strength of his bones gave out, exploding into pieces and piercing his brain, but he still lived, and the boot knew that since it hovered right above his riddled brain, placing a soft and uncomfortable pressure on it.

June felt the vibrations of a guttural laugh; his ears were a lost cause, the reformed eye was back to mush and coating his brain, and the remaining eye popped out of its socket and firmly planted itself within the mud. The boot turned to point its toe box at his brain, and slowly pressed down on his brain. Each individual groove on the boot scraped haphazardly against his brain, making his senses misfire and go haywire, but his body remained still regardless; it was thoroughly broken.

The boot raised after a while of playing, then placed itself back onto his brain, then pressed down. Remnant fluids crept out like an oily burger's residue, and June's pudgy grey matter split apart like a steamed fish under the weight of his opponent's boot. This was his death. Unavoidable, Slow, and in the end, just another show for the people beyond.