Kalo and Stella took a seat in the empty audience chairs, which left Mei as the only one left standing. She was worried about the girl who was trembling in the cage.
What she didn't know that the girl was not trembling out of fear, but out of wrathful hatred.
'Come on Sophie... you can't fail here! You still have to get back Asher's memories!' Mei seemed to get the wrong idea about Asher's relationship with his other persona, but the boy in question knew nothing about that.
The three spectators looked at the ring as the cage doors automatically closed behind the two fighters.
Asher wiped his eyes, covering his hand with blood. For some reason, Sophie's soul wept uncontrollably after Kalo said what would happen to Mei.
Just before the sadness overwhelmed him, another System prompt appeared.
[A new skill of the Scorched Girl has been unlocked!]
[A Nostalgic Room: Enter 'The Room' in Sophie's mind, which heals physical and mental wounds. All wounds can heal in the room given enough time. Because it is only a mental projection, your physical body cannot move while in this state and can still be attacked.]
[Description: The room was nostalgically warm. It reminded her of 'that' night, when her life fell apart in front of her eyes. She pushed the painful memory down, further and further, until she couldn't even recognize the room anymore. Your experiences have reawakened that memory.]
He examined the skill quickly, but its description dampened his excitement. It was yet another out-of-combat skill like [Bystander], so he had no way to use it against the Soldato.
Could he kill the Soldato with only one offensive skill? Or should he just expose himself, and wear the Fairy Queen E.G.O?
"Need a weapon, kid?" The Sottocapo called out from the stands.
Asher nodded.
Kalo grinned, satisfied that the girl was taking the fight seriously.
Without another word, Stella grabbed a metal bar beside her and threw it inside the ring. Since the Soldato already had a weapon, she did not bother to throw in another. Asher swung the bat experimentally as the man took a knife from inside his coat.
"Heh. Sorry, kid. No hard feelings, but I don't want to lose to a little girlie."
Stella stood up from her chair and raised her hand.
"Alright! Deathmatch, standard rules. Everything's allowed, and no one's let out before one of y'all dies. Begin!" She threw down her arm, signaling the start of the match.
Mei watched in trepidation as the two slowly approached each other.
"Ha-!" The man immediately thrust his arm at Asher's heart. Asher tried to step to the side, but he discovered the Soldato was even faster than the men from the Kurokumo Clan. The knife sliced through his side, causing a lance of red hot pain to throb in his stomach.
'Damn... If I had my E.G.O on, a fairy would've spawned already.' Covering his wound, he quickly backed away from the Soldato.
However, even as blood dripped through the gaps in his hands, Asher didn't switch to his E.G.O. He had yet to see the effects of [Fourth Match Flame] and he wanted to see just what it was, even if he died today.
Kalo's eyes dimmed, seeing the girl bleeding profusely after only one strike.
"Tch. Turns out that girl is weaker than the kid in the recording." He turned away from the fight, already uninterested.
"Come on, boss. She hasn't even attacked yet~"
"That's precisely why I'm not watching it." Even though Kalo turned away from the fight, Mei and Stella were still fixated on it, though for different reasons.
Stella just wanted to see a good bloodbath, and Mei was only worried about Sophie.
Asher's hand slowly let go of his stomach, and his face turned impassive. It felt more natural to him, as the soul behind his synchronization did not care for insignificant pains like that.
Blood flowed down his dress, staining it with a sheen of crimson.
Asher let Sophie's emotions control him, as he changed his stance to the one that felt most comfortable to him. His joints stiffened like a rusty doll's, and his movements became filled with erratic and painfully powerful jerks.
The bones in his body crackled, and his joints dislocated as they swivelled to inhuman limits.
"S-Sophie?" Mei couldn't help but gasp at Asher's transformation. The girl had taken on the appearance of an abandoned doll. Neglected. Mistreated.
Kalo glanced back at the ring, hearing the inhuman crackles and pops. His face lit up with glee.
"That's an incredible... Wait-" Kalo narrowed his eyes slightly. He originally thought it was a body augmentation, but now that he looked closer...
Asher charged forward, his feet nearly skipping above the ground as they carried him forward. He swiveled his spine mechanically before swinging horizontally in a single fluid movement.
"Ugh-!" The Soldato tried to block with his knife, but the metal bar had too much leverage over his short knife.
He took a step back. Looking back at the girl, he saw she was already preparing for another blow.
"What kind of damn augmentation is this?" The man dodged the next swing from Asher and tried to counterattack, but the girl shot back like a marionette, the angle of her spine suddenly nearing 90-degrees.
The girl swung the bar again, but this time the man dodged by leaning to his side-
Asher's elbow dislocated itself, bending against its limits, and swung back towards the Soldato at an unnatural angle. The metal bat smashed into his arm with a sharp crack. Kalo whistled with appreciation on the stands.
The girl's twisted elbow joint snapped back into place with a satisfying pop.
The man looked down at his limp arm and back at Asher. The sudden strike knocked his knife across the ring, leaving him defenseless.
Just before Asher was about to bash the Soldato's brains out, the man reached into his jacket.
A sharp bang echoed across the room.
Everyone fell silent, if only for a split second.
Asher looked down at the flowering bullet hole that tore through his chest. His impassive expression morphed into a wince as the sudden impact startled him.
"Heh... Rules said that all weapons are allowed, right?" Stella nodded her head, a bit miffed at how Asher's performance was interrupted by a rude gunshot.
The Soldato picked up his knife from the ground as Asher marvelled at the amount of blood that flowed onto his dress.
'Just wait until he's a little closer...' Asher didn't forget his other skill, his [Fourth Match Flame]. His next attack would be his fourth.
He made himself look weak as the man approached him. His arms trembled as he supported himself by leaning on the metal bar.
"Like I said, no hard feelings. I'll play with that slut well for you, haha- eh?"
The Soldato flinched as Asher raised his head, revealing that his eyes had both melted into fresh blood.
Liquefied flesh cascaded down Asher's body, leaving only the empty eye sockets behind.
"Mom...my...!" Sophie's soul emitted a howling screech through her mouth. She kicked the man's gun from his hand with an echoing howl, breaking her toes as the metal of the gun deformed under the impact.
The bat turned scorching hot as Asher raised it above his head.
"Wait, wait! Don't kill me! I was just kidding!" The man stumbled to the ground and crawled away from the girl. The expressionless doll face, coupled with the girl's hollowed out eyes, painted the picture of a demon in his eyes.
As Kalo and Stella gripped their seats in excitement, the corner of Mei's eyes became wet with tears.
She was familiar with that face; it was like the expression of forced calm that she made often. And the words the girl cried out... Just what kind of pain had she experienced so early in her life?
The metal bar glowed even fiercer, burning through Asher's skin and grafting itself onto his flesh. Asher grit his teeth as the pain became unbearable.
'[Fourth Match Flame]!' The bat burst into blue flames as it swung down, enveloping the weapon until wasn't even visible from outside the flames.
*BOOM*
The ring shook as it smashed into the Soldato's face, instantly killing the man and vaporizing his body.
The blow demolished a portion of the ring, replacing it with a gaping hole.
In exchange, half of Asher's dress was burnt off, along with his entire hand, to the bones of his wrist.
'So this was why the 'Nostalgic Room' exists...' Otherwise, the skill would permanently cripple him every time he used it.
The fleshy holes where his eyes used to be were filled once again as he reverted to normal. Sophie's soul appeared to be satisfied after killing the Soldato.
"Hahaha, we've got a winner!" Kalo roared with laughter at the sight of destruction, a sadistic smile stretching across his mouth. He didn't care about the wounds on Asher at all.
Even Stella walked up to him in concern when she saw the extent of the burns running along the girl's body. The skill completely charred the right side of her body, but Sophie still stood upright, the unburnt part of her face still impassive.
In reality, Asher was in so much agony that Sophie's personality merely took over his pain, which was nothing compared to her slow immolation.
"S-Sophie, are you alright?" Mei gingerly lifted Asher's arm, which reeked of cooked flesh. Stella shook her head, marveling at the power of the strike and how it backfired into the girl's body.
"Winning's good and all, but you'll be crippled for life now, unless... No, getting a flesh transfusion of that scale would be far too expensive for rats like you. Come, I'll get you some new clothes." Stella's voice was tinged with grudging respect as she led them up the stairs, back into the main building.
The Sottocapo sat in his seat, his mouth still curled in a ghastly grin.
"If the boy in the recording is as strong as that girlie... How fun, how fun!" Even though he was hundreds, maybe thousands of times more powerful than both of the two combined, he was still excited by their unique fighting styles.
New methods of killing that he had never seen before. As a veteran of countless wars, this was what made his blood pump.
But if he knew that the two forms were the same person, even he would be shocked speechless.
...
Soon Asher, Mei, and Stella came back to the basement. They were greeted by Kalo, whose face had turned impassive as if nothing had ever happened. He glanced at the girl's arm, which was dressed neatly in white bandages by Stella. Mei's eyes reddened with tears as she kept sneaking glances at Asher's vaporized arm.
"As I promised, take the woman away, little girl."
Asher nodded slightly and turned to leave, but Kalo stopped him.
"Capo Stella will be the one to collect her protections now. The payment of one adult and one child is due next week on Monday, a total of seventy-five Ahn. Rest assured, she is not the type to extort you all like that trash in the ring."
Asher opened his mouth to complain, but then closed it. Yan's words flashed in his mind. The Thumb valued rules and respect; disrespecting the rules in front of a Sottocapo didn't seem like a good idea to him.
"...Alright. Let's go, Mei."
Kalo smiled as Asher and Mei stepped up the stairs and out of his sight.
"Boss, what kind of augmentation was that? The ones that dislocated her joints and the one that caused that explosion?"
Stella's question went unanswered. Kalo stepped into the deactivated ring, motioning Stella to follow. He ran his hand around the burnt hole.
"You know why I'm in such a good mood?"
"No, sir."
"...Because I have no clue how she did it, either. There weren't any mechanical parts in her, no mods, nothing. Maybe she just trained her joints to become like that. That said, you could probably kill her in a fight, right?"
"Easily, sir. Well, if she was many times faster and wasn't so damaged whenever she does that last attack, then perhaps fifty-fifty."
The two of them stood in silence. Who in the world could dislocate their elbow joint through mere training, let alone swing it with any force? And what exactly could have caused the explosion?