46: Chapter 46 Breaking Free and Mutation

At this moment, the wound on Richard's left calf, slashed open by the sickle, was still oozing blood, but the hole punctured in his left flank had already begun to scab over under the effects of the Bloodthirsty Brand.

Every breath tugged at his wounds, making the veins on his forehead throb painfully.

He switched his hand axe to his left hand, drew the small knife from his waist with his right, and used a strip of cloth to bind the hilt to his palm, wrapping it tightly.

The Noblewoman stood beside the operating table, a scalpel still pinched between her fingers, its blade stained with Morpheus's blood.

She tilted her head to look at Richard by the doorway, her face beneath the hood half-hidden in the cold light.

"Baris was one of my most useful creations."

She said, her tone carrying a hint of regret, much like someone lamenting that a familiar old tool had finally broken down.

"It had been with me for seven years, stitched from a vagrant into having six arms; it cost quite a lot of materials, but that's fine, I have other creations."

Richard did not waste words with her.

He whipped his right arm forward, the knife flying from his hand, drawing a straight silver line through the air, aimed directly at The Noblewoman's throat.

But when the knife flew to within a palm's width in front of her, it suddenly stopped.

The knife hung suspended in mid-air, its blade still vibrating slightly, as if held by the tip by an invisible hand.

The Noble Lady didn't even lift a hand; she just tilted her head and swept a glance with the corner of her eye at the knife hovering before her.

The blade slowly turned one hundred and eighty degrees in the air, pointing towards Richard, and shot back at a speed even faster than when it had arrived.

"——Whoosh!"

Richard had already lunged to the side beforehand.

The knife flew past his right ear and pinned itself into the stone wall of the corridor behind him, the blade sinking into a crack, the hilt vibrating violently against the wall, emitting a series of humming sounds.

"Heh, this little bug can really jump around!"

The Noblewoman placed the scalpel into a silver tray beside the operating table and turned to face Richard directly, extending her hands from the sleeves of her black robe, her ten fingers slowly spreading out under the cold light.

Her fingernails were lengthening, springing out from the nail beds like switchblades, their color shifting from a normal pale pink to a ghastly white, their edges becoming exceptionally sharp.

"Let me show you the power granted to me by my Lord!"

She raised her right hand and clenched her fingers in the air towards Cecilia.

Cecilia's body jolted violently, as if jerked upward by an invisible hook embedded in her spine.

With a stiff, mechanical motion, her right hand drew the enchanted sword from her waist, the sharpness runes on the blade flashing a pale blue arc in the cold light.

She turned around with an unnatural gait, her joints moving as if pulled by strings, and faced Richard.

Through the slits of her helmet's visor, those blood-red eyes remained wide open, pupils rapidly toggling between frantic contraction and dilation, as if engaged in a silent, desperate struggle against something.

"Cecilia..." Richard gripped his hand axe tight but did not raise it.

Cecilia's sword was raised.

Her opening stance was still the sword-and-shield warrior stance she was accustomed to.

The shield was gone, her left hand empty, but the tip of the sword in her right hand was slightly upturned, the blade at a forty-five-degree angle to the ground, her center of gravity kept very low.

This was muscle memory, an action carved into her bones through countless days and months of training.

The next second, she moved.

With a violent push off her feet, she lunged toward Richard, the sword carving a pale blue horizontal arc through the air, aimed directly at his neck.

Richard dodged to the side, the blade slicing past less than a finger's width from his throat, the wind from the sword causing the hairs on his neck to stand on end.

He did not retaliate, instead stepping back two paces, holding his hand axe horizontally in front of him in a defensive posture.

"Lia! Cecilia!" He roared her true name.

"Snap out of it!!!"

Cecilia's sword faltered.

Her body stiffened for a moment amidst the momentum of her Charge, the sword tip dropping, the knuckles of her hand gripping the metal hilt repeatedly clenching and relaxing.

Then she swung a second time, but the force of this strike was clearly lighter than the first, and the angle was more skewed.

This strike did not aim for a vital point; it was as if another force was pushing the blade aside even as she swung.

"Think of your family!" Richard dodged the second strike, his back hitting the stone wall; he had nowhere left to retreat.

"Think of your aspirations! What are you doing right now? Who is the sword in your hand striking at?"

The third strike did not come.

Cecilia stood in place holding the sword, the tip touching the ground, the blade trembling violently in her hand.

A voice squeezed through her teeth emerged from the throat beneath her helmet:

"Richard... I... I can't control it... She is in my mind... Run..."

Her left hand suddenly shot up, fingers splayed as she clawed at her own helmet, her nails scraping against the metal with a shrill, screeching sound as she tried to regain control of her body.

But soon that hand dropped abruptly, pressed back to her side by an invisible hand.

Richard saw that while The Noblewoman was manipulating Cecilia, she herself remained standing in place without moving.

Her right hand was still clenched in the air towards Cecilia, her fingers constantly making subtle curling motions, as if manipulating the strings of a puppet.

The Noble Lady's entire attention was focused on Cecilia, and Richard was less than twenty paces away from her.

He switched the hand axe from his left hand back to his right, stomped hard on the ground with his right foot, and activated the Charge skill!

He transformed into a straight black line, the distance of twenty paces compressed into a single point in less than half a second, the edge of the hand axe hacking directly at The Noblewoman's face.

The Noble Lady turned her head at the very last moment; the smile on her face had not yet faded, but a flash of surprise crossed her eyes.

The axe blade struck the center of her forehead, slicing down through her skull all the way to her jaw, splitting her entire face in two.

Her body stumbled back two steps but did not fall.

The split mouth grinned open simultaneously; inside the fractured skull, there were no brains, no blood, only a mass of thick, dark purple mist slowly churning.

Within the mist, one could faintly see countless tiny, writhing granules of flesh weaving and growing along the edges of the wound, pulling the two halves of her split skull back together.

"Little boy, you hurt me."

Both halves of her mouth spoke the same sentence simultaneously, the overlapping voices making the words sound exceptionally eerie.

She swung her hand violently.

Richard felt as if his chest had been struck head-on by an invisible giant hammer, his entire body sent flying by an irresistible force.

The hand axe flew from his grip, his back slamming into the stone wall, causing a web of cracks to ripple across the surface.

Richard slid to the ground, coughing up a mouthful of blood foam; at least two of his ribs were broken.

Just as he was bracing himself against the ground, trying to stand up, Cecilia instantly appeared before him.