Time seemed to slow in Esmeralda’s eyes. She was already sifting through all the spells she knew in her mind, trying to figure out how best to get rid of a fire. But everything she had would be too aggressive, so she had already settled for the most direct method.
Just as she was about to stomp out the flames herself, and considering how best to torture and shred Grey to pieces...
Poof.
One would have thought it was a sound effect from a comedy, but that was exactly what happened. The blueprints vanished into a puff of smoke, becoming motes of light and blips of glyphs and data that spiralled into Grey.
"No!" Esmeralda’s eyes opened wide, a blooming power erupting from her body and sending Grey flying back.
Everything scattered.
Amunet hit the walls, the fake blueprints were shredded apart, and even the resources that piled onto the tables were sent scattering.
Grey grunted, his body shaking from head to toe. It felt like every inch of him was broken. Not just his bones, but the tendons and sinew that connected them. If they hadn’t been snapped entirely, they had been bent beyond recognition.
But none was in a worse situation than the arm Esmeralda had grabbed.
Grey looked over at it, his blurred pupils trembling as he saw what looked like a torn piece of flesh hanging limply from what remained of his stump of an arm.
Human flesh should never look like that. It hadn’t been cut, or crushed, it had been torn like a piece of paper, almost like his skin had given way to the pressure and been ripped clean of itself. He was half filleted, half crippled.
And if not for that...
Grey slowly looked over toward where Amunet had fallen. But she wasn’t moving at all.
Dead. There was no doubt in his mind that she was dead. Nobody at their strength could withstand that kind of impact.
The only reason he was alive was because the force it had taken to tear his arm had slowed him enough that his skull hadn’t been crushed.
However, it wouldn’t be long now. His blood was pouring out of his body so quickly that the parts of him that lay on the ground were already sinking into a puddle of it.
Pain was a distant figment of his imagination. Maybe because his spine was snapped in two, or maybe it was because it had passed a threshold he could no longer respond to.
"Heh..."
Through his blurry vision, Grey could just make out the furious expression on Esmeralda’s face. That look had completely twisted and bent, and for a moment it looked as though her entire face had been scarred, not just the small bit he knew.
And in that moment, he felt like he had seen her somewhere before.
’Holy shit... you’re the ugly old witch lady...’
The Wicked Forest Witch.
Grey didn’t understand. The Wicked Forest Witch had been strong, but not this strong. Did she weaken in her old age?
When Grey saw this cabin, he had noted that it looked a lot like the cabin he had seen during his Region Boss battle. But the inside had looked nothing alike, so he had dismissed the thought.
Well, that realization wasn’t going to do much for him. Even if he wasn’t seconds away from bleeding out, Esmeralda had already locked all her intention onto him, her hair dancing in the air under the might of strands of energy as though Medusa incarnate.
"Do your worst you ugly old hag." Grey grinned ear to ear, crimson lighting his eyes.
**
"It’s working, it’s working."
Caldrin’s body bounced off several walls, his tentacles suction cupping and popping with satisfying pops every time before he finally came to a stop behind Associate Producer Gard.
They had both been working a scheme for Grey’s Canon Event, but this was working out better than either of them could have ever expected.
Associate Producer Gard had pulled some big levers to suppress information about Grey’s Legendary Quest. And luckily for them, Grey was such a fool that he wasn’t properly leveraging his growing audience, choosing pride over bowing at the altars and kissing the feet he should.
Anyone who could watch a private livestream at this stage of the game was a true mogul. If Grey could gain their favor, it would be like granting him an angel’s halo. The sponsored items alone would change everything for him.
But let alone sucking up to them, Grey was ignoring them 99% of the time, and that perfectly suited their purposes.
It seemed that the Genesis Gods were on their side this time around as well, because for some reason, the Rootborn Thrall, Esmeralda, was extremely easy to manipulate.
Tweaking a Rootborn Thrall was an ability that only higher level Producers had. Caldrin couldn’t do it, but Gard could on the margins. Usually, you could only tweak their decisions slightly and within the rules of the Genesis System.
For example, Caldrin had tried his best to have Captain Terran kill Grey when the opportunity presented itself, but Captain Terran’s hatred of the Gnomes overrode the attempt.
However, for whatever reason, Esmeralda seemed to really, really hate Grey. Pushing her intent to kill him was far easier than it ever should have been. They could only thank their lucky stars that Grey had entered what was apparently a Death Instance.
Death Instances came in two categories, though they were often one in the same. They were either Instances that had never been cleared before but had a substantial death cap, or Instances that were so difficult they weren’t meant to be passed at all. Instead, they were a culling.
An Instance that had Vanguard Class Threats in the early game like this was certainly both.
What they didn’t know was that the reason Esmeralda’s systems were so easy to manipulate and tweak was precisely because of Grey. Every time he died and was sent back to the start of the loop, Esmeralda frayed just a little bit more, loops of frustration silently building in the background unbeknownst to everyone involved.
In an irony of all ironies, Grey’s life saving grace was also making his life a living hell.
And now Caldrin was watching with greedy anticipation as the distance between Grey and Esmeralda closed for one final time.