Harem Sync: Divine Edition-Chapter 30: Predator Above the Seal (2)
The wreckage began to shift, twisted pieces of metal and burnt wood being pushed from the inside out, and Kaelthar emerged from beneath it with deliberate and controlled movements despite his condition.
His face was burned, skin red and peeling in several places, his chest exposed where his clothes had melted from the heat of the explosion, his left arm was gone, torn off on impact, leaving only the bleeding stump which he completely ignored.
He was still standing, still functional, still dangerous, and when he looked at the destroyed field around him, his light gray eyes found what they were looking for.
Haru crawling across the ground...
Without legs below the knees, only the bloody stumps leaving a red trail in the mud as he pulled his body with his arms, slow and uncoordinated movements of someone who was at the absolute limit but refused to stop.
Haru didn’t know whether to cry or smile; the expression on his face was somewhere between despair and hysterical relief, but one thing he knew for sure: he didn’t want to die.
Kaelthar began walking towards him, each step firm despite his mutilated body, and Haru heard the boots hitting the wet stone, drawing ever closer.
Kaelthar reached Haru, turned him around, grabbed him by the neck, lifted his body off the ground with the ease of someone lifting an empty sack, and punched him in the face with his remaining right fist. Once, breaking his nose again. Twice, splitting his eyebrow. Three times, cracking his lip and knocking out teeth.
There was no long speech, no villainous monologue, just blow after blow as Haru spat out blood and bits of teeth, his vision gradually blurring until he could barely see anything but red blurs.
"So... it ends like this..." Haru thought through the consuming pain, remembering the moment he had killed Corvus and realizing that it had been exactly the same for him too, the feeling of no longer being able to defend himself.
"What if I had wanted a quiet life, what would it be like? What if my harem wasn’t so greedy and I had escaped Valtherion Manor sooner... I would probably be happier..."
The system tried to notify but the numbers no longer made sense, only showing:
``` 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺
[HP: - ?]
```
Kaelthar then pierced Haru’s abdomen with his right hand, fingers cutting through flesh and muscle until he felt the internal organs pulsing beneath, and squeezed hard while looking directly into Haru’s eyes, who was still somewhat conscious.
"FUCKING GAMER!" Kaelthar shouted, the first time he had shown real emotion since the beginning of the entire fight, pure rage distilled in every word. "GAME OVER FOR YOU! THIS IS ONLY FOR PRO PLAYERS!"
He squeezed harder, Haru felt something tear inside, and darkness began to engulf everything.
Kaelthar threw Haru’s body aside as if it were trash; the body hit the ground and rolled about two meters before stopping in a puddle of dirty water mixed with blood. Haru couldn’t even think anymore; he only felt everything darkening and the pain becoming something distant, as if it were no longer a part of him.
Kaelthar began walking towards the path where Isabela and the others had been taken, the trail of energy speaking. He still had work to finish.
On the other side of the field, Vandris’s body opened completely, the spirits that had possessed him were finally released, free from the matter that bound them.
They immediately sought a new host because their nature demanded it. They sensed Kaelthar first but rejected him; too structured, too organized, his mana flowed in patterns too rigid for them to enter. They sensed Isabela far away but also rejected her; her mana was too stable, her body trained to resist the invasion.
And then they sensed Haru.
They remembered. They had seen him during the Time Stop when he passed near the possessed Vandris, moving above matter in a state that shouldn’t be possible, and predators recognize rare things when they find them.
They began to circle his fallen body, shadows swirling in the air as they slowly approached.
Kaelthar felt something, paused for a split second, looked around with a confused expression.
"...Spirits?"
Too late.
The spirits entered Haru all at once, penetrating through his open wounds and his mouth and nose, invading his body with the clear intention of devouring what remained, consuming his essence and using the empty shell as a new host.
But in the midst of the invasion, in the midst of the consumption process, Haru forced an intention through the pain and darkness that consumed everything.
"You can... take what’s left... but please... let me get up... and mess with that guy..."
The intention was weak, almost nothing, but it was enough to change the nature of what was happening, transforming the predatory attack into a pact, brutal and forced and dangerous but still an agreement.
```
[Contractual Override...]
[Partial Bond Established]
```
Haru stopped bleeding, all the wounds still open but the blood simply wouldn’t come out anymore, and then his legs began to return. Bones first, growing, extending and branching, then cartilage enveloping everything, muscles forming around them in layers that wove themselves, and finally skin covering everything in a darker color than the rest of his body, almost gray. The wounds stopped worsening but didn’t heal properly, only closing enough so that he wouldn’t die in the next few minutes.
His eyes opened and were completely black, and when he stood up the movement was heavy and slow, each gesture displacing the air around him as if his body had become denser than normal.
Kaelthar had sensed the change in the air and turned to see.
"What—"
Haru lunged forward in an explosive movement that shouldn’t have been possible for someone who had just regenerated their legs, closed the distance in two steps, and punched Kaelthar in the chest, sending him flying backward with enough force to send him flying about five meters before hitting a piece of rock that shattered completely on impact.
On the other side, Isabela was still regaining consciousness in the arms of the guard carrying her when she saw Yukihime suddenly wake up and start causing a commotion with the other guard carrying her. The child kicked and struggled until her hands glowed faintly and exploded in the guard’s hand in a spray of blood and bone that made him scream and drop them to the ground.
Yukihime landed on her feet and ran back to the mansion, tears streaming down her face and her fox ears drooping.
Isabela regained full consciousness at that moment, saw the child running back towards danger, and then realized once and for all that Haru wasn’t there.
"Where’s Haru?!" she shouted as she climbed down from the guard’s lap and ran after Yukihime without waiting for an answer.
Kira woke up too, saw Yukihime running, and instinctively followed her without thinking of anything else.
The guard who had been blown up stood there holding the bleeding stump where his hand had been, and the other guard looked at him, unsure what to do.
"Go! Save Miss Isabela, I’m fine!" the wounded man said, stopping the bleeding with fire from his other hand, and the other guard ran after the three of them.
Kaelthar tried to stand, coughing up blood, feeling his broken ribs shifting awkwardly inside his chest, but before he could stand, Haru was already on top of him. He stomped on his chest forcefully, the ribs breaking even more with dry sounds of snapping branches, and Kaelthar coughed up more blood as he tried to speak.
"... haha ...ha..."
Haru grabbed his head with his hands and smashed it against the stone floor, once making the head hit hard, twice cracking the skull, three times, four and five times until Kaelthar stopped moving completely and what remained of his head was something unrecognizable.
Haru stood looking at Kaelthar’s body for a few seconds, and then felt something changing inside him.
The spirits who had made the pact began to eat more now that the agreement had been fulfilled.
He fell to his knees, blood gushed from his mouth, and his skin began to darken gradually, starting from his fingers and moving up his arms, veins turning black and visible beneath the surface.
[HP: ?]
He fell sideways into the mud, the rain had stopped, leaving only the sound of the wind passing through the surrounding debris, and the darkness.
