Infinity Is My Affinity?!?-Chapter 83: I... Just Wanted To Have Fun.

-BOOM-!

The two roaring beasts collided in the center of the clearing with a shockwave that shook the leaves from the trees.

Technique, feints, and martial arts all vanished, replaced by a raw crash of flesh and mana.

Arlath caught Nico’s charging slash with a bare hand, ignoring the steel biting into his palm to grip the blade, and with a savage twist of his hips, wrenched the Kukri aside, snapping the wrist like a dry branch.

-CRACK-!

Nico ignored the fracture to drive his forehead straight into Arlath’s nose with a sickening crunch.

Arlath roared in delight, spitting blood as he released the blade to wrap his massive arms around Nico’s waist.

He lifted Nico off the ground and crushed.

-CRUNCH! – AAAAHHH-!

Nico screamed as the ribcage collapsed inward under the Tier 4 pressure, while the shattered bones pierced his lungs in a dozen places.

Bloody froth bubbled from his lips as internal organs turned to mush, yet the savagery in his eyes burned brighter.

And so did the Grade 2 alchemy surging through his veins, forcefully inflating his collapsed lungs and knitting the shattered ribs back together in a violent, audible ripple of regeneration that pushed against Arlath’s crushing grip.

"You don’t die!" Arlath laughed, slamming Nico into the dirt before stomping on his knee and-

-SNAP-!

The leg bent backward at a grotesque ninety-degree angle, tearing out of Nico a throat-splitting shriek that sounded less like a human and more like a monster.

-GRAAAAAAAAH-!

And the next second, the leg bent back with a wet crunch.

But Arlath moved before Nico could, grabbing the arm with a growl, he-

-RIIIIP! – AAAAAAH-!

Wet, tearing sounds filled the air as ligaments popped and muscle fibers shredded under Arlath’s overwhelming strength, ripping Nico’s arm off its socket in a spray of crimson blood, leaving a jagged stump of weeping flesh and bone.

Arlath tossed the severed limb aside, looking for the shock that would finally break the boy’s mind.

But he found only the bloodshot whites of a monster’s eyes lost to the slaughter.

Nico leapt forward with the stump at his shoulder, already hissing as vapors of red mist swirled around the wound. Bone shot out from the shoulder blade like a piston, followed rapidly by weaving muscle and wrapping skin.

In the span of a single heartbeat, a fresh, pink hand formed from the mist to curl into a fist, which Nico shoved into Arlath’s jaw with a wet, gurgling roar that snapped his head back.

-BAM-! ROOOOOAAAAAAR-!

-Ding!

{5 Seconds till the potions wear off...}

The system chime cut through the red haze of Nico’s mind, detonating instinct over thought.

Nico launched himself at the stumbling Arlath, screaming as he threw his body straight at the giant.

And Arlath responded with a piston-like punch aimed directly at Nico’s chest, intending to launch the boy into the treeline to buy a second of respite.

[Gatcha!] Nico snarled in his mind.

Instead of dodging, he severed the mana feed to his Ice Reinforcement.

His skin softened instantly, shedding the durability of the frost armor just as the fist connected and-

-SHLUCK-!

The sound was wet and sickening, like a boot stepping into deep mud.

Arlath’s knuckles punched cleanly through the sternum, pulping the heart and lungs, exiting out the back in a spray of bone shards and lung tissue.

Arlath froze, his eyes widening in genuine confusion as the boy slid down his own arm like a meat skewer to close the final meter of distance, greasing the path with his own internal organs, until Nico was staring into the giant’s stunned face from inches away before spitting a mouthful of hot, blinding blood directly into Arlath’s eyes.

While the giant blinked against the stinging crimson, Nico dumped his entire 55 MP capacity worth of Ice Reinforcement into a single point: his jaw.

Frost coated his teeth, turning them into diamond-hard chisels as he opened his mouth wide.

He bit down on Arlath’s throat with the force of a hydraulic press.

-CRUNCH-!

Agony thundered across Arlath’s very soul as the teeth sank through his neck and locked onto the jugular.

Sheer primal panic flooded the giant’s mind; his free hand shot to Nico’s back, grabbing a handful of what remained of his clothes to rip the parasite off him with all his might and-

-RIIIIIIP-!

The sound of wet tearing echoed through the clearing as Arlath hurled Nico to the ground, but his hand flew instantly to his own neck.

He gasped, choking on his own blood as he clutched the cavity on the side of his neck.

A massive, ragged chunk of his own meat was gone, ripped away with the blood-drenched man writhing on the ground before him.

Nico spat the chunk of flesh onto the grass, all the while his bloodshot eyes never leaving Arlath.

The hole in his chest was already knitting together as the alchemy forced the flesh to close over the void where Arlath’s arm had been.

Watching Nico with wide, trembling eyes of sheer terror, Arlath’s hand shot to the healing potion at his waist.

He popped the cork, desperate for a single drop of salvation but-

-CRACK-!

An ice pebble shattered the vial in his grip before he could lift it, splashing the precious liquid uselessly onto the dirt, mixing with the blood pooling on the ground.

-Ding!

{Status has returned to normal.}

Arlath fell onto his backside, strength bleeding out onto the forest floor. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

And as he looked, he found Nico standing over him, the Kukri in his hand dripping with a mixture of both their bloods.

And so the predator had become the prey.

Arlath raised a shaking hand, coughing wet, red bubbles through the ruin of his throat.

"Wai... I’m with... Entropy... I can! Ack!"

-THUNK!

The Kukri buried itself to the hilt in the center of Arlath’s forehead.

The light faded from the giant’s eyes instantly, leaving his expression frozen in a mask of terror.

And slowly, Nico released the handle and let the heavy body fall back onto the earth.

-Ding!

{Tier 4 Mid-Stage, Human Warrior Killed.

2,000 EXP + 400% Bonus for killing an entity 4 Tiers above rewarded

Total Exp Received: 8,000}

The System’s voice, booming in his mind, clinically marked the end of Nico’s worst nightmare.

Only to leave him simmering in its aftertaste.

Nico’s chest heaved like a bellows, and the red haze in his vision slowly and agonizingly receded like a tide pulling back to reveal the wreckage beneath.

The adrenaline that had acted as a dam against his sanity slowly cracked.

The first thing that hit him was the taste.

His tongue moved reflexively against the roof of his mouth, finding the texture was still there... coating his teeth and gums like a film that wouldn’t wash away no matter how many times he scraped his tongue against his palate.

-Thump.

His knees buckled.

Nico collapsed into the pool of both their blood before-

"HAAAALK!"

He doubled over, retching violently while his trembling hands shot to his mouth to claw at his tongue.

He scraped his fingers across the surface, digging his nails into the muscle, gagging and spitting and scraping in desperate, frantic wriggles of his fingers that accomplished nothing except spreading the taste deeper into his throat.

"Get it out! Get it out! GET IT OUT!"

But the taste remained, sliding down into his stomach, coating his esophagus, becoming part of him in a way that made his skin crawl with revulsion so profound it felt like insects burrowing under his flesh.

He vomited again, heaving until nothing came up but strings of red-tinted saliva, and like a cherry on top, the phantom pain hit him like a detonation.

-RIIIIP!

The memory of his arm tearing free from the socket exploded in his nervous system with such visceral clarity that he felt it happen again.

Felt the ligaments popping one by one, felt the muscle fibers shredding like wet paper, the bone scraping against the joint before the whole limb came free in a spray of arterial red.

"AAAAAAAGH!"

Nico’s scream tore through the clearing as he grabbed his left shoulder with his right hand and squeezed, feeling intact skin and whole muscle and perfect bone, but his brain refused to accept.

His breathing came in short, hyperventilating gasps as he ripped his vest open and stared at his chest and found his skin new like a baby’s, and the disconnect shattered something fundamental in his brain because his body was lying to him, and the pain was real, the wounds were real, but now gone and he didn’t know which one to believe.

He looked at his hands.

They were painted red, with blood under his nails and between his fingers, soaking into the very creases of his palms, while the images came in rapid-fire flashes of his teeth sinking into Arlath’s throat, and the way Arlath had looked at him with fear as Nico spat his throat onto the grass like a dog.

The tears came without warning, pouring down his face in thick streams that carved clean lines through the blood and dirt caking his face, and just as his mouth opened in a silent sob, it all came at once.

"HAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

The scream ripped out from his soul, tearing through his vocal cords with such force that blood vessels almost burst in his throat, and it wasn’t rage or victory, it was pure, unadulterated, soul-deep agony that had no outlet except sound.

He slammed his forehead into the blood-soaked earth, splitting the skin above his eyebrow, and did it again and again while clawing at his hair, wanting to physically tear the sensory memories out of his skull, but they wouldn’t leave, wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t fade.

"I... I just wanted... I just wanted to have fun..."

The words came out as a broken, childish whimper between heaving sobs as his body folded into a tight, trembling ball.

Five minutes ago, he had been running through the forest like a goddamn superhero, laughing, feeling the wind in his face, finally getting to experience the isekai adventure he had dreamed about, and now he was kneeling in a pool of human blood with the taste of raw human flesh coating his tongue and three corpses staring at him and a mind was screaming that he no longer what he was.

The sobs turned guttural, animalistic, as he pressed his face into the mud and shivered violently under the warm afternoon sun.

The adventurer was gone.

Nico... was gone.

And in his place lay a shattered, broken thing that used to be a person, drowning in the blood of the first human beings he had ever killed, trembling in the aftershocks of a violence that had carved something out of him that could never, ever be put back.