VRMMO: World's First Glyphborne-Chapter 111: An Exercise in Exorcising
Belladonna tried everything in her arsenal to attack the ghosts. She changed the infusion on her daggers, just in case a dagger encrusted in dirt or crackling with lightning would hurt them in a way the fire wouldn’t.
She tried punching them, because why the hell not try everything. Punching both with her regular punches and with mana flooding her fist to increase its potency, but that only resulted in sending an air cannon blasting into a Zombie that was behind the ghost, which splattered the Zombie into a nearby decrepit building.
There was simply no way that she could actually hurt this thing, never mind kill it, so she was thankful that only one of them was currently coming after her. Yet despite what she thought and its supposed impossibility, a single glance towards Beans told a different story.
The Ghosts hated Beans, with a burning passion. They constantly lunged at him, sweeping their hands through the air in an attempt to catch the flying cat. Whenever their hands passed through anything, such as one of their rotten comrades, the heat was utterly sucked out of it leaving the area they ’touched’ encrusted with frost and ice.
Not only was Beans an expert at dodging them, but when he swooped towards them and raked his claws across their faces, which were still twisted in torturous pain, Belladonna could actually hear them let out horrifying wails of pain.
Claws, Teeth and Tail. No matter what Beans used or where, it would always hurt the Ghosts, something Belladonna had failed to do. He had even killed a few, and was on his way to add a third incorporeal body to the non-existent pile.
Beans landed on the Ghosts face, standing on what should be completely intangible, as he scratched the ghosts face to shreds. Any time the ghost tried to reach up to peel him away, Beans swept his tail and sliced his tail spike across the ghosts wrists.
It was as if he was intentionally playing with it, before finally he drew the killing blow. A single stab to the chest was all it took for the ghost to let out a final wail before its body lost all sense of form. When they died, they simply evaporated into a cloud of white smoke, leaving behind a pile of white dust and one even had a crystal atop their pile.
Beans’ victory against the spectres, she surmised, was all down to the black energy that wrapped around his weapons of choice. A shadow infusion, done completely on instinct as was part of his nature as a ’Shadow Demon.’
The solution was simple. Belladonna simply had to learn Shadow Infusion, in the middle of a fight. An infusion that was much more metaphysical than she could imagine and had no idea where to start with it.
Pretty simple, really.
Belladonna flipping backwards, dodging out of the way of another grasp from the Ethereal menace and kicking another Zombie’s head off in the process. It seemed that Shadow infusion really was the only way, and she only had one possible way she could think of to learn it.
She closed her eyes, drowning out everything around her, before using the [Shadow Veil] skill. Her body dissolved, converting into darkness that melted into her shadow as she vanished from the earthly plane.
The teleportation lasted barely a second, so she cast it again, and again and again. All of her possible charges of [Shadow Veil] were burned in one go, extending her time in the ’Shadow Realm’ to a measly 4 seconds.
It wasn’t much, but it was all she had.
Her mind reached out, drinking in her environment with studious attention. When she teleported like this she had no fingers to wiggle or toes to curl, and yet she could still feel them and do it.
Her ’body’ or whatever it was she was at the moment literally grew fingers and toes for the express purpose of wiggling or curling. Of course... just like a shadow her form was undefined and ever changing, becoming whatever form it needed to be. Shadows had no form of their own, they were nothing but reflections of what existed in the world. They were not a thing of their own, simply defined as the absence of light and yet they had traits.
They were cold. Not the cold of ice, but the coolness that came from standing in the shade on a hot summers day, and the relief it brought you. They were relaxing in the sun, yet terrifying in its absence.
Everyone feared the shadows at night, for what could lurk in their embrace. Horror was defined by shadows. It was simply in the nature of our very existence to fear and worry about the dimly lit, shadow filled corridor over the brightly lit or even the completely dark corridor.
Shadows were neither light nor dark. They were the absence of both and yet reliant on them for their existence. Shadows were everything and nothing. They were relief and horror.
When a person died and the light left their eyes, when their last breath was stolen, when their blood was drained, when their flesh was ravaged and bones ground to dust. When nothing was left to remember who or what they were... there was still the shadow. The Shadow copied its form, waiting patiently to be given movement once more and existing as a memory of what was.
Shadows... were the most loyal companions in existence.
After 4 short seconds, Belladonna manifested back into the world of the living as she was surrounded by nothing but the dead and the shadows. She was hunched over on all fours, her eyes still closed as she panted heavily.
The ghost immediately noticed her appearance and lunged towards her, whether its goal was to freeze her to the bone so that her spirit joined them in death or simply take over her body so it could rejoin the living, that was unclear.
What was clear, as Belladonna whipped around and caught the ghost by its throat, was that it would never get a chance to achieve those goals.
