"Ha. Ha. Ha."
Heavy breaths echoed from within Masters keeps throne room.
Devastation coating the once immaculately kept throne room, centered in the middle of it all were two figures who were previously locked in the middle of combat.
Crimson colored blood slowly seeping from between them and sinking into the numerous cracks in the marble tiled ground, pieces of burnt flesh joined the steady river of blood entering the ground.
Named Count Dracula and Slade respectively, black flames clung to the mans head while a stake ran through the vampires heart.
My gamble worked.
"Hahaha! Yeah Baby!"
Laughing loudly, a Euphoric sensation ran through my body as every part of me threw a party like no other.
And with it, the disappearance of both my strength and the weight of the body lying on me.
Dispersing into a flock of bats, although it seemed that the Count wasn't dead, with how the bats ran away without looking back, the wounds on his body were at the least not small.
Lying limp on the ground in a pool of my own blood, my face twisted into a grimace as pain shot up from my shoulder.
'Wait no, I can't feel anything below my shoulder'
Having been in places where knowing your own body's state was extremely important for long term survival, I instantly located the source of the pain.
But honestly I didn't even need to mentally sort out all the pain signals travelling across my body, I just needed to look to the left and see it.
'Oh Good God that looks gruesome.'
[It is particularly gruesome.]
"Oh God it's gruesome."
Noticing the appearance of Death incarnate, the God of Death floated besides my shoulder that was missing a good portion of shoulder.
[If you don't bandage this part up so that it can heal, you won't even have an arm to work with the next time round.]
"What do you mean by that?"
[I mean that that Vampire knows how to timebreak, and he landed a particularly debilitating wound on your shoulder, erasing the flesh on it.]
"Ah. So that's why I took that gamble? How does Dracula even know to timebreak in the first place?"
Looking at the wound with bits of exposed white bone poking out of it, I pushed away the morbid interest to continue looking at my twitching pink flesh and searched for something that could help my arm.
[Do you not remember? Cherry I think it was told you that Elites and Boss monsters had the capability to timebreak due to them retaining more sanity then the others.]
"Were you watching me?" Widening my eyes in surprise as I pulled out a potion and dumped it onto my shoulder, the skull nodded their head sagely.
[You may not see it that often, but as the incarnation of death, I'm omnipresent wherever death exists.]
The skull did the skull equivalent of a shrug
[It's also impressive how many times you have brushes against death]
"ReRRrry?" Tilting my head in question as my teeth tore at a piece of cloth which I then wrapped around my arm to keep it in place, Death nodded.
[Yes Really, I also came to tell you to never let your guard down because of... what was that thing Fun refers to again? Phase 2?]
*THUD THUD THUD
[That]
"Oh no"
Already not liking what I was hearing, I looked up only to see a large chunk of stone smash down right besides me scaring me out of my wits.
[Oh.]
"What do you mean by Oh!?"
Hurriedly getting up from the ground and forgetting that one of my arms hadn't healed in the one minute its been in a cast, I looked at Death.
[My time here is up.]
"Can you at least tell me what the hell is happening?!"
Dodging another block of stone falling from the sky and crashing into the ground, the still disappearing skull of death spoke solemnly
[Phase 2]
"WELL THAT'S KINDA OBVIOUS"
[This vampire is arrogant enough to want to explain it all] The skull grinned [I hope I won't see you soon]
Disappearing once more into a whisp on the skull tat above my heart, although I was grateful for the blessing from death to not see death soon, with how the way things are going, that blessing wasn't going to be enough.
Hurriedly twisting to the side once more, the ground having had enough of standing against all of this abuse gave out with a loud roar.
"!"
Falling down alongside the ground, the throne room fell apart into several pieces as a giant winged figure framed by the moon flew down from the ceiling.
"GRRRAAAHH!"
Roaring loudly, the source of the throne rooms destruction revealed itself, illuminated by moonlight.
It was a green giant with skin so taut against the body that cracks appeared on its surface, glowing a bright blue light as a pair of crimson bat wings stretched out atop his back as an ugly mug reared its head.
Two horns like that of a rams pointing upwards like a crown, red eyes like that of rubies and finally a bloodied mouth full of fangs.
That was the beast that flew in front of me
"You. You. YOU DAMNED BLOOD BAG!"
Roaring loudly with a voice that seemed to have climbed up from the deepest darkest pits of the abyss, this beast, if we could even call it that anymore flapped its wings.
Generating gale force winds strong enough to move stones, a visible curtain of air rushed towards me with all of its might striking me square on the chest.
"Gah!"
Following the path of the wind, my back slammed against a falling stone platform, what remained of the throne room before it was broken apart by this thing.
And with it, the bandages covering my arms fell off.
*SWOOSH BANG
Slamming into the platform my prone form currently lay atop, three sharp claws embedded itself into my arm causing me to let out a sharp cry of pain.
"BECAUSE OF YOUUUUU!"
Roaring loudly into my face, I grimaced in pain before shouting in pain as another pair of claws stuck into my abdomen.
"BECAUSE OF YOU!!!"
"DAMN, BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU BIG FLYING GREEN MOTHERF- AGGGH!"
Screaming in pain as my body was now left without a shoulder, the giant green monster roared loudly in delight as he held up my arm in his claws.
"BECAUSE OF YOU! I NEARLY PERISHED IN THIS ERA AND IN FUTUREONES!"
A giant fist came crashing down on my body, breaking through the stone platform and ripping out the claws still stuck into my flesh.
"BECAUSE OF YOU, TO SAVE MY LIFE I HAD TO MERGE WITH THE BOSS CELL, CAUSING MY BODY TO BECOME UGLY LIKE THIS!"
Breaking through what little remained of the platform, the blue light glowing on his wounds intensified as he opened his jaw at my still falling body, his voice still echoing through the air.
"BECAUSE OF YOU! I NOW HAVE TO SPEND SEVERAL ERAS TRYING TO STABILIZE MY FORM BEFORE IT IMPLODES ON MYSELF!"
A giant beam of orange light flew through the air and out of its mouth before crashing into my body, its residue carving out a large gash on the side of the tower walls holding up the Throne room.
"BECAUSE OF YOU! NOW THEY'LL ALL KNOW THAT I KILLED TWO BOUND HOLDERS OF THE MALAISE!"
Calling out to the numerous red bats hidden within the tower, a horde of flying beasts flitted through the air, periodically bursting into acidic blood as they chaotically roamed the sky
"BECAUSE OF YOU! NOW THE HOLDERS OF THE BOSS CELLS ARE NOW AWARE AND WARY OF MY ACTIONS!"
Mimicking the motion of throwing something, the giant meteors once manifested from within his coat started to flow downwards like rain, crashing against the numerous stone fragments in their way
"BECAUSE OF YOU! THE CONNECTION TO MY KIN HAS WEAKENED TO THE POINT I AM UNABLE TO CONTROL THEM ANYMORE."
Exploding into piles of magma that rapidly cooled as they fell from the air, the monstrous Vampire Count's winds glowed blue before pillars of black flame began to downwards with every flap of his wings
"BECAUSE OF YOU! NOW HUMANITY SHALL NOT BE ABLE TO RECEIVE JUDGEMENT IT DESERVES BEFORE GOING EXTINCT!"
Angrily flapping his wings, the vampire count briefly disappeared only to reappear breaking through a giant stone platform heralded only by bloody spears.
"BECAUSE OF YOU! THE BOSS CELL IS NOW TEARING APART MY HEART IN HOPES OF SPREADING THAT DAMNED INFECTION AGAIN."
The Vampire Count's legs slammed into one of the still falling platforms with an angered grunt.
"And now I am stuck here in a timewarped area, forced to stare at what remains of my castle before being able to experience the next Era"
"You know death said you would explain everything, I really didn't expect you to actually explain everything"
"WHAT!?"
Head snapping to the source of my voice, a pair of red eyes the size of basketballs landed on my grinning self flying towards his shoulder
Clinging onto his body with the help of my new arm, the grin on my face couldn't help but recall how things got to this point.
As it turns out, trying to not die while only having one arm was extremely difficult when you once had two arms.
The habitual movements made with two arms were now impossible with one.
So the only logical solution in a world where magic and magical solutions existed alike?
Well.
Magic
So through being lasered to death by light so hot that it could melt stone, armor appeared on my body, briefly protecting me.
And as my skin cracked and boiled under the flash fire, the blaze rune activated and coated my body in a flame that briefly protected my body from the light.
Next, my hands, well hand, entered my inventory and retrieved the last blocks of wood from within.
Bending the blocks of wood to my will with the Vine rune, almost instinctively, I made them form around my body like armor.
The only problem was that my instinct forgot that I only had one arm left forming and failing to protect my already missing left arm.
And with it came the realization in my mind.
Still forming the armor around my left arm, instead of making it an empty shell, the wood condensed around the empty space, creating a makeshift arm that I could control however I liked.
And that's how I now have an arm made of wood which I could use however I wanted
Case in point, using wooden fingers to grip at the glowing blue wounds to anchor my body onto his own.
'I should've stabbed his eye with my left arm'
Feeling a brief regret at the inability to explode my wooden arm inside of his skull to cook the Vampire counts brain, he let out a pained roar as his claws reached up to grab me at his shoulder.
But by then, I was already gone and on the still falling platforms.
Sending tendrils of wood that dug into the platform, stopping my momentum from sending me tumbling into more stones, my head snapped upwards as a grin covered my face
"You said that we won't be able to escape free fall until the next Run yeah?"
I rolled my shoulders and held my blade. "Then that means that it's just me and you fighting until one of us gets killed."
The runes on my body flared to life as extremely powerful mana flowed through my heart and limbs before I got into a combat stance.
"And I think I know who's going to be getting out of here alive."
Letting out a loud roar of anger, the Vampire Count flapped his wings before rushing forwards with a pair of obsidian colored claws.
+++
Still sick without a trace of Covid
Tree