Chapter 8

Cracking apart, a slit in the ground appeared underneath Emilie.

Multiple long proboscis reached from between the crack.

The length of them were massive, spanning well over 20 meters.

Actively wiggling, it moved in every direction in search of her.

However, they were only meant to be a distraction.

Tozue lunged forward, bounding ahead within the blink of an eye.

Moving backwards from it, she was caught by Tozue's slash.

Their blades clashed, with her straining against him.

While locked in the air, she heard a strange noise.

It came from his sword.

Thousands of little voices screaming for help, along with a strange buzzing.

He noticed that she was intrigued by it.

"I made this with your subordinate's contracts to the earth devil, life devil, and creation devil."

After a short pause, he added:

"I don't know how anyone could be scared of any of those devils, but they exist I guess.."

Immediately after he finished talking, swinging his blade upward, he broke her guard, cutting her in half with another swing.

From the swing, out came a grotesque cloud of Emilie's blood, flies, dirt and sand.

This time however, her body didn't reconnect together.

Both halfs of her were turned to silt and stone, as if she was petrified.

Wide-eyed, she looked down at her end and noticed this development.

Both of them came down from the sky.

Tozue gracefully coming down back to the ground.

Her flopping down and landing on her back.

As she lifted herself up onto both hands, Tozue started to talk to her.

"I'm not all together up there, if I'm gonna be totally honest."

Moving on both palms over to her lower half, she could hear his foot steps.

"But, I had this little… uhh… "Eureka!" moment… you know..?"

Connecting both stumps together, she spat out some more blood from her mouth, temporarily using it as a bind between both parts.

As she came back to her feet from her hands and knees, she saw that Tozue was only a few cars down.

Putting her hand into the air to retrieve her sword, Tozue kept walking towards her.

"If she just regenerates her damage over… and over… couldn't I do something to stop her from reconnecting at least..?"

Sweating, Emilie got into a ready stance with her sword, using two hands to grip it.

"Then, I thought of this video game series… where one of the status effects literally turns you to stone."

As he got ready to lunge again, he said:

"In the game, it was an instant-death type magic."

He tightly gripped his crude blade with two hands as well, at the back-right stance.

Tozue was ready to continue bisecting her into thousands of pieces.

"Miss Emilie… I've been meaning to tell you… I…"

The ground beneath him cracked under his back foot, and the air made a eardrum-bursting boom.

Shooting through her, he sliced down the middle, splitting her into left and right halves.

The dust cloud shot out of his sword again, with a mass of locusts emerging this time.

His sword's tiny little voices were even worse this time, screaming in agony.

Her blade clattered to the floor, off to her left side.

Now split into four, she struggled to figure out how to coordinate herself and glue back together her pieces.

"…Really like… you."

There was multiple indents and a long cut in the ground, streaking through the street all the way to him.

The cars parked on the edges of the road were heavily dented and blaring their horns.

The crack in the earth he made, from where his spawn of proboscis swarmed, still writhed with them.

She laid there on the black asphalt, with her hair messy and scattered in every direction.

Both of her eyes darting around in every direction, while sweating profusely.

Now, with two husky, low and disembodied voices, Emilie said:

"Are you crazy… an older woman… seriously… du er en idiot…"