Second Genesis

"Rest in piss." Grey said coldly, his eyes flashing.

[Branching Blood].

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Lv5 Heart Lance > Lv7 Heart Lance

—

Thorns of blood exploded out of Joaquin’s eyes, mouth and neck. A foaming pustule of crimson and saliva pooled out from his lips.

"No... No..." 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

A gargled mess of two words boiled out from his mouth, barely coherent. He grabbed at Grey on his back, but any flexibility he had had in his original form was all gone. He couldn’t even reach up properly as his body lost strength.

His eyes slowly lost their light, his body toppling over before it crashed to the ground with a dull boom.

Grey rolled off of him, landing with his back on the ground and his eyes facing the ceiling. He gasped for breath before a wide grin spread across his face.

Grey began to laugh, a surge of warmth filling him.

He hadn’t felt so good in such a long time. He laughed, and laughed, and then laughed some more. It was like he didn’t notice the Bishop stand, Calixan’s eyes both wide with shock and horror.

But he very much did notice. He just didn’t give a damn.

He didn’t have any strength left. His Stamina was at near rock bottom, his body was a mess, and the Cyber Core that Baron Giyoto had given him a day before was empty.

He had used 20 units to refill his mechanical jaw, then the rest to download the first three abilities in the Blood Witch Inheritance Tome.

That definitely made his decision to kill Joaquin no matter what all the more reckless, but he didn’t give a damn.

"Sometimes you just have to piss on your own grave, right gramps?"

Grey eventually got the strength to crawl up to his feet, stumbling to the side and barely catching himself with a palm on the wall. He needed to go.

Maybe people would call him an idiot, maybe they would look down on his decisions and swear they would do something better.

He also didn’t care about this.

He was Grey, and he would always be Grey. He wasn’t going to let anything in this world change him.

Center of Balance would never change his personality, and the ability to revive was never going to make him a coward.

As the days blurred together and he faced enemies from all sides, the only thing he had left that was truly his own, that he could trust implicitly, was his own sense of self.

And he wasn’t going to change for anybody.

Grey took a step, about to stumble away. His thoughts were consumed with what his next move should be.

’My stamina is barely at 3 right now. I’ll need to get back up to at least 10 before I feel somewhat decent. That will take the bracelet three to four minutes so long as I don’t do anything stupid—.’

Grey’s steps paused and he frowned. His eyes focused on the white tattoos that covered the pig’s fat head.

The moment Joaquin had changed, all his hair fell out and the tattoos replaced his bald spot. It was incredibly faint, pretty much what you’d expect from white tattoos, but they were incredibly intricate.

Grey had been planning on getting a full slate of body tats and sleeves the moment he turned eighteen, so he had done quite a bit of research on it and had even considered white tattoos in the past but felt they were too faint for him.

He preferred to make a statement.

That was part of why he had almost ignored Joaquin’s, but now they were wafting an odd, steaming energy.

Joaquin’s body was practically deflating in real time as though he had been pumped full of air.

The priest wannabe’s skin didn’t snap back, leaving his body in a droopy, gooey mess of flesh masking bone that had become far too small to manage it.

Grey’s eyes darted back and forth on the pattern, finding himself memorizing it in an instant as though it was being imprinted onto his mind.

’Fuck me, I almost left without the tool belt. Where’d that bastard put it.’

Grey would have slapped his own forehead if everything didn’t hurt so damn much.

He moved back over toward Joaquin, his stamina ticking back up to 4 and giving him a little bit more energy than before. Kicking the fat blob over, he pushed the robes out of the way and didn’t find what he was looking for.

Instead, he found a ring with a hidden space inside of it. This should be the spatial treasure that Joaquin had taken. Meaning, the tool belt wasn’t what the Bishop had actually handed over to him.

Grey looked up and then to the side. The battle had ended up a small distance away from the vaults, but they were still within eyesight.

He stumbled his way as quickly as he could manage.

The vault was still open. The Bishop hadn’t been able to close it, maybe because the energy he had used to save Joaquin twice left him without enough to do this much.

Grey grinned and gave the stunned Bishop a wink.

He quickly found the tool belt. It was dropped right at the vault entrance. This wasn’t too much of a surprise after they had specifically come here for it.

Grey picked it up and checked the contents before nodding to himself.

Without missing a beat, he pulled out a certain Russian assassin’s cloak and put it on. He had been looking forward to using this thing for too long.

The stealth almost certainly wasn’t all that effective against those beyond Proving Class, but it was at least something.

The tome was what he really wanted anyway, and it was in there.

’Perfect. Let’s get the hell out of here.’

Grey didn’t go back toward the entrance he had come through, that would definitely be its own death sentence. If people weren’t already aware, they would be soon.

A sound jolted something right up Grey’s spine.

’Fuck, fuck, fuck, go, go, go.’