Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day

Chapter 484: Lightning And Thunder [I]

The tension in Vince’s hand relaxed as soon as I accepted the deal.

But some of the damage was already done. Two of his fingers were bent grotesquely, white bone sticking out through his torn skin.

On cue, I felt my Origin Card forcibly deactivate, disintegrating and retreating deep into my soul.

For the next sixty seconds, I was completely locked out of my innate ability. That sounded a lot less than it was actually going to be.

But it wasn’t over yet.

Vince’s face snapped up.

Tears were still pouring down his blanched cheeks, but his stormy eyes weren’t looking at me anymore.

He was staring directly past me, looking up at my twin sister standing on the cliff edge.

“I’ll trade your shoulder wound… for my broken fingers,” Vince choked out as Yasmeen forced the contract through him. “Do you agree?”

That was a new application of his power. So they made him ascend.

“Yes,” Thalia’s answer was instant, and right before my eyes, the deep, gushing gash on her shoulder started closing up.

Her flesh knitted itself back together, looking as if it had never been cut at all— save for the heavy coat of blood staining her vest.

Behind me, Vince collapsed onto his knees with another gut-wrenching shriek, much louder this time. “AARRGGHH!”

He thrashed and convulsed on the muddy ground as the exact same brutal gash that had been on my sister’s shoulder ripped open across his own. Blood sprayed into the dirt, soaking his blue hair and clothes.

He stayed there, crying and gasping in pain unbearable, until a shadowy blur swooped in from the trees and took him away.

I barely had a second to process the horror of what just happened before Yasmeen moved again.

The girl with stitches raised both her hands, drawing nine more Cards from her Deck aside from her Origin Card.

Sickly dark light erupted all around her in the clearing. The stench of rot reached me as ten massive coffins materialized there, dropping onto the ground with heavy thuds.

The stone doors of the coffins rumbled open simultaneously, and a collection of utterly nightmarish monsters stepped out from them.

Omr was a tall woman in a frayed red dress. She was humanoid in shape but an utter abomination in every other regard, eerily gliding forward. Her eyes were covered by a blood-soaked rag, and her hair desecrated. Her arms were abnormally long and thin, hanging down past her knees. Her mouth was a maw of needle-like teeth and her skin was sticky and grey.

Beside her stepped forward a six-foot-tall dog-like thing standing on two hind legs, hooked bone spikes sticking out of its spine. Its jaw was split into four fleshy petals like some kind of horrid flower, dripping corrosive saliva.

Above them, a massive bird-shaped beast shot toward the sky, flapping its wings that were burning with smokeless black flames. It opened its excessively long beak and screeched out a sound that made my ears hurt.

Another coffin disgorged a midnight-black stag, its flesh rotting off its ribs and disgusting worms crawling out of its exposed, festering wounds. Its antlers might as well have been broadswords judging by how wide and sharp they looked.

Six more abominable beasts followed suit, moving to surround me. Fine red strings were spilling out of all their bodies, reaching Yasmeen.

And if ten raid-boss summons weren’t already enough, a rustle to my left caught my attention.

An Ivory Cadet sprinted out of the bushes there and rushed me with a longsword. He was charging for my flank.

Up on the cliff, my sister stood up straight, completely healed now. A ruthlessly cold smile spread on her face.

Beside her, her Caster friend, Moria, was already raising her wooden staff. I could tell she was ready to call upon a second, even larger bolt of blue lightning from the heaven above.

No Divine Sword. No innate ability. Ten Minor and Lesser Spirit Beasts and nameless extra on me. So I was outnumbered and unarmed and about to be overwhelmed.

“Heh,” I huffed out an amused breath, adjusting the cuffs of my sleeves with my gloved hands.

Everything happened just as Juliana predicted. Word for fucking word. If I had a penny every time she was right about something, I’d have become a billionaire all over again by now.

The first to reach me was the Ivory Cadet. He jumped up high and brought his longsword down with him, pulling off a near-flawless execution strike.

I sidestepped the downward arc of his blade with ease.

To his credit, the Cadet recovered fast.

He flicked the longsword in his grip as soon as he landed, widened his stance, and slashed his blade up in a diagonal line.

He was a good swordsman, I could tell.

But good was not enough.

I ducked beneath his whistling blade, letting it pass over my head, and pivoted inside his guard so that my back was facing his chest.

Before he could retreat, from my still slightly crouched position, I threw my right hand under my left arm, trying to reach backward.

The boy behind me attempted to step away, but his attempt came far too late.

Viciously dark claws, long as daggers and just as sharp, burst out from my fingers, tearing through my leather glove and plunging into his belly.

KAAACH—!!

The bone-deep chill that had been numbing me for days now, that lingering frost in my marrow, ebbed away instantaneously. It was replaced by a surge of warmth.

It felt so good as my dark claws started sucking out the Cadet’s blood, feeding my craving for an appetite I had been suppressing for far too long now.

The boy’s face lost color, his eyes widening in panic and dread as his strength left him in a blink.

I could see him struggle, but his knees buckled under the effect of sudden blood loss. I didn’t give him time to do much more.

Pulling my claws out, I whirled around and grabbed him by the neck with my other hand.

The boy then screamed as I spun on my heel and practically threw him into the path of an incoming beast — a massive crab-like thing that was originally lunging directly for my throat.

The drained Cadet flew straight into its gaping maw, the impact knocking the monster backward.

Before the boy was even eliminated, I was already on the move.

I sprinted three steps ahead, and launched myself high into the night air.

Directly above me, the giant bird-shaped beast swooped down, its wings ablaze with smokeless black fire fanned out waves of blistering heat.

I vaulted straight over its burning wings, feeling the intense heat singe the loose strands of my blond hair.

Mid-air, at the very peak of my jump, I twisted and drew a Card I had borrowed from Alexia. Immediately in response, a golden lasso came into existence in my palm.

Without waiting for gravity to drag me down, I whipped the golden rope forward. The glowing loop whizzed through the air and snapped tight around the neck of the six-foot-tall bipedal canine pacing below.

“Aha!” I yanked the line taut. The momentum of the rope pulled me straight toward the two-legged dog creature like a fired harpoon.

I slammed down onto its shoulders with all my weight.

Before the canine monstrosity could split its four-petaled jaw to munch my head off, I drove my vampiric claws straight down into the crown of its head.

The pitch-black claws punctured the canine’s thick skull and stabbed into its brain, my momentum driving the strike so deep that the monster tumbled over.

I flipped off the beast’s collapsing carcass and landed smoothly a step away.

From my left, the rotting stag charged at me. Its razor antlers were aimed for my gut, disgusting worms spewing out of the open wounds across its festering body.

I leaned back to evade being disemboweled by an inch, and quickly turned to—

CRACK-THUUUUM—!!

…Haah.

Remember when I told you about my fight against the God Who Eats Is and I said I hate getting struck by lightning?

Remember I also said that in my entire life I’m fortunate enough to say I’ve only been struck by lightning only twice?

Yeah. Today was one of those two instances.

The world suddenly went white.

I didn’t understand what had happened until I was already on my knees.

Apparently, the tempest above the cliff had discharged another column of lightning onto my sister, who had generously redirected it in my direction.

The blinding light swallowed me whole.

I didn’t have time to move. I didn’t have time to dodge. It just hit me. I could only dig into the calcified earth with my claws to anchor myself after I was already down.

My teeth clamped shut as I shrouded myself with a metric ton of Essence, letting the mystical energy spread over me like a second skin to reinforce my body.

My ears rang. The sky roared. My vision swam. The ground cracked. Tens of thousands of volts flooded me, lighting up my nervous system in absolute agony.