BXBX NOVEL Chapter 305 - 305 A Fellow Victim
'I look like one. I'm a demon, though. Also, I don't think non poisonous snakes have fangs, only tiny teeth,' her words made him enter contemplation, as he cast a wall of fire around the two, curious about the girl's answer.
'Whatever, so long as she tells me the stuff before she dies, I'm fine with it,' Noah said while shrugging inwardly. He still remembered how she used to bite the people in the petstore where he bough her a while back. If they didn't die, she probably didn't have any venom either way. "So, ready to talk?" he asked, while the shocked assassin stared at the flames in awe.
"Yeah..." she said, her mind completely elsewhere, as she sad down on the floor, dropping her dagger. "But I'll ask you a favor."
"Sure, what is it? And why," Noah asked, confused, seeing she had just completely let go of her will to fight.
"After this conversation is over, kill me." Her words left Noah flabbergasted. He had no idea why she would do or say this, but he knew for a fact she wasn't lying. Rather, her face told him she was actually happy, somehow. "This place is getting quite hot, so I won't be long, is that okay?" she asked him, finally looking back at him.
"Sure, so long as you tell me the truth," Noah said, also sitting down, looking her in the eye.
"My blessing come from a minor god, known only in small cultures. She's the god of deception and lies, Leira. My blessing is making others believe what I believe, but it only works for two things. I can believe there are steps in the air, and walk over them, and I can believe there's something on my sword that causes a reaction, but only things that exist and I have experienced myself, for the second one, there's also a high price I have to pay, so I hate using it," she said, looking dejected.
"Let me guess, they force you to do it, don't they?" Noah watched as the woman nodded in silence. "Wouldn't it be better if you asked me to free you from them, instead of killing you?" Noah asked, out of a new found empathy.
"You have no idea what I've been through. Like I said, I can only coat my blades with something I have experienced myself, so you must know how I came to learn all the poisons I use. I just don't wanna live anymore." she said, staring at her dagger.
"Can I ask why they have so much power over you?" Noah's curiosity went above his respect for a person, he wanted to know more, even if he was being inconsiderate.
"My father used to work for them, and he was found to be swindling money. They killed him, but forced on his debt onto my mother, me, and my sister. It was a huge amount of money, and they expected us to pay for it every week..." Noah bit his lip while listening to her story. Even Lilith herself was silent, bathing on the anger she felt from him. "When my sister turned 16, she started diving into the fortress, she was a blessed, but her Blessing was only D Rank, nowhere near enough to make up for that money. After a few months, she ended up getting herself killed, not having paid even a dime of the debt, only managing to pay the interest." The girl sobbed, as tears began forming on her eyes. "After she died, they started being worse and worse. People would show up at our house almost every day, and harrass us, because we had no way of paying them back anymore. My mom worked many jobs, but her money would be funnelled straight to their pockets, because only their businesses would hire her because of their influence. So, after a year or so, my mother became very ill, and had no way to continue working. They would still come and try to take the money we didn't have, and would search the entire house, destroying everything we still had every single time. Then, the day she died, that man who's the leader of this group came with the men, and said I would have to pay with my body." She bit her lip, looking up in frustration, waiting for the tears to drop. "I had hope they'd let me just work, but after my blessing awakened, and they discovered it was a Rank B Blessing, they started using me to do their dirty work, and when they discovered I could use the things I experienced, they started making me take the poisons until I was resistant to them, so that I could use them." She breathed heavily, taking a pause, and stopping her tears before staring Noah in the eyes. "Is this enough for you?" she asked, almost begging him to kill her.
"Honestly," Noah said, clenching his fist, his hands trembling. "I really don't want to kill you here. After all, at least to some extent, you are the same as me." His words made her eyes widen, as she stared at him in disbelief. "I could try to hide you, and help you once this fight is over, and tell you my story. But up to your mother dying, it's pretty much the same as mine. Though I am the elder sibling, and thankfully I didn't die." Noah's poker face crumbled, as he looked at her with hate-filled eyes, almost ready to shed tears. "If you still want me to kill you, I will, but if you still have any hope, I'll do whatever I can to help you," he said, walking up to her, and offering her a hand to stand up.
However, she did not take it, instead, folding up her knees and loweing her head, lifing her blade up to him. "The payback for using my blessing is that I also get poisoned when I poison someone, I'm strugging to even talk right now, because the effects of the poison I gave to you are making me want to fall asleep. How come you're still standing?" she asked, while holding her dagger to him.
It was a blessed weapon of at least C Rank, so he took it eagerly. "I am immune to mental effects. Your poison is a form of illusion, which is why it didn't work on me," he said, checking the edge of the blade. "This blessing of yours, you see it as a curse, don't you?" he asked, making her nod in silence. "I understand. You still want me to kill you right now, isn't that so?" he asked, biting his lip in frustration.
"Yes, just make it quick. And if you can, burn my body afterwards. I don't want those people to still own me even after I die," she asked, finally looking up and staring Noah in the eyes, who was looking down on her.
'Guess it's a good time as any to test that new skill,' Noah thought to himself, as he looked at the blade in his hands, only to see her hand him another one. Those two were a pair, just like his, and they far surpassed the weak daggers he had grown fond of. He took the second one, putting them into the belt he used to hold his daggers. "I'll make it painless. It's still a shame we can't work together," he tried one last time to change her mind, but she wouldn't bulge. From the streams of sweat flowing down her temples, and her even more ragged breath, he knew she was on the verge of collapsing. "One last thing, why me? Why not anyone else?" he asked, before casting his skill.
"Because I wanted to die with honor, killed by a blessed more powerful than myself," she said, standing up, and walking up to Noah with a smile on her face. "Please end this," she said, hugging him, despite the clear snake coiled around his neck, which had bit him before.
"I will." With his words, Noah pulled the walls of flame closer, reducing the size until they nearly touched them, since he'd spent a lot of mana. He felt her shudder in his arms at the sudden heat, but she trusted him. "It's over." He said, as three swords of fire poked from the flames, around them, clealy embedding themselves into her body, in what Lucifer thought was the quickest way to kill her with no extra pain, as one of them pierced her head from above, all the way down her spine.
"Thank you," she murmured, as the swords passed through her, and she let go of him, falling dead to the ground, as the swords vanished into flames, setting her body aflame.
'Are you not letting the Imps take her eyes?' Lilith asked, as she saw her body burn. 'It'd be a shame to not let them,' she said making Noah think.
"It'd be a massive loss not to take them," he grumbled "I considered not doing it out of respect, but I think she would be happy knowing she was going to help me punish those people," he said, slowing the flames down as he mentally called for the imp who teleported like him to come over. "Take them and leave," he said to the Imp, turning away not to see, biting his lip in anger. As he heard the imp teleport away, he took a deep breath, increasing the flames once again, as a message appeared in front of his eyes.
[This person has committed countless sins. It is possible to absorb skills.]
[Absorbing fragment of divinity.]