Clementine smiled, her crimson gaze again focused on him.
He was thoroughly oblivious to the meaning behind her words, whereas the clear confusion within his eyes already gave the woman the answer to her previous question.
"An intelligent Calamity! Ah... so that was why he was able to come here unlike those savage calamities. Truly commendable, I would say," she remarked with chillingly soft praise.
SNAP!
Out of nowhere, she snapped her fingers. She used all the power she was able to utilize in her current state to directly attack his soul, aiming to completely annihilate him.
"Aaaaaaaaaagghhh..."
"Still, how fortunate I am to get what I truly need to succeed in my endeavor. Such a weak Calamity, merely at rank one in both his spiritual and material Ascension cores. To think a rank one Calamity actually survived in this place and came to me."
Clementine chuckled, amused by the sheer irony of fate.
Moreover, considering who she herself was when alive—an Ascension rank ten [Divine Entity]—it should have been quite easy for her to accomplish the task of annihilating his weak soul even when using her current weakened consciousness, maintained by her deep and dark emotions of hatred and vengeance. She intended to initiate the attack and destroy the soul of this rank one Calamity instantaneously.
However, that was not the case this time, as the Calamity somehow fought back, surprising her entirely.
... ... ... ... ...
The moment the red-haired woman snapped her fingers, he suddenly felt an excruciating pain assault his whole body, his whole being.
Furthermore, this pain was mostly focused on his heart and brain. It was so sudden and so intense that he immediately fell to his knees, sprawling on the ground, grunting, screaming, and suffering in pure agony.
"Aaaaaaaaaaagghhh..."
He didn't know where it came from or why he was suddenly in so much pain. Frankly, his mind was completely blank already, fully focused on this new sensation that he was feeling for the first time—one that he did not like one bit.
He did not have the luxury to think why this was happening or what was causing it since, momentarily, all he could do was simply endure it. He grumbled through gritted teeth and clenched his fists tight, hoping that the pain, the horrible feeling, would go away as suddenly as it came.
It was a naive thought indeed, but that was who he was currently—an ignorant being who only knew bits and pieces about the world, meaning nothing. Even if he had a rough idea of what pain was, knowing it and feeling it were two distinct things altogether.
"It... hurts... It hurts so bad," he ground out in a ragged whisper, the sound nearly lost to the heavy silence of the clearing.
His eyes turned bloodshot, and his fingers dug into the soil when his hands clenched. His vision had already gone white and black, a blurry red because of this pain that came without any physical wounds.
"Hm...?" Clementine frowned, her tone shifting into a thoughtful murmur. "Have I truly become so weak that I cannot even crush a pitiful soul such as his immediately? Even so..."
She focused her gaze on him, her expression quite amazed at his tenacity. "To think this weak Calamity is strong enough to endure the soul pain for this long, and without even screaming no less. A stubborn one, huh."
She exhaled a breath of slight regret.
"What a pity though, that you had to die so early without even realizing your actual worth. I really do need your body though, as I'm not strong enough to do the same with the other calamities. My soul has already been destroyed, with my consciousness having deteriorated enough that I can't even dominate the souls of other calamities, even if they haven't yet awakened their soul cores. You're the only weaker one here, a humanoid Calamity, my only chance after so many years to finally fulfill my desires and vengeance. Otherwise, if not for this, I would have truly loved to see you becoming the entity that your name entails."
Clementine blinked, her dark red eyes widening slightly. "Hm... Oh... I've become quite chatty, huh. Must be because it has been truly a long time since I last talked with someone else. I'm bored, it seems."
The woman talked to herself, her lips curling as she raised her hand towards him, slowly clenching her palm into a tight fist. "Let's see how long you last, you poor thing."
She smiled, finding entertainment in the plight of the being before her.
Meanwhile, the pain started to increase with weakness spreading all over his body, and the feeling of death rapidly encroached towards his soul. He raised his head, looking towards the evil smile of the woman. At this moment, he did not feel fear as his death stood directly before him. Nor did he feel what she described as the soul pain anymore.
Now, all that was in his mind was simply one thing—it was a simple thought that this woman was the reason behind his suffering. Moreover, at this juncture, he didn't even care why one of his abilities brought him here to her or why that something was preventing him from coming here. Because all that was in his mind now was to kill her, erase her completely, and annihilate her thoroughly, just as she had wanted to do with him.
He didn't know how he would do it when he knew she already wasn't alive. All he knew was that he could do something to stop her. This feeling came directly from one of his abilities, which again, he did not even know the name of, as all he knew was that it had something to do with souls. No, not souls, but something deeper, something more intricate, something without which a soul was nothing but an empty shell.
It was Will, the consciousness that made up an existence and made one who he was. It was the mind of a soul, something which made a soul complete. At this moment, before his death, he unexpectedly came to understand a little more about the abstruse element, Soul, through one of his abilities. He came to understand that a soul was more than just a container for one's Will, but he didn't have the time to dwell on this slight epiphany. After all, his life was just minutes away from being snuffed out.
The distance between him and the woman was approximately seventeen meters. And considering a normal rank one ascendant can easily cover up to ten meters in one second, whereas he as a Calamity already had a strong body with a vastly different biology compared to other races, therefore, he was able to cover a distance of fifteen meters within a second while somehow enduring the soul pain.
It could be said that his Will to live had given him the strength to resist that pain, and that currently, he was solely moving on his instinct to get out of his current predicament.
Meanwhile, the red-haired woman was quite surprised to see the Calamity suddenly coming towards her. Additionally, it could even be said that she was also quite amazed and caught off guard by his sudden movement, one which she wasn't expecting. Nevertheless, the shock was only for a millisecond as, in the next moment, she quickly composed herself. Her being a rank ten [Divine Entity] when alive wasn't a joke after all; she had too much combat experience to fall for such desperate tricks.
Her eyes narrowed as she saw the Calamity attempting to grab her neck while taking a step towards her. She certainly wasn't pleased when being challenged by a weakling like him. However, then her senses tingled, making her eyes go wide on realizing that something not good would happen if she were to get caught by him.
In a split second, she decided to dodge instead of confronting the attack head-on. Clementine took a swift step back, creating distance between them.
Even so, the surprise didn't end there, as a sudden attractive force abruptly pulled her metaphysical form towards him. Regardless, she noticed the change beforehand and tried to fight back against this attractive force, but she failed completely. Before she could think of something else or understand why that happened, it was already too late.
GRASP!