"Don't get distracted, Triss!"

Had she not heeded that warning and Katriel's quick steps, Tristessa would have been stabbed in the face by the dagger plunging straight toward her. She threw herself to the ground just in time, and the man torn a large piece of bark from the tree. Covered in dirt and bleeding steadily from the burning cuts, she crawled as fast as her twitching limbs could carry her.

Her eyesight wanted to close, clouded with exhaustion from the effort her body was making to resist, trying to survive. She could barely see the bandit's corpse among the many shadows dancing before her eyes, searching for the exact spot to activate her [Divinity of Accursed Existence].

"Arise!" she exclaimed from within her mind as soon as she found that metaphysical lightswitch cord. Xiliarra's dark light filled that corpse, and the phantom weight was imposed on her own soul. From where she lay, slowly bleeding out, she could see the dead body's eyes rolling back in their sockets and fingers beginning to move again.

"Help Reiden!"

"You do smell awful!" she heard Katriel complain, referring to the excessive amount of Discord that had begun to emanate when she activated her Divinity. "I ate something bad the other day, and what I crapped didn't smell as bad as you do, Triss... Come on, get up. I'm not done with you yet."

"Yeah, keep talking, motherfucker..." she thought, at least managing to get on her knees. "Give me your full attention."

She felt a paradoxical combination of cold and unbearable heat running through her bruised body from top to bottom. Tired, very exhausted, her consciousness hanging by a thread. And her soul bearing the weight and transcendental animosity of that corpse that began to stand up, at the same time as her.

"How about I give you another demonstration of swift slashes?" the bandit proposed, closing the distance with her and forcing her to look up with his dagger under her chin. His dark eyes met hers, grey as a cloudy day. "You're a wreck of a woman. Your Discord is sickening, even to someone with a dark soul as myself…but damn, you're so pretty."

Katriel used the edge of that same dagger to make a long, deep cut across her cheek. A curtain of blood began to flow, and Tristessa's eyes filled with tears as she suppressed the urge to sob in pain.

"I really want to cut you to bits, Triss. Do you think you can resist without…? Huh?"

Katriel's gaze had strayed for a moment, peering over the top of the young woman's head. He had been caught in a veil of confusion that had fallen over him when he realized that his henchman—who had just died—was standing.

"Grrr..."

That guttural sound came from Zef's bloody mouth, created from the deepest hatred towards life and what drove him back to it. Tied to invisible chains, forced to do the bidding of that girl who felt those dark emotions spreading around her very soul like a disease.

"Zef?!" One of the bandits saw his companion bathed in his own blood, doing the impossible. His neck exposed trachea and ruptured arteries, and yet there he was, standing, clutching his dagger tightly. "By the Gods…! FIO, LOOK!"

The bandit fell on his butt, terrified. He crawled backward, distracting his three companions at the same time.

"What's wrong, Bennett…?!" The bandit named Fio, who was facing Reiden in combat, didn't even finish his question when the revenant lunged at him, stabbing him in the right cheek with his blood-stained weapon. "…!"

Reiden stared in amazement as the reborn corpse threw itself so violently at its companion that they both fell to the ground, the dead man on top of the living.

"NO, NO...!" screamed the bandit, the inside of his mouth torn open by the revenant's dagger, slicing through everything it encountered. Zef yanked his weapon outward and tore off a chunk of his cheek and part of his tongue. "AAAHHH...!"

His screams were cut short when the same dagger that had disfigured his face sank into the center of his chest.

"Show me your blood, show me, let me see its color! Let me see it flow!" the revenant screamed, his voice filled with supernatural malice. It contaminated the souls of those present with profound terror, as he brought his dagger down on Fio with such force and murderous intent that the blade split as it sank into one of his splintered ribs. "Blood, more blood!"

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Now with only his fists as weapons, Zef began to unleash blows on Fio's hooded head. Uncontrollably, like a primate subdued by its most basic instincts, he sank the base of his fists into that face that had already lost consciousness.

"What in the Abyss…?"

Mesmerized by the bandit's bloody and irrational butchery, Tristessa slowly turned her head to see that Katriel was in the same condition. Horrified, unable to reconcile thought and reason about what he was seeing.

Distracted.

Tristessa felt the lightness of her hunting dagger, locked between her weakened fingers. She didn't waste the opportunity and mustered what little strength she had left in her battered body to plunge her weapon into Katriel's torso, on the lower right side that was not protected by his leather breastplate.

"AGH, YOU FUCKING…!"

In that split second when the deep pain on Katriel's face turned to inhuman rage, Tristessa released the dagger and fell back, toward the bloody ground where the dead were accumulating.

She couldn't keep her balance, falling backward into all the blood that had been spilled during that part of the highway. There was so much that the soil couldn't absorb it that quickly anymore.

"Now you die, criminal!"

While Katriel hurled insults and grabbed Tristessa's dagger to pull it out, struggling against the agony, Reiden continued attacking Ludvig, who had lost all focus on the battle.

"Bennett, do something, you useless bastard!" the bandit yelled at his companion who was still paralyzed with fear on the ground, before Reiden disarmed him with a blow to his fingers with the handle of his bastard sword. "Ah...!"

Then the mercenary stabbed him in the foot with the tip of the blade, and, having him kneeling at his mercy, sliced ​​off his head with a horizontal slash.

"Damn necromancers!" yelled the man named Bennett, getting up from the ground, terrified at the sight of his comrade's head rolling on the ground. "Followers of the Shadow Queen!"

He threatened Reiden with his dagger. His eyes filled with murderous intent, contrasting the way he was drenched in sweat, other people's blood, and deep-rooted fear that he couldn't supress.

"Die!"

Bennett threw himself like a madman at the mercenary, forcing him to move to the opposite side of Tristessa, lamenting in silence that he couldn't protect her.

That part of the highway had become a graveyard, reeking of Death and awash with blood. Tristessa had tried so hard to get away from Katriel Strauss that she felt human remains beneath her fingers, gelatinous and slippery.

"Blood…blood…blood…" she heard the revenant repeat endlessly and next to her, while continuing to smash his fists on Fio's dead body.

Blow after blow, the sound of fracturing bones and blood splattering chipped away Tristessa's sanity. Fio's skull was already shattered from the top half up, like the fingers and bones in Zef's hand. Scattered around her were the remains of liquefied brain and black flesh, along with pieces of bone and teeth from the upper jaw.

"Ugh, shit! What the hell did you do?!" Katriel managed to pull the dagger from between his ribs and glared at Tristessa with that look filled with pain and dark intentions. He pressed down with his hands and had to grit his teeth to resist the wave of agony as fresh blood flowed steadily between his fingers. "I get it now... All this Discord... It's you using a Divinity, you little bitch."

He was marching straight toward her, filled and dominated by a bloodlust worthy of a varg. Every step was torture, but he was willing to overcome it to reach her.

"I'll make you wish you were never born, girl." In the darkness, the criminal, even wounded, was terror personified. His black eyes were vortices of the void, harbingers of Death, and the black metal dagger in his free hand was its instrument. "Now I'm going to skin you like a farross!"

"Protect me!"

Tristessa commanded the corpse, and it instantly stopped its barrage of blows. It twisted its head to the side, its muscles in rigor mortis tearing, and rose from the ground with the savagery of a beast guided by its most basic instincts.

The revenant stood before Tristessa and let out a blood-curdling roar, its mouth open and its teeth stained dark red. It gave off a pungent, vomit-inducing, and extremely unpleasant smell of Death. So much so that even the wide array of odors emanating from Fio's corpse wasn't as noxious.

"If you're going to play dirty, there are two of us." Katriel hadn't smiled like that in several minutes, and that gave the almost unconscious Tristessa a bad feeling. From one of his pockets, forced to stop clutching the wound, he took out a small metal sphere and used his dagger to generate sparks on its surface. Something activated inside it, and little by little, it began to glow. "Catch this!"

With a painful swing of his arm, Katriel threw the sphere, and it not only struck the revenant squarely in the chest but also got stuck on its surface. Rising high temperatures caused the metal to melt against clothing and beyond, searing skin and flesh. For a living person, it would have been indescribable anguish, but for a reanimated corpse… It was Tristessa who felt the damage as a distressing pressure inside her head.

Meanwhile, Reiden slashed Bennett across the chest and kicked him, leaving him nearly dead on the ground. He caught a glimpse of the glowing sphere flying toward them and recognized it, with fear reflected in his eyes.

"A pyrochromatic bomb! Get away, Tristessa!"

He dropped his sword to the blood-stained ground to scoop the girl up into his arms and threw himself with her to the side, seconds before the flash that ended in a small but powerful explosion…

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