Chapter 132. The Corruption Is Feeding on the Wounds
Catherine closed the distance in an explosive burst of speed that tore through the air like a physical shockwave, leaving shimmering afterimages in her wake. In the terrifying fraction of a second before her blades connected with the creature’s outstretched claw, the static of her old trauma finally went silent.
A single, crystal-clear purpose crystallized beneath her ribs: she wasn’t fighting to prove her worth to the ghosts of her past. She wasn’t fighting to apologize for her survival.
She was fighting because there were living souls behind her students who looked to her for salvation, and a man who had patiently stitched her shattered psyche back together, one broken piece at a time.
They deserved the White Sword. They deserved the woman who had once commanded the wind itself.
That shift in purpose didn’t just change her mindset; it rewrote her physics.
The hesitation that had plagued her earlier—the microsecond of doubt before every strike— evaporated. In its place emerged something William had only heard whispered about in legends: a fluid, merciless precision that made the monster seem like it was moving through molasses.
This was the woman Grock and Albert had described with reverent fear: the fastest blade in three kingdoms, finally standing upright and breathing fresh air again as the White Knight of Astoria.
Both swords became extensions of a single, unified consciousness. Wind’s explosive footwork carried her in tight, lethal arcs around the creature’s flailing claws.
The monster swung a massive, corrupted limb, each strike carrying enough force to pulverize granite, but Catherine wasn’t there. She was a ghost in the machine, dancing through the gaps in its grotesque anatomy.
’Left flank, rising slash... Now!’ Her mind worked with tactical coldness.
Her first strike caught the creature across its exposed throat. The steel bit deep into the corrupted flesh with a wet, tearing sound, spraying a fountain of black, putrid ichor across the stones.
The creature shrieked a sound that was less a roar and more the grinding of metal on bone, but Catherine didn’t give it a moment to recover. She spun on her heel, using the momentum to drive Wind’s left blade upward, punching through the creature’s ribcage.
There was a sickening crunch as bone splintered like dry kindling, the blade protruding from the opposite side in a spray of gore.
William, positioned as her guardian angel, felt the wind of a stray claw whistle past his ear as he intercepted a desperate swipe meant for Catherine’s exposed ribs. He was momentarily awestruck.
He had fought alongside elite mercenaries and battle-hardened veterans in his previous life, but this was something else entirely. This wasn’t combat; this was art written in blood.
"Gods above," William muttered under his breath, his teeth gritted as he parried a bone crushing blow from one of the creature’s smaller appendages. "She’s not just fighting it... she’s dismantling it."
Catherine didn’t hear him. She couldn’t afford to. Her world had narrowed to the rhythm of breathing and the taste of iron.
The creature lashed out again, a wild, desperate swing that caught Catherine’s shoulder. It wasn’t a killing blow, but the force sent her skidding backward, blood blooming across her tunic.
’Pain is just information,’ she thought, her inner voice steady despite the fire blooming in her shoulder. ’The wound is shallow and the blade is still sharp!’
’The target is exposed!’
Before the creature could capitalize on the opening, Catherine lunged back into the fray. She ducked beneath a downward smash that shattered the ground where she had stood a heartbeat before, the impact sending chunks of stone flying like shrapnel.
Rising from her crouch, she drove both blades upward in a devastating X pattern. The steel sheared through the creature’s left forearm, severing the limb at the elbow with a wet, grinding snap.
Black blood geysered from the stump, drenching her face and hair, but she didn’t blink.
"Catherine! Watch your six!" William roared, stepping in to drive his sword through a corrupted tentacle that was coiling around her ankle like a viper.
The sound of the tentacle snapping under his blade was like a wet branch breaking.
"I see it!" she snapped back, her voice carrying a new, steel-edged authority.
She twisted her body mid air, using the creature’s own momentum to flip backward, landing lightly on the balls of her feet despite the blood slicking the ground.
"Don’t you dare die on me now!" William yelled, his own adrenaline spiking as he parried a spray of bone fragments thrown off by the monster’s convulsing flesh. "You’re finally awake, Catherine! So stay awake!"
"I’m not going anywhere, William!" she cried out, her eyes blazing with a terrifying, beautiful hunger for vengeance. "I’m finally here!"
"You’re incredible," he called out, deflecting a stray claw strike aimed at her exposed back while she pressed her own assault forward without pause.
"Focus on the monster, William, not the compliments."
"Nah, don’t worry..." William smiled. "No need to get too serious on this one since you’re back."
"I see what you meant..."
The creature’s shriek was a discordant symphony of agony and rage. Sensing its severed limb was not a fatal wound but merely an invitation to violence, the monstrosity lurched forward.
Its remaining arm, a twisted mass of chitinous spikes and weeping muscle, slammed into the earth with enough force to send a shockwave through Catherine’s boots.
CRACK BOOM.
The ground buckled. Catherine didn’t retreat; she channeled.
As the creature’s massive fist descended toward her skull, she pivoted on her left heel, the motion so precise it looked like she was spinning on a needle’s point.
The fist missed her by millimeters, pulverizing the stone where her head had been a heartbeat before. The impact sent a spray of razor-sharp stone shrapnel whistling past her cheek, drawing thin lines of crimson.
"Now, William!" she commanded, her voice cutting through the chaos like a blade.
William didn’t hesitate. He saw the opening she had engineered.
As the creature’s weight was committed to the failed strike, its torso was momentarily exposed and off balance.
William roared, his muscles bulging beneath his armor as he threw his entire body weight into a devastating thrust. His sword found the soft seam between two chitinous plates on the creature’s abdomen.
SHLIIIIICK.
The steel sank deep, grinding against bone before punching through into the writhing mass beneath. The creature convulsed, its black blood spraying across William’s face in a hot, foul-smelling deluge.
"Got you, you bastard!" William grunted, twisting the blade to widen the wound. \
The creature’s reaction was immediate and primal. It lashed out with its tail, a barbed, whip-like appendage that tore through the air with a wet whoosh.
"Catherine, down!"
Catherine dropped flat, the tail whistling inches above her spine, severing a nearby boulder as if it were soft cheese.
K. CHAK.
In one fluid motion, she rolled forward from her prone position, using the momentum to drive both Wind’s blades upward into the creature’s underbelly. The blades sang as they carved through flesh and sinew, the sound echoing like tearing canvas.
SQUELCH.
A gout of ichor erupted, drenching Catherine as she twisted both swords sideways, severing internal organs. The creature’s roar became a gurgling wet sound as its own fluids filled its throat.
But the horror was far from over; the corruption within it seemed to react to the damage, the flesh around the wounds knitting together in grotesque, cancerous spasms.
"It won’t die!" Catherine shouted, her breathing coming in harsh, ragged gasps.
Blood dripped from her chin, mixing with the black gore on her face. "The corruption is feeding on the wounds!"
"Then we cut deeper!" William shouted back.
He stepped into the creature’s reach, accepting a glancing blow from a spike that tore through his shoulder guard with a screech of protesting metal. Pain flared white hot through his arm, but he ignored it, driving his elbow into the creature’s face a wet, bone crushing impact that shattered a section of its mandibles.
The fight became a blur of lethal geometry. Catherine was a whirlwind of silver and steel, her movements so fast they created audible whish whish sounds as she carved patterns of death into the monster’s hide.
She danced between its strikes ducking beneath a claw that severed a tree behind her, leaping over a sweeping tail that left a furrow in the earth. Every time she landed, it was with a deadly purpose: a slash to the tendons to slow it down, a stab to the joints to weaken its stance.
CLANG. SHINK. CRUNCH.
The air was thick with the metallic tang of blood and the sulfurous stench of corruption. Catherine’s lungs burned, each breath feeling like she was inhaling broken glass, but the adrenaline kept her heart hammering a relentless rhythm.
She saw a moment a tiny, precious sliver of opportunity. The creature’s movements had grown sluggish, its regeneration struggling to keep pace with her relentless assault.
She leaped, bringing both blades down in a dual overhead strike aimed at the crown of its head. The force of her landing and the strike combined to send a visible shockwave through the creature’s skull.
KRA KOOM.
For three seconds, there was silence. Only the sound of their ragged breathing filled the clearing. Catherine stood over the staggering beast, her blades dripping with black sludge, her body slick with blood.
Despite everything—the pain in her shoulder, the exhaustion threatening to collapse her knees, the overwhelming horror of the creature’s existence—a sharp, breathless laugh escaped her mid-strike, a sound of pure, defiant triumph at having finally found her strength again.