Chapter 115: Bora Devil
Okay..." Mark began as they moved out of earshot. "Okay,You were right," he admitted quietly, glancing back toward where Wisp waited a short distance away.
"Something about her seems off... like really off." He glanced back at her, "Okay, all of it. Everything about her is off..."
He exhaled, and rubbed his brow. "For once, I’d like to actually make it out of here without having to face this... whatever this is..."
"You should have listened." Sera said, "we would’ve found a way around this by now."
She stayed silent for a moment, then said again: "Then again, we couldn’t just kill her, not when we weren’t sure what she was."
Mark’s expression stiffened. If they thought of killing Wisp because they suspected that she was a beast and later found out that she was human, he wasn’t sure he would be able to forgive himself...
"So, what do we do now?"
Sera looked at him with an absurd expression. "You’re asking me? You’re supposed to be the leader here."
"Well sorry if I don’t have a plan to kill a beast that could immitate humans!"
Sera sighed, then replied. "Just — stay sharp. Whatever she actually is, we don’t know what she’s capable of yet."
"Noted." Mark nodded. For now, playing along was the best course of action...
The couldn’t risk acting out now and attack her when they didn’t know what they would face.
And the Edge had an annoying record of exceeding expectations in the worst ways possible...
They nodded and went back towards Wisp, then they started walking...
After a while, Wisp began leading the way down the narrow trail she’d insisted on.
They were surprised as to why she would lead the way like that, but they didn’t question her. They wanted to see where they were going, or rather, where she was taking them.
The terrain shifted gradually the further they walked. The trees growing sparse and twisted, sunlight fading into a dim grey light that had no clear source at all.
The air itself was thickening with a cold scent that reminded Mark uncomfortably of how dangerous this nightmare actually was...
"So," Mark said, keeping his tone casual as best as he could, falling into step beside Wisp. "This path. You said it leads somewhere specific. Where exactly are we headed?"
"Forward," Wisp said.
"Forward’s a direction, not a destination though" he said with a stiff chuckle.
"It’s the way," she said, and left it at that.
Mark’s brows furrowed. Something about the flatness of it made the hair on his neck stand. It was worse now that he was actually paying attention to it.
He studied her as they walked — the too smooth movement, the eyes that never quite blinked at the right intervals, and the way her expression sat so still no matter what either of them said.
The longer he looked, the wronger it all felt.
The realization was crawling up his spine in a way he couldn’t fully understand.
It was terrifying...
He stopped walking entirely.
"Wait." He turned to face her fully. "Do you even know where we’re going?"
"Yes," Wisp said.
"How?"
The pause that followed stretched for a long moment. Her head tilted slightly, as if the question was asked in a different language.
"I know," she said finally, offering nothing further.
"That’s not an answer."
"I know," she repeated, the exact same words in the exact same flat tone.
Something in the way she said it shattered every doubt that Mark had, and as Wisp’s expression shifted, just slightly, Sera caught it and unsheathed her blade.
**CHING**
She threw her blade, the weapon leaving her hand in one instant, spinning toward Wisp’s chest, and for one suspended second, everything held still.
Then, Wisp caught it.
She didn’t dodged, she didn’t deflect. She caught it, bare hand closing around the spinning blade mid air without so much as a flinch—not even looking toward her direction.
Blood began leaking through the wound—green liquid oozing from her palm slowly, and Wisp looked at it, her expression completely unbothered by the wound...
"Ahhh.... I’m tired of this."
Her eyes met with Sera, and she took an instinctive step back. "You’ve been testing me," Wisp said, and her voice changed entirely...
The flat tone xcracking apart into something deeper and distorted, wrong in a way that made every hair on both their bodies stand. "Both of you, watching, waiting, whispering when you thought I couldn’t hear."
"Sera—" Mark stepped back, his gauntlets flared instinctively.
"I’ve grown tired of this," Wisp continued, and her skin began to split and shift. The human shape peeling away like a mask that was finally discarded.
The skin peeled off more, revealing something dark and scaled moving across her body like skin, "I’m tired of playing along with prey that refuses to stay properly fooled."
"Properly fooled? What, so you expect us to just stay here and wait to be devoured?" Mark pointed at her. "You are out of your mind, lady."
Sera didn’t say anything. She just watches with wide eyes as the woman whom they had stayed with at their camp had suddenly became this.
She was right. She knew she was... but this... this wasn’t what she had expected.
She had expected Wisp to transform into a beast. The kind they had fought countless times...
But she watched in horror as the transformation completed in a violent, cracking sound and where Wisp had stood a moment before, something towering and monstrous now crouched instead— she still had two legs, but her body was covered in scales, her eyes glowing a dim yellow and jagged rows of teeth lining her mouth.
Many joints formed along its limbs, and it made a low hungry growl as its eyes moved from Mark to Sera...
The system notification bloomed in front of their eyes simultaneously.
[Ding!]
"Okay," Mark looked at it, his eyes widening before backing up, his gauntlets flaring brighter "That’s considerably worse than I was hoping for."
[You have encountered a Bora Devil.]