KFBRV Pt 2 Ch 8
- 14 hours ago
- 6 min read
The Phoenix proved the absolute worst match for his constitution. Ever since the entity settled within his body, Viktor suffered from agonizing pain, as if his entire form were engulfed in flames.
Using his ability even slightly triggered excruciating agony, mimicking the sensation of a hunting rifle piercing his flesh.
The pain intensified and grew fiercer with each passing day. It reached a point where even Viktor, a man possessing a fierce will to live, begged for death daily.
Desperate for purification, he penned dozens of pleading letters to Odette.
However.
I refuse to associate with a lowly human, worse than an insect. How dare a filthy, vulgar thief even dream of meeting me?
How many times had he read that callous reply?
He convinced himself that since a Purifier wrote the letter, the stationery itself might harbor purifying power. Whenever the agony pierced his body, he clutched the paper like a talisman.
As he obsessively re-read the words, the image of Odette sharpened in his mind.
A lowly human, worse than an insect. A filthy, vulgar thief.
The Odette in his imagination spoke exactly like the noblewoman who had treated him as a mere stallion. She mirrored the woman who had branded him with indelible disgrace.
Throughout those agonizing, hellish nights, her mocking laughter echoed in his ears.
I am going to lose my mind. I am going mad. Please, someone, just kill me.
Driven to the brink, Viktor ultimately unleashed his own ability upon himself.
Sensing his absolute resolve to die, the parasitic power finally yielded, retreating just before he reduced himself to ashes.
The agony remained excruciating, yet it subsided enough to let him breathe.
Once he could finally rise from his bed, he committed his first act: he incinerated Odette's letter, the paper he had clung to as his sole salvation.
He cemented the belief that seeking salvation from another human was absolute madness.
Therefore, their initial encounter left him utterly bewildered. The woman named Odette completely defied the villainous image he had constructed from her letters.
Her teal eyes radiated a precarious fragility. Her speech remained elegant yet cautious. A fleeting scent of spring drifted from her.
Above all, her profound physical weakness shattered his expectations completely.
[Odette] "Cough, cough! Vi... Viktor."
He recalled her desperate gaze, pleading for salvation as she coughed up blood.
[Odette] "I'm sorry... that someone like me... wants to live......"
She occasionally exposed her fractured psyche. Her astonishingly frail, slender bones easily fit within his grasp.
She compensated for her fragility with a rigid, unyielding posture. She wielded that stiffness as her sole shield for survival.
Every glimpse of her vulnerability churned his stomach. His instincts warned him that this churning would ultimately destroy him.
He unleashed harsh words specifically to counter that feeling.
He refused to crumble under a foolish concept like love. He refused to plummet into the abyss like a pathetic idiot.
[Odette] "Colonel König. Why make such an expression? You should be happier. It's the most famous scene you wanted to see so much, isn't it?"
He had remained entirely ignorant of the deep scars his words inflicted upon her.
The image of a trembling Odette pressing the muzzle against her own head lodged in his throat like a jagged stone.
He could neither swallow the memory nor spit it out. It threatened to strangle him for the rest of his life.
From their initial encounter to her final moment, he had displayed nothing but a wretched, pathetic attitude. He had accumulated a mountain of regrets.
He should have reached for her as she plummeted into the ocean. He should have saved her using any means necessary.
He should have prevented her from falling into the lonely abyss alone.
I am the one who let her slip away.
Viktor clenched his fists. His knuckles turned bone-white and trembled.
Karl had pinned him in that crucial second, yet the boy's grip wasn't the reason he failed to reach her.
Karl possessed formidable strength, but he had yet to awaken. By Viktor's standards, the boy wielded the force of a mere child.
His trauma regarding hunting rifles paralyzed him.
The instant Odette brandished the pistol, all strength drained from his arms reflexively.
Ever since the day he barely survived "disposal" in that sadistic noblewoman's hunting grounds, firearms and gunshots rendered him entirely immobile.
The momentary lapse born of his trauma condemned Odette to plunge into that freezing, abyssal sea.
He allowed that fragile girl to fall to such a gruesome fate.
Regret compounded upon endless regret.
And today. Finally. He successfully located the Odette he had hunted so desperately.
[Viktor] "I knew you were alive."
He stood beneath an ashen sky, atop a snow-capped peak battered by a raging blizzard.
He registered zero cold. The thin air of the high altitudes failed to disrupt his breathing. His stamina remained absolute.
A perilous, steep, snowy mountain. For Odette to elude him this far in an environment so overwhelmingly advantageous to him proved her extraordinary tenacity.
These snowy peaks are deadly. She has absolutely no fear......
Despite this being her first excursion on this mountain, she scaled it with the reckless confidence of an expert guide.
Viktor might have genuinely lost her trail. However, she had triggered a hunter's snare, leaving vibrant crimson drops beside every footprint.
The pooling bloodstains grew denser along the path. It provided undeniable proof that her wound was tearing further open.
She drags herself to this altitude while bleeding profusely?
[Viktor] "Incredible. You possess a divine talent for driving a man insane."
He stared in disbelief at the final bloodstain leading into a small cave. He murmured to himself, a plume of white breath accompanying his heavy sigh into the freezing air.
Odette anticipated he would track her footprints and blood. She deliberately selected routes that masked her presence, frantically prioritizing the dangerous trails where wild beasts prowled.
She would gladly offer herself to wild predators if it meant escaping my grasp.
With a fragile body that wouldn't even constitute a single mouthful for those beasts.
[Viktor] "Even now, you excel at making me lose my mind."
A hollow chuckle escaped his lips as he approached the cave entrance.
He had spent an entire year drowning in absolute regret and self-loathing.
He wanted to beg her for forgiveness. To apologize for ignoring her fragility. To plead for a chance to protect her from now on.
He vowed never to repeat the actions she despised. He would immediately abandon his habit of calling her "darling."
Viktor fantasized about this exact reunion endlessly. Confirming her survival would finally allow him to breathe. Finding her alive offered his only chance to swallow the crushing guilt that had strangled him since her funeral mass.
Absurdly, standing mere inches away from her drove his anxiety to an absolute breaking point.
Odette had crawled into a narrow, filthy cave, bleeding profusely in the corner. Her state perfectly mirrored a dying, fragile animal seeking a dark crevice for its final moments.
The dense, metallic stench of blood indicated a severe wound. Upon detecting this vulnerability, the beast within him boiled and raged, demanding immediate action.
Stay still, you overgrown turkey. Do you think I'm not anxious enough already?
He harbored an overwhelmingly desperate urge to storm that damp cave and drag her out by force. He suppressed the impulse entirely through superhuman patience.
He gripped the upper rim of the small rock cave. He maintained a calm facade, but a rabid madness possessed him internally. His frenzy completely blinded him to the fact that Odette's signature scent had vanished.
Gripping the stone entrance served as a physical anchor, restraining his instinct to charge inside.
The jagged rock tore into his palm, drawing fresh blood, while his arm trembled violently on the verge of a spasm.
Yet he swallowed his chaotic emotions entirely, bending his knees and composing his features.
He lowered his head into the opening. Odette crouched deep within the shadows of the cave.
[Viktor] "It has been a while, Odette. Have you been well?"
He forced his voice into a gentle, affectionate tone. He needed to reassure her. He approached the situation like calming a terrified animal—maintaining a safe distance and whispering.
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