Flip the Coin [BL]-Chapter 340. I Marionette (by The Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra)

Chapter 340: 340. I Marionette (by The Blake Robinson Synthetic Orchestra)

Henry’s POV

I did as I had planned, acidifying the bony rhinoceros, but it took longer than I wanted it to.

Not only had the monster’s size and state of consciousness changed, but it was stronger—far stronger than it had been before.

The bones generally had become sturdier; the black bones that were scattered amidst the white ones were especially stubborn.

But it worked, and I acidified it as a whole.

With no bones left behind, it would take even longer for the monster to ’produce’ new ones, and in the meantime, I could try to wake Henrietta up.

I ran back to the half see-through shield, and with a light tap, the crystals gave way.

I looked at Kenny, took his pulse, and felt for his breath. He was still alright but showed no intention of waking up.

I saw the child shaking Henrietta, but she was still unresponsive, her eyes wide open and her lips moving.

Did her counterpart, the female monster in the skyscraper, die because the dragon crashed into it, resulting in her experiencing the cut of another link?

Was this what was destroying her even more, or had she just been injured by the crash like the rest of us, apparently before I involuntarily activated the shield?

I bit my wrist and sucked a mouthful of blood. Clutching Kenny’s jaw, I then bent over to give it to him.

CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK

I looked up after licking over his lips one last time and tasting my own blood, seeing that the respawning had begun anew.

More bones were digging themselves out from the earth amidst the black debris, as if thousands of skeletons from underground wanted out and merged together—to gather around that one black beating heart, to then defy death as a whole new being.

Where were these bones coming from? The Bone Monster itself shouldn’t have come from this world, as we crossed into it together.

Was the heart responsible for the respawning, and if that was the case, why didn’t it die with the destruction of the heart?

How the fuck should we kill it?

No.

CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK

We had to run.

But we couldn’t run; the spider leg that was putting itself together in front of my eyes was long enough to reach us, no matter how fast I would run.

I looked at Henrietta and clenched my jaw, putting Kenny down unwillingly to bite my healed wrist yet again.

If I didn’t want her to ingest Kenny’s blood, I had no choice but to become her blood bank for the rest of our lives.

CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK.

I stood up and stepped to Henrietta, the child still trying to get her attention.

I patted the child’s shoulder, telling her to stop, and crouched down beside our ticket out of here, feeding her my blood.

I snickered when I saw her state not changing, her bloodstained lips still moving, not saying anything but looking as if she was reciting something.

Closing my eyes, I moved my head to the left and right, making myself ready to let loose and test the limitations of my powers.

"Later, try waking her up, but if it doesn’t work...it doesn’t matter," I told the child, and seeing her nod, I stood up.

Looking at the black hands at the end of the spider, thin black bones sprouting out from them made them look like hair, and the skull tower was forming as the body of the Bone Monster, I took Kenny in my arms and lifted him to my side before yanking Henrietta over my shoulder again.

With just a glance, the kid understood and jumped on my back to hold on to me.

I ran again over the debris, bringing as much distance between the nearly completed monster and us as possible.

The debris never ceased, showing that we hadn’t even had an idea of just how many skyscrapers there had been.

When I looked up and saw dark clouds forming in the sky, I knew we were in the midst of wrecking another world.

The one I had found Kenny in was black, from the coal in the air to the burned-down ground, and right now, we were moving in just the same direction.

But who the fuck cares?

Neither of us wanted to be here; it hadn’t been us capturing monsters to gain money, health, youth, or power from them.

I looked back and saw that the Skull Spider had nearly finished putting itself together, so I stopped and threw Henrietta on the black debris. The child went down by herself, and then I cautiously put Kenny down and pecked his mouth a few times.

Having to let go of him, I stood up and stepped away, imagining the crystalline shield, the protective dome, forming around them.

This time it was even more see-through, but it didn’t become sturdier no matter how hard I tried.

I contemplated acidifying Kenny’s collar so he could use his power...but this wasn’t a fight I wanted him to partake in anyway, and if he couldn’t teleport...then I could take on the monster with the assurance that he would be there on my return.

That he wouldn’t teleport away, leave the shield, or worse, this world.

CLUCK CLUCK CLUCK.

I turned away from them and ran to the monster that had been completed.

The skull tower was moving; better said, the rows of skulls, which had further spider legs sticking out in between. The rows that turned didn’t seem random, more as if a mechanism was being activated.

When I arrived in front of it, I closely watched it, not finding the heart, which was possibly hidden inside the skull tower.

As long as it didn’t attempt to reach the shield, I chose to stay unmoving, trying to come up with something.

Everything could be killed, and it only took one human to do it; Kenny proved that fact with the giant.

If each bone was a counterpart, and the heart needed to be destroyed for the bones to respawn, then maybe we had to kill it often enough until the bones ran out—until each of the bones managed to come out, be part of the organism, and be destroyed.

The question was just how long that would take and how much power that would suck.

A hint that this theory was correct was that the heart was now not easily spotted, not plainly there to see and attack. As if, at some point, the monster didn’t intend to evolve because it was nearing its halftime.

This theory was good enough. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

I stood still, the sky darkening further, the clouds circling above us as if this was a battlefield watched by the gods.

Then it moved.

A long bony spider leg slowly lifted, the bony black hand at the end of it hanging from it as if it were only a lifeless decoration. But that was until it stopped mid-movement for two seconds, the hand coming to me at an unimaginable speed.

It tried to attack me, to reach me.

I teleported meters away, the hand piercing into a black debris hill.

Another spider leg lifted itself, and again there were a few seconds of absolute stillness when the hand came down, this time faster.

I again let the acid spread through my veins and teleported to the other side of the spider, away from the shield, in hopes of luring the Skull Spider to the opposite side of the shield.

When I was on its other side, I saw that the skull tower was still moving, each row turning in place.

Through the bony legs, across the black debris hills, I checked on the shield unconsciously, stopping in my tracks when I saw Kenny standing there, his hand on the shield.

Shocked but exhilarated, and at the same time anxious that he would rush out to the monster, I was in the midst of motioning him to stay there, not sure if he would see it because we were so far apart.

But then I saw him moving his finger, as if he was commanding me to come to him.

I felt an attack and looked up, only barely able to dodge another strike from the spider leg.

I looked back at the shield.

But when I saw his face, albeit a bit blurry even for my enchanted body because of the distance, I saw that he wasn’t looking at me, that his motion wasn’t intended for me to see.

That he wasn’t trying to break out of the shield, that his face looked absolutely tranquil beside a bloodthirsty grin emerging from his lips.

He meant the Skull Spider.

He wanted it to come to him.

...And it obeyed.