The Tyrant Of The Red Throne

CHAPTER 6 A Tragedy Singing in the Ears

"AAAAAAARRRGGGGGHHHHH!"

Ivan's scream tore through the dead silence of the pine forest, echoing between the towering dark tree trunks. The absolute sickening crunch of rusty iron biting into his flesh and shattering his shinbone was almost unbearable to hear.

Fresh blood sprayed out violently, soaking the moss and the pile of dry leaves right beneath his foot.

Henry instantly dropped to his knees in the dirt, grabbing both sides of the bear trap's massive iron jaws. The veins in his neck and arms bulged to the absolute limit. "Hold on, Ivan! I'm going to pry it open! Dammit, open up, you piece of junk!" Henry growled, pouring every last ounce of his giant strength into pulling the steel plates apart.

But the trap was specifically designed to hold down a half-ton mutant bear. Human strength, especially from someone whose arm was already badly torn up like Henry's, was completely useless. The iron jaws didn't budge a single millimeter.

"It hurts, it hurts so bad! Dammit, Henry, let go of it!" Ivan thrashed wildly, tears streaming down his mud-streaked face. He was gasping for air, black spots rapidly dancing across his vision. "This damn iron is dug straight into my bone marrow! Just chop my leg off, do it now! Or we're all going to die right here!"

"Don't be an idiot! You'll bleed out in three minutes if we chop it off out here!" Faried snapped back.

The hyper-rational guy threw down his rifle, which was now absolutely nothing more than a useless wooden club. He pulled a hunting dagger from his waist, gripping it in a reverse hold. His cold, sharp eyes scanned the pitch-black darkness completely surrounding them.

"We're too late," Faried whispered, his voice incredibly tense. "They're already here."

Out from the shadows of the fern bushes, a pair of glowing red eyes appeared. Then another pair. And then another.

Three mutant tracker hounds, easily the size of full-grown wolves, stepped out of the darkness, circling the group in a highly systematic, calculated rotation. Thick drool dripped heavily from their snouts, which were packed with jagged, uneven fangs.

And right behind those three grunt hounds, the dense brush was violently smashed apart by something much, much bigger.

The two-headed Night-Stalker stepped forward slowly. The right eye on one of its heads was completely blown to pieces from Faried's shot, leaving behind a ruined, black hole that steadily dripped dark blood. Its remaining eyes locked dead onto the group of boys with absolute hatred and pure killing intent. The massive mutant let out a low, rumbling growl, a clear signal for its tracker hounds to completely cut off any escape routes.

They were officially surrounded.

Henry forced himself to stand up. His chest was heaving. He glanced around frantically, desperately looking for absolutely anything he could use to defend them. His eyes locked onto a rotting, moss-covered wooden plank, a leftover piece from a collapsed hunter's blind right near the trap.

With one violent yank, Henry ripped the heavy wooden board, roughly the size of a small door, straight out of the dirt, turning it into a makeshift shield. He stepped up to the front line, completely shielding Ivan's body as the curly-haired boy continued to groan in agony on the ground.

"Faried, cover my left side," Henry ordered, his voice shaking but packed with pure resolve. "If those smaller dogs jump, stab them straight in the eyes. I'll handle the mother."

"You're going to die in a single bite, Henry," Faried replied totally flatly, even though his grip on his hunting dagger tightened significantly.

"At least I'll die on my feet, you bastard," Henry growled back.

Right in the middle of that suffocating, absolute despair, Ivan still somehow managed to let out a weak, off-key laugh between his groans. A laugh born purely out of agonizing pain and absolute irony.

"You two are acting like such damn heroes right now," Ivan wheezed, coughing up a small splatter of blood onto his own lips. "Henry with his rotting piece of wood, Faried with his little butter knife. Just great, what an absolutely legendary party we are. If we actually survive this, the beer is totally on me, I promise,"

Roy didn't react to the dark joke at all. Ever since Ivan had screamed, Roy had just been standing completely frozen right behind Henry.

Roy's breathing was incredibly heavy. The anemia was violently torturing every single cell in his brain. He stared down at the massive puddle of Ivan's fresh blood steadily soaking into the dirt. He had way too little of his own blood left to summon his magic, but right at his feet, liters of blood were just going to absolute waste.

'System,' Roy called out in his mind. 'Use this blood. Turn it into a weapon. Do it right now.'

The ancient, blood-red interface instantly flared to life across his retinas. But this time, it wasn't the confirmation he desperately needed.

[Access Denied.]

[Host Vessel Level Insufficient for External Manipulation (Non-Host/Non-Enemy).]

[The Martyr's Blood Art requires absolute soul resonance. The blood of an ally who holds absolutely no killing intent toward the Host cannot be manipulated at the current tier. Must utilize enemy blood, or the Host's own blood.]

"You piece of shit," Roy cursed under his breath. He clenched his fists so hard his knuckles turned completely white.

This system was an absolute curse. It wasn't designed to save him, it was explicitly designed to torture its user. Roy literally couldn't manipulate Ivan's blood because Ivan wasn't an enemy trying to kill him, and Roy's level was simply too low to manipulate any blood without extreme emotional resonance.

"Grrrrr."

The three mutant tracker hounds started lowering their bodies to the ground, getting ready to pounce. The Night-Stalker let out a sharp, vicious bark, officially giving the order to execute.

Roy bit down incredibly hard on his bottom lip. So hard that he literally tore the skin right off his lip. The metallic taste of his own fresh blood washed over his tongue.

He squeezed his eyes shut tight. This feeling of total helplessness, he absolutely despised it. It was the exact same feeling as being crushed under that wooden beam back in his cabin. Right amidst the monstrous growls of the mutants and Ivan's agonizing groans, a memory from his past violently started playing in his head. It wasn't a happy memory, but a bitter memory of his father, completely drunk on cheap ale after working all day in a cruel landlord's fields.

His father used to sit right in front of the fireplace, singing an old, worn-out song with a raspy voice packed with deeply suppressed anger. A song about the rot slowly eating away at the world of Aethelgard, about the human race constantly being trampled underfoot.

Back then, Roy just thought it was the meaningless rambling of a drunk man. But tonight, those lyrics felt incredibly alive, heavily resonating with his own heartbeat, which was now absolutely overflowing with vengeance.

Roy opened his eyes, which were now glowing a deep, intense crimson. He locked his gaze dead onto the massive Night-Stalker. His bleeding lips moved slowly, whispering the lyrics of his father's song like an absolute death chant.

"Staring up at the weeping sky," Roy whispered, his voice incredibly hoarse but crystal clear in Faried and Henry's ears.

Faried slightly turned his head. "Roy? What the hell are you babbling about?"

"Blood is spilled, washing over the earth," Roy continued, the tone of his voice turning incredibly cold, practically freezing the air right around him. "Crushed and destroyed, completely ground down, by the wheels of their absolute arrogance."

[Emotional Resonance Confirmed.]

[Absolute Rage Detected.]

[Warning: Physical Vessel severely lacks blood raw material. Forced activation will result in permanent tissue damage.]

"To hell with permanent tissue damage," Roy hissed.

He stepped forward, walking right past Ivan's collapsed body. Sticking out of the ground near Ivan's foot was a violently snapped pine branch, its jagged end pointing straight up, easily as sharp as a wooden stake.

Without hesitating for even a single fraction of a second, Roy raised his left palm high into the air, and slammed it down with every ounce of his strength right onto the wooden spike.

SHKK!

"ROY! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, YOU ABSOLUTE LUNATIC?!" Henry screamed in pure horror, watching his best friend purposefully impale his own hand.

The filthy, moss-covered wooden spike violently punched through Roy's palm, tearing straight out the back of his hand. A crippling, agonizing pain exploded through his nerves, but Roy's face remained totally static. His slowly eroding humanity made this intense physical pain feel like absolutely nothing more than a simple transaction price.

Fresh blood violently sprayed out from Roy's ruined palm, heavily soaking the wooden branch and the air completely surrounding it.

'This is my blood. The raw material is right here,' Roy stated to the system in his mind, completely ignoring Henry's screaming. 'Turn it into razor wire. Tear these damn dogs to pieces.'

The bloody interface aggressively blinked across his vision once again.[Raw Material Accepted.][Transmutation Calculation: Tier Two Barbed Razor Wire.][Required Transaction Price: Memory of Taste. Surrender the memory of 'The Taste of Your Mother's Cooking'.]

Roy's breath literally stopped in his throat for a second.

After permanently losing the warmth of his mother's embrace back at the village, the absolutely only sweet thing he had left of that woman was the memory of her cooking. The potato broth soup he had eaten just tonight. The taste of her homemade wheat bread that always accompanied him out in the fields. The sweet taste of the berry jam she always hid away specifically for his birthday celebrations.

That was the primary memory anchoring him to the very simple, pure happiness of being human.

"The three dogs are jumping! Watch out, Henry!" Faried screamed, violently shattering Roy's focus.

The three tracker hounds pounced all at the exact same time. One went straight for Faried, the other two vaulted right at Henry's rotting shield. Henry's wooden board instantly cracked under the crushing force of the mutants' fangs, and the massive guy was violently shoved backward, falling hard right on top of Ivan.

[Transaction time remaining: five seconds. Four,]

If he refused right now, Henry was going to die. Ivan was going to be completely torn to shreds. Faried was going to run completely out of energy.

In this totally ruined world of Aethelgard, innocence and sweet memories absolutely could not be used as a shield. They were nothing but dead weight that critically slowed down the swing of your blade.

"Take it," Roy whispered incredibly softly. "Eat every last drop of that memory."

Instantly, deep within his taste buds, the lingering flavor of his mother's potato broth completely vanished. It evaporated just like smoke blown away by a hurricane. If someone were to physically shove his mother's food right into his mouth at this exact second, Roy's tongue would only taste completely bland, dead ash. That sweet memory was ripped out entirely by its roots, leaving a massive, gaping hole in his soul that was instantly filled by a completely feral, absolute killing instinct.

[Transaction Accepted. Executing Martyr's Blood Art.]

The fresh blood spraying from Roy's impaled palm suddenly stopped falling toward the ground. The crimson drops literally defied gravity, vibrating violently in the air.

In the absolute blink of an eye, the liquid blood violently stretched, elongated, and rapidly hardened with an incredibly sickening, carbon-cracking sound. The blood was no longer a liquid, it had completely transformed into a dense web of dark red steel wire, packed with hundreds of razor-sharp, violently crossing barbs.

One of the tracker hounds, the one that had just ripped off the top corner of Henry's shield, vaulted high into the air, aiming straight for Roy's completely exposed throat.

Roy didn't even try to dodge. He simply raised his violently impaled hand, and sharply flicked it forward.

The barbed razor wire, made entirely from his own blood, shot out and violently expanded in the air. The crimson net completely enveloped the body of the leaping mutant hound with absolute lightning speed.

CRASH!