Chapter 84: Saint Hilarius Hospital (16)
Valisera—or the entity that had merged with her—slowly raised her right hand.
Her fingers ended in claws of solid darkness.
She grabbed the Surgeon’s steel leg, the one that pierced her abdomen.
"What have you done to my lady... you filthy insect?"
The entity spoke these words in a tone dripping with contempt and superior rage.
With a single motion, devoid of any physical effort, driven by pure cosmic force...
Craaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaash!
The entity tore apart the Surgeon’s titanium steel leg as if breaking a dry tree branch!
The Surgeon emitted a high-frequency alarm and staggered backward, losing its balance after one of its primary legs was severed.
Valisera did not fall to the ground.
Gravity ceased around her.
She remained floating in the air, surrounded by a violent black and purple aura.
She extended her hand, pulled out the remaining steel piece embedded in her abdomen, and tossed it aside indifferently.
Then the nightmarish miracle occurred.
The open wound in her abdomen, from which blood had been flowing... began to close.
But it did not heal like a human’s.
Threads of black darkness and purple Eitra intertwined like weaving spiders, stitching the flesh together within seconds!
The entity was repairing the vessel with its own power, transforming her flesh into something beyond natural biology.
"Unknown spacetime mutation detected. Threat level: unquantifiable," the Surgeon stated, its remaining legs retreating backward. For the first time, the machine was programmed to flee. "Activating retreat protocol."
"Retreat?"
Valisera laughed with her dual voice, a laugh that shook the concrete walls of the laboratory and caused the remaining glass containers to shatter from the force of its frequency.
"You touched the throne of the abyss... and there is no retreat from the abyss."
Valisera floated forward, and at a speed that made time itself seem to stop, she manifested directly in front of the Surgeon.
The Surgeon unleashed all its weapons at once in a desperate attempt to survive: the laser scalpel, the bone saw, and the acid injector.
But the aura of darkness surrounding Valisera was absolute.
The laser scalpel extinguished the moment it touched her black mantle. The acid evaporated into nothingness. The bone saw stopped spinning as if its motors had been crushed from within.
The Surgeon’s resistance was immense; it poured all the Eitra from its blue core into an S-rank energy shield, a shield capable of withstanding a city-level explosion.
But Valisera extended her black-clawed hands and drove them directly into the energy shield.
"Rend."
Boooooooooooooooooooooooooom!
The shield shattered like fragile glass.
Valisera grabbed the surgical arm that had killed Aiden and, with pure sadistic intent, tore it from its roots! Black oil and electrical sparks scattered everywhere.
"This... is for making him cry," she said in a voice dripping with death.
Then she lunged at the remaining spider-like legs.
She began tearing them apart one after another! Craaash! Slaaash! Craaaanch!
Reinforced steel was being ripped apart with bare hands.
The Surgeon was being violently struck, thrown left and right in the air by inverted gravity, while Valisera dissected it alive just as it had dissected its victims.
"Core structure damage... 70%... 90%..." the Surgeon spoke in a broken voice.
"Silence!" she roared.
She thrust her right hand directly into the Surgeon’s human chest.
She pierced the ribcage, shattered the ribs, until her dark fingers reached the blue mechanical heart that was beating frantically, trying to keep the machine alive.
She lifted the entire Surgeon into the air with one hand, suspending it by its heart.
The scene was magnificent, terrifying—a work of art of absolute destruction.
The girl with the single black horn and mismatched eyes floated in the air amidst the rubble, holding an S-rank nightmare with one hand as if it were nothing but a broken doll, while the black and purple aura raged around her like a miniature storm.
"The final diagnosis, doctor," Valisera whispered into the Surgeon’s face, a monstrous smile splitting her expression. "You are scrap."
She clenched her fist.
Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom!
The blue mechanical heart exploded inside the Surgeon’s chest with immense force!
But the explosion did not reach Valisera; gravity suppressed it and directed it entirely inward.
The Surgeon’s body—its spider-like frame and human half—swelled for a second, then tore apart into thousands of scorched metal and flesh fragments that scattered like black rain across the laboratory!
The S-rank monster, the nightmare of the Chimera labs... was completely annihilated.
Nothing remained of it but burning scrap.
Valisera slowly descended onto the shattered floor.
The moment her feet touched the blood-stained tiles, the black and purple aura extinguished.
The black horn that had emerged from her forehead cracked and dissolved into ash in the air, leaving behind a small wound that would heal later.
Her dark right eye returned to its natural crimson color.
The cosmic entity returned to its slumber in the deepest part of her mind, after fulfilling its duty in protecting its "lady," leaving her exhausted, breathless, but alive and physically whole thanks to the threads of darkness that had stitched her wounds.
Valisera stood alone in the middle of the destroyed Chimera slaughterhouse.
The Surgeon, the S-rank monster, was now nothing but scattered burning scrap and charred flesh around her.
She looked around. The silence of death enveloped everything.
Then she slowly turned toward the dark corner.
Where Aiden’s torn, headless body hung, no longer bleeding, suspended from the hydraulic clamp that had frozen in place.
She walked with heavy, slow steps.
Each step felt as though she was dragging a mountain of lead.
A pawn?
The word echoed in her mind as she approached him.
Was he truly just a pawn?
She had always deceived herself.
Throughout her leadership of Alpha Squad, she had convinced her cold mind that those with her were nothing but tools.
Mere pieces on a bloody chessboard, any of which could be sacrificed to reach the king.
That was the first and most important lesson carved into her skull.
The lesson she had personally learned from the FBI commander—that damned traitor, Alexander Vance.
"Attachment is weakness, Valisera. Soldiers are numbers. If you cry over a number, you will lose the entire equation." That was what he used to tell her.
But now... she stood beneath the remains of the thin, cowardly young man who trembled at his own shadow, who had challenged an S-rank monster just to grant her a single second to live.
And here... she failed again.
Valisera failed utterly, catastrophically, and painfully in restraining her emotions.
The icy wall she had built around her heart for years shattered into millions of fragments.
She completely failed to hide her sorrow, failed to maintain the mask of cosmic indifference.
Because in the end, beneath the title of the "Silver Demon," beneath the aura of terror and the burden of containing a cosmic entity... she was not superior. She was not an emotionless monster.
She was just a girl. A fragile girl, burdened with the sins of an entire world, not yet past the age of twenty.
A girl forced to become a monster to survive in a city that devours the weak.
Her knees collapsed.
Valisera fell onto the floor soaked with Aiden’s blood.
She raised her trembling hands and held the edge of his torn, hanging shirt.
She placed her forehead against his cold, blood-stained hand... and cried.
She cried in deadly silence, more soul-rending than any scream.
Hot, innocent tears filled with indescribable anguish streamed from her crimson eyes, washing the dust from her pale face.
Her small body trembled with every stifled sob she tried to suppress in her throat—but she could not.
She was crying for her soldiers.
Crying for the trust they had placed in her, which she had failed.
Crying for the boy who dreamed of a pension salary and died torn apart for her sake.
"I’m sorry..." she whispered in a broken voice, choked with tears—a girl in her twenties who had lost a comrade, not the voice of a military commander.
"I’m sorry, Aiden... I failed you."
She slowly raised her head. Tears still streamed down her cheeks, but her crimson eyes shifted from an ocean of sorrow into a hell of absolute vengeance.
She looked upward, through the shattered ceiling, as if piercing through layers of concrete to stare directly into the eyes of Saint Hilarius and Alexander Vance.
She clenched her fist around Aiden’s bloodstained shirt until her knuckles turned white.
"But I promise you..." Valisera whispered, her voice gaining a terrifying, sharp, and cold firmness.
"I swear by every drop of blood spilled here... your sacrifice will not be in vain. I will not be satisfied with killing them. I will burn this corrupt hospital over their heads. I will crush their rulers, and I will tear out Saint Hilarius’s heart with these hands."
She stood up slowly, releasing his shirt.
She wiped her tears with the back of her bloodstained hand.
There was no longer any place for crying.
There was no longer any place for masks or for the cold lessons the traitors had taught her.
Now... there was only blind rage, and a promise of destruction.
Valisera turned and walked into the darkness, leaving Aiden’s body behind—but his spirit and sacrifice became the fuel that would ignite the worst inferno the city of Elysium would ever witness.
Alpha Squad lost a member... but gained a demon who had lost the last fragment of her mercy.