Chapter 93: Saint Hilarius Hospital (25)
Sia burst into bitter sobs again, pounding the ground with her fist. "They died! They all died because of me! I couldn’t heal them! I couldn’t protect them!"
Sia’s words fell like nuclear bombs on Eva’s mind.
Damian... died? The rock they leaned on? The unbreakable shield? Burned alive? And Aiden was dissected?
Alpha Squad... destroyed. Annihilated. Nothing remained but fragments and memories.
And as grief strangled their breaths in this cursed basement...
Footsteps were heard. Slow, rhythmic, heavy footsteps, approaching from within the shadows.
Kyle, Eva, and Sia raised their heads.
From between the shattered pillars of the laboratory, "Valisera" appeared.
But she... was not the elegant silver Ascendant they knew.
The sight was pitiful and horrifying at the same time.
Valisera walked, staggering like a corpse animated by black magic.
Her white coat was completely destroyed, her clothes reduced to blood-soaked rags.
But the true horror was her body.
Blood streamed from her crimson eyes in continuous lines.
She was bleeding from her nose, and from her open mouth that coughed blood with every step.
Her left hand... looked as if it were "shattering."
Deep black cracks, resembling fractures in broken porcelain, stretched along her arm, emitting a nightmarish purple glow, as if the flesh itself refused to remain connected.
The wounds weren’t just from the surgeon’s blows.
They were wounds that kept appearing on her body by themselves. Small tears opened in her skin, as if a terrifying and immense energy were devouring her from within, as if human flesh could no longer endure this magnitude of absolute power after she used it to annihilate an S-rank monster!
"C-... Commander..." Eva muttered in terror as she watched Valisera collapse.
Valisera stopped in front of them.
She looked at Eva, at the crying Sia, at Kyle, and at Aiden’s hanging corpse.
Her eyes, which shed blood instead of tears, did not hold coldness.
They held cosmic exhaustion, sorrow that swallowed stars, and black rage.
She parted her bloodied lips to speak, but instead of words, she coughed a massive clump of black blood onto the tiles.
She slowly fell to her knees like a statue breaking, her body trembling violently, the purple cracks in her arm widening.
"There’s... no time to cry..." Valisera whispered in a fractured, dual voice, her own voice mixing with that of the cursed entity tearing her apart.
"We lost the shield... and we lost the shadow... but the hospital... is still breathing."
Valisera looked specifically at Kyle with her bleeding eyes, as if handing him leadership in her moment of helplessness.
"Kyle... don’t let their sacrifice go to waste... we’ll burn this place... even if it’s the last thing we do."
Valisera fell forward into the pool of blood, losing consciousness, her body still twitching from the energy devouring her.
...
...
...
Death in Elysium does not always come quietly; sometimes it comes with the sounds of flesh tearing and bones breaking, and sometimes it comes in the form of pure purple energy devouring its vessel from within.
At the bottom of Basement Level Three (B3), the Chimera Laboratory that had turned into a mass grave, "Valisera" lay on the shattered floor, submerged in a pool of her black and crimson blood.
The sight was horrifying enough to freeze blood in the veins. The body of the "Silver Demoness," the Ascendant who minutes ago crushed an S-rank monster with her bare hand, was now tearing itself apart.
Deep black cracks glowing with nightmarish purple light spread along her left arm, climbing toward her neck and pale face, as if the human porcelain of her body refused to contain the colossal cosmic entity she had just used.
The flesh cracked, releasing smoke that carried the scent of burning dead stars.
"No... don’t die... not you too... please!"
Sia Novilth screamed with a torn voice, choking on tears that had not stopped since she left Damian burning on the upper floor.
The blonde doctor crawled on her knees over shattered glass and remains, ignoring the chemical agony still eating the left side of her waist burned by acid.
She reached Valisera’s twitching body and threw herself over her.
Sia’s hands lit up with a bright, concentrated golden light, blinding Kyle and Eva who stood in shock behind her.
Absolute Healing Eitra.
Sia pressed her glowing hands directly onto the open purple cracks in Valisera’s chest and arm.
Tssssssss!
The collision between the golden healing Eitra and the purple cosmic energy generated searing heat.
"AAAAAGH!" Sia screamed in pain, the entity’s Eitra stinging her hands as if she were touching an exposed nuclear furnace, yet she didn’t lift them.
She pressed harder and bit her lips until they bled.
The cracks began to close slowly... human flesh weaving itself over the purple light.
But the moment one crack closed... another burst open somewhere else!
KRAAAK!
A new crack appeared in Valisera’s shoulder, spraying black blood onto Sia’s face.
The dark cosmic entity, which awakened to protect its vessel, was now raging, trying to break the human prison and manifest in the material world, and Valisera’s body could not withstand this emergence.
"Damn you! Go back to your hole, you filthy parasite!" Sia roared, losing every trace of medical calm.
She poured every drop of Eitra from her core until her nose began to bleed from the excessive strain.
"You won’t die, Valisera! I won’t let you leave us here! Come back to us!"
The golden glow turned into white flashes from sheer concentration.
Sia began stitching the spacetime cracks in Valisera’s flesh with brute healing force.
She forced the entity’s energy inward, compelling it to retreat to the deepest point in the girl’s consciousness, building over it a wall of regenerating human cells.
This biological and cosmic struggle lasted two minutes that felt like two centuries.
Eva and Kyle watched with hearts barely beating, unable to offer any help.
Kyle clenched his fist, the forgotten blade in his soul groaning in terror from the entity’s energy emanating from Valisera.
Finally...
The cursed purple light faded.
The cracks stopped appearing.
The flesh sealed, leaving black scars like burned veins across Valisera’s arm and neck, but her body stopped tearing apart.
Sia collapsed beside her, breathing violently, her body trembling like a palm frond in a storm.
She had exhausted every ounce of her energy.
A deadly silence filled the air for a single second...
Then... Valisera gasped violently!
Her crimson eyes snapped open, widening with pure terror as she dragged air into her lungs like a drowning survivor emerging from the ocean floor.
She coughed clotted black blood,
and tried to rise, but her arms failed her.
"Commander!" Eva rushed forward and helped her sit, supporting her torn back.
Valisera was breathing with extreme difficulty.
Her eyes were unfocused, but she looked at the collapsed Sia, then at Kyle, and finally at Aiden’s torn hanging corpse in the corner.
She closed her eyes for a second and swallowed a lump of anguish powerful enough to destroy mountains.
"I... pushed it back into its cage..." Valisera whispered hoarsely, brokenly, referring to the dark entity.
"But my body... my body is shattered... I can’t... use gravity now..."
"It’s okay, you’re back, that’s what matters," Eva said, tears glistening in her eyes.
But... in the depths of Elysium, relief is only a short-lived illusion.
Before they could catch their breath, or even think about processing Aiden and Damian’s deaths...
Something happened that made the human mind refuse to believe.