Crazy ran, dragging a collapsed redhead behind him, his hands slick with sweat, heart pounding. His feet pounded the forest floor as he jumped over roots and felled trunks, every muscle in his body screaming for him to keep going. Behind him, the world exploded.
What the hell was that? A deity? How the hell was he going to fight that?
He glanced back.
A giant figure loomed, grotesque and contorted, tendrils reaching up toward the darkening sky. Black rain poured down like liquid nightmares, the air thick with malice. The figure's enormous yellow eyes followed his every movement, twitching as though it saw him—hunted him.
Then a glowing tree came hurtling toward him, speeding at an insane velocity. Crazy swerved, but the tree clipped him, exploding on impact and sending dirt flying.
Fuck, he thought, squinting against the debris. What hell of world is this?
He closed his eyes, hand instinctively rising in a half-assed gesture of respect. Whoever's memorial tree that was, sorry.
His gaze flickered to Ayeka, her limp body still dangling from his arm, her skin pale, eyes closed, and perhaps... dead.
"Ayeka!" Crazy snapped, hauling her limp form up as he sprinted through the chaotic wreckage. Her once fiery demeanor was now reduced to a drained, lifeless weight in his arms.
"Get up!" he barked, but she didn't respond, her eyes fluttering weakly. He cursed under his breath. "You're really going to make me do all the work, huh?"
The False Deity loomed behind them, its towering figure still swaying darkly in the black rain.
It let out a gutteral scream that made Crazy's head ring.
His free arm jerked her along, his patience running thinner by the second. She was dead weight, and every step felt like an eternity.
His mind spiraled into fantasies of what he'd do to her once they were safe—45 different ways to torture the living hell out of her came to mind.
Another tree sailed through the air at them.
Crazy's eyes narrowed. He exhaled.
Then, with a savage grin, he pivoted, three words slipping from his lips like a curse: "SOCIOPATHIC B*TCH, GO!"
He launched her into the oncoming projectile.
Ayeka's eyes snapped open just in time.
A hurricane of wind erupted from her body, shattering the tree like a twig. Wood exploded in all directions, leaving nothing but the echo of destruction...
And a very irritated redhead.
Crazy blinked, momentarily stunned. "Oh. So you were alive."
Ayeka's fury was immediate, her face flushed with rage. She turned on him, fists clenched, her voice carrying the wrath of a thousand wronged women.
"YOU THREW ME?!"
She stormed toward him, fury radiating from every step.
"Aren't you supposed to be some kind of hero? You know, with your 'ooooh, let me carry the beautiful heroine to safety with my chiseled arms and dazzling courage!'"
Crazy didn't even slow down. His gaze stayed ahead.
"Two things," he muttered, voice dripping with sarcasm. "One: I'm not a hero."
He glanced at her, face unamused. "Two: You're not beautiful at all."
The silence that followed was thick. Then, as if she were a pressure cooker about to explode, Ayeka screeched, "YOU UGLY SON OF A CONSTIPATED RAT!"
The sheer rage in her voice only made Crazy smirk, though his feet kept pounding forward. He didn't stop. "I hate you."
"I hate you more." She was catching up, rage giving her the speed of a freight train.
Behind them, the False Deity screamed once more. The forest shook.
The storm was worsening.
Crazy's legs burned. He wasn't sure which would kill him first: the godlike being chasing them, or the redhead with murder in her eyes.
Before he could even think it through, twisted wooden arms shot up from the ground, followed by grotesque, elongated figures. Their spines warped and jagged, horns spiraling from their heads. Their eyes glowed sickly red, like a warning.
[Guardian of the Hollow Heart][Type: Elemental, Earth, Construct][Level: 10 (AWAKENED)][Weakness: ??? (Level doesn't meet requirements)]
"Ah, fuck," Crazy muttered under his breath, drawing his sword.
"Get out of my way," he snarled, not even pausing to blink.
The guardians fell, one by one, their grotesque forms cleaved in half by a blur of steel. The only trace left of them? The glint of Crazy's blade as it returned to its sheath.
For a long moment, Crazy just stood there, staring at the carnage, as though contemplating whether he should use the blade on Ayeka next.
"Well?" He smirked, finally breaking the silence. "How're we gonna get out of here now?"
Ayeka glanced to the side, whispering something into the air like a madwoman. Then she grinned.
"We run. We leave the forest. The artifact's broken, so we just walk out."
Crazy chuckled. "Finally. I'm getting the hell out of here."
She hissed another cryptic phrase, her finger pointing to the right. "That way! Go!"
Without hesitation, Crazy sprinted, sidestepping a guardian rising from the dirt. He glanced over his shoulder, flashing a grin at the monstrosity pursuing them. "Hah, you idiots. I'm outta here—"
And ran straight into a wall.
He slammed into it with a crack, stone crumbling beneath his body. His head hit the dirt, and Ayeka skidded to a stop, her eyes wide.
The inscription on the stone wall seemed to mock them.
"Honorable Unbreakable Great Wall of Leonhart, built in memory of Lyralis Sthevenstone, heavenly leader of the 45th Azure Legion."
"...What the hell?"
Crazy picked himself up, grimacing as he wiped the mud from his face. Before he could get another word out, Ayeka screamed into the air. "What? WHY WOULD YOU LEAD US HERE?!"
The wind whispered something in her ear. Suddenly, Ayeka looked down at Crazy with wide, shocked eyes.
"You pissed on Thorin Argentium's memorial?!"
Crazy stared, utterly confused. "What the hell are you talking about—"
Then, he remembered. The wet patch in the dirt. The stick. The glowing tree.
And then, Ayeka's anger burst like a dam breaking. She trembled, her eyes turning molten with fury. "WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU PISS ON A MEMORIAL?!?!"
Crazy scowled, as he slowly got up, his face contorting as well.
"I WAS FERTILIZING THE DAMN TREE!"
But before she could respond, the roar of the False Deity echoed again. Closer this time.
It hovered, swirling with dark tendrils, moving toward them with eerie slowness.
"...Ah, f*ck."
"Rain… Let there be eternal rain…" The distorted voices whispered from the clouds above. The storm screamed its fury as black rain thickened, sinking into the world like ink staining paper.
The drops became heavier, colder. And then—voices.
Whispers.
At first, they were faint, broken. But as the rain thickened, they grew clearer, more distinct.
"…Failure… failure… again and again… it never changes."
A twisted version of his own voice.
Crazy's head throbbed. His body felt heavier.
Another crimson status window appeared, cold and metallic.
[You have come in contact with the mythical special element: 'Nightmare Inducing Rain'!][Your sanity will slowly decrease.]
The pain hit him like a fist. He stumbled, hands clutching his skull as his vision blurred. The trees around him warped, bending and twisting like long, gnarled hands, reaching to take him.
"What… The… Hell… Ayeka…"
He turned to her, but she was already kneeling, hands pressed to her head. She was mumbling incoherently, too.
"Ah, sh*t, sh*t, sh*t, sh*t, sh*t…" Her voice was a panic-stricken murmur.
Crazy's head spun. The world around him twisted. His knees buckled as his vision faded to black.
'...I Can't... Die... Like this...!'
Ayeka's screams turned distant. Static.
And then, the darkness took him.
...
Crazy sat alone in the darkness, wondering what the hell just happened.
He looked around.
Darkness to the right.
Darkness to the left.
Darkness everywhere.
Where am I?
But then, suddenly, the darkness turned into a sky. He was standing on nothing, as the world around him turned blue and cloudy...
The sky cracked apart, revealing the hollow void beyond, and in its depths-
A figure.
No. Him.
The void filled the sky.
A silhouette, faceless yet familiar, a blade resting in his hand. A warrior clad in fragmented memories, stitched together by the echoes of a past Crazy didn't remember.
He was sitting on a throne of bones and blood. A giant, yellow moon, glowing behind him, as the screaming of thousands could be heard from the distance.
Blood dripped down from his hair, as the figure's sword, a black and crimson blade, jagged and immortal.
Slowly, Crazy took a single step forwards, reaching his hand towards the shadowy figure.
"...You... You look handsome. Who are you..?"
Crazy's voice shaked. His head was ringing.
Dozens of memories emmerged from the back of his mind.
The figure simply smiled.
'You forgot.'
The words weren't spoken. They were felt, carved into his mind like an unshakable truth.
'But your body remembers.'
Pain lanced through Crazy's skull as images surged forward- battles, blood, the arc of a blade slicing through the impossible. A dance of destruction that defied logic, severing gods, spirits, and reality itself.
A name burned into his mind.
Windows appeared like a barrage, their crimson glow mirroring the blood slithering up from the ground.
Slowly, the blood rose, drowning Crazy and the figure in it's bright red clutches.
[Assimilation rate increased by 10.5%.]
[An abnormality in the system has been detected.]
Crazy stepped back, as he suddenly screamed, the abyss disappearing. A fracture split his mind in half, as dark roots emerged from his eyes, covering the entirety of his head.
The figure on the throne simply chuckled, before fading away.
...
Crazy opened his eyes.
But something has changed.
His eyes glew crimson red.
The black rain fell around him, as guardians swarmed the two.
But he didn't seem to care.
Slowly, he automatically unsheathed his sword.
As the metal scraped on the sheathe, a dark aura slowly wrapped around him like a snake. Blood trickled out of his eyes, his nose, his mouth, as his veins turned inside out.
The blood coming out from his eyes slowly floated upwards, as a faint, crimson halo made out of his very blood manifested above his head.
He was no longer in control.
A crimson window appeared in his vision, but he couldn't see it.
[You have remembered the skill 'The Fool's Heaven Defying Sword Art.']