Chapter 20: Chapter 20: A Battle on The Run

A cold and wet raindrop fell on the elbow of the girl who was covering her ears with her palms, and then another one dropped into the bowl that still had some water left. The clouds hiding in the dark were revealed by the lightning traveling everywhere across the endless black world as if the gods themselves had been angered. A big thunder soon gave the start to a pattering rain.

"Come on, girl! Pay attention to your visitor, don't be rude. It is called the Hunger of the Night. This creature eats souls. The more it eats, the stronger it gets. So far, it has probably around two hundred souls. DAAAAAAAAAAMN! That ain't going to be easy, ay?"

The girl looked at Ashura and listened to his words despite covering her ears. She sometimes hated her ability to hear so clearly. That was a weakness as much as it was a strength to her. Saori seemed to be crying as the rain was falling down her cheeks, but she, in fact, wasn’t.

"Yoi! I didn't want to make a baby girl cry. Come on, Emer said you are a beast, right? You beasts don't have feelings." A bolt of big lightning that split the night sky in two revealed the man's evil grin. He was making fun of her.

"Now leaving the mischief to the side. The finest creation of Emer is coming to say hi to you. So well done! You have finally reached the final stage of your long journey. From this point forward it's only the monster, the beast, and the handsome," Ashura used his hands to push his wet blonde hair to the back and smiled charmingly at the girl.

"So annoying," she thought.

The black and monstrous mass coming from the woods was nothing like the rest of the cursed creatures Saori encountered until now. It was purely black, it was walking on two legs, and it was bent forward like an old hunched man that cannot stand up straight. Its limbs looked like octopus tentacles made of gelatin, but with three long and thick fingers at the ends.

The creature was wearing a Japanese traditional mask (Noh style) on its face, which portrayed emotions of anger and disgust. On its back, the black mass was carrying a huge blue globe filled with the souls that it fed on. Black steam was floating around both the otherworldly being and the sphere.

*Snap, rip, break. *

The creature eventually came to a stop about five meters in front of the cage.

Screams of pain and despair were coming from the souls trapped inside, screams that both Ashura and Saori could hear with their fine hearing.

"These souls cannot find peace. They will be trapped here as long as this creature lives. Right?" the girl asked.

The man clapped his hands. "Yes, you're right. You catch on fast. These are also the souls of all the villagers you left behind and of those that you killed after they'd been cursed. This forever-seeking power creature ate them all. It may not be big in size, but it's way beyond the other creatures in strength."

"I can hear and discern the voices between them," Saori said as hope was starting to come back. A smile spread across her face.

Ashura's eyes were filled with admiration.

"What? She can tell the voices apart? It is impossible even for me to tell the difference between hundreds of souls trapped together screaming at the same time, plus all sound exactly the same. I have trained myself my whole life to sharpen my senses to an outstanding level. Just how well can this girl hear? Is she stronger than me?" he thought.

As he was getting distracted by the avalanche of questions crossing his mind, the man saw the girl take a starting position as if she was getting ready for a speed run. One leg was stretched behind and the other one bent in front, her arms crossed under the form of X in front of her with her claws out ready for battle. The muscles on her body were all strengthened making her seem more masculine than before.

"Has she lost her mind? Why is she smiling? Something is off. She should've lost all hope." Ashura thought.

The man started running towards the cage to stop her. "I need to close the gate before she gets out. Emer's creation will--"

"Incredible, gran. You're alive. I shall follow in your footsteps," as soon as she said those words, she made herself disappear with a huge bang. She pushed so hard into the foot behind her that the grates bent and the cage got thrown backwards. The girl surpassed the speed of sound in that moment and cut both the globe and the shadowy monster before Ashura could even blink.

Emer's creation vanished instantly and the souls trapped in the globe spun around each other while they quickly got absorbed in the night sky, and then departed through the clouds. The captured souls were now finally free after weeks of torment.

Anta's voice was not among the souls trapped, which meant she was alive. She made use of that hope and excitement to put everything she got into her escape, and found the strength that even she thought she didn't have.

Saori used the moment to make her escape and vanished between the trees. She could fight, but she decided to listen to her father's advice and run. The girl already knew who this man was.

"Unbelievable. She exceeded all my expectations," the man talked to himself.

"I believe we could have been great friends if we happened to meet in different circumstances. We are more similar than I thought."

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! That's soooooo infuriating!" Ashura screamed at the sky. "I'll make you wish you never did this power show in front of me, girl."

He started chasing the beast.

"This feels so good. I'm finally able to move at my own pace." Saori was running professionally through the numerous trees and rocks without taking a single wrong step that would slow her down. She was using her hands to grab onto the branches of the trees and to push into the rocks, maintaining a high speed at all times. The dark, the heavy wind, the thunders, and the rain smashing against her skin, were all unable to slow her down.

According to the smell, she was already outside of Emer's cursed territory. This was encouraging. Just as Ashura said, this was most likely her last challenge of the long nightmare that started back in the village. Once this is over, she will finally be able to take it easy and recover her strengths.

A few miles later, after a good couple of minutes of constant running, she looked behind.

THE MAN WAS THERE! AND HE WAS GETTING CLOSER!

It was difficult to see the guy, but she could hear his heavy footsteps. Just by the sound of it, he seemed to be faster than her. How was it possible for someone to be able to close distance on Saori? She didn't know how, but it was a scary thought.

Ashura was running while looking down with his hands swinging madly by his sides. It was a bit of a chaotic run, but he was still faster than her. He was an absolute monster! He didn't need to look in front to know exactly which way to go. He threw his vest off him as he considered that the wind blowing into his clothes was slowing him down.

"For real?" the girl thought as she used her claws to cut multiple trees while passing by, to make them fall behind her and slow the man down.

It was of no use, the man was avoiding them or punching his way through the obstacles with ease.

"Okay then, let's see how you can handle this," Saori smiled confidently and took her vest off. She made use of a strong gust of wind that came from the opposite direction to make her vest get blown into the man's face.

Ashura pushed it to the side with his hand before it could reach him. The girl was nowhere to be seen now, which didn’t seem to surprise him as he slowed down and stopped where he last “saw” the girl.

After checking the surroundings, he sniffed a few times trying to see if he could catch the girl’s smell, but to no avail. He then checked the ground by squatting next to a big mud puddle.

Something seemed off to him as the girl could not simply disappear in a second. He was the chaser, after all. Not even once in his life had he ever lost someone when chasing them. Ashura knew she must be close.

“I must acknowledge your expertise. You’ve been well trained.”

He wanted to get her to come out from where she was hiding, but the girl knew better than to be fooled by such a simple trick. She was waiting for the right moment to flee, and if it happened to be found, she would attack with the intent to kill.

“Want to know something funny? Your father also died by my hand, so this might be fate, you know? Why don’t you get out and behave like the good little girl you are?”

It couldn’t have been just lies, but she didn’t know for sure. She thought that his method of finding her was funny. As a kid, she’d been told many times about how people will use any means necessary in order to crash their opponents, and that included mean words for emotional responses and sloppy fighting.

He was a scumbag that needed to be taken care of.

As she couldn’t hold herself from laughing anymore, she started chuckling and came out of the puddle for a quick and deadly attack with her claws. She was fully covered in mud which made her blend into the night much easier.

“Got’ya, girlie,” Ashura said as he turned towards the beast girl. He immediately dodged by tilting sideways and pushing her hand to the side with his palm. He used that turn to gather strength in his right foot and kick the girl from the side but missed.

Saori managed to avoid the hit by jumping over his leg and onto her hands. She used that position (head down) to try and get a surprise attack using the claws from her feet. The girl was now fighting upside down, making great use of the long reach of her legs.

Ashura was able to dodge all shots, but he had no opening to attack. He was being pushed back and forced to avoid the girl’s deadly claws. Her movements were clean and precise.

“Shit, this is so annoying! I can’t grab her legs to put an end to this barrage of claws.” The man got angry when his cheek got scratched. Meanwhile, the girl seemed to be enjoying herself.

Saori spun on her hands in order to change the front attack with a round kick from the side to the opponent’s head.

“That’s it!”

Seeing an opportunity, Ashura aimed to catch her leg by the ankle to stop her.

In order to avoid that, Saori grabbed some mud from the ground as she spun for the kick, and threw it into his eyes, then changed the target and went for his arm with her claws.

You are reading story Wake up, beast girl: Surviving in a cursed world! at novel35.com

What happened next was like a shock to Saori. She felt something that she had never felt before. The claws from her right foot all broke at once sending pain into her toes.

“I don’t use my eyes to see, idiot.”

“Tchhh.”

Not only that, her foot was immobilized completely, while the man’s kick plunged deep into her stomach, which sent her flying backwards.

To avoid the crash against a tree, she spun mid-air and cut it with her claws. The girl then kicked it into the man with great power. Everything was happening so fast that a normal human would struggle to understand what exactly was going on.

Not even waiting to see whether that was going to work or not, she turned and tried to run away, but to no avail.

The man had already reached up to her and grabbed her by the ankle, then smashed her against the ground and onto a few trees as one would use a bat to destroy things when angry.

Saori didn’t even have time to moan from the pain before he jumped on her.

A minute later, the two were now fighting mid-air at an incredible speed with punches and kicks back and forth, both managing to dodge each other’s hits.

“He is strong, calm, and calculated,” she thought.

“How am I going to get out of this situation? I feel like I could die any moment if I lose my temper and my focus.” An idea suddenly came to her mind.

Saori made a 360 degrees turn on the spot in mid-air and kicked the man with her clawless foot. Just as she was hoping, Ashura tilted his head backwards to avoid its reach by a few millimeters, but another pair of claws grew instantly from the top of her toes, deeply scratching the man’s face. She used that opportunity to push her legs into his chest and smash him to the ground.

With a black flip, she turned around and ran away once again. Glad that it worked, she was now once again heading towards the place where she was supposed to meet Anta. She could never lose the track of where she was because of her acute smell. She had to run in the opposite direction to where the smell of death and putrefaction was coming from.

Half an hour later of constant running and there was no sign of Ashura chasing her. She found a lake, hid behind a tree, and sat down. Her toe was sore and bruised, so she needed to at least take a short break. Luckily, the rain stopped.

“It huuuuuuuuurts so badlyyyyyy.” The girl complained as she held onto her foot.

“That crappy selfish piece of shit! Who does he think he is to simply come to people, torture them, and kill them? And put me in a cage?!! Does he have a few screws loose and some weird ass fetish?!”

A few minutes later after swearing and cursing, being pretty sure that she’d lost him, the girl went to the lake to wash herself.

“Let’s see you getting girls now with that face,” she muttered to herself in a quiet, but enthusiastic voice. She was proud of herself for ruining his face.

Saori jumped into the lake without taking her clothes off. The water was not too cold or deep, reaching up to her chest. It made for a nice refreshing bath after the fight.

Feeling an unpleasant smell coming from her own body, she smelled her armpit.

“I stink! I really need to take a bath.”

The sound of the water flow managed to chill her out. As she was finally able to relax, the girl felt something was wrong. The course of the water seemed a bit unnatural, almost as if something else was inside the lake changing its course.

Realizing what was happening, the girl tried to get out, but before she could do it, a muscular arm with tattoos came out of the water and grabbed her by the neck, slowly lifting her up. His arm was bigger than before.

As she was getting lifted higher and higher with every second, the head of the man eventually came into view. He was huge compared to last time. As he completely stood up, the girl’s legs were nowhere close to reaching the surface of the water. It was as if she was being held by a titan with an unbreakable grip.

Ashura was more than two times taller than the girl now and he seemed extremely upset. The scratches on his face were once again starting to bleed now that he was out of the lake. He had traveled along the stream to avoid the possibility that the girl will feel his presence, smell him, or hear his footsteps.

A blue light was coming out of the skull’s eyes and mouth, and it was also shaking uncontrollably on his chest. Its eyes were shining brighter than before.

“Just… how… many… monsters are you… summon—” The girl was forced to shut up as the man’s grip was getting stronger and tighter around her throat.

Monsters from all directions were now approaching the two of them. They were the same kind of disgusting creatures that she had seen and killed back in the village. It felt like the curse had chased her all this time and eventually caught up to her. A nightmare that she hoped was over.

 

*

“Damn all!” An angry kid let out his frustration of losing once again against Saori by punching the floor.

“Winner, Saori! Congratulations! Please shake hands you two.”

The girl had been brought to a summer fighting course by her mother while her dad was away with work. She was only eight years old at the time.

“Saori, why do you never let others win? You could at least pretend to lose every now and then to see the others happy,” Saya asked her daughter when she was getting changed after the training.

“Let me ask you something, mom. Did dad ever let me win?”

“Ammmm… that’s different, darling.” She was surprised to see Saori so serious about this.

“No, mom. It is not. Even though one can learn a lot from defeat, losing only brings more losing. One’s mental strength is the most important factor in determining the result of a close fight.”

The girl was now fully changed and ready to go back to the farm with her mother.

“I shall only lose after I put all my might into the fight.”

*

Remembering more of her past and the promise she made to her mother a long time ago, she clenched her teeth in frustration.

“This is not the flashback before my death. I will show this titan my real worth,” the girl muttered to herself and swung her right foot upwards with all her might. She hit Ashura’s elbow, breaking his arm and bending it in the opposite direction. The claws from her foot also penetrated his arm.

Not wasting a moment, the girl cupped her hands together and smashed her fists on the man’s forearm. Saori managed to completely destroy his arm, which fell into the lake, using a double axe handle move.

She did it just in time to be able to avoid the rest of the monsters that attacked her. The girl pulled two of them by the head and crashed their skulls in between her feet, then ripped two of their sharp limbs to use as swords.

After falling to her feet, Saori turned her back to Ashura and ran away one last time. Her father had told her not to fight this man, and she didn’t forget it. This time she knew for sure that she will not be followed, though.

“Have I just lost my arm?!” Ashura had underestimated the girl and now he regretted it.

“Why am I getting so dizzy? It’s only been a few seconds. I didn’t lose so much blood as to get dizzy yet, so why?”

They were now out of the cursed zone, so the monsters were weak and clumsy. Saori managed to make her escape with ease, only needing to kill those that were standing straight in her way. They were slow and she was fast, so it was not even a fight, but a massacre.

With a five-meter high-jump over the remaining creatures, Saori finally managed to make her escape with tears of joy at the corners of her eyes, and then disappeared between the trees.

Meanwhile, left behind, Ashura’s height slowly came back to normal.

“I didn’t know her claws had poison too. She is an incredible survivor and a gifted fighter. You have my praise, Saori!”

You can find story with these keywords: Wake up, beast girl: Surviving in a cursed world!, Read Wake up, beast girl: Surviving in a cursed world!, Wake up, beast girl: Surviving in a cursed world! novel, Wake up, beast girl: Surviving in a cursed world! book, Wake up, beast girl: Surviving in a cursed world! story, Wake up, beast girl: Surviving in a cursed world! full, Wake up, beast girl: Surviving in a cursed world! Latest Chapter