Only Wisdom Awakened - Chapter 254

Chapter 254: A Blood Debt
“Aaagh!!”

A scream resounded throughout the room… but it wasn’t Hans’s scream, his body was still safe and sound since the claw threatening his life stopped a few centimeters from his face when his opponent heard the terrifying and agonizing scream.

The figure in front of him, even with a bit of hesitation, disappeared into the fog, probably going to aid her companion…

When she reached the place where she could see the man with her own eyes, she could hear someone’s faint breathing and a strong smell of blood.

The woman immediately rushed to the man, but she was too late…

A spike pierced the man’s lower abdomen, tearing through it completely, and other than flowing out of his wounds, his blood also covered his lips, his chin, and even part of his clothes.

He could still be saved if she managed to get a good healer there in time, but what worried her the most was finding out who almost killed her reliable aide.

She was cornering Hans when it happened so who… who could it ever-

As she pondered about the matter, two other spikes of ice grew out of the fog and pierced the man’s body, one of them right through his heart, and the other completely tearing apart his abdomen.

“Luca?!”

For the first time, Hans heard the woman’s voice, and it was while she was screaming desperately.

The woman closed the distance between her and the black-haired man.

She hugged the cold corpse as a few tears slid down her cheeks.

Her eyes soon turned into flaming volcanos, the veins in her sclera were like rivers of magma trying to break out of the ground, and soon, her tears turned crimson, just like blood.

“Hypocrite!”

A voice from the fog said…

“I know the things you have done… did you think everyone’s lives were worthless? Let me show you… how much a life can be worth”

It was a familiar soothing voice… but not for the now mad-driven woman.

Her teeth grew, becoming canines as sharp and dangerous as those of wild wolves, and her fingers morphed, turning into claws as sharp as a tiger’s.

{Assimilation:

You can morph parts of your body into monsters you’ve come into contact with before.

The higher the {ferocity}, the higher the assimilation rate.}

{ferocity:

A class stat that allows its owner to make use of monsters’ powers, the higher the stats, the better the effects, depending on mental state, the target’s ferocity might increase or decrease.}

‘Thank god I followed Caelan’s advice…’

Hans thought as he observed the scene.

A few hours prior…

“So you don’t think it’s time for me to learn an ultimate spell… can’t I learn an eight-tier one?”

Hans asked as he watched out of the jet’s window.

Caelan, talking to him from his mind, replied:

“It’s not something which would benefit you that much right now, apart from the fact that even you might not be able to learn an eight-ranked spell In a few hours.

Even if you could… most high-ranking spells are simply medium-ranked spells repeated”

Hans thought about his fight with Caelan, and indeed… most high-ranking spells he used were huge loads of medium or lower-ranked spells.

“What about the way you talked then? Can’t I learn that?”

Hans also remembered Caelan’d deep and intimidating tone as he first spoke.

“That… ah, no, that’s not something you can learn, after you become a tenth tier it just becomes normal, it’s difficult to hold it in if anything”

“So? What should I do? I don’t see any path to progress… maybe I should just take a few months to improve and prepare myself before I take on the snake”

“Mh…”

Caelan could be heard thinking in the background of Hans’s mind.

“There might be something… it won’t be able to help you when fighting the snake, but it should get you out of trouble during fights against smaller opponents”

“Which is?…”

Hans asked impatiently.

“Distant casting”

“Distant… casting?”

“Or delayed casting, whatever you like to call it”

…

‘The spell I just used was called {delayed casting} (tier-5)

It allows me to lay some spells and ignite them when I want with strings of mana used to send the signal, it works similarly to a dynamite’s fuse.

I placed those spells before backing down to draw the Crimson Lady away and make the man feel safe so that he wouldn’t move, then, I activated one of the spells, barely managing to stop her from killing me by distracting her with the man’s screaming.

The following two spells were to assure he would die, and now-‘

Hans could’ve never imagined… the devil he had just released into the same cage as him.

As if she had always been there, the woman appeared in front of him, she was charging forward with her mouth open and her eyes red as she roared, like a wild beast.

She was too close for Hans to move away, so, attempting to avoid having his heart ripped out of his body by the woman’s bites, he raised his arms and covered them in a thick layer of resistant ice armor.

As the woman’s teeth wrapped around his arm, he felt a throbbing pain, and then a snap…

His face contorted as he clenched his teeth.

His armor was still fine, but his bone had snapped from the bare strength of the bite.

As cracks appeared on the ice, he realized he wouldn’t have been able to get out of there with two arms if he let the situation continue like that.

Using his other arm, Hans punched the woman with his {repulsion} spell, making her fly away, but contrary to his expectations, the beast didn’t loosen her bite on his arm, causing him to follow right after her.

The pain in his arm was beginning to get unbearable, especially because the force that shattered the bone was still being applied, his bone was now reduced to nothing more than smithereens and little crumbs.

As he was getting dragged through the room in the air, Hans glanced at the woman’s status.

{Assimilation: Iron wolf (teeth)}

{Assimilation: Royal tiger (claws)}

Other than those two, something else piqued Hans’s attention… the woman’s ferocity stat, it was.., skyrocketing.

{…

Ferocity: 892

….

Ferocity:929

….

Ferocity:937

….

Ferocity:949

…

It showed no signs of stopping anytime soon, and Hans realized that if he didn’t manage to get out of the beast woman’s grasp, he would’ve probably died tied to her.

Adrenaline pumped in his heart, he couldn’t feel anything other than pain as his fogged vision peeked at the woman’s face.

The fog had slowly begun subsiding, but it seemed like he was fated to be unable to see her face.

Pure pain drove his arm to raise and cast a spell towards the woman’s mouth, a clump of ice formed and expanded inside her mouth, and Hans moved his body to let his other arm slip out of her fauces.

He had completely lost feeling in his left arm, luckily for him, he knew a bit about light magic and medicine, he had come across the following as he researched everything he could find in the various libraries.

He landed quickly as the woman continued flying away and rolling on the floor, ending up a couple dozen meters away from him.

He took this chance to grow a little tree out of the floor, he touched the ground and cast:

{Roots’ grasp}(tier-3)

The floor started cracking and eventually broke, leaving space for a little tree to grow out of it, Hans transformed his necklace into a sword and cut the tree somewhat evenly, before strapping it around his arm.

He tore his shirt off and wrapped it around his arm and the stick before casting his usual ice armor, enveloping everything in ice.

It was the best he could do to avoid permanent damage, and he didn’t have much more time, as the woman had already regained her stance.

The woman bolted forward, and Hans didn’t back away but instead confronted her, his pained face showed a hint of anger as he tried to stab the woman.

He had the sole intention of killing her, and making her suffer…. Why was it? Hans wasn’t usually like this…

It was something he had learned as he read the report about the Crimson lady…

He had decided to ask Emma…

[why is my grandfather so obsessed with hunting her down?]

He had sent this message to Emma.

The icon on her name said: typing…

But soon after returned to normal, it went back and forth a few times before a reply finally came…

[your grandfather only had one obsession in his life… his one and only love… your grandmother.

When she was taken away from him… he had to find another obsession, so he started chasing after the person who killed her]

[how… did my grandmother die?]

[ she was a lawyer who refused to cover the red tyranny during the first year after the lady’s awakening… she was kidnapped and publicly hanged down in Sicily, your grandfather… unfortunately saw the video and how those people acclaimed as his wife was strangled to death, which led him to be what he is today.]