The forest around Koda no longer resembled a forest.
What had once been dense forestry had been reduced to a shattered wasteland of splintered trunks, overturned earth, and long scars carved through the snow by forces far beyond anything an ordinary human could survive.
At the center of that destruction stood two figures that looked almost as ruined as the landscape itself.
Koda slowly pushed himself upright, every breath tearing through his lungs.
Every movement sent pain coursing through his body.
The attack had left him battered, bloodied and exhausted.
But exhaustion had long since stopped mattering.
Somewhere during the endless battles, the starvation, the fear and the desperation, something inside him had changed.
He no longer felt like a frightened Aspirant trying to survive.
He felt hungry.
Really… really fucking hungry.
Across the ruined battlefield, Old Bram stared back.
The butcher’s body seemed to be falling apart faster than it could hold itself together.
Tendrils twisted beneath torn clothing and damaged flesh, constantly reinforcing parts of him that should have stopped functioning long ago.
The Nightmare Creature fused to him was no longer hiding.
It had become impossible to tell where Bram ended and the monster began.
Yet somehow, despite everything, the old man was STILL standing.
STILL smiling.
STILL refusing to die.
Their eyes met.
And at that moment, neither one of them saw a human anymore.
Bram’s ruined grin widened.
“Wow, of course you’d make it.
You really are similar to me.” Koda spat blood into the snow.
“Shut up.” The butcher laughed.
The sound was ragged and broken, but there was genuine amusement buried inside it.
“You have always been a timid little shit.
What happened to you?
You’re starting to act more and more like that other brat.
Only he was far superior to you.
With those explosions of his, he actually managed to harm me.” He said, no longer sounding like himself.
Koda’s claws slowly flexed.
“Don’t act like you know me, I am a completely different person.
You’re just embarrassing yourself.” The smile never left Bram’s face.
“Fine.” Then he charged.
The ground exploded beneath him.
Despite his injuries, despite the impossible damage holding his body together, the Nightmare Butcher still moved with terrifying speed.
One moment he stood dozens of feet away.
The next, the enchanted cleaver was already descending toward Koda’s head.
Koda threw himself forward instead of backward.
The blade passed behind him.
The resulting shockwave tore apart everything in its path.
Koda did his best to ignore it.
He was already inside the weapon’s reach.
Which was exactly where he wanted to be.
His claws tore across Bram’s side before the butcher could recover, forcing the larger man to twist awkwardly.
The moment Bram adjusted, Koda changed angles again, refusing to stay in front of him long enough for his overwhelming strength to matter.
That was the difference between them.
While Bram fought like a force of nature, Koda fought like a starving beast.
One relied on power, the other relied on opportunities.
The exchange accelerated.
Bram swung.
Koda slipped past the attack and countered.
Tendrils lashed out.
Koda ducked beneath them and drove forward again.
The cleaver carved enormous trenches through the battlefield whenever it missed, while Koda constantly circled closer, searching for weaknesses, searching for mistakes, searching for anything he could exploit.
For several minutes neither gained a decisive advantage.
They simply crashed against one another over and over again, both of their wounds worsening.
The fight gradually lost all sense of structure.
Neither fighter had enough energy left for elegance or any special techniques.
Neither had enough patience left for caution.
The battle became increasingly savage as injuries accumulated and restraint vanished.
Bram abandoned precision and began using brute force.
Massive swings of the cleaver shattered the landscape while his tendrils attacked from Koda’s blind spots, forcing the boy to dodge continuously, relying heavily on his instincts.
Instead of creating distance, he remained close.
Painfully close.
Every time Bram tried to generate momentum for one of his devastating attacks, Koda disrupted it.
A claw across the wrist.
A strike against the elbow.
A sudden change of angle that forced the butcher to readjust.
He wasn’t stronger.
Nor he any faster.
But he was doing a pretty damn good job for a mere aspirant fighting an awakened.
Making him spend too much energy.
Making him bleed.
Making him angrier and angrier!
And the angrier Bram became, the sloppier he fought.
Koda noticed immediately.
The realization brought a grim smile to his face.
There.
That was the opening.
Bram overcommitted to a powerful horizontal strike.
Koda slipped underneath it.
His claws found purchase.
For a brief instant, momentum shifted entirely in his favor.
Then Bram abandoned the cleaver.
The butcher simply let go.
Koda barely had time to process the decision before a massive hand seized him.
The impact felt like being caught in a bear trap.
Suddenly he was airborne.
The world spun.
Then Bram slammed him into the ground.
Once.
Twice.
Again.
The earth shattered beneath every impact.
Pain erupted through Koda’s body, he felt his consciousness fade as his skull started to crack.
Before he could escape, Bram’s grip tightened.
The old man’s remaining eye burned with feral intensity.
Gone was the amusement.
Gone was the confidence.
He no longer cared for games, he no longer cared for the chase.
He was finally content with ending things.
“You never learned,” Bram growled.
Koda immediately recognized the danger.
Not the words, but the look in the butcher’s eye.
The same look he had seen in starving creatures.
The same look he had seen in himself.
The butcher had finally lost whatever remained of his restraint.
The battle changed instantly.
It stopped being a fight.
Koda’s chance was gone.
Funnily enough, he never actually had a chance.
Old Bram had apparently tricked him into thinking there was even a sliver of a chance.
Koda clawed as best he could.
Tendrils wrapped around limbs.
Claws tore through them.
Neither cared about pain anymore.
Neither cared about injuries.
Every exchange became uglier than the last.
Momentum disappeared beneath sheer determination.
The battlefield narrowed until nothing existed except the person directly in front of them.
Bram’s strength remained overwhelming.
Every time he managed to establish control, Koda felt it immediately.
The old man was still far stronger.
Still heavier.
Still capable of ending the fight with a single mistake.
He was an awakened after all, there was no reason for Koda to even still be alive.
But he was weakened.
Fighting all those nightmare creatures, using all of his energy and power… he was much weaker than he would’ve normally been.
Koda refused to stay controlled.
Refused to stay trapped in the man’s grip.
He didn’t stop moving, again and again he forced his way free through stubbornness alone.
Again and again he returned to the attack.
Every setback only made him more determined, every injury only made him angrier.
The struggle stretched on.
Seconds felt like minutes.
Minutes felt like hours.
At some point neither knew who attacked first anymore.
Until the Old Man caught him.
ACTUALLY caught him.
The moment Bram’s hand closed around Koda’s wrist, the flow of battle changed yet again.
Until then, Koda had been surviving through movement.
Every attack had flowed into another, every dodge had bought him a few more seconds, every wound he inflicted had come from refusing to stay where the butcher expected him to be.
The instant Bram caught him, all of that disappeared.
The old man’s grip crushed his wrist hard enough to make the bones grind together.
Before Koda could twist free, he felt himself being dragged forward through the snow.
His bare, clawed feet dug furrows into the ruined ground as he desperately tried to resist, but resisting only made the difference between them painfully obvious.
Bram had lost an arm, half his face, and most of his organs, yet the strength remaining in his body still felt monstrous.
Koda’s feet left the ground.
A heartbeat later, his back collided with a shattered tree trunk.
The impact drove the air from his already shredded lungs.
Before he could recover, Bram stepped forward and slammed him against it again.
Bark exploded.
The wood cracked.
Koda felt something in his ribs give way beneath the second impact, but the butcher wasn’t trying to break him with the tree.
He was positioning him.
The realization arrived just as Bram’s ruined mouth began opening.
The flesh around the butcher’s jaw tore apart further, exposing rows of jagged teeth surrounded by writhing tendrils.
Koda immediately understood what was about to happen and drove his fist into Bram’s face with every ounce of strength he had left.
Nothing.
The enchantment still refused to activate.
Bram laughed.
The sound was wet and horrible.
Then his jaws slammed shut around Koda’s arm.
Pain exploded through his body.
The bite landed high on the shoulder, crushing through flesh and muscle almost instantly.
Koda felt the pressure increasing with every passing second as the butcher’s jaw continued closing.
Tendrils wrapped around his torso, pinning him in place while Bram tore his head from side to side like a starving beast trying to rip apart prey.
Panic surged through him, he had already lost that arm.
Koda knew it before it happened.
He felt bone cracking beneath the pressure.
Felt tendons stretching.
Felt the joint beginning to separate.
The moment that realization hit, he stopped trying to save the limb.
Instead, he attacked.
His remaining hand slammed into Bram’s ruined eye socket once.
Twice.
Three times.
The butcher barely reacted.
The strikes were too weak.
Too desperate.
So Koda changed tactics.
Rather than punching, he drove his claws deep into the exposed flesh around Bram’s throat and hauled himself forward.
The movement only made the bite worse.
Agony shot through his entire body as his arm began tearing apart inside the butcher’s jaws, but it also brought his face closer.
Close enough.
Koda’s mouth split open even further.
His jaws widened far beyond anything human.
Then he bit.
His teeth sank directly into the side of Bram’s neck.
The reaction was immediate.
The butcher roared and slammed Koda into the tree again hard enough to shatter what remained of the trunk.
Both crashed through splintered wood and into the snow, but Koda refused to release his grip.
His claws remained buried in Bram’s throat.
His teeth remained locked onto flesh.
The old man tried to tear him away.
Koda bit harder.
Blood flooded his mouth.
The vulgar taste only made him hungrier.
The giant beneath him wasn’t some unstoppable monster anymore.
In Koda’s eyes, he was food.
Bram’s grip tightened.
There was a horrible tearing sensation.
Koda roared.
His arm came free.
Not from Bram’s hand.
From his body.
The butcher ripped it away entirely.
For a brief moment, the battlefield spun.
Pain overwhelmed everything.
His vision darkened.
He nearly lost his grip.
Nearly.
That was Bram’s mistake.
The butcher expected him to recoil.
Expected him to break.
Instead, Koda surged forward.
The instant his arm separated, he roared and drove himself deeper into the larger man, using the butcher’s own momentum against him.
His feet tore through ruined flesh while his remaining hand hammered the gauntlet into Bram’s ribs over and over again.
The first strike failed to trigger the enchantment.
The second failed too.
By the third, Koda was no longer thinking about the gauntlet at all.
The explosion caught both of them.
A thunderous crack erupted between their bodies.
Shattered ribs punched through Bram’s side.
Flesh burst outward.
The larger man finally lost his balance.
That was all Koda needed.
Both crashed into the snow.
The fight devolved instantly.
Bram landed on top initially, using his weight to pin Koda beneath him while tendrils wrapped around his throat and remaining arm.
Koda immediately twisted sideways rather than trying to bench press someone three times his size.
The movement forced one of Bram’s ruined ribs into the ground, and the butcher instinctively shifted to relieve the pressure.
Koda exploited it instantly.
His remaining hand drove into the open cavity of Bram’s abdomen.
The wound was already enormous.
His claws disappeared almost to the wrist.
The butcher jerked violently.
Koda grabbed whatever he found.
Tendrils.
Organs.
Muscle.
It didn’t matter.
Then he ripped.
Bram’s roar echoed across the ruined forest.
The larger man finally rolled away, clutching his stomach, but Koda followed immediately.
He didn’t give him space.
Didn’t let him stand.
Every time Bram tried to create distance, Koda threw himself back onto him, clawing, biting, and tearing.
The fight became a slow collapse.
Bram remained stronger.
Every shove launched Koda several feet.
Every strike felt like being hit by a hammer.
But the butcher was dying.
Each explosion weakened him further.
Each bite removed more flesh.
Each wound forced the Nightmare Creature holding him together to spend more and more strength simply keeping him alive.
The balance gradually shifted.
Not all at once.
Inches at a time.
The moment Koda realized it was happening, he became relentless.
“I will…” Koda began, his voice resembling more of a growl than anything.
“I am going to…” he continued.
“…FUCKING EAT YOU!” He roared.
He climbed onto Bram’s back after another explosion shattered the butcher’s balance, buried his claw into ruined shoulders, and bit deeply into the side of his neck.
When Bram reached back to throw him off, Koda abandoned the bite and attacked the arm instead.
When the butcher protected the arm, Koda returned to the throat.
Every movement forced a reaction.
Every reaction created another opening.
Eventually, Bram slowed.
His tendrils moved less frequently.
His remaining eye struggled to focus.
The enormous body beneath Koda no longer felt invincible.
It felt tired.
Koda saw it.
And hated him for it.
After everything.
After all the suffering.
After all this bullshit.
The old bastard was still smiling.
“Gonna eat me?” Bram rasped.
Koda slammed the gauntlet into his face.
The enchantment activated.
The explosion tore away what remained of the butcher’s cheek and drove his head sideways.
“I’LL DEVOUR YOU ALIVE!” He roared once more, blood exploding out from his destroyed throat.
Then he bit.
And this time, he didn’t stop.
Every mouthful removed another piece of the old man.
Every attempt to fight back grew weaker than the last.
The struggle continued for a long time after victory became inevitable because Bram simply refused to die, and Koda refused to let go.
Koda’s vision went black, all he could think about was eating.
All he could do was eat.
No matter how hard Bram pushed him, Koda never let go, Koda never stopped devouring.
Until… [You have slain an Awakened Human, Bram.] [You have slain an Awakened Tyrant, Devouring Leech.] Koda recoiled, breathing heavily with wide eyes as he stared down at what remained of Old Bram.
The man was only a pair of legs held together by what remained of his lower stomach, some black tendrils here and there lay limp around his skeletal leg and torso.
The pain finally caught up to Koda.
His eyes widened further and he fell down, holding his torso.
He could feel that his lungs were punctured, he couldn’t fathom the feeling of missing an arm, swiping at the air where it should’ve been.
He gasped and gasped for air, getting impatient.
“W—when… when will this end…” he rasped, his throat shattered and barely able to form words.
“I… can’t die now… not now…” he said, reaching for anything nearby, anything that he could lean on.
The only thing nearby was Old Bram’s enchanted cleaver.
Koda reached for it, but when his fingers brushed against the black metal… The cleaver split into a million white sparks and flowed into his body, making the boy’s eyes widen even further.
Which wasn’t very wide.
[You have received a memory: Famine’s Requiem.] He finally stopped trying, his body falling limp on the cold, hard frozen ground.
“Why…” he muttered.
But then, the spell spoke one, final time.
[Wake up, Koda!
Your nightmare is over.] [Prepare for Appraisal.] CREATORS’ THOUGHTS Rikud0u yay finally.
imma take a week break now, just to chud out.
unless we reach 100 power stones today …