[1% LIFESTEAL] Chapter 75 - Sophia Summer

Freddy followed Sophia through the woods. They moved cautiously as they slowly approached the outer edge of the passage realm. 

According to her, the best course of action for them would be to go to the very edge of the realm and bury themselves underground. Their bodies were undead, so that wouldn’t kill them, even if they remained buried for months. 

One of the most essential skills for an archhuman was creativity. With supernatural powers so easily accessible, it was best to take preconceptions of common sense and throw them out the window. With just an undead body, burying oneself underground for a few months wasn’t a good idea. Fungal growth, worms, bugs, and bacteria would slowly begin invading the body, eating it from the inside as it cracked the layers of skin one by one.

But combined with their talents, the idea was almost flawless, barring the fact that it would still bring them much suffering. It was still a much better fate than confronting a swarm of monsters. 

Although Freddy had been doing his best to exercise this creativity from the beginning, it hadn’t been a skill that came naturally to him. He knew damn well how hard it was to break out of the “common sense” fallacy and develop a different method of thinking. 

Even at that moment, as they headed to execute this plan, it was Sophia’s idea—not his.

Naturally, he had asked her how she knew what was happening many times, but she simply ignored his questions every time he asked. 

The outer edge was quite far, and combined with Sophia’s sudden hyper-vigilance, it took them a while to reach their destination. They left the woods and entered a clearing void of all growth, right beside the massive, jagged cliffs surrounding the passage realm's outer perimeter. All that stood below their feet was dead, dry soil. 

“All right,” she said as he pulled a small knife from her dimension ring. Then, she knelt and dug into the ground, using the dagger as an improvised trowel. “We should make the holes around here. This will reduce the odds of something finding us.”

But rather than joining her in digging his grave, he stood to the side, watching her.

Eventually, she paused. She took a deep breath and aggressively rubbed her face. “You think I’m insane, don’t you?” she asked him.

“Yes,” he said. “But I don’t think you’re making shit up. You know something,” he said simply, remaining upright as he squinted down at her.

The day suddenly blinked out, and night descended on the realm. Both of them merely glanced at the sky, already used to dealing with this phenomenon, having seen it happen quite a few times. 

She suddenly started chuckling. A mixture of laughter and disbelief rang through her body as she looked around. Then, tears began streaming down her face. “Why?” she said, gulping and sniffling as she sobbed. “Why can’t I just be free?”

Free from what? That was what he wanted to ask her. But he remained silent, simply looking down as he waited patiently. At first, he had given her the benefit of the doubt, but the longer he thought about it… the stranger her story seemed. 

She was a powerful, well-trained archhuman despite, according to her words, being one for only a few weeks. Her talent was immensely potent. She also possessed a storage artifact. Those were very, very expensive.

Yet despite all this, she was utterly broke to the point where she didn’t even have a place to live. Her excuse was that she had traded everything for a talent, but… really? Even if that was true, having no money left over didn’t make sense.

He hadn’t thought much about it since it hadn’t been his concern, but his honest guess was that this woman had run away from home. She was likely part of a powerful family or clan. But now that he was contemplating it, that story didn’t line up either. 

Not only was she thirty-two, meaning she had lived to be quite old before getting her prime, but if she was from an influential family, there was absolutely zero chance that she would have run away with nothing in her possession. 

Her story simply didn’t match her circumstances. Her actions at that moment didn’t match the actions of the woman he first met. That person seemed absolutely insane, acting with utter disregard for her personal safety and the safety of those around her in favor of chasing a high in combat. 

Freddy watched the woman sob her heart out in the darkness for a long few minutes. Then, she picked up the dagger and continued digging. But it didn’t take long for her to stop again. “I…” she started, taking a deep breath to calm herself. “I grew up in a cult.”

His eyebrows twitched slightly, but he wasn’t truly surprised. Something else suddenly clicked. “They’re the ones behind this attack.”

She reluctantly nodded. “Yes. I recognize that barrier. It’s a talent that belongs to one of the higher-ups.”

He felt a bit of anger bubble in the back of his mind. “Did you know that they would do this?”

She stared at the ground for a few seconds. “No,” she said. “If I had known they would come here, I would have never stayed in Nova York.”

A few long moments of silence passed. Then, he sighed and walked over, kneeling beside her as he took out his own hunting knife and started digging.

She stared at him, her mouth quivering slightly. “Do you—”

“Do I what!?” he spat angrily. “Do I trust you? No, I don’t fucking trust you!” He sucked air through his teeth as he pursed his lips and clenched his fists. “How do you expect me to believe anything you’re saying?” he asked. “You’ve been lying your ass off from the start, and you’ve already tried killing me once! If you want me to have any faith in you, at least explain that much!”

“What do you want me to say?” she asked. “That I plotted against you?”

“Well I don’t know what you did!” he spat. “I thought you were just naive. You came across as naive. Your excuse was infantile, and you just seemed like a spoiled brat. You’re asking me what I want you to say? The truth. I want you to tell me the truth because what you told me before was a lie.”

Her gaze held his for a few seconds, but her eyes drifted away as a sense of resignation enveloped her. Time drifted past them, neither of them aware of how long they were just sitting there. 

Eventually, she opened her mouth. “I don’t regret what I did,” she said. 

A small surge of anger sparked in his chest, but he remained quiet, waiting for her to finish.

“The only way to get anything in this world is to be willing to risk everything,” she said. “For so many years, I had lived as a mindless pawn waiting to be used at the right moment. The first time my life truly began was when I took a real risk.” She took a deep breath to calm herself. “I don’t know who my parents are. I didn’t even learn of the concept of parents until I was around twenty years old. Remember when I said I’ve been training martial arts for 15 years?” she asked.

He nodded, already having cooled down as she started her story.

“Yeah…” she said. “That was also a lie. But you probably wouldn’t have believed me if I told you I started 30 years ago.”

He couldn’t deny that.

She continued, “My life started as that of a child soldier. The cult simply referred to us as ‘children,’ even when we reached thirty years of age. They trained us to the bone our entire lives, and once a child became skilled enough, they would send them into a private underground passage to fight against monsters. None of us were archhumans. All we had was a single weapon of choice. The monsters were on the weaker side, yes, but that didn’t make the occasional deviant any less lethal.

“Only once a year would the strongest member of the children be allowed to accept a prime and ascend into an archhuman, and then they would be allowed to join the cult as a full-fledged member. If anyone manifested a prime or acquired one by killing a deviant, they weren’t allowed to take it and had to surrender it to the cult.

“I manifested a prime vestige four times during my life as a Child, and I got one from killing a deviant fifteen times. And every single time, I had to give it away.”

Freddy winced at that. 

She smiled, grim amusement at his reaction dancing through her eyes. “If you want me to be entirely honest, I threw you off that cliff because you pissed me off,” she said. “You patronized me and acted like I was nothing but a naive kid. Meanwhile, you were acting like a total coward, and honestly, I was beyond shocked when I saw how bad you were at fighting.”

“And you think that’s a valid excuse?” he asked.

“Liam, my entire life has been a competition,” she said. “I don’t have a habit of considering others’ safety since proving myself has always been my priority. You seemed so much more powerful than me that I thought you would be completely invincible against those dumb beasts. All I wanted to do was prove that I didn’t need to be babysat. And I truly believed we’d be fine, and, to be fair, I wasn’t even wrong.”

At that point, his anger had subsided quite a bit. When he had presumed her actions were ones of a total lunatic, it seemed that he had been far closer to the truth than he had thought. 

But there was something that immediately stood out. “You say that you grew up in a cult as a child slave forced to fight from birth, but I’m not sure I buy that,” he said. “From what I’ve seen of you, you give off the impression of someone with a pretty spoiled upbringing.”

She snorted at that. “What, you think we were kept in cages in a dungeon?” she asked. “For the record, I only learned that I had been living in a cult after I escaped,” she said. “From what I can tell, we lived pretty ordinary lives. We only spent around 2-3 hours a day fighting in the passage, then maybe another 2-3 training. I’m not sure you understand what kind of place I grew up in. It’s an entire community the size of a small town.”

He frowned at that. “Really?” 

She nodded. “Although what we were allowed to view was heavily regulated, there was a movie theater we could go to. There were also cafes, restaurants, boutiques, there was even a damn club. The entire cult thrived on being a community. We fought for a greater purpose, seeking strength to face the ‘degeneracy’ of the outside world, living in service of ‘gods’ I’m not even sure actually exist.”

That was a lot to take in. She had lived the life of a frog in a well—it was hardly surprising that her behavior was so unusual. “So…” he started. “You ran away?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t tolerate seeing people around me die anymore. We were told to believe we were living with a purpose, but I never fully accepted that. So, I decided to escape.”

“How?” 

“By taking a risk,” she said. “The passage was a bit away from cult headquarters, and we were always taken there in a transport carriage where we couldn’t even see the outside world. Usually, we would be guarded by powerful cult members, but on that day, for whatever reason, there were only three guards, and they were on the weaker side. Still, they were full-fledged members.

“We were all conditioned to obey our entire lives, and we were being loaded into the carriage in the middle of a courtyard surrounded by fences of rusty barbed wire. The cult had no reason to believe that anyone would try to make an escape since that sort of thing basically never happened. But as soon as I saw the opportunity, I grasped it. I still remember the feeling of barbed wire tearing into my skin as I climbed over the barricade, but I was ready to die if need be. 

“I didn’t come out unscathed. Three stone bullets hit my back, and a shard of blood nearly cut into my spine. Frankly, I barely remember how I made it out of the forest, but by the time I reached civilization, I was nearly dead already. A police patrol spotted me and brought me over to a hospital. When they realized that I had no real identity and no way to pay them, the clinic only did the bare minimum to stop me from dying and sent me to be interrogated.

“I told them everything, and after around two days, I was released with a new identity. But my injuries weren’t healing,” she said, clutching her stomach. “I still vividly remember the night I spent in the rain, hiding under a bridge, my back so inflamed I could barely think straight. For a long moment, I thought maybe the cult had a point. Back home, as long as we survived, we were given free treatment, and it was pretty damn good, too. 

“Then, I saw a flash of purple light envelop me as a small ball dropped on my lap. I had seen that happen a few times already, and without hesitation, I accepted the prime into my body before I even knew what it did.  

“The natural-quality healing of ascending to a single star saved my life, but my back wasn’t healed enough to stabilize yet. Then, I saw it. My eyes had changed from my ascension, going from a dull brown to a vivid purple, and it wasn’t just a cosmetic change. I could see life force. I could smell it. Taste it. And I instinctively knew that I could tear it out of the bodies of living things. I killed a stray cat and used its spark to heal myself. That was also when I learned that there were consequences to doing so.

“I realized I needed a spark with stronger vitality to fix my mistake, and I knew only one way to get my hands on one. I was in a small town near Nova York, and there were no public passages there. 

“So I hitchhiked for days and eventually made it here. Ever since, I’ve been living inside this passage, sleeping and hunting every day in my search for a deviant with enough vitality to help me fix my problem. And that was when I ran into you,” she said, staring at him. “There you go. Happy?” she asked, trying to smirk, but it looked strained.

“Just one more thing—where did you get your dimension ring?”

“Oh, that?” she asked. “I found it on an old corpse buried under a pile of rubble.”

He nearly choked. “You didn’t report that?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, where did you get yours?” she asked. “I doubt you have enough money to buy one with enough space to fit a whole damn machete in there,” she said with a cheeky grin.

“Fair point,” he said. 

Honestly, he didn’t know what to say. His evaluation of her situation was wildly off, and he couldn’t help but feel a little… humbled. In many ways, she had gone through through something surprisingly similar to what he did.

The moments of silence stretched on, and eventually, he opened his mouth. “My real name is Freddy,” he said. A voice in the back of his mind screamed at him to keep his mouth shut, but he couldn’t resist the compulsion to speak. 

Then, starting from his childhood, her told her his story. Granted, he kept many details private. He didn’t share his real surname, he didn’t share where he had lived, he didn’t specify Madam’s identity or why she took him under her wing, he didn’t tell her about Bloodshed, he didn’t tell why the Kraven clan had been after him, and he said nothing about the fight between him and the patriarch. But he said everything else.

By the end, he felt… good—a lot better than he had for a while—as if a massive boulder had rolled off his back. He didn’t trust her enough to say everything, but… he felt a kinship with the woman. And once he finished telling his story, he knew that he had made the right decision. Within her eyes, he could see not sympathy—but empathy. She understood. 

“Wow,” she said. “When did this turn into a tragic backstory dick-measuring championship?”

He laughed at that. “I don’t know… but I think I win.”

She chuckled at that, shaking her head. “Nah. Mine is definitely better.”

“Nuh-uh,” he responded childishly. “Anyway,” he clapped. “What do you want to do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well… don’t you want revenge?” he asked.

She hesitated. “I don’t know,” she said, slumping a bit. “In hindsight, I honestly think the cult has a point about some things.”

He couldn’t disagree with that. “Yeah, they got the ‘degeneracy of the outside world’ part correct, at least. But—”

“But their means are inexcusable,” she completed what he was about to say.

He closed his mouth and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Either way,” she started, “I don’t know what you’re aiming at, but I can tell you already that we stand no chance if we decide to fight against them.” She shifted a bit as if recollecting a painful memory. “They don’t hesitate to utilize illegal talents, and they have no qualms about using them in fucked up ways. To them, the savages of the ‘outside world’ are lower than animals.”

“But do we stand a chance of going unnoticed if we bury ourselves?” he asked. 

She paused. “I don’t know. Maybe. If the person with the right talent comes across us, we’ll probably be discovered, but I prefer those odds over taking them head-on.”

“Are you afraid of confronting them?” he asked. 

“Of course I am,” she said. “I’ve seen what they can do. I’ve been watching my whole life.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said. 

She paused for a few moments. “Yes,” she said. “I honestly don’t want to see any of them ever again in my life. I’m afraid that they’ll convince me to return. I don’t want to become one of them, Lia—I mean, Freddy. Sorry… It’ll take a while to get used to that.”

Freddy took a deep breath. Now that he knew what they were going against, he was pretty confident that the plan of burying themselves wouldn’t work. He needed to find a way to convince her to give up on it. “Didn’t you say that you can’t get anything in life without risking everything?”

She winced at that.

He patted her shoulder. “I get it,” he said. “If I came across the people who are after me, I would probably react the same way. But I’ve already faced a situation like this once,” he proclaimed.

Turning to face him, she raised an eyebrow. “What did you do?”

He couldn’t stop a small smile from appearing on his face. 

It was time to introduce her to his favorite little skeleton.