Chapter 42 - Hollow Male

Chapter 42: 42 - Hollow Male

"What are those things, Noodle?" I asked, swinging my bone again, this time aiming for the zombie beastman’s head. It connected, and he flew back, but only for a moment before he stood up again.

"Hollow male."

I felt Noodle’s eyes on my back as I braced for another swing, this time coming from the side.

"Warm-blooded, born outside the mate bond. They are dangerous to everyone."

The mate bond, again. Why was everything tied to it?

I broke the hollow’s limbs, one by one, watching as he kept crawling toward me single-mindedly.

"...female..."

He wanted a female, and I happened to be the only one here.

The other night beasts, around four, were closing in as well. The rotting smell coming from them was overwhelming, and it made me realize they had been badly injured by the hollow male before we arrived.

After a while, I managed to take down the night beasts and broke the hollow male, who kept whispering the word ’female’ even after his bones were crushed.

Compared to Noodle, they were around rank 1 in strength. They were not a big threat when one knew how to fight in pitch darkness.

I waited for the mist to dissipate and the flowers to bloom again, which illuminated the battlefield.

The sight was a feast for the eyes. The Night Beasts looked like a mix between a dragon and a mole, with scales covering their bodies and big claws for digging. They had long, thick tails that helped them to balance while walking on their hind legs.

The hollow male was a bear beastman, larger and more muscular than Noodle. His eyes were bloodshot, red veins spreading across his sclera like a spiderweb. His body was covered in scars, both fresh and old.

I walked around him, prodding him with my bone.

"Precious."

I tensed at the sound of Dickhead and turned to find him standing there, his arms crossed behind his back. He looked around, his eyes taking in the scene.

"Having fun?" He stepped forward, his foot landing on the hollow male’s head, and pressed down until the skull cracked. A spray of blood and brain matter shot out.

His weight alone shouldn’t have been enough to do that kind of damage. He was strong enough to crush a skull, sure, but not just by shifting his weight onto it. The boots, then. Could they be the Empire’s latest invention?

The beastman’s body twitched once, then went still. Dickhead shifted his foot to the brain matter, squishing the core and destroying it as well.

And there he stood, cutting off my access to the hollow male. As if to say the game was over, and I had to go back to the leash. He was the master of the game, and I was just a player he had let out for a while.

"Fun," I replied, swinging the bone on my shoulder. "More fun than being stuck in a cave with you."

He dug his heel into the beastman’s head, grinding it further into the dirt. "You should be sleeping. It’s been six days."

"I’ll sleep when I’m dead," I said, walking past him, towards the night beasts.

At least this, I could take with me. The cores gave me a sense of effort and reward for the time spent in the fight. I hated waste. "Help me out, Noodle."

Noodle didn’t like playing around with corpses, and his expression showed it. He slithered to my side, rolled my sleeves further up so they wouldn’t get stained.

He then used a pin clip he made from spikehogs to keep the fabric out of the way. He even pulled my pants higher and tucked my shirt in. All for the sake of keeping me clean.

"Watch mate, I’m going to get water for her." Noodle ordered Dickhead before disappearing into the dark, his body slithering away. He didn’t read the mood at all.

I knelt beside the first night beast and used the knife I stole from Nugget to cut out its core. It was smaller than the spikehogs’, black, and kidney-shaped. The second one was similar, and so were the rest.

Noodle was a bit of a simpleton, but it didn’t mean he was locked inside a cave for fifty years without learning anything. He knew a lot, and he seemed to enjoy teaching me (thinking I was the clueless one).

His knowledge from his ancestors and his memory were a goldmine of information, and he shared it freely, without expecting anything in return.

It’s been a while since I had been around someone who didn’t have a secret agenda. I didn’t have to second-guess their motives, or wonder what they were after. They all died because of me, in one way or another, and some of them even by Dickhead’s hands.

"Your pet is getting bold, isn’t he?" He crouched next to me.

"Mate. He is my mate," I corrected him.

He made a sound, something between a snort and a chuckle, then reached out to touch my cheek. I jerked away, his fingers grazing a droplet of blood in the air. "You are healing, and it’s because of him."

I stood up, pulling my face further from his reach. "And you are here to ruin it. As always."

He was a plague in my life that wouldn’t let me be. A tick that burrowed under my skin, feeding on my blood, and growing fat on my life force. And no matter how hard I scratched, I couldn’t get him out.

"I’m not the one who’s ruining it," he said, following me as I moved to the next night beast. "You are the one who’s digging her own grave. I’m just trying to stop you, before you end up in a place where I can’t reach you."

I cut the next core. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. Don’t listen to his poison. Don’t let him get in your head, and get you high on his bullshit again. That’s what he did. He got you high on promises, and then left you to crash and burn.

"Hearing you call him Noodle, makes me miss my old nickname, as ridiculous as it was," he continued, unfazed by my silence. "Shroomie. Because I would make you so giddy, you felt like you were on a mushroom high, remember?"

I cut the last core. The trip down memory lane was over, and the ticket back to reality was to ignore him and walk away.

Banter was for when I felt like it, not when he asked for it.