Soft Thorns ❦𝙺𝚊𝚔𝚎𝚐𝚞𝚛𝚞𝚒❦

Thirty-Three

𓇽𓇽𓇽𓇽

One after another, all dropped like mere flies. A precise leap, an impactful strike, and then the disconcertingly delicious sound of metal slamming against bones.

They rattled, in the dead of night, vibrations filling her ears as the enemy fell before her. Then, she moved on to the next one, wasting no time grieving that which was not sentient. It perished by the blade of a belligerent player consumed by vengeance, sharing the same fate as its late comrades.

The bloodlust of this player was savage not, but a measured sort, born of years upon years of mental training under the watchful eyes of her parents. There was elegance to be seen in even the most animalistic of scenes. Ripping the rotten flesh off the immobile corpses' limbs was all in a day's work for her.

The howls of the beasts she had tamed bounced around the cage, muffled by the sound of rain and thunder splitting the sky in half. They were crying, yearning to be picked to bear offspring, to raise their pups to adulthood so that they might serve their master in the exponentially growing army.

The initiation of a bloody war between the two dominant forces was what lay ahead.

"Aren't you dramatising this a bit too much?"

Shiori parted her lips slightly in shock. Gone were the beasts, and in their stead, lots of dogs with cute muzzles appeared, waiting for her to feed them the rotten flesh of the zombies she had slain. She blinked, the bright screen of the laptop staring motionlessly at her.

"What? No, of course not!" Shiori looked past the pixels in front of her, to a sarcastic Ririka. "I just got immersed by this game, that's all..."

"Be that as it may," The older girl shook her head, a small smile gracing her lips as her ponytail swayed behind her. Shiori took note of how pretty she was, biting on her inner cheek to control herself from doing or saying anything stupid. "I'm happy you are enjoying it. Although you are taking this more seriously than it should be... You also said you played other games, didn't you? I've been meaning to ask about what kind."

"Again, I am not," Her character fed the dogs populating a small cage behind their half-built house and watched them conceive life after life. She tried not to think about how she had long since slipped past the border of insanity as she bred a mom dog with her dog son. "And... Hm. I think I like rhythm games. They're flashy and can be pretty challenging. But since I'm skilled with my fingers, that last part does not count for me."

"Oh."

As she observed Ririka turn into a tomato, Shiori curled her lip upwards into a sneer, "The double entendre was intended."

"Oh," Ririka sounded like a broken record; her ears became so flushed one could almost see smoke coming out of them. Red suited her quite fine. It was a lovely colour on her otherwise porcelain face. And, speaking of porcelain, Shiori knew Ririka secretly begged to have her mask on her right now. Too bad Kirari had confiscated it from her, saying something among the lines of "It is most unbecoming to don the mask while we entertain guests."

"By the way, I have some-" The younger girl hovered her cursor over the piles of ashes in her inventory, changing the subject faster than Ririka could manage. "Gunpowder? Here, from killing those weird plants that explode. Does that mean we can make guns?"