Aethernea : Soulbound [Book 1]

Episode 100 - Razorblood

But a Replica is also a person.

A small voice whispered inside his head.

It bleeds, it thinks, it feels. Just like everyone else. No different than a normal person.

And this person, whose life you ended would never again see the light of day again.

Even if the Replica Dungeon created an identical Replica at a later time, that Replica and this Replica would not be the same. This Replica was dead forever.

Kiel gripped the handle of his sword so tightly that his fingers turned white. He had hoped that this Replica would disappear when he killed it. Hoped that he wouldn't have to look at its miserable corpse any longer. In the Arena, Memory artifacts would instantly reconstruct the body of the slain party so the audience wouldn't be able to see the gory sight for long.

Yet, this wasn't the Arena, this was the Replica Dungeon. And the corpse of the Replica remained there unmoving as if to prove that it was very much real and not an illusion. That it had been alive and now it was not.

This Replica was created for my sake. It lived for my sake and died for my sake. There is nothing wrong with it.

Kiel argued. His eyes landed on the small near transparent dagger, lying lifelessly next to his feet. Even if I didn't kill it, would it have spared me?

Those with an intention to kill should be prepared to be killed.

The rest of the participants of the exam stared at Kiel with mixed emotions. The ease with which Kiel dispatched one of them left the rest feeling unsettled. In their eyes, it seemed as if Kiel just picked this person at random to attack, just because he was the closest one to him, not caring about whether this person was strong or not.

Kiel exuded sharp coldness and confidence bordering on arrogance. He stared at them defiantly as if asking them to hurry up, as if asking them "what are you waiting for? Come at me.".

Yet none of them knew that that was exactly what Kiel wanted them to think. No one realized that Kiel picked this person intentionally. That he picked him because he didn't recognize his face, thus this person should have been among the weaker ones. That he picked him because the reaction of this person to the previous beheading wasn't pretty, which made Kiel believe that he wasn't an experienced fighter.

None of them realized that this defiant, cold look of his was just a mask covering his inner turmoil.

Several seconds passed, and then, almost simultaneously, Rhur Rroda and Nelaira Helyot made their moves.

Rhur grabbed a handful of something from his pocket. When he opened his fist, countless small, red petals were revealed. He smiled towards Nelaira, who was the prettiest female in this batch of participants, and blew on the petals charmingly, as if blowing a kiss to his lower.

However, even though he was gazing towards Nelaira, his petals floated towards the participant closest to the man Kiel had just killed.

You can still flirt in this kind of situation?? Kiel stared at Rhur speechlessly.

Nelaira, on the other hand, didn't seem to have noticed Rhur's gestures at all. She concentrated her attention on the female to her right. She flicked her wrist, and as if responding to her gesture, hundreds of sharp icicles condensed from thin air on top of the female and started raining down like a stream of needles.

Kiel was familiar with Rhur's fighting style, for he had fought him before. Rhur was extremely proficient in using a sword and in fact, the reason why Kiel picked the same weapon was because he wanted to one day surpass Rhur. However, what was the most dangerous about Rhur's fighting style wasn't his exquisite swordsmanship, but rather, his ranged attack and control abilities.