Bloody Odyssey

Chapter 91 91: Living Weapon

The alien form of the weapon clung to Alfonzo like a second skin.

Not embracing, but consuming. Her slender arms wrapped around his torso, her lizard tail coiled around his leg, her six eyes pressed close to his face as if she were breathing him in. He could feel her—not just against his skin, but inside him. Flowing through his veins. Replacing what he was with something new.

With time, he noticed he wasn't the same.

The weakness was gone—but so was everything else. He looked at his hand.

What is wrong with me?

The hand that stared back was not his own. Pale. Elongated. The fingers too long, the knuckles too sharp. Blue veins pulsed beneath translucent skin, and beneath the skin, something moved—something that should not be inside a man.

It's almost as if I'm transforming into her.

Even his thoughts were weak. Fragmented. Like glass that had been shattered and was trying to hold itself together.

I want power.

He stretched his hand toward her face. Toward the six eyes that watched him with something that might have been hunger or recognition.

This gnawing in my chest… if I don't grasp this opportunity…

In his mental space, Alfonzo was falling.

Endlessly. Tirelessly. Through a pitch-black pit that had no bottom, no walls, no end. The darkness pressed against him from all sides, and the wind of his descent screamed in his ears.

I've never really had a goal in my life.

The thought came unbidden. Quiet and honest.

I was only living as the days went by.

He remembered his father—a vague shape, a warm voice, a hand that had once patted his head. Then death. A mission gone wrong. A body that never came home.

Sudden death!

He had been young. Too young to understand. Too young to feel anything but a hollow emptiness where grief should have been.

My attachment was almost nonexistent to the clan.

He curled up as he fell, knees to his chest, arms wrapped around himself.

I hated them for my father's untimely end. I wanted them to feel what I had felt.

But when the clansmen began to die—when the Blood River came, when the attacks grew bolder, when familiar faces stopped appearing at the dinner table—something had changed.

I was enraged. Guilt covered my heart. Maybe it was my wish that caused all those deaths.

He looked at his hands in the endless darkness.

I lacked what it took.

Why? Why am I feeling this way?

A gnawing loneliness clawed at him from the inside. Not the loneliness of being alone—but the loneliness that guilt can cause.

Watching others fight and die while he stood at the back, bow in hand, praying that no one looked at him.

It's all their fault.

The thought should have brought comfort.

It didn't.

In the inn, Dax walked around Alfonzo's convulsing form.

He carried a bottle—not the crimson vials, but something else. Something darker. He poured its contents over Alfonzo's head, his shoulders, his chest. The liquid was thick, warm, the color of old wine.

Diluted blood. His own.

Alfonzo's eyes twitched in a frenzy. His body fell—then caught itself, hovering inches above the floor, suspended by something unseen.

Dax smiled.

While his guards trembled.

In their presence, Alfonzo turned pale—paler than any living man should be. The color drained from his lips, his cheeks, his fingertips. He looked like a corpse that had forgotten to stop breathing.

Then the nano suit manifested.

It flowed over his skin like liquid metal—blue, the same shade as the gun, the same shade as the eyes that had cracked and leaked black. It covered his slender physique, hugging every contour, every muscle, every bone.

He carried the air of a weapon.

The guards stared.

The eldest among them—the Scared Wolf, they called him, though no one remembered why—felt his heart stop for a single beat.

What on God's creation?

In the deep emptiness, a hand stretched toward Alfonzo.

It came from above—from the darkness beyond the darkness—pale and slender and impossibly far. Seeing it, something in his chest cracked open. Hope. Desperation. Or maybe the need to feel something.

He stretched toward it.

Please.

His falling continued. The pit had no bottom, and his descent had no end. The hand stayed where it was—outstretched, waiting—but he could not reach it. Could not get closer. Could not stop falling long enough to grasp.

He tried once more.

His fingers brushed empty air.

I see my dream right before my very eyes.

He reached again.

If only I can.

The black substance pouring from his eyes began to cover his lips. From his mouth it dripped onto the floor, sizzling against the wood and leaving small burns that smoked in the silent air.

Dax stopped pouring the bottles.

He returned to his seat beside Madeka and Nadia, his expression unreadable. He looked at Alfonzo the way a sculptor looked at an unfinished work—with patience, with certainty, with the quiet knowledge of what would emerge.

Is this the promise of a good life?

The Scared Wolf questioned in his heart. His whole body was stuck under the influence of Dax's power—frozen, helpless, forced to watch.

The young lord is too formidable. Even I, the Scared Wolf, cannot see through him. This alone makes me question his morality.

He thought of the warnings he had ignored. The signs he had dismissed.

His actions…

He looked at Alfonzo's convulsing form.

Fool. I warned you not to get too close to the young master, but you ignored.

Guilt settled into his chest. His eyes remained glued to Alfonzo, unblinking.

The same was true for the others.

"Why did you leave him there?"

Nadia leaned her head to the side, her golden eyes fixed on Dax with a questioning gaze. Her voice was soft, but there was something beneath it—curiosity, perhaps, or the faintest edge of concern.

He doesn't realize how abnormal he is. Her eyes traced his face. It's like watching the image of something that shouldn't be.

Her gaze remained glued, waiting for a response.

Dax did not look at her.

"If I help him through this final stage… though he might not die, he would definitely fail his final step."

He gestured toward Alfonzo.

"Living weapons are powerful. They are weapons with life, designed and created by me—a race created for violence."

He pointed at Alfonzo's transforming form.

"That weapon is a live example."

Nadia's gaze shifted to the sword leaning against Dax's chair. Cil. The weapon that had cut down Ryker.

"Could that also be one?"

Dax simply grinned.