Bradley dashed, not like a runner, but like a bullet fired from a silent gun, his speed unnatural and breathtaking.
As he reached the corridors that led to the cafeteria, he slammed to a halt.
Blood.
It was everywhere. Crimson-black blood painted the walls like macabre abstract art and pooled on the polished floor.
And worse: carnage. Limbs were scattered around—a pale, lifeless hand, a severed arm, a boot still attached to a bloody lower leg.
"Fucking hell..." Bradley's breath hitched, the curse a choked whisper.
Spirit Bradley frowned, his ethereal face contorted. [They were only kids... this is worse than I thought.]
Bradley's fists clenched, the purple silk of his katana's grip digging into his palm. He squeezed until a tiny bead of his own blood seeped out and fell onto the gruesome floor.
"Fuck, it's all my fault. If I had come earlier, maybe this wouldn't have happened."
[Don't blame yourself. It's not your fault. Even if we tried to deal with her during the day, there'd still be victims. All we can do now is avenge them. Focus your rage, don't let it blind you,] Spirit Bradley said, his hand resting on Bradley's tensed shoulder.
"Yeah. You're right." Bradley nodded once, the self-recrimination receding, replaced by a cold, surgical fury.
He walked toward the double doors of the cafeteria, the metal slick and crimson-stained.
He shoved them open, and what he saw next made him tremble, not with fear, but with an earth-shattering rage.
The cafeteria was swallowed by shadow, but his spirit vision made the tableau sickeningly clear: a dozen dead bodies scattered across the bloodied floor.
Some of them were still in their school uniforms. Many of the bodies were mutilated, hacked into different pieces—limbs everywhere, intestines spattered on the ground like discarded, glistening spaghetti.
It was a gruesome, impossible sight.
Slurp~ Crunch~
Bradley snapped his head towards the sound.
He saw her.
The nurse was seated at a student table, perfectly composed.
She was eating.
In front of her, laid out on a serving tray, was the body of a young girl, her eyes wide open, the light in them long extinguished.
The girl had a gaping hole in her stomach, her organs hanging out, a tragic, grotesque centrepiece.
The nurse delicately stabbed a fork into the girl's stomach, gently cut a small piece of flesh with a butter knife, and brought it to her mouth—chewing with loud, satisfied crunches. Then, she picked up a glass filled with a deep-red liquid—blood—and sipped it with the grace of a woman at a tea party.
Next, she stabbed an intestine, twisting it around the fork like it was a delicate pasta. She grabbed a tomato sauce container from the table, poured the contents over the organ, and then slid the blood-soaked, sauced coil into her mouth.
Slurp~
She picked up the napkin on her lap and gently dabbed the blood that had fallen onto her chin.
"Delicious~" she purred, her eyes closed in blissful appreciation.
She finally turned her head, her unnaturally red eyes locking onto his.
"Oh my, I didn't see you there!" She sprang from her seat, the metal chair scraping loudly against the floor.
"How rude of me for not inviting you to eat! Come, dine with me! There are still some perfectly good intestines and fresh meat left in this girl. Human flesh is truly the best delicacy after all!" She pulled out a chair, her gesture a twisted parody of a gracious hostess.
Bradley didn't reply. He didn't even look at her face.
His sole, unblinking gaze was on the dead girl's body, used and desecrated like a piece of cattle.
He felt a wave of nausea so powerful he had to clamp his jaw shut to keep from vomiting.
The sight was sickening him to the core.
Even Spirit Bradley, who was usually quick with a sarcastic jab, remained utterly silent, his eyes wide with profound, cold horror.
Bradley's fists clenched tighter, the already-bleeding wound in his palm beginning to drip a slow, steady rhythm of purple-tinged blood onto the floor.
Seeing his silence and the absolute hatred burning in his eyes, she smiled—a horrifying, wide grin with small scraps of meat still visible between her teeth. "Oh, are you perhaps angry that I started eating before you? I apologise, I couldn't hold myself back. It's just so fresh." She bowed dramatically, a mockery of repentance.
"Stop with the bullshit." Bradley's voice was low, a strained, gravelly sound of suppressed violence.
She lifted her head, her smile widening into a laugh that bounced off the metal walls of the cafeteria.
"Hahahaha, you should've seen your face when I was eating the poor girl! That look of pure disgust! It was priceless!"
[She's a flesh-eating spirit, Bradley. A very dangerous one. The spiritual pressure she's releasing is no joke. Don't let your anger blind you,] Spirit Bradley finally spoke, his warning sharp.
Yeah, I know. Bradley responded telepathically, forcing the adrenaline and rage back into a cold, hard centre.
He took a deep, shuddering breath, calming his pulse.
"What did you do to the real nurse? The one whose body you stole?" he asked, his voice now level, clinical.
"Oh, you mean the owner of this lovely vessel? She's still alive, of course. I didn't suppress her consciousness entirely, so she could experience everything. I like torturing my victims and their hosts. It adds to the flavour," she smiled wickedly, tapping her temple.
[Fucking treacherous monster. Enough of her bullshit. You must kill that bitch at all costs. She is a blight,] the Spirit snarled.
I was planning to.
"I was just about to tell you—"
Before she could finish her sentence, Bradley vanished from his spot. He didn't run; he dissolved into a blur of black energy.
He moved with inhuman speed, closing the 20-meter distance in a heartbeat.
He drew his katana—not in a simple upward motion, but a perfect, fluid Iaijutsu[1] draw—and slashed with devastating speed toward the nurse's torso.
The line of the blade was purple.
The razor-thin blade left a shimmering purple arc in the air mixed with black spirit energy.
"How rude! Don't you know you're not supposed to interrupt a lady when she's talking?" She clicked her tongue, an annoying, high-pitched sound, and moved her left hand, not to dodge, but to block the blade.
Normally, that slash would have sheared a normal human hand clean off, but the spirit, occupying the nurse's body, was far from normal.
CLANG!
The slash was blocked.
A blinding flash of sparks erupted, momentarily lighting the dark cafeteria.
The nurse's hand had not just stopped the blade; it had transformed. Her fingers had elongated, thickening into four razor-sharp, dark-red claws, the hardened spirit material deflecting the blade.
So that's how she tore the students apart, Bradley realised instantly, adjusting his stance.
Bradley spun on the ball of his foot, using the momentum of the deflected slash to whip out a low, punishing kick toward her stomach, aiming to destabilise her. She blocked it casually with her free palm.
"No way, you just tried to kick a woman in the stomach? Such poor manners," the nurse mocked, her expression one of faux scandal.
"Shut up!" Bradley yelled.
He immediately leveraged his other foot off the ground, using the grounded leg as a pivot to deliver a sudden, powerful, reverse-roundhouse kick with the remaining free foot.
This one caught her off guard.
The kick sent her flying backwards, smashing through a stack of metal tables with a violent CRASH! of splintered wood and flying trays.
"Hehehe, ahhhhh, this is fun! I didn't know I would find a genuine Spirit Hunter in this country! How surprising! It's been decades since the last time I've seen one." She laughed, a high, manic cackle, as she stood up from the wreckage of the broken tables, completely unharmed.
"A Spirit Hunter? Are there more like me?" Bradley asked, circling her slowly, his guard up, katana held in a perfect low stance.
She tilted her head to the side, her eyes gleaming with predatory interest.
"You didn't know? Of course, there are others, but the numbers have dwindled since we, the High-Ranking Evil Spirits, hunted them down centuries ago. However.. there are none like you that I've seen. You're working with an evil spirit." She pointed a claw at Spirit Bradley.
[Huh? You can see me?] Spirit Bradley pointed at himself, genuinely surprised.
"Obviously. I wouldn't call myself a Higher-Ranked Spirit if I couldn't see the little leech sucking energy from your soul." She giggled, finding the observation hilarious.
"What the fuck are you talking about him being an evil spirit? He is not an evil spirit!" Bradley roared, his patience snapping. He dashed forward with a burst of pure, unadulterated dark spiritual aura that coated his body and blade like black lightning.
The nurse matched his burst, her speed unbelievable, coated in a searing, blood-red aura.
Black and red spiritual auras clashed in the center of the cafeteria like a small explosion.
The floor beneath their feet trembled. The dozens of dead bodies scattered on the floor were violently pushed away, skidding across the bloodied tiles by the sheer force of their collision.
CLANG! CLANG! KSHH!
Blade met claw in a blinding exchange. The sounds were like a blacksmith hammering white-hot metal.
"You didn't know he was an evil spirit? Can't you see the dark, chaotic nature of his aura?" she taunted, effortlessly blocking his rapid, calculated slashes.
Bradley reversed the grip on his katana mid-combo, bringing the hilt low and then slashing upward, aiming for her exposed throat.
She hissed, sucking air through her teeth, and ducked under the blade. But as she raised her head, a knee, travelling with the force of a battering ram, covered her vision.
Bradley slammed his knee into her face, hitting her hard enough to hear a sickening CRACK.
The impact sent her flying once more, but this time she crashed with skull-rattling force against the structural wall, creating a massive, spider-webbed crater in the reinforced concrete.
"He's not an evil spirit because he is me! Even if he was, he's not like you!" Bradley corrected, pulling his hand from his pocket and withdrawing a handful of razor-sharp shurikens.
He quickly wrapped them in a focused layer of black spiritual energy and launched them at the still-recovering figure of the nurse. They whistled through the air like guided missiles, travelling with lethal speed.
She scrambled to her feet, flipping her body like an acrobat, dodging the majority of the projectiles. The few she couldn't evade, she parried, the shurikens screeching as they met her hardened claws, sending sprays of sparks and spiritual energy.
"Believe what you want, boy. I just spoke the truth, and plus, you're very interesting. A spirit that looks and has the same soul signature as you...It is deeply weird."
She blocked the last shuriken with a sharp clack and immediately dashed toward him, her movement a serpentine blur.
She unleashed a torrent of furious, raking claw slashes.
CLANG! SHING! KSHH-KSHH!
Bradley was forced onto the defensive, using the length and spiritual coating of his katana to parry and deflect the blinding assault.
Purple mixed with black arcs of spiritual energy met the crimson-red flashes of her claw slashes.
Sparks lit up the room as they danced a brutal waltz across the bloody cafeteria floor.
"You're blocking them well! Not bad for a fifteen-year-old boy playing dress-up!" she sneered, her speed increasing exponentially.
She's getting faster. Bradley's teeth ground together from the sheer force of the blows transmitted through his blade.
[Yeah, she's the real deal! Stop thinking and move!] Spirit Bradley warned, his voice straining.
"Don't get distracted when you're in a fight!" she screamed, exploiting the fraction of a second his attention shifted. She clenched her free fist, and before he could react, she drove a horrific punch straight into his chest.
The impact felt like being hit by a train. His Kevlar vest provided a small fraction of resistance, but the spiritual power behind the blow rendered it almost useless.
"Ugh." He spat a mouthful of blood into the air, his body lifting violently off the ground.
Before he could even right himself in the air, she was already on top of him.
She was too fast!
She punched him on his chest again, her claws scraping his throat, sending him hurtling downward toward the marble floor.
He hit the floor with an earth-shaking bounce, making him bounce off the floor.
She dove down after him with inhuman speed, leaving a streak of red aura in her wake, and landed in a crouch.
She pulled her arm back one last time and delivered a final, devastating right hook to his chest. He felt the sickening, crushing pressure of his sternum caving in beneath the force.
He was sent flying, straight to the double doors, which exploded into splinters of metal upon impact.
CRASH!
Bradley's body flew out of the cafeteria, skidding violently on his back through the corridor, sliding through the congealed blood of the dead students until he slammed against a solid wall.
Cough! Cough!
Bradley coughed out a torrent of dark blood, gasping for air that wouldn't enter his burning lungs.
"Argh, fuck. She hit me well," he groaned, every inch of his torso radiating white-hot pain.
[Yeah, you look like shit.] Spirit Bradley crouched by his side, his face a mask of concern.
Clack~ Clack~
The chilling, rhythmic sound of her heels filled the corridor.
The nurse, utterly composed, strolled out of the ruined cafeteria, humming a sickly-sweet nursery rhyme.
"C'mon~ I know this isn't your best, is it?" She purred, an unsettling, seductive tone entering her voice as she gently bit her lip, wiping a trace of blood from her cheek.
"F-fuck... and Kirby really wanted to confess to this crazy bitch?"
[1] A quickdraw Japanese sword drawing technique for katanas.