Worse than Death

"Grrr…"

"Agh…"

Groaning, Ashy swat his arm as if he was chasing away a mosquito. He didn't want to open his eyes and just continue to his rest.

His hand collided with a fur covered leather then a loud whimper came right behind him.

"Give me a break!"

*Spurt!*

"Cough! Cough…"

Unintentionally stabbing the thing above him with his claws, Ashy let his hand to the gravity and his consciousness closed.

…

Ashy's sleep got interrupted once again. He didn't even feel the passing of time when he slept. It felt like he merely slept five minutes, maybe less.

"Grrr…"

'...again?'

Lifting his eyelids just a little bit, Ashy found a dog right above his head. Under its chin were four-sharp holes that were letting out blood and pinkish liquid.

Ashy more or less recognized this wound. It was clearly caused by his claws.

'The thing I stabbed just a moment ago became an undead already?'

"Cough! Cough!" Violently coughing up dark red blood, Ashy raised his upper body with the momentum and stabbed his claws to the undead dog's chest, destroying its heart in one go.

As the dog crumbled into ash, Ashy fell onto his back with a pained frown.

'The Baroness did a number on me right before she died…'

After he got kicked in the chest, with the power of adrenaline, Ashy didn't feel much of anything other than some pain, but now that he was away from the danger and the effects of adrenaline wore off, the real pain started to torment him.

'Coughing up blood and feeling pain when breathing means that my lungs aren't in good condition.'

Ashy brought his hand to his chest and gently touched.

"Argh! Cough! Cough!"

One of his ribs moved when he merely brushed, causing him to clench his teeth and tremble to hold back his scream.

'I am lucky…'

Although Ashy was suffering, he considered himself lucky. If the broken rib punctured his heart instead of his lung, he would die. As a part doppelganger, he knew he was so much more resilient than before, but he also knew that the heart was the biggest and maybe the only weakness of the Creatures of Darkness.

So, he was lucky. Instead of dying, he was still clinging to life.

'Damn this luck…'

Closing his eyes again, Ashy fell asleep once again while hoping to get the rest he deserved.

…

Bang! Bang!

Ashy woke up once again, this time to the sound of thunderous gunshot.

'To hell with my luck…'

Cursing his misfortune, Ashy retracted his claws and turned over. Enduring the pain of his broken lung and gulping down the blood that came to his throat, Ashy lay face first. Hiding as much as black blood, he waited.

*Bang!*

Bullets met with the bark of trees, causing splinters to fly at dangerous speed. Footsteps gradually closed in accompanied with heavy, labored breathing.

It was strange. Ashy didn't sense anyone other than this man, so, what was this man chasing after so desperately?

Soon, the man got dangerously close and Ashy focused on his acting dead—

"Arg—!"

Or at least he tried to do so before the man literally stepped on him, causing Ashy to bite his own wrist to suppress the scream and the show of black blood.

He was at his wits end.

'I will kill you!'

"A child?" Muttered the man in surprise, not knowing that he already gathered the hostility of the said 'child'.

As the man put his knee on the ground and brought his hand to roll over the child, he pulled back his hand and got up. Instead, he took out his gun and pulled the trigger two times.

*Bang! Bang!*

Before Ashy could react, one of the bullets pierced his other lung and the other one embedded into his spine.

"..."

"Shit…it was just a normal child!? I killed a child!?"

Scared, the man ran away in hurry after seeing that the 'child' didn't turn into ash.

***

Time passed.

Ashy's consciousness recovered a few times but before he grasped what was going on, he lost consciousness once again. It was like a never ending cycle, or a high fever night that didn't know to end.

Only one thing was in his mind in this whole painful process.

'I will fucking murder you, coward son of a bitch!'

If the man just accidentally stepped on him, he might have forgotten about it, but now that the bastard shot him TWICE and caused him such a hellish time, Ashy couldn't, no, he simply didn't want to forget about this man.

However, he didn't have the energy to get up, let alone kill someone.

He just fell asleep once again.

…

"Cough! Cough!"

Coughing up not blood but something else this time, Ashy spit out a lead bullet. He was slowly recovering.

The pain in his bones decreased a lot and he wasn't coughing up blood anymore.

It was nothing short of a miracle to be alive. He didn't know how much time passed but he could guess that it was more than a week. The black blood that painted the dirt ground wasn't there, instead there were dried grasses and flowers.

Though, this didn't mean that he recovered completely. The wrist that he was biting to endure the pain was working a tad bit slower than before. Plus, the bullet in his spine was restricting his mobility.

"It is better than nothing…"

Pushing himself from the ground, Ashy found himself in a forest. Some trees were healthy the same as the ones in his home world and the rest of them grew abnormally in particular ways.

Some of them had thin, stick-like trunks that were comically smaller than their huge branches, while some of them had dry trunks that were larger than a few dozen trees combined while they were just a few meters in length.

In short, they were abnormal through and through.

"Are they the undead trees Elissa mentioned?"

Picking up a few of the fruits of these abnormal trees, which was equally abnormal, Ashy began to walk while whistling.

"I wonder how that bastard will react when he eats these?"