A Trash Novel's Only Reader-Chapter 7: Gamble

Shu lurched forward and grabbed at his side, fingers pressing hard around the place where the knife had gone in. The pain spread through his back and stomach at the same time until his whole body locked for a second.

’What the fuck,’ he thought, breath catching in his throat. ’She actually stabbed me.’

Behind him, the sword guy let out a weak laugh through all the blood in his mouth. He pushed himself up just enough to grin through missing teeth. "Yeah... that’s right... you deserve that, you fucker."

Shu turned his head toward him, still clutching the wound while blood ran warm between his fingers. The woman’s voice shook behind him the whole time, small, panicked, and full of tears.

"I-I’m sorry," she kept saying. "I-I’m sorry, I-I’m sorry..."

The man coughed and laughed again, uglier this time. "See?" he rasped, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Even she knows you are a fucking monster."

That word hit him at the worst possible time.

The pain, the leftover heat from [Slaughterer], the sight of that man’s grin, and the woman’s shaking voice all crashed together in one messy second.

His head was already slipping, and instead of sorting any of it out, his body just reacted.

He spun around and his hand flashed out before his brain caught up, backhanding the woman across the face and sending her flying sideways into the wall. The movement yanked the knife in his back just enough to send a fresh bolt of pain through him.

"Tch," he grabbed the knife and pulled it out, wincing a bit, "and I thought you two were innocent, guess I was the dumb one for being so narrow minded."

The woman slid down the wall and crumpled onto the floor without a sound.

He turned toward the man by the entrance next, and the second their eyes met, the guy nearly threw the pipe away.

"W-wait, I won’t attack-" he started to say, but Shu bent down, picked up a loose chunk of broken wall from the floor, and hurled it at his face before he could finish.

The rock cracked into his forehead hard enough to knock him out on the spot. After seeing his fallen body, Shu turned away before his head could cook up anything worse.

He limped over to the stairs with one hand pressed hard against his side, then lowered himself onto the step with a long shaky breath. The adrenaline was finally dropping now, and all it did was make the pain clearer.

’Fucking hell,’ he thought, leaning forward a little. ’I have never been stabbed before, this sucks ass.’

Blood kept slipping through his fingers no matter how hard he pressed and it was way too much for his peace of mind. He knew he needed to stop the bleeding somehow, but every second that passed made his arms feel heavier and his legs less interested in listening.

’Imagine I die through blood loss, that would be so embarrassing,’ he thought, smiling bitterly.

He lifted his head after hearing someone approach and saw the little girl standing a few steps away with the chocolate bar still in her hand, staring at the blood on his shirt with wide frightened eyes.

"Mister..." she said quietly, creeping closer one step at a time. "Are you okay?"

He looked down at himself, at the blood pooling under his hand, and almost laughed from how stupid the question was.

"Yeah," he said anyway, lying to kids was the best way to keep them calm, "this is no big deal, I just need a little rest and I will be back in top shape."

She looked even less convinced after hearing that, coming closer until she was only a few feet away. Her hands tightened around the chocolate bar while she kept staring at the wound, clearly trying not to panic.

"You are bleeding a lot," she whispered.

"Yeah, but don’t worry about it, I will be fine," he said, trying to keep pressure on it, but his grip ended up slipping a little. He was getting weaker and weaker the more blood he lost.

’No, no, stay awake dammit,’ he thought, stretching his eyes wide open. ’Passing out right now would be the dumbest possible ending.’

His breathing got rougher the longer he sat there, and the edges of his vision started going a little weird when the system screen suddenly opened in front of him.

[Emergency Mission: Survive Integration]

[Objective: Consume a monster core and endure the integration process.]

[Time Limit: 10 minutes]

[Failure: Death]

He stared at the screen, then at the next lines appearing under it one by one.

[Reward: Skill unlocked - Core Consumption]

[Core Consumption: Allows the user to consume monster cores and learn abilities from them.]

[Additional Reward: Full Recovery]

His eyes locked on the last two words.

’...You scammy piece of shit system,’ he thought, clutching his side harder as a weak laugh almost came out. ’You really waited until I was bleeding out to offer the that.’

He thought it over for a few seconds, then let out a long breath, ’if I am doing this, I am going with the best one,’ he thought, already reaching for the bag. ’No point gambling my life on the cheap trash.’

His bloody hand fumbled through the cores until his fingers closed around the biggest one, the pig monster’s core. He pulled it out and stared at it for a second, his face twisting a little when he felt how warm and ugly it was in his palm.

It really did look too much like a heart.

’This is so fucking disgusting,’ he thought, lifting it toward his mouth. ’I can’t believe I am about to eat monster organs in order to survive.’

The little girl watched with wide eyes when he opened his mouth and bit down. The surface split open with dark fluid running over his lips at once, and the taste that hit his tongue was bad enough to make his whole face tighten.

"Ugh... fuck..." he muttered, forcing himself not to spit it out. "This is horrible."

He kept chewing since he did not have the luxury to be picky, each bite feeling worse than the last. Beside him, the little girl took several quick steps back and clutched the chocolate bar to her chest like she had just seen something she was not supposed to see.

From across the room, the sword guy stared at him in shock, ’What the hell was this freak doing? Is he seriously eating a monster?’

Everyone knew about cores, that they had many use cases but the one thing that people were always warned about, was never to eat one, cores were very poisonous to humans.

They were packed with monster energy so dense it ruined the body from the inside, and idiots who swallowed them died screaming long before the power inside could become theirs.

That was common sense, yet this guy sitting on the stairs was chewing one up with blood all over his shirt like he had lost his mind.

The man stared harder, then let out a laugh, "idiot," he thought, watching Shu force down another bite. "You have just signed your own death."