Not the Hero, Not the Villain — Just the One Who Wins-Chapter 85: The Monster in the Mirror

The poison was a slow, insidious fire, and the Goblin King was a mountain beginning to crumble from within. The single drop of his dark, viscous blood that had fallen from the wound in his neck sizzled on the stone floor, a testament to the potent neurotoxin now coursing through his veins. His movements, once a blur of brutal speed, grew sluggish. His roars of fury, which had once shaken the very foundations of the cavern, turned to pained, confused grunts. He stumbled, his massive obsidian club falling from his grasp with a deafening clang that echoed through the silent, blood-soaked chamber.

He was wounded. He was dying.

This was our chance.

I surged forward again, my body a symphony of screaming muscles and fractured bones, but my mind was a cold, clear instrument of destruction. I was no longer a mage, no longer a strategist. I was a predator, and my prey was finally within reach.

Liora, her own arm hanging limp and useless at her side, moved with a grace that defied her injuries. She drew a small, silver dagger from her boot, its blade glowing with the faint, holy light of her dwindling mana, and threw herself at the King’s back, her attack a desperate, suicidal gambit. He roared and swatted at her, but his movements were slow, clumsy, his reactions delayed by the poison. Her blade found its mark, sinking deep into the thick muscle of his shoulder.

At the same time, Aurelia, her own body trembling with a profound exhaustion that went beyond simple mana depletion, summoned the last of her strength. She didn’t have enough power for a full-fledged lightning bolt, but she had enough for a spark. She slammed her hands against the King’s iron-plated greaves, a small, crackling arc of electricity grounding itself in the metal, sending a jolt of pure, unadulterated pain through his already ravaged system.

He screamed, a high, keening sound of agony, and fell to one knee.

And I was there to meet him.

I leaped onto his back, my legs wrapping around his thick, muscular neck, my hands clawing at his face, my teeth bared in a feral, inhuman snarl. He thrashed, his massive body a whirlwind of dying fury, trying to throw me off, but I held on, my own body a vessel of pure, unadulterated rage. I drove my thumbs into his eyes, a brutal, savage attack that was born not of skill, but of a deep, primal need to inflict pain, to make him suffer as he had made others suffer.

He roared, a sound of pure, unadulterated agony, and finally, with a great, shuddering groan that seemed to shake the very stones of the cavern, he collapsed, his massive body hitting the floor with a ground-shaking thud.

He was defeated. But he was not yet dead.

And the monster inside me was not yet satisfied.

I stood over his fallen form, my chest heaving, my own blood dripping from a dozen different wounds, mingling with his on the cavern floor. And then, I began to punish him.

I brought my boot down with a sickening, wet crunch, crushing his penis against the hard stone floor. He screamed, a high, pathetic sound that was music to my ears. Then, I picked up a fallen goblin axe, its blade chipped and rusted, and with a single, brutal swing, I cut the mangled flesh from his body, a final, definitive act of emasculation.

But it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

I dropped to my knees beside his head and began to punch him, my fists a relentless, brutal hammer against his face. I felt his nose break, his teeth shatter, the bones of his skull crack and give way beneath my assault. My own knuckles split open, the pain a distant, unimportant thing, my own blood mixing with his in a grotesque, crimson tapestry. I was no longer a boy, no longer a man. I was a force of pure, unadulterated vengeance, a storm of rage that had finally broken free.

"Ashen, stop!" Liora screamed, her voice a sharp note of horror in the blood-soaked cavern. She grabbed my arm, her grip surprisingly strong, but I threw her off with a strength that was not my own, my rage a physical, tangible thing. "He’s dead! It’s over!"

But it wasn’t over. Not for me.

Then, a small, hesitant voice, a fragile thread of sound in the symphony of my own madness, cut through the red haze of my fury.

"I am scared, uncle."

I froze, my fist raised for another blow. I turned, my own movements slow, clumsy, as if I were waking from a long, terrible dream.

A small girl, the one who had been huddled against the wall, the one who had watched her mother’s violation, was standing a few feet away, her small body trembling, her eyes wide with a terror so profound it was almost a physical thing.

And in that moment, in the reflection of her wide, innocent eyes, I saw not the hero who had saved her, but the monster who had just been born. She looked at me with the same terrified awe that Yumi had, and a single, devastating thought pierced through the fog of my rage. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

What if she saw me like this? What if Yumi saw what I have become?

The rage, the fury, the all-consuming need for vengeance, it all just... vanished, leaving behind a cold, hollow ache in my chest.

I looked down at my hands, at the blood and the gore, at the broken, mangled face of the Goblin King. And for the first time, I saw myself.

I scrambled to my feet, my own body recoiling in horror, and I ran. I left the King, I left the cavern, I left the screams and the blood and the death behind me. I fled into the darkness, my own ragged sobs the only sound in the suffocating silence.

Liora and Aurelia, their own faces a mixture of shock, pity, and a dawning, unwilling understanding, began to tend to the survivors, their movements slow, gentle, a stark contrast to the brutal, savage violence that had just unfolded.

I waited for them at the entrance to the cave, a solitary, broken figure in the dim, pre-dawn light. And as the first, faint rays of the sun began to pierce through the dense canopy of the forest, the other team, Layla’s team, arrived, their own faces a mask of grim, weary concern. They had seen the flare. They had heard the screams. And now, they had come to witness the aftermath of the monster’s birth.