Fragments

Ch.11 - Advancement

"Dead weight…" The knight silently uttered and glanced at the light green barrier covering its arm.

"...what's it doing?" Min-jun asked himself while raising his fists, a drop of sweat sliding down his forehead. On a psychological level, the knight suddenly changed, and Min didn't know what to think. It was unnerving. The situation felt strangely tense, despite the knight ignoring Min completely.
And then, a brutal sight unfolded before them.
The knight transformed its only available blade into a 4-fingered claw, the sharp edges of a sword lining the fingers like a glove, and grabbed the bicep of its immobilised arm.
And simply started pulling.
At first, it was only a strange sight to behold, but slowly, the unbearable sound of tissue being torn apart filled the warehouse. Cracking, snapping, and sprays of blood came off of the arm's shoulder as even the joint was slowly broken apart by brute force. Nobody could bring themselves to look away, despite the maddening sounds and sickening visuals. Min-jun felt paralyzed. This was a level of madness he never thought was possible…
The last remnants of muscle were stretched and torn, and a fountain of blood painted the knight's head dark red. Without even a second glance or a show of the pain it must've endured, it raised the brutalized arm, which the shield ironically still covered, and hurled it straight towards Min like a spear.
After the traumatic sight, he could hardly bring himself to react efficiently.
"Move!" However, Min forced his body to act and jerked his head to the right, avoiding the lethal blade just a millisecond too late. It cut across his eye and continued down the side of his head, creating a deep gash that blinded his right eye. "Shit! I was too slow!" He thought in panic as the rest of the arm flew by his head.
At that moment, the knight had already moved towards Min, and the two were suddenly incredibly close. "It's already–?!" However, before anything could be done, he was already pierced. An extremely thin sword poked out of Min-jun's abdomen, and he coughed out blood from in-between his teeth. "It'll change the sword inside of me!" He immediately had to escape after getting a dreadful feeling of impending death, and forcefully slid off the blade just as it widened exponentially. "What is this? It's suddenly like a different being entirely! I need to guard myself!" He was given no time to breathe and immediately had to cover his upper body in barriers to shield himself from another savage attack. In the crisis, he thought of creating barriers shaped like a turtle's shell to deflect the blade easier.
The knight immediately closed the gap again and thrust the thin sword forward, regardless of Min's defenses. The first hit bounced off with a spark, but was followed by a burst of more lightning-fast strikes, and the damage quickly accumulated. "It's using such a thin sword, that's why it's so fast..!" Min observed the attack through the shield while backing away, but no matter what he did, the knight incessantly chased after him. "I need to counter at some point!" During the ceaseless burst, the turtle shield cracked and shattered, and a few attacks got through, creating deep cuts on Min's forearms. "That broke so quickly! Make anothe–." As if the knight foresaw Min's next action, it cancelled the creation of another shield by kicking him in the abdomen. Min was blasted away by the force, his back hit against the wall with enough force to shatter the hard bricks, and he fell to his hands and knees. Blood dripped from him like a light rain, and his vision was tilted, twisted and unfocused. "It… Kicked… Me?" Min-jun gagged as he held back the pain assailing his stomach. "This feels awful… No. Get it together… You adapted once, you can… Do it again. But it wasn't like this before. What happened? Why such a massive change?" The only reason Min could think straight, why he could stand again after being run through and kicked by a creature several times his size, was because of the strength his willpower provided. If it wasn't for his powers, he would've been dead long ago.
But, right now, even the limits of his enhanced strength were being brutally tested. He was heavily injured, couldn't see from one eye and the exhaustion of constantly creating barriers was slowly taking its toll. "Wait… Why isn't it attacking?"