Girl Who Killed a God Remake - Chapter 7

Lily sat beside her, quiet and not moving, but she was like a coiled spring, ready to unleash in a split second.

Grace found comfort in the dagger clutched in her fist. Her heartbeat thrummed through the grip as sand dried her mouth. Despite killing last night in the heat of the moment, there was something different about this time.

Maybe it was because she knew she could get away from the lowlifes. No matter how skilled they were, few could move like she did—and that was before she’d become godblessed.

Now, they wouldn’t stand a chance against her.

Which didn’t make this killing out of sheer survival, but cold, premeditated murder.

And that it didn’t bother her was what truly scared her.

They’d rob or kill me at the very least… I need to protect Levi…

Everything she did was for her brother.

That smile on his face, those eyes still filled with hope and life. She knew that fire had gone out of her weeks after her parents had died, and yet her brother never stopped believing she could do anything.

Taking a deep breath, Grace waited inside the door, knowing they would come, and ready for what she was about to do.

“Stop!” a sharp, feminine voice hissed.

One she immediately recognized.

Scarlett… that bitch! Which means her partner must be—

“You think she went in there?” Bones whispered. “Who’d be that stupid?”

“She’s a baby, you fool. No matter how she likes to pretend, that scrawny little tease doesn’t have the street smarts to know not to go in there. Now be quiet and get ready.”

Their words sounded so crisp and clear in her ears. Their steps through the trash and small puddles of stagnant water told her exactly where they were. He enhanced senses were making this only too easy for her.

She risked a quick glance at Lily, who had bared her teeth but remained silent, crouched even lower. Her fur seemed darker in here, almost as if blending in with the shadows they were hiding in.

The tip of one of Bone’s trademark bone knives appeared as the waif man crept into the abandoned house. His head darted both ways but passed right over her. He continued scanning the room, not noticing her.

It’s darker in here than I realized…

The man slowly slid forward, testing each step as he moved. As he passed into the building, Scarlett came next. Her red hair dulled in the darkness to a ruddy brown.

The color of old blood.

“Slowly,” she hissed.

A slight nod from Bones acknowledged her command.

“I swear when we find her, I’m going to have my way with her, and then I’m going to visit her–”

“Shh..”

Those words turned her blood into ice as pure rage roared in her chest. Her jaw ached from how hard she clenched her teeth.

Her resolve had already solidified, but his words ensured that she was going to relish in their deaths.

Slowly, Grace crept up behind Scarlett. She moved like a cat, no sound coming as she stalked the woman. Something uncoiled itself inside her soul. A wall she’d built so long ago she could barely remember it started to crumble.

A wall that once built, Grace swore she’d never climb.

Because on the other side lay only a cold, unfeeling wasteland. A place of death and suffering, and callous indulgence.

 The wall fell, and the prison of her mind vanished along with it.

And after so many years locked away, Grace Akem was free to do as she pleased once more.

Bones stepped forward a little, and a plank creaked. He winced and slowly shifted his foot, applying pressure to a different spot on the floor.

Grace used the sound to mask her whispered footfalls as she slipped silently behind Scarlett. In a single, fluid motion, Grace rose on the balls of her feet and clamped her hand around the woman’s mouth. She yanked her neck back, breaking her balance and gaining complete control over her. Without so much as a whisper, Grace shoved her dagger to the hilt through Scarlett’s throat.

The edge of the blade ground against her spine, and as Grace twisted, a muffled pop pulsed through her fingers as Scarlett suddenly went limp in her grasp. A single rasped death rattle died in her palm and Bones held up his hand as he continued to try and find a spot that didn’t creak as he moved forward.

The man hadn’t realized what Grace had just done in the shadows behind him.

Grace wrenched her knife free and slowly lowered her corpse to the floor and then slithered forward. She wanted to plunge the dagger into the man’s back over and over.

There was a cruelty inside her that demanded he suffer.

Every time his fingers wandered too far when Max ordered her searched, his fetid breath on the back of her neck, or the disgusting comments he made to her. It all replayed in her mind with a vicious clarity.

And with them came a wanting—a willingness.

She wanted him to hurt.

And she wanted to be the one to hurt him.

Silently, she took a deep breath and then kicked his left leg out from under him in a powerful sweep. His leg shattered at the kneecap, the sickening crunch of bone a musket shot in the stillness of the house. In an instant, his leg twisted at an unnatural angle and Bones howled as he crashed to the rotten floorboards.

His dagger clattered against the wood and bounced a few feet away as Bones wailed in agony as he clawed at his ruined leg. The sharp ivory of bone pierced through his skin as blood rushed over his torn flesh.

His eyes were heavy with tears as he glanced back and caught sight of her standing next to Scarlett’s corpse silhouetted by the light of the front door.

“Bi… Bitch… what have yo–”

His words stopped when Grace bent down and thrust her dagger into his other leg, ripping it out as she sliced through his hamstring. There was a sense of delight within in her as she relished in the man’s screams.

Grace grabbed his mangled leg and squeezed, the bones underneath her fingers were pliant and shifted like gelatin. It was a sickening feeling, but the thug’s vicious howling made it more than worth it.

Sinking her nails into him, Grace dragged the man back toward the open door, letting him flop around as he struggled to move. Bones fought back as best as he could, unable to stop Grace as she overpowered him. Like a cat with a mouse in its mouth, she pulled him to where she wanted him.

Into the light so he could see what was coming next.

Letting go of the broken man, a flash of white caught her eye as he rolled over, a sharpened bone shiv coming for her throat. Moving to try and block it, a shadow appeared, clamping down on Bones’s hand with a snarl.

Lily had moved so fast that she was a blur, catching his left arm as the bone approached Grace. The dog thrashed, biting down, and Grace heard bones breaking and the screaming of the thug who was about to die.

“Lily heel!” Grace ordered.

A ragged, torn finger clattered to the floor as Lily let go.

Grace kicked him, sending Bones tumbling to his back.

Not risking another attack, she crushed the man’s right hand under her foot and found herself smiling as she moved till she was on top of the man. He thrashed and writhed beneath her but could do nothing else under her strength.

Growing tired of the man’s incessant screaming, Grace took her dagger and thrust it up under his jaw. The tip punched through the roof of his mouth and slid into his brain. With a flick of her wrist, she scrambled what little gray matter the man possessed.

He shuddered once and stopped moving.

[You have slain a Human Thief. A portion of her Essence has been stored inside your core!]

[You have slain a Human Thief. A portion of his Essence has been stored inside your core!]

As Grace withdrew her stained knife, she realized just how much blood there was. She was covered in it. It seeped through her clothes and was warm against her skin as she stood with a sigh.

Good thing I bought new clothes this morning. She chuckled as she wiped her dagger off on Bone’s shirt. I’m going to have to rethink my clothes budget if this keeps up.

She glanced at Lily, who sat there, staring up at her with a happy go lucky expression.

“Thank you, Lily. I owe you a treat.”

Glancing over the two bodies, Grace was reminded of one of the rules of the street.

Leave nothing valuable behind.

Searching the bodies and stripping off their clothes, she found seventeen copper rale. Not exactly a fortune for her, but still more than she expected the pair to have. None of their clothes or weapons were worth keeping.

Doing so might draw attention to her being the one who had killed them.

Once she was done with that task, Grace moved the barrel she had stored everything in and stripped, putting on one of the new sets of clothes. They were finer than anything she’d owned in Toran and rivaled most of her clothes back in Cressida. A pang of nostalgia washed over her as she donned them but it quickly faded as what sounded like bell chimed in her head.

A new notification suddenly appeared before her.

[Quest Completed!]

Keep What is Yours: For completing this quest without hesitation and delivering death so brutally, you have been rewarded.

Reward: 200 Essence

Bonus: 100 Essence

[You have accumulated enough Essence to elevate your Nascent Core. Would you like to Ascend to Tier 1?]

Though Grace had no idea what any of that meant, none of it sounded bad, so she said, “Yes.”

As soon as she spoke, there was a rush of wind that swept through the house and carried with it motes of golden light. They shimmered like a thousand golden coins the size of a grain of sand. The breeze brought with it a hint of the deep forest and the ocean. Pine needles, wood rot, the salty tang of the ocean and the stench of dead fish.

Life. Death. Rebirth.

The resilience of the cycle of nature.

It was the domain of the Sovereign of the Endless Abyss.

Death, and all its many forms.

The old giving away to the new, and the new succumbing to the perils of mortality. So the cycle spun endlessly.

The dragon eating its own tail.

As the light gathered around her, it sunk into her bones and suffused her entire body with a heat so intense, her flesh should’ve burst into flames while her bones turned to charcoal. Grace wanted to scream but couldn’t find her voice as the heat pumped through her veins and coalesced just above her navel.

She collapsed to her knees and just waited for it to be over.

And eternity and an instant later, the pain vanished, leaving behind only a pleasant warmth in its wake.

As grace blinked the tears from her eyes, she found another notification waiting for her.

[Stat Page]

Name: Grace Akem

Race: Human (Godblessed)

Age: 16

Core Tier: 1

Essence: 0/2500

Rank: Initiate

[Attributes]

Physical: 7→9

Mental: 4→7

Spiritual: 5→8

Grace didn’t fully understand what the system was, or what the numbers represented, but she knew the strength they gave her, and that was good enough for now. With the money she had at her fingertips, she would finally go to the bookstore and actually purchase a book instead of borrowing them as she had been doing since she first arrived in this city.

She doubted anyone would outright tell her about what was happening to her—even if she was going to reveal that she was Godblessed, which she wasn’t—so the next best thing was a book.

A small bark came, and Lily sat there, wagging her tail as Grace was lost in her thoughts.

She smiled down at the dog. “Come on, girl. I need to get clean up this mess before we can leave.”

Looking at her bloody clothes, Grace almost threw them into the barrel and stopped. Anything that could potentially trace back to her was a mistake to leave at the scene of two murders.

“They could track these back to me…”

Rolling them up as best as she could, Grace stuffed them into her satchel and hurried out of the decrepit building. With the evidence of her crimes weighing her down, Grace needed somewhere to hide them until she could burn them later. Running down a small side alley, she knew where she was, and that one of her safehouses was nearby.

She made sure she wasn’t followed and slipped inside the abandoned house. The owners must have been pretty wealthy a few decades ago, but time had left a thick layer of rot over the entire place. Mold clung to the walls and moth-eaten furniture with abandon.

In the kingdom of ruin, it alone reigned.

The foul stench of decay hung in the air and clung to the back of her throat with every breath, but it so revolting not even the most desperate of myrk fiends would squat here. Which made it perfect to use as a stash house.

Grace sat on the floor of the old estate where she had hidden so many things and pried up the loose floorboards to reveal a small safe hidden beneath the floor. It had been open when she first stumbled across the house, so the original owners must have taken the contents and fled, leaving behind the empty safe with the combination written on the inside.

She swiftly opened it and stored away the bloody clothes next to the largest pile of coins she had. Well over three gold and a fistful of silver rested inside the bulging coin purse. Enough to rent a small apartment for well over a year in Midtown. But she held off. She’d still have to steal to survive, so until she found legitimate work, she’d rather hoard her wealth—and hopefully, by the time she found gainful employment, she’d have enough to not just rent a place but buy one.

A home for her and Levi.

That was her goal.

She sat there, untying the knot and slowly folding the paper back. Twelve thick strips of meat were pressed together. She tore into one of them and tossed another to Lily, who happily snapped it out of the air and worked to devour the meal.

Slowly chewing on hers, Grace closed the safe and moved the boards back into place. With her having killed two people and completed a quest, Grace thought it best to lay low for the rest of the day. She’d stop by the bookstore to return her borrowed books and see if she could find out any information on the system.

That was about the best thing she could do to pass the time until nightfall.

Then she would go to work.

Unless of course Azaroth had a job for her.

As she walked back to town, she sighed as Lily kept pace beside her, thinking back on killing Bones and Scarlett.

I’m starting to see why the god chose me… It seems he knows me better than I know myself. And if he wanted a monster… well, I suppose he got one.