Vanessa's heart pounded.
She was probably being controlled. Otherwise, how could someone as weak as her dare to take up a weapon and fight back?
But that wasn't a bad thing, at least not right now.
She licked her lips and quietly crept behind the man.
She raised the wooden club high in both hands, then brought it down with all her strength without a moment's hesitation!
Thud!!
A teeth-jarring, dull impact rang out! The club struck squarely in the center of the man's crown! The steel nail at its tip pierced his greasy hair and thin scalp without resistance, driving deep into his hard skull!
"Aaaargh!!!"
Even the man, mad as he was, let out a distorted howl of pain.
Delight stirred in Vanessa's heart. Gripping the wooden club in both hands, she prepared to strike again.
Unfortunately, the girl had far too little actual fighting experience. She hadn't struck somewhere easily fatal, but the crown, the hardest part of the skull.
And this sort of nail-headed club had another problem: when it struck someone's head, it could easily get tangled in their hair. With the nail embedded in his skull as well, Vanessa tugged several times but couldn't pull it free!
The man before her, meanwhile, swayed as he turned around.
Fear surged through Vanessa's heart.
That fear should have left her trembling all over, too frightened even to run, but now, for reasons she couldn't understand, it ignited her anger instead.
Desperation was a furnace: either crumble in silence or bare your fangs.
Vanessa's hands began to tremble, but not from fear. It was her body's hunger and excitement.
She should have been weak and indecisive, yet the anger surging in her chest left her unable to think.
She craved destruction. She wanted to see blood. She couldn't wait to destroy all of this with the most direct violence.
Looks like I'm being controlled again... so be it.
Vanessa bared a savage smile and charged straight at him.
On the card table.
Elliot clutched the [Armed Girl] card in both hands, veins bulging on their backs. It took every ounce of his strength to wrench it out of the [Attack] slot, which seemed to exert a suction, before he shoved it into the adjacent [Dodge] slot in an almost frantic scramble.
The game's combat system was actually real-time, which genuinely surprised him.
Weren't card games supposed to be turn-based? You hit me, I hit you, with all sorts of planning and calculations of health and attack.
Instead, he actually had to rely on hand speed, shoving cards into slots to control things.
That was manageable. The main problem was...
"What the hell?! Why is she charging forward on her own again?!"
The moment his attention slipped, the girl's card would spring toward the [Attack] slot, even though she was bare-handed and looked incapable of beating the opponent no matter how he looked at it.
"I get it! The real challenge in this fight isn't the enemy. It's the protagonist constantly trying to get herself killed!"
Elliot watched [Man in a Frenzy] pop out of the [Attack] slot. A nail-headed club was now embedded in the portrait's head, with the blood trickling down rendered in meticulous detail.
A line of cold brass characters simultaneously updated on the Difference Engine's status panel beside him:
[The man's attack failed. Entered Instability State!]
Elliot's gaze sharpened. Seizing the opportunity, he slammed [Armed Girl] back into the [Attack] slot without hesitation!
This time, like a hungry wolf returning to its den, the card was instantly swallowed without a trace, sliding in smoothly without the slightest resistance, as though it had long been yearning for this strike!
Vanessa charged a few steps forward, then came to an abrupt halt. This time, she truly felt herself being controlled. That will completely ignored her impulse to rush in and fight for her life, forcibly pulling her into a sliding sidestep.
At the very instant her body shifted aside!
Whoosh!
Trailing a foul, bloody gust, the man hurtled through the spot where she had just stood like an out-of-control battering ram!
Vanessa's dodge was precise to an outrageous degree! As though she had rehearsed it thousands of times, a simple twist and a shift of her feet let the deadly charge brush past her, her movements as fluid as a dance.
The man missed. His tremendous momentum sent him staggering several awkward steps, nearly pitching headfirst into the ground.
Before he could regain his balance, rapidly approaching footsteps sounded beside his ears!
Instinctively, the man tried to roll out of the way, but the attack from behind wasn't aimed at his body!
Carrying through the momentum of her dodge, Vanessa twisted at the waist, spun, and raised her leg! A vicious, precise side kick lashed out like a whip at the back of the man's head-at the end of the wooden club driven deep into his skull!
Crack!
The crisp sound of splitting bone made the scalp crawl! Wedged into his skull like a bottle opener, the wooden club brutally pried his hard skull open under the tremendous leverage.
A thick mixture of red and white, mingled with fragments of shattered bone, gushed out and splashed onto the filthy muddy ground.
To Vanessa's own surprise, the sight of such bloody horror stirred not the slightest ripple of nausea or fear within her.
She merely breathed a sigh of relief, her taut body suddenly relaxing, as though she had finished a paper at the very last moment before the deadline.
"I actually... did it... I beat him..."
Panting, she wiped the cold sweat from her forehead and dragged her exhausted body toward the flatbed cart, ready to set it upright and hurry away from this nightmarish place.
Yet she had only taken two steps when her body froze again.
That will had returned and was still controlling her.
She watched helplessly as she stopped walking and tightened both hands around the nail-headed club, now covered in red and white matter, its tip pointing coldly at the... "corpse" on the ground that should have been thoroughly dead.
She saw herself come to a standstill, holding the wooden club in both hands and pointing it toward the man lying some distance away.
"What's wrong? Isn't the fight... over...?"
Vanessa was bewildered, but that will showed no sign of leaving. It simply waited. Soon, reflected in her abruptly contracting pupils, the man whose skull had been pried open, whose brains had spilled everywhere...
His fingers actually twitched!
Then that battered body shakily rose to its feet again, its joints twisted into a bizarre posture that completely defied its anatomy!
In the mansion.
The brass character wheels above Elliot spun rapidly, spelling out the girl's puzzled murmur.
He glanced at the card that had popped back out at the opposite end of the combat area.
"The fight's over? Not a chance."
[Man in a Frenzy] had already been swallowed by the slot. What now stood at the other end of the scarlet tabletop was-
[Resurrected Corpse]
"Looks like supernatural beings exist in this game. If only coming into contact with the supernatural were this easy in reality."
Elliot sighed softly and inserted the card into the [Combat] slot again.
"The warm-up's finally over. Now watch what I can do!"
Before you continue