Jackal : The Goddess Of Death

The three months of summer had ended. Alice opened her door and was greeted by Taiyo.

"What up dawg!"

Alice slammed the door in her face and walked back to her bed. Taiyo opened the door with a pouty face.

"That was very rude of you, young lady."

Alice was ignoring Taiyo. She had her face in a copy of After Being Called a Hero: The Unrivaled Man Starts a Family. Taiyo came over to her and leaned against her bed.

"Do you have a fetish or something for dragon people? There is at least one in like almost every manga you read. You know, I heard that dragon keeper males have their dicks grow twice in size when they transform. Oh, and also-"

"Do you have an off switch?"

"No, but I have an on-switch around tall, muscular men."

"... Why did you come here?"

"It's time for your trial. This will be your first mission. Try not to make it your only one."

Taiyo led Alice out of her room and to a car outside. She drove Alice to an abandoned grocery store. It was now noon, but it was like there was some sort of veil around them that caused it to be nighttime.

"Did Yoshi tell you about the rankings of anomalies?"

"Yes."

"Recite them to me. Weakest to strongest."

"Seraphic, mirage, echo, aether, paradox, and zenith."

"Do you know which rank I am?"

"Uh, no."

"Zenith. You might never encounter a zenith class anomaly, but sometimes, entire countries need to be fled when one shows up. That's how powerful they are."

"Right now, you're seraphic until you rank up. Yoshi is echo as of right now. The creature you're gonna fight inside there is mirage, so it will be much weaker than Yoshi is. Though, it could still be dangerous, so try not to die."

Alice got out of the car. Taiyo followed close behind her. The two stopped right outside the grocery store.

"The victim is Mikai Jacob. Not much is known about how they died. Oh, and make sure you pay attention to the flashback. You're required to write those down after you're done, no matter how graphic or gory."

Alice remembered what Yoshi said to her about the shared memories and it made her nervous. She took a deep breath and walked into the store. The store was filled with insects and fleshy zombie-like creatures, walking around and purchasing items. The fleshy creatures were bipedal like humans, but their faces were completely melted and their bodies had several spikes coming out of them. They were also constantly releasing groans of pain and agony. The store itself has its walls, ceiling, and floor replaced with bloody, burnt flesh. The mere sight of all of this made Alice nauseous, but she simply had to stomach it. After all, it was either this or death.

As Alice walked through the store, the flesh monsters seemingly ignored her. She didn't know where or what the victim was. She continued to look around the store for nearly an hour, looking for clues on where he was.

Her mind was starting to slip on her. It was like the groans were getting louder and louder and her body felt heavier and heavier the longer she was in that store. She collapsed against a case of headphones. She was about to close her eyes when she noticed that one of the headphone brands had switched inside the box. It was a blue box between several green ones.

She looked over and saw an apple inside an orange bag in the fresh produce section. Alice realized the anomaly was the store itself, and it was constantly trying to construct and deconstruct itself over and over again. But it made subtle mistakes that Alice could catch on to.

She mustered all her strength to keep pushing forward. She took a sniff of the headphones, then sniffed the apple. They had the exact same smell, and some other products in the store shared the same smell. Thanks to her enhanced sense of smell, she followed a trail of suspicious-smelling objects that became more and more common down a certain path. Eventually, it led her to one of the flesh monsters that looked slightly different than the others. He was the only one who was wearing a watch in the entire establishment.

Once he noticed Alice staring at him, he let out an ear-piercing screech. All the other flesh monsters charged at Alice.

Alice clapped her hands together and the monsters fell down, cold and lifeless. It was a technique she developed called judgment. It was an area burst attack that killed everything within a few meters of her. However she had no control over it, and if someone was drastically stronger than she was, they could ignore its effects.

The man let out a deafening roar and created a bow made of flesh. Alice, though tired, got in a fighting stance.

The man fires an arrow at Alice's head but she chops the arrow out of the air. She ran up to the man and went for a gut punch, but the man dodged and made her fist go through his bow. He turned around and swung his hands in front of him, slamming Alice on the ground and making her eyes shoot open in pain.

He tried to stab her in the head with an arrow, but Alice caught it between her hands. She spun her body on the ground and swept his legs. As the man was falling, Alice used her hands to push herself off the ground and kneed the man in the chest, sending him flying back into a bookshelf and breaking off a part of his face. However, this only seemed to tick the creature off even more.

The man grabbed a fleshy dagger on his hips and started exchanging blows with Alice, who used her scepter to block all his attacks. The man tried to stab Alice in the neck, but she dodged. As he was pulling his hand back, Alice chopped his hand, throwing the knife up out of his hand. Alice grabbed the falling knife with her other hand and delivered two slashes to the man, but both were evaded.

He rushed back in and tried to kick Alice, but she ducked under his leg. Before the man could pull his leg back, Alice uppercutted it, blowing it clean off and making the man stumble back. The man got up and tried to grab his bow, but realized it was gone along with his arrow quill. He saw it in Alice's hands.

She ran up to him and the man tried to punch her head again, but Alice blocked him effortlessly. She jumped in the air and wrapped the bow around his neck. When she fell back to the ground, she slammed him against the ground. It was hard for him to get back up since one of his legs was now gone. Before he could get the bow off of his neck, Alice jumped on top of him with an arrow in her hand. Alice pulled the arrow back on the bow string and launched the arrow at high speeds at his face while his head was still caught on the bow, killing him.

She panted heavily as her muscles began to ache. Her exhaustion hit her all at once when the fight ended. But it still wasn't over for her.

Her brain began to get an influx of information. It was the man's life. The man she just killed was Jacob, who was a teenager just like her, and he had a story that would scar her forever.