Lewd skill in a filthy world

Chapter 102: 102. Death and flowers are twins



A distorted scene of a young girl no more than seven could be seen. The girl stood stiffly on creaking wooden floorboards, clutching a small teddy bear whose one button eye stared outward like a silent witness. Her wide eyes peered through the crack of a partially opened door, catching the grotesque display of what some might still call "home."

Inside, a fat man with blotchy, bearded cheeks scratched at his bloated belly with one hand, the other raising a bottle of cheap booze to his throat. He guzzled loudly, ignoring the silence in the room. He could've once earned the right to be called father, but not anymore. Not after all the nights he staggered home reeking of alcohol, anger, and filth. No. Monster was the only name she could give him now.

The girl kept watching. Watching as the woman she called mother gently served food into a chipped ceramic plate, walking toward the man with lowered eyes and a trembling smile. She bowed her head slightly, offering the meal.

"Here, dear," she said softly, her voice cracked, lined with desperation. "Your dinner... you said you were hungry."

The man sneered.

He slapped the plate out of her hands with such force that the noodles splattered against her chest, scalding her skin. The cutlery clattered across the floor, vanishing under the broken table. The woman gasped, pressing her hands against the hot stain on her dress, but she didn't cry. Not anymore. She'd used up all her tears years ago.

"What the hell is this, woman? You call this food?" he roared, his words slurring into a growl. He hurled the bottle across the room. It shattered against the wall.

"You said you were hungry..." she repeated, her voice shaking.

"I said I wanted food, not this soggy shit! You're my damn food! I bought you, remember that! Paid your filthy parents a bride price even though you were already used up! Just an old woman waiting to die! You think they loved you? They're enjoying my money right now. So I'll enjoy you as well. Now get naked!!" He said, putting his bottle of booze to his side.

The woman backed away, her voice barely audible.

"The child... she's still awake. Please... just wait until she sleeps."

He spat on the floor. "So what? Let her watch. Which kid doesn't know their parents screw each other? Maybe she'll learn how to please a man too. And be better than her useless mother!"

With that, he lunged, grabbed her by the hair and flung her onto the rickety bed. She screamed, kicking, struggling, but he didn't care. He never did. His hands tore her dress. His belt clanged to the floor. His tongue lolled out, disgusting and wet.

"Come on! Stop fighting me, woman! The damn viagra's kicking in! Don't waste my money!"

Outside the door, the girl watched with trembling limbs. Her tears fell silently. She wanted to scream, but her voice was trapped in her throat. The teddy bear fell from her hands.

In the middle of the struggle, the mother turned her face toward the doorway. Their eyes met. The horror on her daughter's face shattered her heart.

"Please… don't look," she mouthed.

"Hoi... hoi!! Shut up and please me!!" The man growled and slapped her across the face hard enough to leave red welts.

Seeing her child witness such horror, the woman's desperation overpowered her fear. Her hand instinctively reached for the heavy glass bottle of liquor near the mattress, her fingers trembling but determined. With every ounce of desperation and rage she had left, she smashed it against his face, shattering his nose as he began bleeding.

The pain that tore through him mixed with the raging blood flow from the viagra pills he'd taken and the sudden trauma to his system, the man stiffened. His mouth gaped slightly open, clutching at his chest. Then with a shudder, he collapsed beside her, his body twitching. Cardiac arrest.

The woman stood up, her chest heaving, blood from his face staining her nightgown. For a long moment, she just stared. Her hands trembling. She killed him. She really killed him. Her eyes darted to the door at her child. Her daughter had seen everything. What now? What would the village say? Would they arrest her? What would happen to her child?

No one would believe it was self-defense. She'd be jailed.

Without another word, she disappeared into the night.

She went to the backyard at her garden of flowers filled with roses, daisies, and lilies. She began to dig beside them with frantic hands, her breath ragged, praying no neighbor would hear her.

The child followed.

Three hours passed and she managed to dig the hole. Then she returned to the house.

Dragging his body was hell.

His weight nearly broke her. It took another hour and a half just to pull him outside.

The girl just stood there. Watching.

"Mommy… what are you doing to him?" the girl asked at last, tilting her head.

Her mother didn't look up. She shoved the man into the earth. Began covering him in soil. Then gently transplanted the flowers over the disturbed ground.

"Your father was tired, darling," she said softly. "His life was full of misery. I'm letting him rest peacefully... beneath the flowers."

And from that moment, death and flowers became twins in her mind. Her mother taught her that death didn't have to be ugly. Every time someone died in the village, her mother would pick a few blossoms and place them in their coffin.

A beautiful goodbye.

Until one day, the world changed.

[Reformatting World Settings...]

[Real-World Currency Disabled.]

[Physical Laws Adjusting to Game Protocols.]

[Initiating Player Culling Sequence...]

[All Players Age 60 and Above Will Now Be Eliminated.]

Blue screens materialized before every villager's eyes. People began screaming from every cornor of the village.

The girl who was now a young woman—watched in horror as her mother, kneeling peacefully in the garden, tending to her flowers slowly began to pixelate. Her limbs faded into blue light. From the legs upward, her body vanished into dust until.there was no trace of her anymore. She was 61 by then.

She died alone, erased by the System. She wasn't buried in a coffin full of flowers, she just died an ugly death.

**

These memories—if they could be called that flooded into the flower tsukuma's mind the moment Gegee called it a twisted monster.

The tsukuma howled.

"What… is this!?" it roared in a guttural voice.

"What are these things I'm seeing?!!"

It gripped its face with its cracked fingers.

It didn't understand what it had seen. But its instincts screamed one thing:

"People must die. And be buried beneath the flowers. Only then will the world be beautiful again."

The more she screamed, the more the ground trembled. The skeletal flowers multiplied. Their roots twisted like veins, reaching to grab anyone. The air filled with toxic gas from the puffing mushrooms. It didn't matter how many undead sliced at them—they just grew back.

"Die!!" she screamed. "Accept your death! Say it! Say you accept a satisfying death!!"

Her cursed words filled the air, making the girl's lips tremble as if wanting to speak without permission. Lilian bit hard into her lip to stop herself, the words almost falling out.

Gegee used her last MP to command her armored undead. One raised its rifle and shot—the bullet hit the tsukuma's forehead, embedding deep. Black blood oozed out, mixed with fluttering black petals.

Others loosed arrows. Some missed. Some hit.

Through the gas, Lilian ran, choking, burning and gritting her teeth to resist until she grabbed the axe she'd lost earlier. With a furious cry, she hurled it. The axe spun through the air and embedded itself into the back of the tsukuma's skull. It stuck. It didn't come out. More black blood flowed.

But the tsukuma did not fall.

It cried.

"Why won't you just… die in the flowers…?" it wept, as if failing to give death was a greater tragedy than being slain.

"I… I accep—" Lilian screamed, biting her bleeding lips hard to stop herself from speaking. The pain helped. Slightly.

But the soil beneath her had turned into thick red mud, skeletal vines clutching her ankles, and bringing her down into the dirt.

The undead were also falling one by one, dragged back into the dirt from which they came.

Sylvia stirred, barely conscious only to be pulled down to the dirt by vines. "Help!! Somebody!!"

The gas began filling her lungs. Then her mouth opened involuntarily—

"I accept a satisfying dea—"

Bang!

An undead struck her from behind, knocking her unconscious before she could finish that cursed sentence.

Gegee's real body's eyes lit up. She had an idea.

Her first undead, still functional, was commanded to aim for the tsukuma's heart. That could be its core.

Then the undead that had been carrying her gave in, it's connection to the real body severing as it fell down, Gegee dropping to the ground too.

The soil pulled at her tiny ankles.

But before it could swallow her, she gave one last command to her one standing undead.

Their hope was laid on it.

TBC


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