Page 422 of Light Leech

Naoma started to slap my shoulder. “You promised you would never hurt me! You’re such a liar! I knew you would fail me!”

Ralia: Zhu needs to consume it. It is Dokkaebi, Petya.

I shook my head. I knew it was an illusion, but my heart still wanted to fix whatever I had done to her. My split minds battled between illusion and reality. It was not as simple as a cast image. This was Naoma. Part of me believed that beyond a doubt.

“Let me consume it,” Zhu said.

I started to cry. Real or not, it would result in the same pain.

Zhu was my Bite’s core. Eating teeth was the only thing that kept him thriving.

I grabbed her shoulders, weeping as I prepared to do the thing I promised her I would never would.

I threw her to the ground, reached inside her mouth, and pulled out her perfect teeth. I ate them, feeling bliss and hatred for myself cloud out every other feeling.

Until I started to feed, I hadn’t realized how much this thing was draining me. My reserve was depleting with each emotional impact. I was on the brink of succumbing, but the teeth saved me.

Eating a portion of Dokkaebi through Naoma’s teeth had preserved my atrophying mind.

She was delicious.

I wanted to vomit.

I put my lips to hers, gave her a kiss, then devoured the teeth from their source. We wept together, making each passing second more agonizing than the last.

Chapter thirty-two

Tears in Space

Naoma’s beautifully broken face faded. I was staring at the toothless face of some councilwoman who was well dead.

I stood, wiped my mouth, then flew back into the wall for what felt like the tenth time in the last ten minutes.

I burned my Bite reserve, stood, and jumped out of the way of Kim–Dokkaebi’s charge a breath before impact.

I gazed around the room. My family and friends were gone. The councilmember’s corpses had taken their places.

Black light claws covered my hands and I charged toward the beast of a man.

I dodged his strike and tore apart his chest from the middle with my claws.

A light line shot from the prism into Kim–Dokkaebi’s back. His light lines flashed with green. He shook with an electric tremble but remained standing.

I pried the center open, reached inside for the man that had called himself Kim Jong Il, and stomped on the fleshy abomination that he was.

His vehicle of body lost the vibrant light in its lines as the pyramid absorbed it.

I reached inside and tore at any vital wire I could find until the body collapsed. The lifeless vessel stared up blankly with its homunculus pilot reduced to a pile of fleshy mush.

I breathed out and rested my hands on my head.

The light line from the body retracted to the prism. I followed it, letting the white noise of the few intact machines in the room numb my every thought.

I stepped down into the hole in the table’s center, then placed my hands on the prism and leaned in. My face was an inch away from the green ghost within.

I let out a relieved laugh. “We did it.”

Ralia nodded.