I Died and Became a Noble's Heir

Chapter 695: Sera’s Unnatural Ability

The oldest bandit, the scarred brute, reacted first. He charged forward, raising a massive war hammer that would have crushed bone as sure as the sun set.

The movement was straightforward, driven by the kind of warrior instinct honed over decades of combat.

Sera’s response was not combat. It was something that only coincidentally resembled fighting.

Her torso twisted at an angle that should have snapped her spine into fragments. Her head rotated nearly completely backward, her chin approaching her shoulder blade as her body contorted to slip beneath the hammer’s downward arc.

The metal head of the war hammer passed within inches of her skull, the displaced air carrying the hot pressure of its passage.

Before the bandit could recover from the missed swing, Sera’s right arm unjointed at the shoulder. The joint dislocated with an audible pop, and her limb elongated.

The bone structure stretched like taffy, the muscles extended to lengths that violated basic human anatomy. Her arm became a whip, stretching and speeding toward her target.

The scythe rotated in her impossibly long grip. The massive blade arced around her body and through the space where the bandit’s torso occupied.

The edge caught him across the ribs, and the cut was so clean that for a moment, there was no blood.

Just the sudden separation of flesh from bone.

…..

Then the bleeding began.

The brute screamed with an unrefined, visceral intensity, conveying the profound realization of their own undeniable mortality.

He staggered backward, one hand clasped to his open side, trying to hold organs that were no longer contained by his abdominal wall.

His other hand dropped the warhammer. His breathing became wet, rattling, the sound of someone drowning in their own fluids.

The color drained from his face as he sank to his knees. Sera stepped over him without acknowledgment, her attention already moving toward the next target.

The other bandits charged in panic-driven desperation.

Three came at her simultaneously from different angles. The second bandit swung a curved scimitar in a horizontal arc designed to disembowel.

Sera’s arm re-jointed at the shoulder as quickly as it had separated, the bone sliding back into place with a wet pop. But as the first bandit’s sword came down toward her neck, her entire spine folded backward.

Her head rotated toward her own shoulder blades, her torso arching in a way that should have been fatal.

The sword passed through empty air.

She jerked her arm, and it came up from a position that made no physical sense.

The scythe blade rotated in a trajectory that began behind her back and ended through the bandit’s chest.

The impact wasn’t clean. The blade caught her ribs and stuck for a fraction of a second before Sera yanked it free with a wet, sucking sound.

The bandit collapsed, crimson blood spreading across his torso in a bloom that obscured his features within seconds.

She flowed forward like water.

The third bandit came at her with a battle axe held high, the kind of weapon designed to come down with apocalyptic force.

Sera’s legs flexed. Her hips dislocated with an audible snap. Her body twisted into a configuration where her upper half faced one direction while her lower half bent at right angles to face another.

Her dislocated legs remained rooted to the stone floor while her entire torso rotated nearly 180 degrees, bringing her chest and arms around to face her attacker. In contrast, her lower body remained facing the opposite direction.

The axe came down where her head had occupied a moment before.

Sera’s elongated arms brought the scythe around in a figure-eight pattern that left no space for the bandit to retreat.

The massive blade caught him across the shoulder and the neck in rapid succession. The first cut went deep.

Deep enough to sever the connection between his head and his body cleanly. The head fell in one direction. The body collapsed another. The axe clattered to the stone floor, forgotten.

The remaining bandits scattered.

One tried to charge past her toward the tunnel entrance. Sera’s entire body contorted. Her neck twisted backward until her face was directly behind her body. Her arms unjointed completely, both of them stretching like elastic serpents made of human flesh.

She moved in directions that defied Cartesian geometry, her joints separating and re-attaching in a rhythm that had become as natural as breathing.

A fourth bandit tried to make a stand with a war pick, trusting in the weapon’s weight and his own combat experience.

The mistake was in assuming that conventional physics applied to his opponent. Sera’s spine folded. Her hips dislocated. Her left arm unjointed at the shoulder, elbow, wrist, and fingers, each joint separating independently and stretching to lengths that made her limb look more like a tentacle than anything human.

The scythe rotated within her extended grasp. The substantial blade descended with a force that transcended conventional muscular leverage, originating from an alternative mechanism operating under principles distinct from typical skeletal mechanics.

The war pick rose to block the strike. The scythe blade shattered it clean, the metal unable to withstand the impact. The blade continued its arc and caught the bandit across the chest. The impact drove him backward against the stone wall hard enough to crack bones. He tried to push himself forward, but Sera was already there.

Her other arm became disarticulated. Both limbs were extended. Both arms rotated the scythe in synchronized patterns, eliminating any safe angles or escape routes, and instead creating increasingly efficient methods of inflicting injuries with zero chance of surviving.

The sounds of her body overshadowed the sounds of combat. Joints popping in and out of their sockets in rapid sequence.

Bone grinding against bone with wet, grinding noises that echoed through the cavern.

Her breathing came in heavy, rhythmic gasps. Her cheeks had flushed bright red.

The color was spreading across her pale skin, as if someone had painted her face with fever.

The flush deepened as more blood painted the cave walls. Her pupils dilated further with each strike, her entire body responding to the escalation of violence with the same intensity as an addict experiencing the rush of their drug of choice.

A younger bandit decided to run deeper into the caves. The decision was correct: run, don’t fight. But it came too late.

Sera’s entire lower body dislocated at the hip. Her legs remained rooted to the stone floor, her feet anchored in place. But her upper torso twisted around nearly 360 degrees, her spine bending at angles that should have been catastrophic, her face coming around to face him directly. Her unjointed arms extended forward, impossibly long, impossibly flexible.

The scythe blade rotated through the space between them. The edge caught the bandit across the back as he tried to reach the tunnel, and the impact sent him sprawling against the cave wall hard enough to dislodge torches from their moorings.

He tried to push himself upright. Sera’s dislocated hips re-jointed. She moved toward him with the fluidity of something that had transcended the normal constraints of skeletal anatomy.

Two more bandits fell in rapid succession. The first tried to use the cave’s tight spaces to his advantage, thinking the limited space would protect him. He was wrong. Sera’s body was far more adaptable to confined spaces.

She folded herself in half, her spine bending until her head nearly touched her knees and flowed through an opening he thought was too small for passage.

Her scythe blade caught him from an angle he didn’t see coming.

The impact nearly severed his arm. He screamed as he tried to run.

Sera’s arm unjointed completely, stretched, and brought the scythe blade around in an arc that finished what the previous strike had started.