With every step she took, fresh blood streamed from the hole in her thigh.
Enduring the agony of torn flesh and separated bone, Gavo struggled toward Griffin.
A distance of three hundred meters would normally have been nothing to her.
But now, the organs in her abdomen were howling, and the broken bones inside her body were tearing into muscle again and again as she moved.
Around her, the dozen or so Weepers holding their modified firearms jeered at her without restraint.
"Kid, weren't you supposed to be fast? Why are you crawling slower than the worms in the pipes?"
"I bet he'll drop at fifty meters and twitch like a dying rat."
"I say he'll be dead by thirty."
They mocked her, using their issued rations as wagers while guessing where exactly she would collapse.
Not a single one of them believed she could make it alive to the three-hundred-meter mark.
And yes, this really was one of the Tearblood Gang's old initiation rituals.
But the ones normally allowed to take part in it were sturdy, infamous adult scum.
And even then, they would only be stabbed once through the thigh. They would never be beaten half to death inside and out like Gavo had been.
All of them thought this was just one of Griffin's games, a little show he had arranged for the brothers. Just like the pit fights of the Wild Dog Gang, it was meant to use hope as a form of despair and amuse them with the little brat's death throes.
Blood seeped from Gavo's mouth, nose, and thigh, running down her body before gathering beneath her feet, leaving behind one bloody footprint after another along her path.
As more blood drained from her, her consciousness gradually blurred. The vicious laughter of the Weepers nearby once again turned into those familiar strange whispers in her ears.
The whispers tempted her to give up her life, urged her to release herself, and lured her into praying to some unknown existence.
But Gavo paid them no mind.
Her thoughts drifted back to a distant time, back to that period when she had not yet opened her eyes.
So cold...
Why was it so cold?
The scene before Gavo's eyes began to twist and darken, as though she had returned once more to that endless darkness.
She walked blankly through that darkness. In fear and confusion, the strength in her body slowly faded away. Her legs grew as heavy as lead, and every inch of movement became harder than the last.
Just as she was about to lose the ability to move those heavy legs, a single beam of light appeared ahead, like a spotlight in a stage monologue.
That beam illuminated a corner in front of her, and there she saw a baby curled up in a garbage heap full of filth, trying with all its might to let out shrill cries.
But perhaps because it was too cold, the baby's cries gradually weakened, and its life seemed to flicker like a candle in the wind.
Seeing that scene, Gavo's body trembled.
She did not fall, but she no longer had even the slightest strength to move forward.
Just as the infant's life was about to disappear, a pair of hands reached out from the darkness and slowly lifted the baby up.
As the light shifted, the owner of those hands came into view.
It was a scavenger so deformed that he looked frightening.
Tears flowed down both sides of Gavo's face, mixed with blood, and dripped from the gaps in her mask onto the ground at her feet.
He was the one who had taken her young self back to that little sheet-metal home. He was the one who had raised her. He was the one who had taught her how to scavenge. He was the one who had taught her how to survive in the underhive...
If the Emperor loved all of humanity selflessly,
Then her adoptive father was the God-Emperor who belonged only to her.
Her life had been given to her by him, so she should live for his sake.
The fire of survival ignited once more in her chest, using her will as fuel and pouring new strength into this body that was already on the verge of collapse.
Nearby, the Weepers who had just been about to divide up the wagers stared in shock as Gavo, who had already entered a death-like daze, took another step.
At first, they kept mocking her.
Then, as their bets looked increasingly likely to fail, they angrily began throwing stones to interfere with her.
And in the end, they fell silent from sheer shock.
Griffin lowered the pocket watch in his hand, because the time limit had long since expired.
But time no longer mattered.
Now, everyone was wondering the same thing.
Could she really make it to the end?
On the ground, Rabbit-Mouth and Mir, who were still pinned down, stared blankly at that figure inching forward at a speed no faster than a wriggle.
For the first time, they realized that perhaps they had never truly understood this pretty masked weirdo.
Two hundred meters.
Two hundred twenty.
Two hundred thirty-five...
Her speed was getting slower and slower, but the light in her eyes was only growing stronger.
At this point, every single Weeper was watching the little figure in front of them.
They had even forgotten to keep pinning down Rabbit-Mouth and Mir.
A new emotion had appeared in these underhive scum, men who were all too familiar with slaughter and death.
Respect.
Rabbit-Mouth and Mir had also completely forgotten to struggle free. They did not even dare breathe too loudly as they watched Gavo.
Everyone was waiting.
Some were even praying.
And Gavo herself had entered a strange state.
It was something she had never experienced before, as though a wall stood before her.
No.
It was not a wall.
It was a mountain.
It was her limit.
Perhaps once, it really had been just a wall. But with every boost from Infinite Growth, that old low wall had been built up brick by brick until it had become the towering mountain now standing before her, seemingly impossible to cross.
But there was not the slightest ripple in Gavo's heart.
Because at this moment, she had only one thought.
Move forward.
Under the silent gaze of everyone watching, that body that now looked like nothing more than a walking corpse had finally reached Griffin.
She only needed one more step.
One more step, and she would reach the finish.
As everyone held their breath and stared at the goal, a foot slowly lifted...
But it was not Gavo's foot.
It was Griffin's.
With a twisted expression on his face, he simply kicked out.
He did not even use much force, yet that fragile figure was sent rolling back once more, landing five meters from the finish.
And yet that figure did not stay down.
Though she rose as slowly as a broken machine, she still stood up and kept moving forward.
Seeing that, Griffin kicked her again.
And so it went.
Gavo was kicked away again and again, yet kept standing back up and moving forward.
With each kick Griffin delivered, a little more cruelty appeared in his eyes.
And alongside it, a little more admiration.
Even the coldest gunmen of the Tearblood Gang could not help but be moved by Griffin's cruelty at this point.
And then, after the last time she was kicked down, a trembling appeared in Gavo's body.
That trembling came from the mountain called Limit.
With a heart-rending roar, her body surged upright at an unbelievable speed, then lunged past Griffin's side.
The instant she landed behind him, that trembling reached its peak and became the sound of a world-shaking collapse.
The mountain was gone.
[You have broken through your limits.]
[You have awakened your own latent psychic talent.]
(End of Chapter)
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