The Laughing Swordsman

Talon's breathing became unsteady.

"Thank you, sister..."

He brought his hand closer to his face.

"...for reminding me..."

Talon pressed his fingers against the edges of his eyelid, blocking the yellow glow.

"...of how far I've come."

Oddryl's voice resounded throughout the hallway.

"What are you doing? You can't possibly be-"

Suddenly, Talon shoved his fingers into his eye socket.

"AHHHHHHHH"

Although he had experienced many levels of pain before, in terms of intensity, this was the worst. That's not to say what Talon experienced before was that much better. Constantly living under pain for many years would cause nearly everyone to break down.

But Talon pushed through it, and that was what he planned to do now as well.

His fingers dug deep, squeezing his eye to make room to go further. It was already horribly painful to just touch the eye, so going farther than that...

Oddryl fell silent for a moment.

"You... You're insane!"

Talon screamed at the top of his lungs from the agony he subjected himself through. Talon's fingers wrapped around his eyeball. For a moment, his screams cut off.

Blood and tears fell from Talon's eye socket.

"I am... strong."

He pulled hard on his eye.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH."

Talon was able to pull it just barely out of the socket. However, his efforts appeared to be in vain. Several muscles held tightly onto the eye, preventing it from moving any farther. However, his fingers continued to pull until his knuckles became white.

After a few moments of watching this display, Oddryl went from afraid, to confident.

"Hahaha, do you really think it's that easy to remove your eye? With how essential vision is, it is only natural that several muscles grasp the eye with great strength!"

Talon didn't react to Oddryl's taunt. In fact, he couldn't even hear it. His mind was overloaded by the suffering he set upon himself. The only thing he could register was the pain in his body.

If an ordinary person was exposed to this kind of pain, they would die on the spot. In fact, even some of the extremely resilient people would be sent to the afterlife as well. Their deaths would simply come from shock.

As for why this would happen, it is because the human body goes into shock from pain. If there is too much...

That shock will directly kill them.

Talon himself was on the verge of dying right then and there. However, he remained alive. His body had adapted to extreme amounts of pain.

This was because Talon was always pushing himself to the limit. Lena's words had stuck with him the entire time, even when he wasn't consciously aware of it.

There had been many times when Talon nearly died from shock. However, by some miracle, he just barely pulled through each time.

He was essentially dancing on the tip of a knife, carelessly brushing by death time and time again.

Eventually, his body had to make accommodations, else death would not be long for him.

As such, Talon was still able to survive despite being subjected to terrifying levels of pain, breaking through the limits that a person should be able to experience.

However, despite his tenacity, he was not able to pull out the eye.

It was simply too difficult to tear off a tendon as it was made to resist extreme amounts of force. Not to mention, there were several connecting the eye to the socket.

Talon realized this was going nowhere and pulled out his fingers from his eye socket. A frightening amount of blood and tears dripped down from his eye as his hand violently trembled.

Oddryl scoffed.

"You finally recognize the outcome is set in stone! You might as well give up now to reduce your suffering!"

The pressure Oddryl was emitting continued to bear down on Talon, making it terribly difficult to lift his hand.

However, he raised them both anyway. His arms let out many uncanny cracking sounds, but at this point, he could hardly even tell.

Talon grasped the pair of scissors on his back.

Oddryl seemed to be panicking.

"Your struggling is pointless! Not only are your chances for survival abysmally low, but the process you will have to go through is an unworthy trade-off!"

His voice became louder, unbeknownst to him.

"For you, the cost of living is too great!"

Talon couldn't hear Oddryl, but even if he could, that wouldn't change anything. His arms were trembling violently as he took off his scissors.

Talon brought it over his head before letting it slam onto the floor.

He was going to cut away what kept his eye in place.

In a certain sense, Talon was fortunate in swapping out his sword, as it would make what he would do next far easier.

He wielded a pair of scissors and was going to use them to cut away the tether that tied him down.

Talon put the handle of his scissors on the ground, while the blade pointed towards him. He grabbed the two handles with his hands and slowly opened the scissors.

Courtesy of his own hands shaking, the blade shook as well.

It wasn't going to be the most precise, to say the least. However, Talon lowered his face closer to the blade.

He carefully moved his face forward, trying to fit the giant scissor blades around one of the muscles binding his eye.

Unfortunately, the shaking caused him to stab himself in the eye. Talon instinctively wanted to whip his head back as far as he could, but didn't.

As more tears and blood spilled out from his socket, the scissors were gradually moved into position. The sharp tip stabbed into the walls of his socket, but Talon couldn't do much about that.

Then, he pushed the handle together.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH"

Talon did not use enough strength, meaning the scissors only cut through part of the muscle. He grit his teeth and let out a muffled scream.

Talon pushed even harder, pushing the blades to cut even deeper through the muscle.

Until a soft snip rang out.