Chapter 273: Bon Appetit, Bon Mort

Chapter 273: Bon Appetit, Bon Mort

Hours later, Xenia peeled the very last piece of skin from the man’s heel of his right foot. She held the piece of skin pinched between her two fingers and lightly tossed it onto a small mound of the man’s other pieces of skin previously composing his hide. The skin flaps ranged from very small to several feet in length such as the long continuous piece removed from his upper back down to his posterior upper legs.

Xenia smirked at the bloodied pile of skin and then moved her gaze to the man laying before her. She ran her hand up his body starting from his toe. She dragged her hand upwards stopping at his chest before lifting her hand and licking the blood off her palm.

The man lay still like a big piece of red meat with two stark white eye balls staring back at Xenia, “I hope you had your fun, lady. Because the fun stops here. You can’t breach the stone’s barrier, and... and... you’re dead once my boss gets here. I only wish I would be alive to see Warlord Ganon skin you alive.”

The man laughed for a moment until he was interrupted by coughing up his own blood. Xenia held her finger to his lips, “Shhhhhh. You’re ignorance knows no bounds. I’ll be back to celebrate with you once I have the stone in hand.”Ne/w novel chapters are p/u/blished on no/vel(/bin(.)c/o/m

She then left the man laying with no skin as she slowly walked to the back of the large cavern where a narrow conduit led her further back into a small chamber. As she approached, a glowing white light reflected off the walls until she turned the corner to see a concentric barrier of ki surrounding an inner circular area of 10 feet in diameter. Within this cordoned space, a small centrally located podium held a fist-sized, glowing-white, mana stone.

Xenia walked up to the barrier and removed her glove to run her finger along it. As she did, the tip of her pointer finger sizzled off, “My my. So he wasn’t lying. This is quite the barrier.”

Xenia raised her power level gathering ki around herself. She then punched the barrier forcefully only to have her fist disintegrate as she made contact. Her momentum carried her arm forward disintegrating her flesh and bone halfway up her forearm before she could stop.

She looked down at her right hand and forearm, or lack thereof, with wide eyes as she pleasantly gasped from pain and surprise. She bit her lower lip and moaned as she watched her arm reconstitute and heal itself, “What a pleasant surprise! Maybe there is someone worthy of me on this planet after all. Worthy to give me an heir, or at the very least, worthy to give me a good time on the battlefield or in the bedroom.

Without wasting a second, Xenia activated her Bloodlust state. Her hair turned a crimson red and her eyes followed. The surface vasculature of her body began to glow a deep red, and ki swirled around her body boundlessly shaking the ground below.

She then thrust her fist back at the barrier. This time her fist met the barrier with a standstill. She held her fist against the barrier maintaining a massive force behind it as she grunted and moaned until at last she withdrew her fist.

Although she was unharmed... so was the barrier.

Xenia ran her tongue along her teeth before sticking her tongue against the inside of her cheek. She folded her arms and tapped her foot, “How bothersome.”

She then turned about and marched back into the larger cavern. She made a direct path to the flayed man and barked at him, “Who made that barrier! Tell me!”

The man turned his stark white eyes and red meat-face towards Xenia and coughed up blood before saying, “What’s the problem? Couldn’t crack it?”

The man then laughed out loud before saying, “If that is all the power you have, you’ll never get through. Red hair, red eyes, red ki? Who do you think you are... a BloodStar?”

The man continued laughing at his own comments until Xenia bloodbent him quiet and yelled, “And what if I am? Tell me what you know of BloodStars!?”

She smiled down at him and then bloodbent into his mind, internally speaking to him, “I could dig it out of your mind if you prefer not to tell me.”

At the sound of her voice inside his head without seeing her lips move, the man quickly turned to comply. He had already been physically tortured, and he wasn’t ready to be mentally tortured as well.

She raised back up, straddling him, as she moaned and chewed his chest muscle, “Mmm. Mmm. So good but just a little dry. Without skin, it’s amazing how quickly the human body dehydrates and dries up. And like a dry steak, all we need is a little bit of sauce to bring it back to life.”

The man was fearful for his life, yes; however, the fear of the unknown and the fear of being eaten alive smothered him even more as the monster atop him smiled down and nodded her head at him.

She dove down for his neck sucking on the side of his neck muscles gingerly where she had previously given him a hickey, “Feel familiar? Probably feels even better with no skin between us.”

She continued toying with her prey sucking on his lateral neck until she said, “But with no skin, that’s one less layer between me, a very hungry girl, and your precious and fragile and oh so vital carotid artery.”

Before he could respond, Xenia bit down hard on his neck and tore away the muscle and tissue protecting the vital vessel group below. Hiding between connective soft tissue and small muscles of the neck, she eyed the carotid artery, internal jugular vein, and external jugular vein like a hungry lion eyeing an injured and helpless antelope.

She took her time and kissed the rubbery vessel wall of the artery and veins, even taking the large caliber vessels in her teeth and playing with them running her tongue over them. She then took the carotid artery in her mouth and bit down hard.

A pressurized spray of arterial blood shot into her mouth, and she let go. Blood sprayed her in the face, and she moaned enjoying the blood running down her face before pouncing back at the hydrant artery and tearing an entire segment away.

Xenia grabbed the loose end of the artery and vaguely directed it to spray on the man’s chest soaking his dry muscle in blood.

As a pool of blood formed over his chest muscles seeping into and running over them, Xenia smiled at the man as he quickly faded into death, “Bon appetit to me. Bon mort to you.”

Xenia then continued biting and feasting on the man’s moist chest muscles enjoying her well-prepared, raw steak until both sides of his chest were completely barren of muscle all the way down to the underlying ribs.

She stood and bloodbent all of the accumulated blood on her mouth, hair, and outfit off of her and threw it against the wall giving her a spectacularly clean appearance for someone who had just eaten a man’s chest clean through.

With the mana stone in hand, she walked back to the rear chamber, “What to do with you? This barrier certainly seems safe enough, doesn’t it? Hmm.”

Xenia mulled over the idea of using this chamber as a storage space, an area for safekeeping. Back home, she had the entire BloodStar Empire to keep her belongings, and no one would be foolish enough to steal from her. However, on this new planet, she had nothing of the sort.

“For now, I can think of no better place.” She used a void portal to walk past the strong ki barrier and placed the stone back on the podium.

The important thing to Xenia was that she now had access to the mana stone, and she also had a storage space for important items. She pondered leaving BloodBane and Blood Scourge behind; however, she ultimately decided to keep those items on her self.

She turned around and left the chamber, walked through the cavern while admiring the dead men one last time, swam through the underwater tunnel, and snaked her way back out of the cave. From the entrance of the seaside cliff, she teleported back on board the Neptune to find Tiber still unconscious with her doppelganger ki clone snuggling him from behind.

Xenia snapped her fingers recalling her clone, and she then stripped out of her clothes leaving everything on the floor at the end of the bed. She then crawled into bed, snuggling Tiber from behind with a smile on her face.