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Chapter 44 - Fighting Demons (1).

Nero's eyes widened and a heavy feeling settled in his chest.

The sound that reached him, was crying.

Not the shriek of an Abomination or the death rattle of some wounded beast as one would expect.

No. It was the discordant noise of a wailing child.

High-pitched, broken, and desperate like the cry of an infant seeking its mother.

Nero froze mid-step, his hand instinctively moving to the hilt of the Silver Blade.

Something was instinctively wrong with that for various reasons.

'A trap. Another ghost?' was the first thought to appear in his mind. He cautiously looked around.

The sound echoed through the trees, bouncing off the twisted trunks and purple leaves until it seemed to come from everywhere at once.

Something was wrong.

Something was deeply, fundamentally wrong.

Every instinct in his body screamed at him to turn around. To run. To get as far away from that sound as possible. Even his body trembled in terror.

But then he saw it.

A flash of silver light cutting through the shadows ahead.

Bright. Radiant. Almost beautiful.

Nero's breath caught in his throat.

That light...

For some reason, the glow was deeply mesmerizing and inviting.

His brows trembled and his grip on his sword hilt loosened.

'What is that?'

The light appeared only for a moment. Then it vanished.

This made his curiosity burn even hotter than his fear.

He no longer suspected the influence of ghosts. That signature cold, gut wrenching feeling was absent.

And yet, against every rational thought in his mind, Nero began moving toward the light.

The crying grew louder with each step. The trees around him seemed to lean inward, their branches twisting and curling like grasping fingers.

And then the forest opened up.

Nero approached the edge of a large clearing.

The fear of god gripped him by the throat, seizing his breath

***

The ground was covered in corpses.

Dozens of them.

Black blood flowed like a river through a bed of scattered violet leaves.

All dead.

Everything was dead.

All torn apart.

Their bodies were strewn across the clearing like discarded dolls, limbs twisted at unnatural angles, black blood soaking into the earth.

But that wasn't what made Nero's blood run cold.

In the center of the clearing, lying on its back, was a massive humanoid Abomination.

It was at least twice his height. Its limbs were thick and corded with muscle. Its skin was a mottled grey-black, covered in pustules and weeping sores.

But even its grotesque body paled in comparison to its stomach.

The creature's abdomen was swollen beyond reason, distended and pulsating. On the surface of the stretched belly was a massive rune glowing with silver light.

It looked like something was moving inside it.

No.

Not something.

Multiple things.

The skin stretched and bulged with each movement, the outline of limbs and faces pressing against the surface from within.

And from the creature's eyes and mouth, silver light poured out in thin, radiant streams.

The crying was coming from it.

Not from its mouth.

From inside the Abomination.

Nero stood frozen, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing.

'Is this... is this how they give birth?'

The thought made his stomach turn and his blood run cold.

But then the Oracle's voice cut through the chaos in his mind.

{No}.

Nero flinched.

"Then what—"

{The creature is not dead. It is mere transforming}.

The words settled over him like a weight.

"Transforming?"

{Yes. The silver light the Heretic witnessed is Ein Sof made manifest. The creature is undergoing ascension from Grade E to Grade D. What the Heretic is witnessing is the physical process of that transformation}.

Nero stared at the grotesque thing in the center of the clearing.

Its swollen stomach writhed and pulsated, the movements growing more violent with each passing second.

"And the corpses?"

{Fuel. The creature consumed them to gather the necessary energy for transformation}.

Nero's hands trembled.

He had been drawn here by the silver light. By the Ein Sof.

His body had recognized it instinctively.

A loud, wet tearing sound ripped through the clearing.

Nero's eyes snapped back to the creature.

An arm had burst through its stomach.

Not from the outside.

From within.

The arm was long and blackened, the fingers ending in curved claws that gleamed in the dim light.

It clawed at the edges of the tear, pulling and ripping.

The creature's body convulsed.

The silver light pouring from its eyes and mouth intensified, becoming almost blinding.

And then the stomach split open.

Blackened blood erupted in a torrent, spraying across the clearing in thick, viscous waves.

Nero stumbled back, his boots slipping on the muddy ground.

From the ruined abdomen, something began to crawl out.

It was born in violence and horror.

The new creature pulled itself free, its body slick with blood and amniotic fluid. It dragged itself forward on its arms, its lower half still tangled in the remnants of its old flesh.

Nero watched, unable to look away, as it turned its head toward the corpse it had emerged from.

And then it began to eat.

It tore into the old flesh with its teeth, ripping away chunks and swallowing them whole.

The sound of tearing meat and crunching bone filled the clearing.

With each bite, the creature's form grew more compact and stable.

Its limbs thickened. Its body stretched then contracted until equilibrium.

Two more arms erupted from its back with sickening cracks, the new limbs twitching and flexing as they adjusted to their existence.

An enormous tumor swelled on its shoulders, pulsating and leaking a greenish gas that hissed as it touched the ground.

And on its chest, beneath the layer of blackened skin, a face began to form.

A human face.

Its eyes opened.

Its mouth stretched into a silent scream.

Nero felt his knees weaken.

This was no mere transformation.

This was rebirth.

A profane, twisted rebirth.

The creature finished devouring its old body and rose to its full height.

It stood on four legs. The face on its chest continued to scream silently, its expression frozen in eternal agony.

The tumor on its shoulders leaked more gas, filling the clearing with a thick, choking miasma.

And then the creature turned its head.

Directly toward Nero.

Its eyes—multiple eyes scattered across its malformed face—locked onto him.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

Then the creature opened its mouths.

And grinned.

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