"Gaaaalh... iihh... aaaa..."
The sound escaping the creature's throat cracked the remaining window glass. It wasn't a war cry, but static noise, like the friction of two dimensions forced to collide.
Vaelen felt a painful ringing in his ears. Fresh blood trickled from his left nostril—the air pressure in the room had shifted drastically due to the Aberration's presence.
The veil of reality was thinning.
Vaelen didn't need to be a mage to feel it. This bedroom no longer felt like part of the Kingdom of Eisenwald. The shadows in the corners of the room elongated and moved on their own, as if they were silent spectators thirsty for entertainment.
The creature that was once Lady Elara jerked one of its shoulder tentacles. The movement was fast, unnatural, like an animation missing a few frames.
WHOOSH!
Vaelen threw his body to the side.
The spiked tentacle slammed into the wooden floor, smashing through it to the ceiling of the first floor below. Wood dust and stone debris scattered.
"Fast for a walking corpse," Vaelen sneered as he scrambled up, his breath hitching.
The system on his retina blinked frantically, its red text overlapping with his visual reality.
[Mental Interference Detected]
[Sanity Check Initiated...]
[Host Mentality: Broken/Cynical -> Resistance: HIGH]
[Status: Stable.]
The compound eyes on Elara's shoulder twitched, staring at Vaelen in unison. The creature's mouth—now torn vertically down to the chin—opened.
It wasn't a physical attack that came next, but sound.
"...trash...""...you are unwanted...""...your mother died because of you...""...you failed in your old world, Adrian... you will fail here..."
The whispers weren't heard through the ears, but echoed directly inside Vaelen's skull. Thousands of overlapping voices, mixing Vaelen's (Adrian's) memories of his company's bankruptcy on Earth with the original Vaelen's childhood memories full of torture.
Vaelen's vision blurred. He saw hallucinations: His biological father on Earth hanging himself, then morphing into Vaelen's father beating him with a horse whip.
Vaelen's knees wobbled. He staggered.
The monster exploited the opening. A second tentacle shot out, wrapping around Vaelen's waist and lifting him into the air.
"ARGH!"
Vaelen was thrown into the ceiling, then slammed hard onto the floor. His ribs creaked in protest. It felt like being hit by a truck.
The Elara-creature approached, dragging its half-destroyed, half-mutated body. Its remaining human face stared at the prone Vaelen. Her pitch-black eyes dripped a tar-like liquid.
"Mine... f-flesh..." the creature stuttered, the remnants of Elara's consciousness trying to speak through the chaos of the monster inside her. "M-Mine..."
The tentacle wrapped around Vaelen's neck, lifting him until his feet left the ground. Vaelen choked, his face turning beet red. Gareth's short sword fell from his limp hand.
Death was right before his eyes. Again.
However, amidst the strangulation crushing his throat, Vaelen didn't see fear.
He saw irony.
The hallucinations sent by the monster were intended to break his mind with guilt and inferiority. But for Adrian—a man who had lost everything on Earth and rebuilt his heart with the cold concrete of cynicism—those whispers were just stale jokes.
"You..." Vaelen grinned through the strangulation, blood dripping from the corner of his lips. "You... got the wrong... guy..."
He grabbed the wrist of the tentacle choking him with both hands.
"I already know... I'm trash..." Vaelen forced the words out. "Old... news..."
Vaelen's eyes glowed. Not red, not blue, but a hollow grey.
The Entropy System responded to its host's mentality.
[Psychological Resistance Confirmed]
[Unlock Requirement Met: Predatory Instinct]
[Quest Update: CONSUME]
[System Action: Open the Floodgates.]
Vaelen's hands gripping Elara's tentacle suddenly changed. The veins in Vaelen's arms turned black, bulging out like infected tree roots.
If the monster tried to corrupt Vaelen's mind with madness, then Vaelen would suck that madness dry.
[SKILL ACTIVATED: PROTOTYPE SIPHON]
SLURP.
The sound was disgusting, wet and greedy.
It wasn't the monster eating Vaelen. It was Vaelen who started drinking the monster's essence through physical contact.
"GYYAAAAAAHH!"
The Elara-monster screamed. This time it was a scream of pure fear. She tried to shake Vaelen off, but the young man's hands seemed fused to her tentacle, latching on like a leech finding a main artery.
Black, purple, and red energy flowed violently from the monster's body, creeping into Vaelen's arms.
It was painful for Vaelen—like being electrocuted with thousands of volts and ice cubes at the same time—but it also provided a sensation of forbidden pleasure. The hunger in his stomach that had been ever-present since he rose from the grave was slowly being satisfied.
Vaelen felt Elara's flesh shrinking.
"Hurt?" Vaelen laughed hysterically, his face covered in blood leaking from his own eyes due to the burden of incoming energy. "Don't be stingy, Mother! Share a little of your power!"
He lifted his leg and kicked the monster's open chest, not to break free, but to bury his hands deeper into the mutated flesh.
"LET GOOO... MEEE!" Elara's voice returned, this time clear and full of human terror.
"Too late."
Vaelen used his free left hand. He held no weapon. He sharpened his fingers—his nails elongating slightly, a temporary effect of the momentary mutation—and stabbed directly into Elara's only remaining human eye on her deformed face.
SHLUCK!
The world went white for Elara. And went black for the parasitic entity inside her.
[CRITICAL HIT!]
[Target Core Exposed]
[ABSORBING...]
A large black shadow jerked out from Elara's back, trying to escape the defeated host body. It was the true form of the Eldritch parasite—like a jellyfish made of oily smoke.
The parasite tried to fly toward the window.
But Vaelen—backed by a hungry System—opened his mouth wide.
Vaelen took a deep breath, a supernatural vacuum suction.
The shadow halted in mid-air, vibrated, then was forcibly sucked toward Vaelen, shrinking and condensing until it was the size of a smoky black marble, then shot into Vaelen's mouth.
Vaelen swallowed it.
Gulp.
Silence.
Lady Elara's mutated body instantly went rigid. Her skin color turned faded grey, then cracked like dry clay. Flesh, tentacles, and extra eyes crumbled into fine dust smelling of sulfur.
All that remained was a dry human skeleton wrapped in the remnants of an expensive silk dress, collapsing onto the floor in a mess.
Clatter.
Vaelen fell to his knees, clutching his own throat. He coughed, vomiting a little black liquid.
The taste in his mouth was terrible—like swallowing a leaking battery and rotten meat. But then, a wave of heat spread from his stomach to all the meridians of his previously dead body.
[ABSORPTION COMPLETE]
[Prey Rank: Unknown (Lesser Aberration)]
[REWARDS DISTRIBUTED:]
1. Status cured: 'Crippled Mana Core' removed.
2. New Meridian Opening: Abyssal Root (Grade 1).
3. Cultivation Technique Obtained: [Scripture of The Formless Hunger].
4. Attribute Points: +5
Vaelen felt something missing from him his entire life now filled. Energy flow. Qi. Mana. Or whatever its name was. He was no longer empty. He was now a vessel.
And inside that vessel, something foreign was curling up to sleep.
Vaelen grinned, his teeth blood-red. He picked up his short sword from the floor.
Outside the room, in the long corridor of the mansion, the screams of servants and the heavy tread of iron boots could be heard approaching. The monster's screams and the earlier destruction must have woken the entire residence.
"My Lady?! What happened?!" the Head Butler's voice sounded panicked from a distance.
"Break down the door!" ordered another voice—likely the vice-captain of the guards.
Vaelen stood unsteadily. He looked at the broken window. The storm wind blew in, carrying cold rain that washed his hot face. The Grey Woods looked dark and inviting in the distance.
There was a place of death for ordinary humans. But for someone who had just eaten a nightmare... it looked like a playground.
Vaelen stepped onto the balcony. He looked back once more at his mother's skeletal remains on the floor.
"Thanks for the meal," he whispered.
With one fluid motion thanks to his increased Agility, Vaelen vaulted over the balcony railing, diving into the darkness of the night, just as his bedroom door was battered open by the late-arriving guards.
They found only their mistress's skeleton and the scent of ancient evil lingering in the air.
And for Vaelen, the real escape had just begun.