"What is this place..."
Joren narrowed his eyes and tightened his grip on the blade.
He drew a slow breath. Protective force surged through his body along the pathways of [Myriad Manifestations Art], and a faint golden membrane appeared over his skin, keeping the pervasive gray mist outside.
[Worldheart Awareness] still sensed the Shadow Fiend.
Close.
Very close.
Joren moved forward with [Heaven’s Sin] in hand. His boots struck the strange black ground beneath him, each step returning a hollow echo.
The deeper he went, the clearer the whispers became.
The scenery changed with them.
What looked like streetlamps along the road were closer to enormous eyeballs, each hanging from a withered length of optic nerve.
Dark red grease flowed through cracks in the ground instead of water, thick enough to cling to the stone.
After crossing a collapsed stretch of ruins, Joren stopped.
An open space lay ahead, something resembling a plaza.
At its center was a mass of black.
The Shadow Fiend.
Except there was almost nothing left of the beast king Joren had chased here.
It crouched on the ground like a candle melting under heat. Its body twitched, softened, then reshaped itself again and again.
"Found you."
Joren raised [Heaven’s Sin].
The Shadow Fiend did not react.
Its back remained turned toward him.
Where both arms had been destroyed, countless thin black tendrils of flesh had begun to grow. They moved on their own, snatching at the gray mist around them and stuffing it into the open wounds.
Squish.
Squish.
A wet chewing sound drifted across the plaza.
It was eating the mist.
Or perhaps the mist was eating it.
"So this is what you were counting on?"
Joren stepped closer.
Lightning crackled around him, briefly driving back the gloom.
At the sound of thunder, the Shadow Fiend finally stopped.
Slowly, it turned around.
Even Joren, who had seen more mutilated corpses than he cared to count, paused for a fraction of a second.
That was no longer a face.
The original features of the Shadow Fiend had disappeared beneath clusters of eyes.
Large ones.
Tiny ones.
All different.
Some pupils were vertical. Others ran sideways. Several were shaped like irregular five pointed stars.
Its mouth had split nearly to the ears.
Gray tendrils filled the opening, crawling deeper into its throat.
"Hehe..."
The sound that came out no longer resembled the harsh voice of the beast king.
Too many voices were layered together.
Men.
Women.
Children.
The elderly.
All speaking through the same throat.
"You see... I saw it..."
"God... so beautiful..."
One eye still looked vaguely like the Shadow Fiend’s original main eye.
It fixed itself on Joren.
No fear remained there.
No hatred.
Only feverish devotion.
"You... hungry too?"
The creature tilted its head.
A chunk of flesh slipped from its neck and landed with a wet slap.
It did not die.
The piece split into several black worms that immediately wriggled into cracks beneath the ground.
Corruption.
Mental corruption and physical mutation, complete and absolute.
The Shadow Fiend had entered this place only moments before.
That was all it had taken to drive a peak Rank Five beast king completely insane.
"Hungry..."
The distorted voice punched through Joren’s peak Rank Three Mental Force barrier and sounded directly inside his skull.
This time, it was not merely a whisper.
Black tendrils erupted from the ground like boiling tar.
The last recognizable outline of the Shadow Fiend collapsed into itself, swelling upward into a mountain of flesh more than ten meters tall.
Arms burst from every opening.
Each palm contained a screaming mouth.
They stretched farther and farther, weaving themselves into a vast net of pale flesh before crashing toward Joren beneath a wave of rotten wind.
"Ruinous Radiant Thunder."
Joren closed one hand.
Boom!
Violet plasma erupted from his palm and became a lightning whip that stretched across a hundred meters.
It tore through the descending mass of arms.
Hiss!
Flesh blackened.
Charred limbs crumbled beneath the thunder.
Yet not a drop of blood spilled.
Gray mist gushed from the wounds instead.
Within moments, even more limbs grew from the scorched flesh, thinner and more numerous than before.
Tiny hands reached for the lightning itself, trying to drag that raging energy into the mouths embedded in their palms.
"It can eat thunder too?"
Joren’s eyes narrowed.
He shot backward a hundred meters as the grasping limbs closed over empty air.
Whatever stood before him could no longer be called a Voidbeast.
The laws of this place had rewritten its life completely.
"Hehe... caught... you..."
The star shaped pupil in the creature’s main eye began spinning.
Buzz.
Space around Joren thickened.
Transparent tendrils emerged from nowhere, slick and nearly invisible, wrapping around his arms and legs.
The instant they touched him, something poured into his sea of consciousness.
Like ink dumped into clear water.
Thoughts that did not belong to him began multiplying.
Kill.
Devour.
Destroy yourself.
The impulses spread like weeds.
Clang!
A blade rang through his mind.
Every stray thought shattered.
The whispers vanished with them.
So did the corruption.
Clarity returned to Joren’s eyes.
He drew in a breath and closed both hands around the hilt of [Heaven’s Sin].
Something changed around him.
The pressure was difficult to describe.
For a moment, Joren no longer felt like a man standing in the mist.
He became a blade vast enough to split heaven and earth.
The thick gray fog recoiled from that edge, separating on its own and leaving an empty space around him.
Blade Intent.
The mark of a Rank Five Awakened Warrior who had begun to command Battle Presence.
Blade Dominion.
"Cheap tricks."
Hundreds of mouths across the corrupted Shadow Fiend screamed at once.
It sensed danger.
Kill him.
Eat him.
Boom!
The flesh mountain expanded violently.
Then exploded.
Black flesh filled the sky like rain.
Every drop transformed into a distorted human face while still airborne, shrieking as it poured toward the lone figure below.
Nothing was left uncovered.
It meant to drown every inch of space in corruption.
Joren closed his eyes.
Then he raised his blade.
Slowly.
Almost as though he were pushing open a pair of impossibly heavy doors.
The moment [Heaven’s Sin] rose above his head, everything stopped.
The wind.
The screaming faces.
Even the rolling gray mist in the distance.
For one instant, the entire world seemed to hold still.
Only Joren moved.
The blade descended.
"Sever."
[Heaven’s Sin, Crushing Weight].
[Divine Mammoth Might].
[Primordial Bladebody, Blade Intent].
Power stacked upon power.
Yet what emerged from the tip of [Heaven’s Sin] was only a black line, thinner than a strand of hair.
It drifted through the frozen rain of faces.
Through the exploded mountain of flesh.
Into the black ground beneath them.
As softly as scissors cutting cloth.
The first screaming face touched the line.
It vanished.
Then another.
And another.
The entire storm of corrupted flesh broke apart without managing a single cry.
The Shadow Fiend’s enormous body hung motionless in the air.
Something else had been severed.
The invisible connection between it and this strange world.
The thing feeding it endless power.
Gone.
Completely cut away by a single blade.
"No..."
Hundreds of mouths moved.
No sound came out.
Crack.
A clean fracture appeared through the center of its main eye and spread across the entire mass.
Joren opened his eyes.
[Heaven’s Sin] returned to its sheath.
Clang.
The vast body split into two halves and crashed onto the ground.
Black liquid spread across the plaza.
The mutated flesh that had seemed impossible to destroy began flaking apart like ash after a fire, dissolving layer by layer into the gray mist.
Soon, only Joren remained.
Standing alone with his blade.