Soul Orchid (4)
"Urk... kghk... May..."
Beril dragged his jaw along the ground, crawling deeper into the cave.
The cave floor was jagged and uneven, worsening the state of his broken leg and arm with every inch.
The fractured bones shifted even further out of alignment, and his lacerations deepened, but his recovery ability wasn't strong enough to guide a normal healing process.
It only managed the bare minimum to sustain life—bones fusing at unnatural angles, muscle tissue stitching together in deformed lumps.
Twisted joints. Grotesquely regenerated flesh.
Yet, lost in his hallucination, he felt no pain and kept crawling onward.
And finally, he reached his destination—
A domed chamber at the cave's deepest point.
Black droplets fell at regular intervals from the center of the ceiling.
Drip... drip...
At the exact spot where they landed, a tiny sprout was growing.
It was the Soul Orchid.
And directly behind the sprout stood a stone slab like a gravestone, faint unknown runes glowing on its surface.
Only then did Beril stop.
But he was still trapped in the hallucination's grip.
"Hehe... May... it's May... Daddy's... here..."
Black Rock Canyon had operated this way for a hundred years.
Projecting hallucinations onto the weak to lure them into the gorge, letting them plummet to their deaths, then absorbing their souls as fertilizer for the Soul Orchid.
The canyon's will knew its illusions didn't work on the strong, so it targeted only the frail.
But Beril was an unforeseen anomaly.
Something that had never happened since the canyon's existence began.
A living being had reached this place.
The thousands of souls heading for the Soul Orchid—
Stopped.
"Alive..."
It began with one soul's whisper.
One voice became two, two became four, and soon thousands filled the cave.
"Flesh..."
"It's warm... still warm..."
"Thumping... I hear it... thump thump thump..."
"Red stuff flows... smells like blood..."
"I want to live too... I want... I want..."
The souls' forms began to warp.
Faces of the dead twisting with longing and hunger.
They were victims who had fallen for the canyon's illusions, dying unjustly.
Pitiful souls unable to wander the afterlife, dragged here solely to feed the Soul Orchid.
To them, living flesh was salvation, its warmth a forgotten dream, life an irretrievable miracle.
"Must get in..."
"Take it..."
"Me first, aaah!"
"Out of the way, I wanna live, I wanna!"
"No, I was a child... I deserve it more..."
The souls desperately resisted the silent pull drawing them to the sprout, converging on Beril.
Fighting the Soul Orchid's gravity was agony, but their craving for flesh burned stronger.
And at last—
The first soul burrowed into Beril's torn wound.
"Kgh!"
Beril's body arched like a bow.
His spine bent as if to snap, then sprang back.
The momentary pain shattered the hallucination, harsh reality crashing over him.
"Wh-where... is this—aaargh!"
A scream erupted.
The sensation of a soul burrowing into flesh defied imagination.
Like icy claws scraping along his veins, every nerve igniting in flames.
"N-no... please..."
But the door was already open.
Once the invasion began, it couldn't be stopped.
The second, third souls followed in rapid succession.
"Grrraaagh! Get out! Get oooout!"
Beril clawed at his body with hands grotesquely twisted, bones protruding.
Nails splintered, blood sprayed, but it was futile.
The souls were already under his skin, into his muscles, his very marrow.
Crack—crack—
As dozens crammed into one body, the vessel reached its limit.
Beril's flesh split like desiccated mud.
Spiderweb cracks spread across his skin, dark crimson ooze seeping from the fissures.
"Keurk... hngh... please... May..."
Blood tears streamed from Beril's eyes.
Black blood poured from his nose, his ears.
Yet the souls didn't stop. The scent of blood only drove them into greater frenzy.
Crack—craaaack—
Skin tore like paper, muscles frayed into fibers.
This should have been the moment of death.
But—
Suddenly, an unknown force seized his body, holding it together.
Ripped flesh writhed like worms, knitting back; shattered bones regenerated, albeit twisted.
"N-no... no... just kill me..."
Beril realized.
This wasn't a blessing. It was the start of eternal hell.
The souls didn't stop.
No—they couldn't stop.
The temptation of living flesh was too overwhelming for dead souls.
Ten. Twenty. A hundred. A thousand.
Endless invasion.
Time passed.
The first few days, he screamed.
"Please! Aaaargh! It hurts, it huuuurts!!!"
After a month, his voice cracked.
"Hng... ugh... please..."
After a year,
Beril could no longer make human sounds.
"Grrrh... hngh..."
Five years passed.
His mind shattered and reformed, over and over.
Thousands of souls fought inside one body, shoving and claiming space; Beril's self drowned in the chaos.
Ten years.
He was forgetting who he was.
May's face blurred like ink dropped in water.
His own name surfaced only in shattered fragments, like broken mirror shards.
"I... I'm... Be..."
Twenty years.
Beril's body was no longer human.
A grotesque mass born from thousands of tangled souls.
Its tar-black, sticky surface sprouted multiple arms that sank back; dozens of mouths opened at once, screaming in different tongues.
And thirty years.
At last—
Twitch.
The black mass slowly rose.
"Kiiiiieeeeeek!!!!"
Was it a scream? A cheer? Or the liberation cry of thousands of souls?
That flesh was no longer Beril.
No longer anyone.
After thousands of egos devoured each other, only pure craving remained.
Its hollow pupils reflected the stone slab.
Completely different from when it first crawled in.
The slab blazed with blinding light, as if it had been waiting.
* * *
I froze at the scream, my instincts halting my steps.
That saved me.
Whoosh—
Something invisible streaked past me at impossible speed.
Slash!
The stone floor right where my next step would have landed was gouged deep, as if clawed by a massive beast.
What the hell was that?
But more than the attack, my attention locked on the 'thing' before me.
A person? Could you even call it that?
Arms and legs bent in impossible directions.
Like a marionette with a botched frame.
Its blackened flesh sprouted eyes everywhere.
Some bloodshot, others milky with cataracts.
All twitching independently, staring in different directions.
Mouths too—in places they shouldn't be: shoulders, flanks, thighs.
"Seolhwa."
Cold sweat trickled down my spine as I asked,
"Just to be sure... that's the remnants of that guy, right?"
Seolhwa responded not with words, but a sigh-like silence.
Then came a voice I'd never heard from her before—flustered, urgent.
Sorry for the sudden change, but run. Now. That's not something you can handle.
"Kiiieeeeeek!"
Before her warning finished, it moved.
No—'moved' isn't right.
One instant it was there; the next, right in front of me.
Boom!
"Master Astra!"
Ascaros leaped instinctively between us.
Thud!
"Guh!"
Ascaros flew back, slamming into the rock wall.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the surface; rubble rained down.
"Ascaros!"
That's... something that shouldn't exist.
Seolhwa's voice trembled.
For a god-like being like her to waver meant this was a true crisis.
Thousands of souls forcibly crammed into that body. Too much for one vessel. They devoured each other, tore and rotted away... until no ego remained. Only craving. The primal desire to seize living flesh.
"That doesn't make sense, Seolhwa."
I backed away slowly, eyes fixed on it.
Dozens of eyes swiveled toward me in unison.
"How can thousands of souls inhabit one body? It couldn't withstand that."
Exactly. Normally, it would have shattered. But something intervened, forcibly maintaining the vessel.
Pity laced Seolhwa's voice.
"Don't tell me that something is..."
Yes. The remnants kept that poor body from collapsing. But while the flesh endured, the original owner's mind... didn't.
It took a step forward.
Black drool oozed from its torn mouths; protruding hands clawed the air like starving beasts.
"So... it was human once?"
Yes. Probably stepped in here like you...
Boom!!!
Before Seolhwa finished, it lunged—no afterimage, straight for my gut.
Luckily, my ability's absolute defense triggered automatically, blocking the first strike—
Damn, just once.
I reflexively gathered black magic and swung at its face.
"Kreeeeek!"
Boom!!!
It reeled back but quickly regained its footing.
No wounds on its body.
Every foe I'd faced before knew fear.
They feared death, avoided pain. I'd exploited that to dominate them.
But this was different.
A being that felt no fear, no pain, not even death.
An empty shell craving only living flesh.
Fuck, what do I do?