The Son's Hatred
“Y-yes… not… even… a single finger… on that person…”
She seemed barely able to string words together anymore, yet Olsidra laughed with pure delight. He mocked her, savoring the sight of her twisted expression, his smile filled with satisfaction.
His appearance could no longer be called human. Even the skin on his face was slowly melting, twisting into something grotesque and repulsive, yet that smile remained disturbingly human.
It was the pure joy born from deep, ugly hatred.
In contrast, unmistakable terror now surfaced on her face. All traces of composure vanished. The arrogant gaze that had once dismissed him—refusing even to acknowledge his existence—lost its power. She hesitated for a moment, then turned and ran.
She did not use magic to take flight or raise barriers. She simply turned her back and fled on her own two legs, desperate to put even a little distance between them.
“K-kh… khkh…!”
That was the moment. Olsidra’s tentacles suddenly stretched out like whips and coiled around her.
“Aagh! Aaaah! Aaaaaagh!”
The instant the tentacles touched her, her agonized screams echoed through the air. Her stained, ancient robe dissolved, and the clothing beneath it—along with her smooth skin—began to blister and melt away.
“I-I’ve… been waiting for this. For you… to run away from me…!”
Judging by how far the tentacles had extended, she had been within their reach from the very beginning. Yet he had simply walked toward her, slowly, waiting for the moment when she would exhaust every option, when every spell failed, and she finally turned her back and fled.
“You ran! You—Great Witch Mering—turned your back… on me!”
Olsidra lifted the captured woman into the air, slowly rotating her before dragging her toward him. He stared at her as she screamed and thrashed in pain.
“H-how… does it feel…? This feeling…!”
With another tentacle, he lightly brushed her face. Her screams grew louder, and her face began to melt as well. The face that had once been beautiful—objectively, strikingly so—now resembled wet mud.
“Aagh! Aaaah! Aaaaaagh!”
“Kh… khkh… khkhkhkhkh…!”
Screams and the chilling laughter of madness filled the air, stirring an instinctive discomfort.
One of his arms had turned translucent, just like the tentacles. Not only that—his entire body was gradually transforming into an opaque jelly-like substance.
As Urshus’s power waned, the fusion was no longer a merger but a consumption.
After laughing while holding her for some time, Olsidra suddenly released her, throwing her to the ground at his feet.
She groaned and rolled across the dirt, collapsing beneath him.
“Look at me…!”
She only continued screaming, eyes squeezed shut as she writhed in agony. Black and blue blotches spread across her blistered, melting skin.
“Look at me!”
At his inhuman roar, she finally opened her eyes and looked up. Olsidra slowly bent down until their gazes met. From Jequirak’s perspective or the golem’s, his expression was unclear, yet a sudden wave of sorrow washed over the scene.
“This… is all your doing…!”
He struggled desperately to speak clearly. The words came slowly and must have been excruciating for him, yet he forced them out, trying to sound as close to his original voice as possible.
“You did this to me…! The poison… the rituals… the experiments… the sacrifices…!”
The tentacles thrashed violently, reacting to his fury.
“The torture!”
One tentacle slammed into the ground, sending up a spray of earth with a sharp crack. When she reflexively shut her eyes, he roared again. Red light flared across his jelly-like body, and the aura of Urshus—nearly gone moments ago—surged back, if only slightly.
“Look at me!”
Whether from rage or the red energy, his voice had nearly returned to normal, his pronunciation far clearer.
“Why didn’t you just kill me?! Why?! What did I ever do wrong?!”
With his remaining human arm, he grabbed her shoulder and hauled her upright. She whimpered in pain, but he paid no attention.
“A failure? Is that what I was? So that’s why? You couldn’t stand the sight of me? That’s why you beat me. Threw me. Drowned me. Locked me away. Cut me. Tore me apart. Injected me. Starved me. And forced me to eat that filth?”
His hand trembled. It wasn’t only from anger or hatred. His voice carried fury, loathing, and revulsion, yes—but also a trace of ecstasy and joy. Beneath all of it, however, lay something far heavier and deeper: a piercing, aching sorrow.
“If nothing else, you should have done it yourself! Only you! You never should have let those filthy things touch me!”
His face, and what remained of his arm, were losing their shape. Only fragments of his human form still lingered.
“You created this situation. Remember that. Though… it won’t matter for long.”
His tentacles gathered behind her, reshaping into a massive maw—or something closer to a coffin—and slowly advanced toward her.
“Enjoy the pain, Mother.”
Mother? The word left me stunned. In that brief moment of disbelief, she spoke.
Her voice was indistinct, her lips barely moving. With her face melted, it was impossible to tell whether she had spoken or merely groaned. But she had said something—because the instant the words left her, his eyes changed.
The fury, despair, hatred, and disgust in his gaze suddenly dimmed.
And though it had already been fading, the red aura of Urshus that had clung to his body vanished in an instant, as if it had never existed.
“Ral. Durmum. Chel!”
She seized the moment. The moment the red light disappeared from Olsidra’s body, her cry triggered a black explosion that obliterated the upper half of his torso without a trace.
The sight was hollow, empty, and strangely unreal. Olsidra remained standing, his body from the shoulders up completely gone.
“Hah… hah…!”
Gasping for breath, she collapsed where she stood, as if her legs had given out.
“……”
It wasn’t difficult to understand what had happened. The reason Olsidra had withstood such powerful spells, the reason his unstable form had held together at all—it had all been thanks to Urshus’s power.
Once that power vanished, not only did his defenses against magic weaken, but the fusion itself became unstable. She had simply seized that instant and struck at the head—the area with the lowest degree of fusion—with everything she had.
Despite the force of the blast, the rest of his body, already transformed into jelly, remained largely intact.
Whether she had seized a final chance at reversal or had planned for it all along, I couldn’t say. Either way, a pang of pity and regret for Olsidra rose within me—along with a faint anger at how pathetic it all was.
Taking more time than necessary to witness a specific scene was understandable when one’s life was already on the line. But to grow careless—or rather, intoxicated by the moment—at the very end and grant the enemy more time than needed… that had been foolish.
It was suicide. And so he had met his end.
-Will you not deliver the final blow?
Jequirak’s voice carried no interest, as if the outcome had already been decided. Yes, as expected, only one remained—and even that one was on the brink of death. Waiting for this result from the beginning had been the right call, and there had been no need to intervene.
Neither Jequirak nor the witch seemed to have noticed yet, but nothing was truly over.
The lower half of Olsidra’s body, now headless, still stood in place. Its movements had grown sluggish, and the coffin-like mass had loosened, yet the tentacles continued to writhe. One might have mistaken it for mere residual movement after death, but that would mean misunderstanding the nature of Sacrificial Summoning.
The filthy, jelly-like mass began to bubble as if filling with gas, then rapidly consumed the remaining fragments of Olsidra’s body—his arm, his leg.
That wasn’t all. Though still vaguely humanoid, the form gradually sagged and spread, transforming into a massive, amorphous blob of jelly.
“……!”
Still seated on the ground, she tried to stand, but it was too late. The tentacles that had stretched behind her, along with the swelling amorphous mass, had already surrounded her completely.
She hurriedly raised a barrier around herself, but the growing blob engulfed both the barrier and her within it.
-…What just happened, Contractor?
When I showed no emotional reaction to the sudden scene, Jequirak realized I knew something about the situation.
“Sacrificial Summoning is called that because it uses another living being as a sacrifice, but its true principle is to drastically increase synchronization with the summon by sacrificing one’s own life and body. That’s how you gain control over a summon you haven’t contracted with. Of course, there are limits.”
Because of those limits, the true value of Sacrificial Summoning lies not in calling forth a single high-ranking entity, but in summoning and controlling many without contracts.
“In other words, he sacrificed his life and body to raise his synchronization rate, then used that high synchronization—and the blurred boundary between life and body—to fuse completely with the summon. Thanks to that, his body was reinforced enough to contain a god’s power for longer, and the god’s power in turn sustained the fusion. It was an incredibly precarious tightrope act.”
-Speak plainly, Contractor.
“What I’m saying is, the essence of this summoning method is synchronization. Whether you stop at summoning or go all the way to fusion, that essence doesn’t change. Which means…”
-Even if the contractor dies, the summon remains alive.
“Correct.”