The Formless One
The Formless One
Intestine-like tentacles burst up through the earth and writhed. Every contraction of those entrails pushed the ground higher; every time they ravenously digested the mud they had swallowed, the ground caved in.
"Grk—gaaagh!"
A soldier who misstepped into one of those hollows dissolved into a fistful of blood and scrap metal, his death cry swallowed by the wet, sucking noise.
Aslan clicked his tongue as lightning slashed across the screaming.
The priest of the Formless One—spawned from Kornil Ashuld—fought with tentacles and followers. It would scatter its followers to direct the attack, or swing a tentacle in a direct blow. That was the norm.
Sometimes, though, it exceeded that. Like now.
Bzzzt!
"Gyaaagh!"
A root-like fork of lightning crackled out; the soldier it touched convulsed and died. The heat and voltage burst his eyeballs, blood welling from every orifice. Steam rose from the corpse as it crumpled.
Aslan traced the bolt's path and snapped his longsword out by reflex.
Thwack!
A tube of flesh, severed by that cut, dropped away. He swept his gaze across the chaos. The damage among the soldiers was substantial. Mere minutes had passed since Aslan, his party, and the soldiers had advanced toward the warehouse, yet casualties were mounting fast. The sheer number of wounded and dead was stalling the advance.
The shape of this battlefield was completely unexpected. Aslan's eyes narrowed as he moved. The battlefield wasn't large, but lightning and screams erupted everywhere.
'So it inherited its host's skills. Troublesome.'
Soldiers and officers were dying under the lightning strikes. Aslan ground his teeth and pressed forward. To minimize losses, he had to. He advanced through the dazzling currents, Angie at his back. She raised her six-foot staff and thrust it toward a flash of light.
Bzzt-t-t-t!
"Gh—hot!"
Electricity couldn't ride wood. Angie's staff was a cheap thing, mostly wood; it could take the shock without mattering if it broke. On this field, only Angie could block the lightning. Whenever something spat lightning from the wall of flesh, she shoved her staff in that direction.
"Ereta!"
"Yeees~"
As Aslan opened a path, Ereta guarded the flanks. Axe and mace blazed in her hands and crashed into the Formless One's charging followers.
Craaack!
First the mace battered and staggered a body.
Snick!
Then the axe followed, severing its neck. The decapitated followers stopped moving.
Weakened as she was, Ereta had instinctively found the most efficient way to spend herself: strike vitals, pound openings, carve through weakness. Every time her sharp technique flashed in her hands, another charging Formless One fell silent.
While Angie blocked and Ereta guarded, Aslan led the way forward.
'Nine of them. No problem.'
He counted the tentacles and Formless Ones materializing through the layers of flesh walls. Then he moved.
Shrrrk!
He swung his curved sword horizontally. Kal's edge took one creature's head clean off; two others lost their balance as their throats were ripped open. He hooked flesh with Kal's tip and twisted the blade.
Crrunch—thud!
A neck twisted and sheared away. As a tentacle surged from behind the staggering, headless Formless One, Aslan brought his axe down. Bone wrapped in tentacle-flesh cracked, splinters flying.
'Three. Four. Five.'
A soft exhalation. Before the tentacle he'd hammered could recover, he recovered his axe and thrust his sword. The blade tangled with the tentacle; he twisted, cut, and swept the axe wide in a single motion. Two tentacles and the humanoid shape they guarded all came apart, split lengthwise and across. They tumbled in chunks.
Aslan's eyes darted through the furor. Three tentacles left. One was conspicuously huge. He tracked the largest as it withdrew, seeming to wait for an opening, and swung his weapons. The white-hot sword and the heavy axe-edge tore through flesh with two distinct voices.
"Angie!"
"Yeah, I'm going!"
Angie laughed viciously, raised her staff high, and brought it crashing down. A tentacle that had thrust its head between the ones Aslan had cut was smashed to splinters under the blow.
They turned every rush into a handful of meat and kept moving without a hitch. As Aslan shouldered forward, the pressure began to concentrate on him. The tentacles' intensity rose.
The deeper they pushed toward the inner sanctum, the more varied the tentacles became. Earlier they'd been simple innards wielded like whips; now they wore bone fragments as armor, or had immense bony tips honed like axe blades, or even launched those shards like arrows and javelins.
None of it was beyond Aslan. He burned mana to reinforce his body, fired shockwaves, threw up barriers. Javelins clattered off those wards as he ran, Angie and Ereta close behind.
"Heup!"
He deflected a lunging tentacle with the flat of Kal's blade, then split the creature with his two-handed axe. Luck warned him of another tentacle rushing from behind; he tilted his head aside. His ear was already torn—no new wound.
The resistance hardened the deeper they went. The attacks practically radiated a desperate refusal to let them reach the heart. They felt it with every step.
The tactic was simple: Angie handled lightning and heavy armor. Ereta guarded Angie. Aslan broke the path, and whenever the advance stalled, he swept away whatever closed in.
"Haaah... having a human body really is inconvenient."
In that role, Ereta felt her limits acutely. A master, sure, but still only human. Without her priesthood, she lacked the stamina and endurance to fight all day and stay fresh. Unlike Aslan, whose high fighting spirit let him keep swinging through the battle, or Angie, whose monstrous physique allowed her to move without rest, Ereta was flagging. She understood now why one had to gather all the masters. A single master couldn't fight a priest on equal footing. Gathering them all wasn't a grand ambition; it was the bare minimum. She acknowledged that truth, forced down the breath that had climbed to her throat, and swung her weapons.
By the time Ereta hit her physical limit, Aslan had sliced through the massive flesh wall blocking their path. When the wall split under his heavy downward cut, he pivoted and extended his leg. That leg glowed faintly white and roared with thunder.
'Thunder Call.'
K-KR-R-R-R-R-SH—BOOOM!
Two layers of flesh wall burst apart across the floor. In the instant they broke, something shot out at high speed—a counterattack. A tentacle.
It was a sudden thrust that caught Aslan full in the blind spot of his awareness. He saw it erupt and knew his reflexes alone couldn't dodge or block it.
The tentacle was aimed squarely at his head, packed with monstrous force. He knew that if he didn't deflect it, he'd die. He had to redirect it, no matter what. Deflection alone wouldn't be enough. He transferred the axe from his left hand to his right, and let the sword fall. His right hand already held a scroll. He didn't even unroll it.
'Pain Removal.'
At the familiar spell's name, the scroll flared and wrenched every trace of pain from his body. Without hesitation, he turned his body sideways.
Crunch.
He caught the attack on his left arm—now holding the axe in his right—and let the impact shatter it. Bone and flesh disintegrated in an instant. But with the pain gone, he didn't stop. He twisted his ruined arm and shed the trajectory. The deflected blow rode upward.
Crrr-r-r-rack!
Even as it glanced off, the immense force raked across his left eye and jaw. The old gash along his left jaw tore wider. Flecks of meat and leather flew.
Aslan used the force that obliterated his arm to spin his body.
BOOOOOOM!
The deflected tentacle slammed into something else, pulverizing it. Aslan's right hand moved. Wild magic reinforced his bones and surged through his muscles. Through his fevered flesh, his mind recited the technique with crystalline clarity.
'Moon Splitter.'
Its effect expanded reach. Thanks to Jehaengmusang, it could even be applied to a throw.
As Aslan spun with the tentacle's momentum, he hurled the axe. The two-handed axe tore through the air with a crisp, hissing crack far too clean for a one-handed throw.
K-CHAK!
The axe bit deep into the wall of flesh and stopped. Beyond the crumbling barrier, the interior finally came into view.
What should have been the center of the warehouse was a nightmare of pulped meat. Wooden walls and floors, scattered equipment—all of it was gone. Only bloated living flesh remained, with bone spars sprouting here and there. The flesh walls breathed; they swelled and shrank in a slow, nauseating rhythm, exhaling a foul reek. The air shimmered as if heat-haze rose from the stench.
Aslan took in the sight and controlled his breathing. This wasn't the work of a single priest. A memory surfaced—something he'd torn from a priest named Niel.
The man had said: 'The Two-Headed Evil expected this to be handled easily with a priest or two...'
'A priest or two.' Aslan had taken that to mean no different from an ordinary priest. But that wasn't it. It meant strong enough to require two priests.
From between the heaving walls, something squeezed through. An immense tentacle, thick as an ancient tree, like some giant's intestine woven into a limb. Its sheer size sent a prickle of revulsion and dread across the scalp just looking at it.
As it emerged, a heartbeat pulsed through the floor—not Aslan's, not Angie's, not Ereta's. It throbbed under their feet.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The tentacle quivered with every beat. Aslan glanced at his two-handed axe, still embedded in the pillar of flesh. The same axe Ereta had once wielded—arguably the most powerful weapon in his arsenal. That throw had been his best possible attack: full-strength body enhancement combined with Moon Splitter.
The result was disappointing. The axe was pushed out by the pulse and clattered onto the fleshy floor. Where it had struck, new tissue had already grown over, rising in time with the heartbeat.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Aslan scooped his sword from the ground. In his grip, the blade kindled white-hot.
'I see. Regeneration.'
Luck and experience pieced together the probable answer. The priest of the Formless One—the pillar of bone and flesh—regenerated. Instinct took it further. Unseen, somewhere beneath the roots of that pillar, a heart beat. That heart was the source of the regeneration.
Luck was a sixth sense. It wove every perception and scrap of experience a human could grasp into a single intuitive conclusion. That intuition now screamed at Aslan to act. Through his narrowed field of vision, missing his left eye, he stared at the floor. A hatch lay there, leading underground. A rope ladder descended with it.
The heart is the weak point. He was certain. No living thing lacked a weak point in its heart. Even a being that had transcended ordinary life couldn't discard every fundamental rule. If it was made of flesh and bone, if blood flowed through it, it could be killed.
"Ah... Aslan, your eye—no, your arm..."
Blood pattered down. Aslan stemmed it with wild magic, forcing his muscles to clamp the vessels shut. The bleeding stopped, but his dwindling mana brought on a wave of dizziness.
"Angie. Ereta."
"...Yeah."
Angie was too stunned to answer; Ereta replied, her expression grave. Through the reeking wind that brushed past his torn left jaw, Aslan spoke.
"That thing's weak point is the heart. I'll take the heart. You two buy me time. I need to get down there."
The tentacles hadn't charged yet. The pillar pulsed in eerie stillness.
"Aslan, magic—heal yourself with magic! Your arm is..."
"That's my spare life."
Angie urged him to use Equalization to restore his arm, but Aslan refused. Equalization was an absolute last resort. It existed to save him when a fatal spot—heart, brain, cervical spine—was about to be destroyed, to somehow claw back to life. Fighting one-eyed and one-armed was going to be brutal, but that was precisely why he had to conserve it. That kind of force could pulp him in a single blow. There was no guarantee disaster wouldn't strike, and Equalization had to be saved until the very end.
"How are you going to fight without your left arm?!"
"Don't worry. I'll be fine."
Aslan turned his head toward Angie. She and Ereta saw his left profile, drenched in blood, the jaw and eye a mangled ruin. But there was a faint, steady smile on that face—the look of a man who had never once failed to execute a plan, who always carried certainty.
Aslan said quietly:
"Please."
Fight the priest without his left arm and left eye. She knew that wasn't a sane choice. But it was far too late to stop him. They were already in front of the Formless One. There was no time on this battlefield to debate.
Angie clenched her jaw, burning through tear-bright eyes.
"Don't die."
"I won't."
Teeth still clenched, she stepped forward. She hefted her six-foot staff in one hand and drew it back.
"Haa... ruuph..."
And hurled it. The monster strength behind the throw sent the staff punching through the pillar like a javelin.
BLAM!
The tentacles convulsed. They twisted and writhed, orienting on Angie.
"Go!" she shouted.
The tentacles surged. Angie watched them come, ripped the mace from her belt, and met them head-on. Ereta threw one agonized look at Aslan and leaped forward to join her.
Behind the crash of woman and girl fighting, Aslan climbed down into the basement. He slid down the rope ladder and dropped into the space below. It looked less like a warehouse cellar and more like the ventricle of some colossal organism. The walls and floor were sticky, pinkish flesh; bone fragments rode the undulating surface like flotsam on a slow tide.
Aslan's gaze found the center: a heart beneath the pillar of bone and flesh, thick vessels radiating in every direction. Each beat made his own insides lurch.
He rubbed his fingers across his ruined eye socket to smear away the blood, then swept his blood-soaked hair back.
'The situation... isn't great. I'm down an arm, bled a lot. Missing an eye narrows my vision. Is my jaw torn too?'
A foul stench leaked through the rent in his left cheek. He moved his tongue—it could practically poke out through the gash. He closed his mouth.
'Reminds me of the first time I used Equalization.'
The day his lower jaw was ripped away and everything below his waist was gone. He'd used Equalization to survive, and he'd leaned on that spell many times since. It felt like coming full circle. He gripped his sword.
Fighting a priest had always been like this. Overcoming a priest with a human body was nearly impossible. Simply risking your life wasn't enough to win. You had to use your life as a tool just to get within sight of victory, and only cold, total resolve—planning and execution that used everything—could finally seize it. That was what it meant to bring down a demigod, something essentially divine.
Walking a blade's edge through impossible odds, you still had to overcome the impossible. Aslan had been doing that for twelve years. One more time wouldn't change a thing.
His fighting spirit blazed even in the face of clear inferiority. That burning will was proven by the white-hot edge of his sword. As long as he had the will to fight, this blade would not break—even if the world itself crashed down on him.
Even in this searing corner, Aslan shaped his victory. Amid the Formless One's pulsing heartbeat—thump, thump, thump—he drew the outline of his win.
When, at last, the priest's pulse aligned with his own, Aslan's thoughts flashed. His hand darted to his tool pouch and retrieved two scrolls.
"Adrenaline."
The scroll pinned between his index and middle fingers flared at the word. The flames died, and the blood trickling from his eye stopped. His vision sharpened. His pulse quickened; vitality surged through his body.
"Acceleration."
The world slowed. In that decelerated reality, a current of power swept through his nerves and flesh, lifting his cognition and body to another level.
Grrr-rrrrk.
Aslan, curved sword in hand, breathed out slow and moved.
The ventricle responded. The flesh walls lining the space stirred. Countless crimson-tinged protrusions stiffened, coalesced into a storm of projectiles, and streaked toward him from every direction.
A deluge of murderous intent, closing in from all angles.
At its center, Aslan's bloodshot eyes flicked rapidly. Dozens. But it didn't matter. Kal's blade danced free inside the killing storm.
Cling-clang-clang-clang-CLANG-CLANG!
Sparks scattered from dozens of tentacles. The curved sword traced a blurred sphere that expanded, then vanished. In the ricochet of crimson fury, Aslan murmured low:
"Here I come."