The Formless One
The Formless One
"Aargh, uwaaah!"
She screamed. The girl's frame was small, a match for her clear, resonant voice. Though her chest and body already showed the unmistakable curves of womanhood, her clothes and manner were still very much those of a girl.
The weapon she swung as she screamed was far from a match for her small frame. It was a hideous thing—a grotesque axehead mounted on an equally ugly haft: the two-handed axe Ereta had once wielded.
The air-splitting shriek of the axe carried a monstrous strength no girl her size should have. Driven by an ancient god's power that defied reason, the weapon tore the charging monster apart into a messy spray.
Crunch! Craaack!
Split beyond recognition, the creature slammed into the floor. The axe was embedded and wouldn't come free easily.
"Ugh, fuck!"
As the girl strained to free the axe, more monsters rushed her—creatures clad in bone, swinging shards of sharp bone like armored knights.
These were not even the Formless One's followers; they were monsters it had shaped from all the things it had consumed.
One monster's bone shard met the girl's upraised arm as she let go of the axe.
With a sound like striking hard scales, Angie's skin split and blood welled up.
"Grrk, hraaah!"
Thwack!
A front kick. A simple kick with no technique at all. Yet its effect was undeniable. The monster, its chest caved in, was hurled backward without a sound.
"Hey, crazy woman! Are you okay?!"
As the monster tumbled away, Angie shouted through clenched teeth. Her forearm burned with pain and bled freely, but with her elevated Constitution, it was nothing she couldn't endure.
What about Ereta? Blood flowed from the gash in her abdomen, and from a wound on her forehead that dripped into her eyes. Her muscles throbbed with exhaustion; her face was pale.
Once, Ereta had been a priest who could survive having her head pierced. Now, she was merely human—a fragile creature who could die from a bad gut wound, let alone a head blow.
"I'm fine."
She was acutely aware of her own state. Even physically, she was at her limit.
She could not swing a weapon endlessly like Aslan, nor could she take every attack head-on as Angie did.
Even the power of her weapon fell short now that her strength had diminished. Her techniques needed to be rebuilt.
But not now. There was no time for that now. Even if there were time, would it be possible? Could she even discard a way of living she'd known all her life?
Ereta didn't know. She only groaned, clutching her wounds, sheltered by a girl shorter than herself.
It was frustrating—infuriating, even—but Angie was undeniably stronger than Ereta.
"Then just hang on a little longer! I'll figure something out!"
Craaack!
Angie swung her fist, swallowing a breath—the blow crumpled a monster's skull and it collapsed. She fought desperately in that crush.
She punched, kicked, and even head-butted. Blood from her split forehead painted her face red, but the girl paid it no mind and kept moving.
Her skin was tough, her bones hard. Her heightened Constitution had elevated her body beyond human norms.
Of course, that alone doesn't win a fight. She felt a sense of responsibility—not as a Last Descendant of the Ancient God, but as Aslan's companion. And also a responsibility born from having a body far superior to most humans.
She had grown up poor, but Belus Alpen was never a bad city. If anything, it had a certain elitism of the better sort. The nobles there tended not to shirk their duties, and a poor girl like her had grown up watching that.
With power comes commensurate responsibility. That responsibility cannot be cast aside.
The girl acted on that thought alone. To keep Ereta, softer and more fragile than she was, from dying, she willingly became a shield of flesh.
With a whomp, a monster's body burst apart. The force of her wide-swinging fist was tremendous, but so was the opening it left. A tentacle struck at that gap.
Crunch!
Angie raised her arm to block the tentacle—stacking one arm behind the other, catching it with her elbow. But the Formless One's attack was not so gentle that it could be stopped so easily.
Snap!
"Ggk."
Her arm bent. The bone broke at the elbow. Angie's face twisted, tears welling at the corners of her eyes, but she endured. Even as tears trailed down her cheeks, Ereta's thrown hand axe forced the tentacle back.
A hopeless fight. A battle with no guarantee of victory. Angie had no strategy to overturn the situation, and Ereta lacked the strength to resolve it. All they could do was hold on tenaciously and wait for Aslan to end it.
Amid the writhing tentacles and countless monsters, Angie panted, retreating while clutching her broken elbow.
Something changed.
—Ruuuuumble
A deep boom resounded beneath their feet, and the ground shook. The tremor was not strong, but its source was obvious. Angie stared at the monsters, anticipating what would follow.
The monsters convulsed. The vessels that had pulsed ceaselessly from the feet connecting them to the floor went still, and they writhed in agony.
It wasn't just the monsters. The tentacles and the organs that had spewed magic also began drooping limply. The simultaneous change was a clear sign of death.
At the center of it all, the most dramatic change came from the column. It was crumbling from within, collapsing strengthlessly like a bundle of dry straw set alight.
Angie's mouth fell slightly open at the sight, and Ereta let out a sigh, pressing a hand firmly to the wound in her abdomen that felt as if her guts might spill out.
The change was unmistakable. Aslan must have done something in the cellar below.
Both felt relief and amazement.
"He did it."
"Ha, fuck... I thought I was gonna die."
Wiping the blood from her face, Angie steadied Ereta.
*
Spells surpassing a fireball in raw power are rare. Even when they exist, they are seldom more efficient than casting a fireball. To the point that game communities debated whether anything surpassed it, the fireball had become the standard for destructive magic, the benchmark.
And he had detonated one directly inside the heart.
The outcome was certain. But before he could witness that certainty, Aslan first felt something else invade him.
In the barest instant before the detonation—so brief it was less than a heartbeat—the heart's flesh clamped around Aslan's arm, not merely adhering but burrowing in.
The moment the flesh bored into his arm, Aslan felt the Formless One's consciousness flooding in.
It was dangerous. Extremely so. He couldn't be sure the priest's information was entirely accurate, but this was the Formless One's 'audience.'
In the slowed world, Aslan recalled Priest Niel's words.
'Its audience is said to be insanely obscure and destructive. A human soul and body cannot endure it. On rare occasions, those who withstand it or see through its nature become its priests.'
Become a priest. That was something Aslan did not want, a situation he had to avoid.
Even if he didn't become a priest, he'd be consumed by the Formless One. Aslan remembered that he had to resist the conversion while enduring it.
But how? By the time he could think of a way, the situation was already spiraling.
Aslan felt the physical intrusion of flesh burrowing into his arm, and alongside it, a psychic foreignness.
His consciousness blurred. His eyes grew unfocused and hazy.
On the arm plunged into the heart, his mana tattoo flared to life, and the inscribed array conjured a fireball according to his mind's last command.
But separate from that, Aslan's consciousness was being devoured by the Formless One.
A destructive audience no human soul could endure. Aslan felt the truth of those words.
While his vision twisted, Aslan saw countless phantasms. Amid the phantoms that must have been memories, he barely held onto his sense of self.
In a word, it was mental agony.
Countless memories flickered past. A span of time no single human's years or mind could bear swept through him.
It was no attack to dodge; the memories poured in, and the vessel was Aslan's psyche.
His right arm grew hot, and inside the heart, flame kindled. With a shimmer of heat haze, scorching heat wrapped his arm.
It burst. Even within that instant, the fireball, committed to detonation, seared his arm away.
Though his pain sensitivity had been dulled by overuse of Equalization, Aslan groaned amid the accelerated perception—the burning felt like his own flesh being flayed.
He had done it because detonating it on the outer surface seemed pointless, but the process exceeded his expectations.
As the Formless One's countless memories seeped into his mind and his arm blazed, Aslan's consciousness gradually sharpened.
Pain roused his mind. His receding awareness snapped back. The agony slowly subsided. Aslan, floundering between physical and mental torment, barely managed to come to his senses.
What Aslan saw when he came to was something entirely unexpected.
He saw a city. Not a city of Geladrion. No Belus in Geladrion could ever look like this.
Towering skyscrapers and buildings that seemed to ring them in, each leaking white and crimson light.
Power lines stretching like spider silk across the city, and glowing streetlamps.
The city felt utterly familiar. He couldn't claim to know it, but it was deeply familiar. It was a city on Earth.
He couldn't pinpoint the exact region, but that much was certain.
'Why this... now?'
It looked like some western city. Just as Aslan drifted between shock, bewilderment, and unease, the memory shifted.
The changed memory now showed other landscapes. The scenery changed roughly every two seconds.
A futuristic space city, viewed as if from above. A world tree that looked straight out of fantasy. A religious city nestled against a massive mountain. A hell realm vivid with Buddhist hues. A near-future city, and more.
As countless vistas flashed past, Aslan felt only bewilderment. He could neither guess their purpose nor what they were.
The scene shifted amid the chaos. The hazy phantoms lifted. What appeared last was a place Aslan knew.
Geladrion. The land where evil gods lurked, the land Aslan had lived in for twelve years. A vast continent split into upper and lower halves, centered on the ancient empire's heart where time itself was frozen and pale.
The moment Aslan recognized Geladrion, the phantasm ended.
Because the flesh that had burrowed into his arm had been incinerated by the erupting flames.
Accelerated cognition snapped back to normal, and with an ear-splitting roar came searing pain as his arm was torn apart.
KABOOOOM!
The blast and heat. As the fireball's heat engulfed everything, Aslan rolled across the floor. His right arm, inscribed with the mana tattoo, was shredded by the explosion.
With his tattooed right arm gone, he could no longer use stored spells, but it didn't matter. Aslan always kept a scroll of Equalization on hand for such contingencies.
But Aslan did not use Equalization. Instead, he gripped his charred shoulder stump and fixed his eyes ahead.
There lay the heart that had shown him those incomprehensible memories. The heart of the Formless One's priest.
The stench of the scorched heart made Aslan's stomach churn, but he couldn't look away.
The column directly above the heart collapsed, and with its crash the cellar shook.
Even as the surroundings heaved violently, Aslan's gaze remained fixed on the heart he had just destroyed.
'What the hell was that...?'
The dead priest could offer no answer. Aslan gasped for breath, left without one.