Glenn hurriedly dodged to the side as another body hurtled in his direction, but it was too late, and it landed squarely on top of him. Glenn pushed the lifeless form aside, recognizing one of the tavern’s former patrons. The man’s head was hanging at an unnatural angle, a good chunk of his skull gone, his brain trickling down from the wound.
Glenn averted his eyes and wiped the blood off his hands on the corpse, instead returning his gaze to the chaotic scene inside the Auberge. The inn was filled with a cacophony of screams intertwined with the sound of weapons cutting flesh. Glenn protected his eyes as a flurry of wooden shards exploded, his heart racing as he searched for Sahro.
“Where did this idiot go?!?” Glenn muttered through his clenched teeth, his eyes widening as the kitchen erupted in an explosion, releasing a grotesque monstrosity and the fighters struggling against it. Glenn gasped and instinctively took a step back, horrified. His eyes were drawn first to the once-familiar face of the tavern's Boss, now lost within a nightmarish fusion of limbs, torsos, and heads. The abomination oozed blood and bits of flesh, resembling a horrifying amalgamation of human forms.
The monster was the size of a big truck, blood oozing off him alongside bits of flesh and bones. Limbs extended from every part of the monster, belonging to the old members of the staff and taking on grotesque angles. The arms and legs intertwined in a nightmarish manner, covered in teeth or desperate, bloodshot eyes. Some heads protruded, screaming painfully, while others were already partially merged with the fleshy body to create nightmarish faces of fused eyes, mouths, and other facial features.
A dozen mouths of the beasts opened to emit a horrific, otherworldly scream, a grotesque cacophony of bestial sounds mixed with the cries of agony from the humans making up the amalgam. The sound pierced through Glenn’s eardrums and sent him to his knees, the faces of the humans merged within the monster continuing to function to emit a constant stream of moans, screams, and pleas for help and mercy.
Glenn gritted his teeth and pushed himself up, shooting his Magic Bullet at the monster. It pierced a hole through its fleshy mass effortlessly, but the wound effortlessly closed, the strands of flesh reknitting themselves in a grotesque display of regeneration. Dozens of eyes of different sizes, each gleaming with madness and pain while blinking independently from each other.
The beast unleashed a deafening sound wave that sent Glenn reeling backward. Seizing the opportunity, a bloodied man attacked the creature with a curved sword covered in crimson light, uttering profanities in an unfamiliar tongue. His blade tore into the monster and carved a huge chunk of flesh off, a torrent of blood flooding out of the wound. The beast shrieked back and threw a bloated limb in retaliation to crush him.
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Sahro clenched his teeth and sent his Aura into his legs, reinforcing them so that he could jump above the bloated limb. He grinned widely as surged through his veins, his heart racing with excitement.
This whole thing felt like a fever dream. One moment, he was going back to see how the guys from the Church of Onnea were going to deal with the Auberge’s crew and the other, the Boss exploded with dark tentacles oozing with a black liquid that grabbed every single one of his colleagues. The result was that horrible, monstrous amalgam of flesh, a monster he could have never imagined, not even in his worst nightmares.
One of the two paladins had tried to nip the threat in the bud, just to end up grabbed by the tentacles who compressed him into a ball and threw him away, like a fleshy, horrible toy. Sahro wiped the blood off his forehead and dashed back into the action, his crimson Aura flaring up with each attack.
This was an opponent worth fighting, and nothing would stop him from defeating it.
***
Glenn rolled away as a wooden beam fell where he stood a second ago, his back drenched in cold sweat.
"Holy shit!” He cursed as he shot more Magic Bullets at the abomination. The creature didn’t seem to care too much, healing each wound easily. It was too concentrated on Sahro, who was cleaving huge chunks of flesh one after the other.
‘Well, see you in Hell, I guess,’ scoffed Diamanes, his words filled with resignation as he seemingly abandoned hope of Glenn's survival.
"What the fu–!" Glenn's protest was interrupted by a chunk of flesh landing on his shoulder, still writhing despite its separation from the main body. Panic surged through him as he frantically tossed the disgusting thing aside, before crushing it under his boot.
‘That's a Corrupted One. And a fairly strong one too, for your first time, remarked Diamanes casually, offering some grim insight.
"I HAD NOTICED, YEAH!" blurted Glenn aloud, not bothering to keep his inner voice hidden. Some chunks of flesh had fallen down the main body, creating some dog-sized monster lunging at the fighters. The minions were even more disturbing, as they had the faces and mouths of humans, biting down on people with human teeth.
Golden light flared up from one corner of the room, drawing in most of the flesh-dogs-minions and drawing Glenn’s attention. The other paladin, the one who didn’t end up crushed into a ball, was swinging a massive sword while protecting the priestess from earlier. The woman was kneeling on the ground, her hands clenched together while she chanted in some sort of holy ritual. The golden light was coming off her, so Glenn could only guess it was holy. That and the fact that she was a priestess of Onnea.
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Glenn averted his eyes and concentrated back on the main threat at hand, the abomination. He attempted to cast his Arcane Auger, but one of the flesh-dogs lunged at him to try and rip his face off. Glenn was pushed to the floor, the human-faced dog biting down on his sword savagely. The dog was clawing down through Glenn’s clothes, carving bloody gashes in his skin. Glenn roared and pushed with all his strength, his sword carving through the monster dog’s head and cleanly cleaving it in half. The corpse collapsed on Glenn’s chest, trembling with post-mortem tremors.
Glenn heaved as he pushed the corpse back and used his sword to help himself up. He fell to a knee, his heart racing madly.
‘What should I do? An Arcane Auger? Will it be useless? Shit, I can’t afford to touch one of my allies!’ Glenn coughed out a lump of blood, ducking as someone flew past him and crashed on the wall in a bloody explosion, his upper body missing. Glenn hurriedly dragged himself behind a pillar, heaving with difficulty. He looked down at his hands covered in blood, his vision blurry. His heart was thumping loudly in his chest, the blood continuing to ooze out of his wounds. The sound of swords against the flesh, the bones breaking, and the human, distorted screams of the creature…
Glenn gasped as he struggled to even breathe, his hand tightly clenched around the hilt of his sword. He froze as a thought crossed his mind.
‘Should I run away?’ He considered that option for a second, before dismissing it, his racing heart pressing him, ‘No, I can’t abandon Sahro. I can’t run away from my enemies, or I’ll always run away…’
Glenn clenched his teeth and leaned on the pillar he was hiding behind. He coughed and struggled to stand back up, stumbling on his feet. Time seemed to slow down as Glenn’s mind diligently sought a path to survival. If running wasn’t an option, that meant he could only do one thing instead.
Kill that fucking monster.
He took a deep breath, like a man who was about to drown and dashed out of his hiding place. The Corrupted was fighting back against Sahro and the other mercenaries that were resting in the Auberge, all while absorbing the corpses of the fallen to grow and create more human-faced dogs. The ever-expanding mass of red flesh shifted as a dozen pairs of eyes were stuck to him, an easy target.
Glenn felt his consciousness about to slip away, but he couldn’t care less. The sounds of the battle and the screams of pain disappeared, replaced by the sole beats of his pounding heart and the irregular rhythm of his breath. The Boss’ distorted visage was protruding from the grotesque amalgam, painted with hatred and anger as it looked at him.
The silver-clad paladin, bloodied and battered, roared in defiance as he fended off another brutal assault, his dented shield a testament to his valiant efforts. He screamed something about needing a few more minutes, but Glenn's ears failed to catch the words. The paladin's helmet hung askew, revealing a desperate face. Glenn suspected that capturing the accursed tavern's staff was supposed to be a mere formality for the paladin, and now, both he and his fellow paladin had met dire fates, fighting the otherworldly monster.
Sahro joined the chorus of roars with his battle cry, covered in his crimson Aura as he relentlessly carved through the monstrous abomination. The creature screeched in pain, flinging Sahro through the air with a ferocious, bony slap. The priestess neared the culmination of her sacred ritual, her holy aura radiating pure divinity. The Corrupted sensed her presence and intensified its attacks, the paladin's once-silver armor now stained with viscous, scarlet blood.
Amidst the chaos, Glenn finally grasped his role in the unfolding mess. A celestial cloud of stars shimmered within his right hand, pulsating with latent power. On the other side of the abomination, a robed figure pressed her palm against its grotesque form, or what could pass for its back.
In response, the creature contorted, bending in half as a shockwave went through his body, its upper body pinned to the ground as a torrent of blood cascaded from the wound. As if by design, the monster now lay before Glenn.
Glenn slowly extended his hand and released the small, luminescent orb of energy fueled with incredible quantities of Mana. The sphere shot out and settled into the monster’s flesh. As the spell drained his entire reserve of Mana, Glenn's whispered incantation resounded louder than any scream.
"Implosion."
A blinding flash enveloped everyone present, the deafening shockwave sending them sprawling. While the monstrous abomination may or may have not been gravely harmed, Glenn's hope had been to at least disrupt its senses. As the world gradually reappeared before their eyes, every fighter beheld a smoldering, perfectly circular hole penetrating the monster's body, wide of two meters. Hesitating to celebrate their apparent victory, the eyes of the fighters widened in horror as the abomination began to rise back from the ground, tendrils of flesh growing to fill the void that Glenn created.
“ROAAAARRRR!!!”
A seismic shockwave flung everyone off their feet, the creature lurching toward Glenn with unbridled fury. His Mana reserve empty, drained by Implosion's use, Glenn held his short sword with uncertainty, facing the grotesque behemoth. Perhaps Diamanes had been right all along, and this was indeed the day of his demise. In this dire moment, as Glenn stood helpless, he could see no salvation in sight and held up his blade in a last desperate stand.
Yet, a mere second before the fleshy hand could descend upon Glenn's face, a brilliant light descended upon the creature, crushing it to the ground. The monstrosity writhed in agony, its human faces contorted in horrified screams.
The priestess, her hood now down, radiated a silvery luminance as she hovered above the abomination. Her right hand emitted a beam of radiant light that subdued the creature, leaving it struggling to even utter a scream.
As her feet touched the smoldering mass, her very presence exerted pressure upon the loathsome entity. Uttering cryptic words in an unfamiliar language, the priestess pressed her hand down, and the abomination ignited in a holy, white flame.
Within seconds, the colossal monstrosity, along with its dog-sized minions, vanished into the white inferno, leaving nothing but smoldering remains.
Exhaustion overcame Glenn as his body swayed and his knees gave way. He collapsed on the floor, a pool of blood forming around him.
"Well, that was over quickly," he muttered, his disbelief palpable.
And then, without further ceremony, he abandoned himself to the comfort of the darkness.