"Is it done?"
A whisper of hope escaped my lips, but it was abruptly cut short as a wave of impending danger coursed through my very being. Almost in eerie harmony, Sidus's alarmed cry echoed through the air. But his warnings were futile, time betrayed us.
"No! Watch out!"
Everything happened in but a mere moment. The Shade's form which was obstructed from our view suddenly revealed itself. Gone were the monster's middle-aged human features, as it had shed whatever human semblance it once had, instead, what emerged was a nightmarish amalgamation of obsidian flesh, writhing tentacles, and malevolent eyes.
The monstrous entity retained a twisted semblance of humanity, its nightmarish shape almost humanoid, albeit contorted and deformed. Its wriggling, slimy appendages bore a multitude of eyes, with each one carrying a maddening aura. Just merely looking at them made my mind swirl and soul space shake.
Seemingly furious, the Shade's many eyes fixated upon its own form, as if inspecting its monstrous transformation. In an instant, one of its countless tentacles lashed out with unimaginable swiftness, aiming for Ynos, and trailing behind it an aura of suffocating abyssal darkness.
Ynos appeared to be just beyond the reach of the tentacle's attack, his instincts driving him to evade the impending strike. I immediately initiated my teleportation in a desperate attempt to whisk him to safety, but alas, my efforts were in vain.
The tentacle's grasp never closed around him, yet the malevolent darkness it carried did. My heart sank and my breath stopped in a moment that felt like an eternity, right before my thread of cosmic mana could fully envelop him, right before my eyes, my brother vanished into the void...
"NO!!"
My mind, once a battlefield of strategy and calculation, instantly turned into a chaotic storm of raw emotion. In that harrowing moment, the tight grip I always tried to hold on my composure shattered completely, and the floodgates of instinctual fury burst open.
For the first time since I arrived in this world, I completely surrendered to the primal urges that surged within me, pushing back every rational thought and drowning it out by a single, deafening command that reverberated through my mind: KILL!
My body became a vessel of uncontrollable force, propelled forward as if guided by some external power. In that moment, everything around me seemed to fade into obscurity—Breta, Sidus, even the very concept of strategy vanished into the abyss. It was as if my entire being had been overtaken by an overwhelming surge of instinctual fury, drowning out all reason.
Within the depths of my soul space, a tempestuous turmoil raged, the very essence of my mana churning and roiling in response to the ferocity of my rage. With a visceral intensity, I hurled myself at the abominable amalgamation of eyes and tentacles, a maelstrom of violence incarnate.
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I tore into its grotesque form with an abandon that defied the laws of self-preservation. Mana coated my entire body. My claws rended its flesh, my teeth sank deep into its obsidian exterior, and every fiber of my being was consumed by a singular, all-consuming urge: KILL!
In that maddened state, the pain that should have seared through me felt distant, the sensation of scales breaking and blood flowing seemed inconsequential. My entire existence was consumed by the overwhelming instinct to obliterate the grotesque creature before me. Lightning crackled and danced around my form, an electrifying manifestation of my unyielding wrath, incessantly striking the abomination.
The poison mana I wielded took on a malevolent life of its own, eagerly devouring the creature's obsidian exterior with a macabre satisfaction. Water and earth mana surged forth, their symbiotic dance further ravaging the monster's form, as they complemented the poison element. Even the few little dormant darkness elements within me stirred to life, eagerly joining the onslaught, seeking every vulnerable crevice to sow chaos and destruction within the creature's body.
The Shade appeared utterly caught off guard by the ferocity of my relentless assault. Its attempts to summon the abyssal darkness were met with swift and unyielding opposition. My heightened senses had transformed into an otherworldly focus, as if I had entered a trance-like state. Every subtle shift in its aura, every flicker of intent, was met with an instantaneous response from my claws, teeth, and mana, swiftly annihilating its attempts to launch an offensive.
The creature's tentacles, once its primary means of attack, now seemed feeble and futile against my unyielding onslaught. No matter how it contorted and writhed, its appendages found no respite, each movement met with an immediate and devastating response.
My assault raged on, wounds accumulating on my body, but my concern for them was a mere whisper in the tempest of my emotions. 'HOW DARE IT! HOW DARE THAT BASTARD! , HOW DARE IT TAKE MY LITTLE BROTHER, RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY EYES!' The fury within me burned brighter, threatening to consume all reason and restraint.
Rage, like a relentless storm, pounded at the fragile walls of my sanity, and I found myself increasingly unwilling to control or suppress it. Why should I? What purpose did restraint serve in the face of such an overwhelming, seething anger? Let the cosmos itself feel the tremors of my fury, for all I cared.
Cosmic mana descended from the boundless void, distorting the very fabric of the universe around us. Reality itself seemed to quiver and warp, but my focus remained singular: to exact vengeance for my fallen sibling.
"Aether!"
"Aether, stop!"
"AETHER!"
Breta's voice echoed faintly in my mind, a mere whisper drowned amidst the tempest of emotions raging within me. But it was as if my mind had erected a barrier, a wall of unyielding anger and sorrow that shut out all else. Nothing penetrated that fortress of raw emotion except for the sight of the abomination's mangled form before me.
Its multitude of tentacles thrashed in a desperate attempt to defend itself, each strike leaving fresh wounds, some perilously close to severing my limbs. Yet, the pain was irrelevant, the injuries inconsequential. Nothing mattered in the face of this all-consuming rage.
"Why won't you die! Die! Die! Die! Die! DIE YOU, BASTARD!"
It was regenerating. Each strike I made, each wound I opened, they all swiftly closed. It felt to me as if the bastard was mocking me, mocking my attacks, mocking my rage. And so in my blind fury, I did something I would have no doubt never done If I was completely sane.
I ate it…