Chapter 340
Roar of a King (XXI)
A grandly misted and black-colored apparition shuffled from seemingly thin air and shaped itself from a formless blob into a giant, twenty-feet-tall behemoth. Its shape, however, was strange; it had no distinct head, instead a gaping maw extending directly from its torso, thousands of teeth orbiting the insides and framing a long, lashing, purple tongue.
Further, six arms extended from its torso, though none resembled one another too much--their shapes, sizes, and even orientations in a few cases were all different, creating a strange, uncanny valley sensation of asymmetry. It walked on two uneven legs and was hunched forward, its skin tightly wound round its flesh, scaly in some parts, smooth in others.
It didn’t appear to have eyes, but Cain then zeroed in on the gaping maw that yawned open as the monster roared--the purple tongue shook suddenly as dozens of eyes ‘opened up’ along its surface, squirming and trembling and eyeing toward him.
“YOU, A PUNY HUMAN, DARES TRY AND CONTROL ME?!!!” the voice came from the gaping maw and it made it seem as though the eyes themselves were talking. If not talking, however, they were definitely gesturing in lieu of the creature’s arms that remained flaccid throughout the ordeal. “YOU DEMAND DEATH, HUMAN!!”
“... can I ask you something first?”
“HUMPH, I SHALL AWARD YOU ONE QUESTION BEFORE TAKING YOUR HEAD OFF!”
“Great,” Cain exclaimed softly. “So, the question: who the fuck are you?”
“...”
“...”
“AAAAAGGHHHHH!!!” the creature roared in anger and flashed forward at the speed Cain wasn’t expecting, lashing out with its many arms and bending spacetime in the process.
Though surprised, Cain reacted quickly and dodged, retreating while firing off a barrage of skills himself. The creature brushed them off easily and continued barreling forward, flailing its arms about violently with seemingly no order or direction.
Cain wasn’t shocked that the creature easily ignored his attacks as they were mostly just normal skills. Similarly, he was in no hurry to defeat the creature--though it was definitely strong, it wasn’t life threatening, as far as Cain could tell, at least. This was a good opportunity to experiment a bit with his ‘newfound power’ against an opponent that likely isn’t on the level of Divine.
While thrashing about, the creature continued to roar and yell many-a-line about how Cain should just ‘stop resisting’ and ‘accept his proper death’ and ‘allow himself be sanctified to the great lord’ and many, many, many ‘insolent fool’ plus ‘insert a self-stroking ego statement’. In fact, within five minutes, the creature had yapped on so incessantly, that Cain got a headache. A genuine, hand-to-heart headache. Something he hadn’t experienced in a while.
“FOOL, RESISTENCE IS USELESS! I SHALL--”
“SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!” it was Cain’s turn to lose it, as he fueled a fist with a good chunk of his Mana and rammed it into one of the creature’s arms, obliterating it entirely. The latter yelped and reeled back in shock, one of its arms entirely gone while Cain growled angrily and huffed. “JUST HOW MUCH CAN YOU FUCKING YAP?!! JESUS CHRIST, I’VE BEEN TO SERMONS WITH FEWER WORDS SPOKEN!!”
“Y-Y-YOU--”
“YOU, YOU, YOU WHAT?!! SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY!! Can’t you just fucking fight like a fucking normal fucking person you fucking fuck of a fuckling?!!!”
“THAT--”
“STOP YELLING FUCKER!! USE YOUR INSIDE VOICE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!”
“I--I’m sorry, I just wanted to say--”
“No, no, fuck off! You’ve said enough!!” Cain was relentless. “So, now it’s time you listened--for the rest of our fight, you’re not to say a single word, alright? All you need to do is shut the fuck up and fight, alright? Got it?”
“Uh...”
“It’s a yes or no question, big, ugly fuck--did you get it?!”
“I got it!”
“Good,” Cain took a deep breath to calm himself down and pushed out a smile. “Let’s have a proper fight, then.”
And for a hot minute, the two did have a proper fight. The creature attacked silently and Cain defended silently, and the two exchanged blows in a proper setting befitting a fight. But then a hot minute passed. And as though it had a memory of a goldfish, the yapping began yet again.
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“HA HA, INSOLENT FOOL!! YOU CAN MERELY DEFEND, CAN YOU NOT? I SHALL EAT YOUR HEART!!”
“...”
“YOU ARE BUT A TOY FOR MY AMUSEMENT!”
“...”
“WHEN THE COSMOS WEEPS, I SHALL LAUGH!”
“...”
“MUHA HA HA HA, HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE MY PLAYTHING?”
“...”
“I SHALL DOMINATE YOUR SOUL, YOU FOOLISH THING!!”
“...”
“FEEL THE WRATH OF THE THINGS YOU DO NOT UNDERSTAND!”
“...”
“I AM SIMPLY BEYOND YOUR COMPREHENSION!”
“...”
“WHY... WHY AREN’T YOU DEFENDING?!”
“...”
“HA HA HA, DID YOU FINALLY ACCEPT YOUR ROLE?!”
“...”
“INSOLENT FOOL, PICK UP A WEAPON AND FIGHT ME!”
“...”
“COWARD!”
“...”
“UH... HUMAN?”
“...”
“Are you there? Did... did I accidentally kill you?”
“...”
“Hey, human?”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!” a roar fueled by rage and anger and frustration blew open a cosmic hole in everything as Mana spilled out like a river. Cain pounced forward and, like a barbarian, pinned the massive creature onto the ground before simply using his fists to relentlessly beat it black and blue. “SHUT UP, SHUT UP, JESUS MAN, SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!”
“H-HEY! OUCH! HEY, STOP! THAT HURTS! HEY!!” Cain was deaf with rage, however, his fists continuing to rain over the creature’s body, opening wounds everywhere. “OUCH! HEY! STOP, IT REALLY HURTS! INSOLENT FOOL, FIGHT ME WITH HONOR!”
“FUCK YOU FUCKING TONGUE!!” Cain suddenly latched onto the massive, purple tongue and yanked it out with all his might. Surprisingly, he was unable to actually detach the thing, and instead moved the entire creature as though it was a leash. In the meantime, the creature screamed out in genuine pain.
“PLEASE, HUMAN! NO! I CAN’T SEE ANYTHING!!”
“FUCK YOUR MOM!” inspired by the moment, Cain began to swing the creature around by using the tongue as the leash. All the while, the creature yelped and cried and begged, but deaf still he was. At the same time, he began to laugh sadistically. Something primal inside of him was being sated, and the pent-up rage was slowly evaporating. The thing was, it wasn’t just the rage that the creature itself had inflicted; it was the overstay of many things in his life, one among them the fact that he was likely to become a centerpiece of a cosmic war.
He continued to lash out for nearly half an hour, until the creature was entirely unrecognizable--not it resembled an oversized blob with broken bones and dysfunctional organs. When he came back to his senses, even Cain cringed at the sight, realizing he’d pushed it a bit too far.
“Waa, waa,” the creature was... crying. It was a toddler’s cry, the ugly, loud kind. “I’m sorry! It hurts! It hurts! Please stop! It hurts! Waa...”
“... shit,” Cain sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Alright, I’ve stopped. Sorry. Took it too far.”
“Meanie... ah!! No, no meanie!”
“Tsk, stupid human! I didn’t think you for the kind that beats kids!” Te’gha suddenly reared his head and appeared on Cain’s shoulder, judging as per usual.
“Kids? He’s a kid?” Cain asked.
“Who else would be crying so harshly over a simple beating? Tsk.”
“... you?”
“Hey! I will scratch your eyes out!”
“Sure, sure,” Cain rolled his eyes as he took out several health potions and, after struggling for some time to find the creature’s maw amidst the morbidly distorted body, poured them directly down its throat. Its tongue was inflated, and its many eyes bore genuine human emotion--as well as tears. It was just... strange. What tears were to the creature, to Cain it looked like... drool. “So, do you submit to me, you big, dumb thing?”
“I submit! I submit! Just don’t hurt me anymore!”
“Good,” Cain took a deep breath. He actually felt a bit better and more relaxed after a beatdown, as though he’d aired out some distant grievances.
“You could have just asked nicely...”
“Huh?”
“N-nothing, nothing...”
“Can you shapeshift into something less disgusting and way smaller?”
“Y-yes...” a moment later, and the behemoth’s body was gone, replaced by... the exact replica of look, just in the size of a normal chicken. Cain was about to say something but sighed, holding back. It was... kind of cute, he mused. “Better?”
“Yeah. This big cat here is Te’gha,” Cain said.
“Who is a cat, stupid human?!”
“And I’m Cain. Who are you? And will you be around forever now?”
“I... I am Domin.”
“How on the nose.”
“And... uh, I will. If... if you keep using Domination Element... uh...”
“For a creature that’s supposed to represent the element of Domination, you aren’t very dominating,” Cain mused.
“It’s... it’s because... you’re scary...”
“...”
“...”
“Pfft, ha ha ha ha!!” Te’gha burst out into bellied laughter, rolling on Cain’s shoulder as the latter had a sour expression on his face. “Scary, he said, ha ha ha ha...!”
“Right, fine,” Cain sighed. “Welcome to the family, I guess? Hop on my other shoulder for now. That way you can balance out the weight that this fat cat holds.”
“Ha ha ha--hey, what did you say, stupid human?!!” Te’gha got rudely interrupted in the middle of his genuine laughter, while the creature nervously hopped onto Cain’s shoulder and settled there. A moment later, a window appeared in front of Cain informing him that he’d successfully dominated the element of Domination, a strange statement if there ever was one, and that he’d acquired access to the element permanently. Suddenly, Mana within him surged in blasting waves and he heaved his head upwards before roaring to dispel some of the weight.
His voice seemed to hold the weight of the world, the command of everything, as the spacetime around them began to collapse like shards of glass, bringing them all back into reality. His voice broke through further, and seemed empowered by something primal, something innate to a Divine, almost, as it carried forward, blasting through the world. He was back, he realized. Closing his eyes and settling down for a few moments, he opened them and looked down to see how everyone else was doing--but what welcomed him was a horror show. Nearly everyone was dead, and the few stragglers were being relentlessly hunted down by Quinn, the twins, and even Lear like they were animals.