Run (5)
Munch, munch, munch... splashh.
"..." Everyone kept absolute silence as they watched the cultivator stop moving, with his back fully opened like the other who was slammed against the door, and with blood making a pool around both bodies. Nobody knew if the sounds of one's footsteps would be enough to get themselves killed. But by watching their roommate get eaten and killed like that without even doing a single thing, one could only wonder.
“Grah- hum! Grrrhgh~,” the monster stood up after having had enough. It ‘gazed’ at the others but not at the same time, and without doing anything else, its beyond 2 meters tall figure started leaving. Watching its bare bum as it left the room, everyone tried keeping absolute silence even more. Those who felt the insides of their throats itchy, the need to clear them up, or felt like gulping down had a mental struggle restraining themselves.
Ciemnosc, on the other hand, was making no sound whatsoever. Though he was breathing, and it was apparent, his nose made no sound, as did his throat or even whenever he slightly moved. After some minutes went by. Those 4 who had accompanied one of the bodies now on the ground were feeling the most nervous and anxious for a good reason.
Ciemnosc moved slightly forwards and stood just 3 steps behind the line formation they had accidentally made before. The one nearest to him was trembling. The cultivator looked down at the 2 corpses and was clearly about to lose it. Looking at him, Ciemnosc was tranquil, and his eyes barely had any sclera visible. Watching over the trembling cultivator, Ciemnosc could notice how the latter was losing his head and…
“GAAAAAAH!” Suddenly, the cultivator to the left of the one about to lose his mind shouted. He was voicing all his frustration, fear, and panic. His survival instinct was undoubtedly useless, as he held his head instead of his mouth to continue screaming until he felt it was all out of his system. But, by then…
Step step step… STEP STEP STEP STEP STEP- TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP TAP…
“Gasp!” The screamer finally recuperated, but it was too late. The footsteps from the very fucking same monster came back, running and sounding more than clear to the ears of everyone in the room.
“!” Their eyes opened wide, looking at the front, already imagining how the screamer would have his body tackled down. And then his back probably eaten out as well. But Ciemnosc, with a tiny frown, soundlessly stepped backwards and away from the trembling cultivator, who was now actually feeling relieved, as if he felt like he was saved from hell…
The monster’s footsteps became sounds of tapping as its tall figure rushed back towards them. A door that was just opening, clearly incapable of hearing it come, was slammed close by its right hand as it passed by it. It continued towards Ciemnosc’s room, however, and it did so by crawling and running like a quadruped animal.
In just a short breath period of time, it arrived once more at their room, whereas the door was already broken. The monster jumped and tackled… the cultivator nearest to Ciemnosc!
“Ooog- aaah… nooo- kuw- aaaahh!!” The screaming started again. This time, the monster wasn’t slow and directly kissed its victim to shut him up before turning him around to eat his back upside down. Clothes were ignored, simply taken in along flesh and pieces of bones. This time, as the cultivator was slammed on the wall right behind Ciemnosc, he could turn his head around and observe the monster’s work. But, at the very least, the cultivator managed to send a deathly technique out before being tackled and then fell at the mercy of his aggressor.
The deathly technique consisted of sending a few blazing tongues of flames through a short distance. And when they landed on the wall next to the door, they immediately began melting down. But at the same time, howling sounds could be heard from all over the ‘place’ they were trapped in. Shortly after, footsteps sounded from afar. Every single one of those sounds was, without a doubt, directed towards them!
“...” Without saying much, others stood up and took steps out of the room. Looking back at the rest, they nodded at them before disappearing into the distance, already out of sight. Only Ciemnosc could scan the 400 meters surrounding him once the door was broken down like a lock impeding him from surveying. It worked the same with other rooms’ doors, he still couldn’t see through structures, but he could sense everything in that range as long as it wasn’t obstructed by sight. And if he concentrated his Spirt Sense, he could even directly shoot out his awareness to scan an immensely long pathway.
Ciemnosc had already been scanning all possible pathways through corridors, halls, and quirky, zigzagging hallways. Seeing someone else feasting wasn’t as good as ‘feasting’ to one’s heart’s contents. Besides, Conflagrate realm cultivators were already tasteless, and only Creatures were worth eating at that level.
After one cultivator left, another followed. Thus, the room quickly emptied out, leaving only Ciemnosc and the young girl from before who couldn’t move now despite knowing what she had to do to survive. Or at least attempt to.
“I- I can- I can’t, no, I can’t…” Ciemnosc set his gaze on her, which she quickly noticed. Looking up at him, slightly taller than regular, the young girl began tearing up again. But she didn’t back down. She held her ground as she begged with her eyes. Unbeknownst to only herself.
Step- click-pshift. Phhshk!
“Ak.. aaa-ak… kk…” The young girl was stabbed by Ciemnosc’s right hand with his Claws Out. He took hold of her right shoulder with his left hand, also in a claw, but without hurting her shoulder as his right hand honorably crushed her heart. She looked up, and his eyes looked down at her, and she suddenly felt as if she had fallen into a warm embrace. Despite both: the cold of the room, now trying to seep into her dying body, and the cold that her body was growing in.
“...” Ciemnosc said nothing, simply letting his right hand remain in her body, her chest already motionless as her life was too headstrong, and remained in her eyes, unlike the rest of her body. At last, Ciemnosc exclaimed to her while lowering his face to hers. He took his right hand out of her chest and pinched her chin with it, his tiny claws’ tips burying in her pale skin. “Shhhh.”
Kissing her lips flatly, Ciemnosc placed his right palm on her chest, where his Voón Link peeked out and began eating her away. Her clothes and body were absorbed, and devoured by him, of course. Her filth was cleansed, and she was granted Ciemnosc’s kiss as a gift.
The last thing she could live out of… was the presence of that devilishly handsome face and the pain he caused her dissipating very quickly.
After giving her clemency, Ciemnosc’s skin absorbed the blood plastered on him around his right arm, and stepped out of the room. He was just about to run for it in a particular direction. When 2 of the 3 ‘corpses’ left behind in the room began moving.
“...” Tilting his head to the right, Ciemnosc saw the first cultivator to ‘have died’ raised into the air remaining stagnant as if some string was pulling his spine. But when it lifted its head, and Ciemnosc saw it directly, he saw the same countenance as the other monster before. Teeth came out of all its holes, but only one tongue and its set of lips was pretty thin and delicate, as if having gone through a famish.
… Step - step - step - step!
Ciemnosc, of course, rushed the fuck out as a swarm of monsters came right towards the room. His Spirit Sense could already sense them, and so could they perceive his Spirit Sense as he escaped. They were annoyed by it, but after noticing that it wouldn’t go away, they proceeded to ignore it; and simply headed over to the room he was ‘transported’ to.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
“AAAAKKGHH!” - “KYaaaAAAAAAAAAHHH!” - “Augh, aaawwrrggh…” - “AH! Please help me, fellow cultivator! PLEASE!”- “AAAH, NO NO n-, mnnmhmmgmhm…!!” - “AAARRWWGHHAAA!! DIEEE!!” - “Nooooooo! Aaaaaaaah!!!”
Ciemnosc took to his feet and used his entire bodily strength to run. He was careful not to make any noise, even as he made small cracks on the floor wherever he stepped. From time to time, some cultivators would, unfortunately, step into his path and become messes of limbs and screens of blood left behind. His front became covered by their blood quickly, and whatever was not on his clothes was disposed of, consumed by his skin.
But the main attraction that kept his attention, without counting his Spirit Sense taking into account everything else, was the scenes of countless rooms being massacred of their inhabitants. There was this patron, however. In each room, people that knew each other, more or less, were placed together. It wasn’t like they were all friends or even knowns. But they, at least, didn’t hate each other to death, to say the least.
Ciemnosc concluded that people who were really attached to one another were placed together, and those who were more or less friendly with or barely known. In the worst cases, they were placed with people they didn’t know, and it could all be seen by how there was no sign of inner struggle before the lights dimmed or amidst the ongoing global massacre.
For example, the young girl and the brother who he killed, they were obviously those who were very attached to each other. But they had only some who seemed more or less knowns to them both. Only Ciemnosc was the stranger here. And Ciemnosc was why their room, unlike others, was brutally slaughtered without knowing how or why.
Naturally, instead of letting enemies meet each other and die, or at least those who had friction between them. People were placed, somehow, with those they were comfortable with. This wasn’t a tactic to play with people’s lives, but to… according to some ‘rules’... manage to eat away to their heart’s content. Only Ciemnosc, perhaps, was aware of such things. But it didn’t matter as he moved through corridors and compact hallways.
Moving along, watching many get slaughtered, eaten, and then converted into whatever those monsters were, Ciemnosc also gained more information. Whenever one became a monster, one of those things, they would have their power increased and even hold mysterious capabilities. Simply, they were no longer humans… or living beings.
But even then, they could still somehow grow more potent. It wasn’t a type of cultivation. And it was more like how Creatures end up going through a mutation. Only. The ‘mutation’ was secured, and all they had to do was to eat human bodies nonstop. Ciemnosc didn’t know if it was only humans, but he could only get to that thought since only humans and those monsters were present.
As long as they didn’t stop eating and hunting for more, they could grow tongues, collect more feet and sharpen them, and even gain more ‘substance’ for their lips. Their lips would acquire any existent color, depending on the skin color of those they ate the most. While their ships would only increase to a limited amount, and from then on, they would simply start getting more powerful.
From some monsters who were being treated like divine figures by other monsters, Ciemnosc could tell they would easily rip off his flesh as long as they tried it…
Keeping his feet moving, Ciemnosc quickly left the area where rooms and so many walls, structures, and doors trapped a couple million cultivators at the very least. Their number was already this immense, to begin with, but what he ended up occasioning by opening the door to this place became something grander than he ever thought it would be. How could he know that the hollow coldness below a mountain was such an unholy place?
He couldn’t be blamed. If he went up instead of down back then. He would’ve just been intercepted. And even more so when he was that close to the Moribund Yearning Cult, one of the ‘major’ organizations. His enemies could only be savvy and not report ‘every single thing’ they do while attempting to take Ciemnosc out of their systems. Quite literally.
And now, as Ciemnosc ran, he came across another empty space. His feet could still walk on something, which he couldn’t discern, but he could still run. Thus, he kept running. He now found himself in an endless darkness. One vastly different from the one within him. That thought, however, somehow made a little rage dwelling within him grow a bit more.
Ciemnosc found himself running even after half an hour. The sights from before were no longer his concern, as all he could see and do was black and run, respectively. But at some point, he suddenly saw someone in white, intangible, standing hundreds of meters before him. With the sight of this ‘person’ - Ciemnosc realized that this wasn’t a flat surface. There were ‘hills’ in between, and he was just a few hills away from that ‘person’ in white.
Step- laaa…
Ciemnosc stopped as soon as he noticed the person. Only his right leg was about to make the last step to stop himself completely. But suddenly, the person from afar appeared right before him. Its body was languid and several meters long but had a normal-sized head and arms. As it bent at an impossible speed, the same at which it had closed in on Ciemnosc, it tapped Ciemnosc with its left index finger.
Wraaaaaa- crrrrrrr.
Ciemnosc felt his body pushed backwards, the person in white disappearing as he once again began falling, this time rearwards. Yet, just as he was starting to fall. From above, he saw the image of that person in white once again.
It had medium-short hair length for a male, jet black in color but also as if it was dried up while maintaining an impossible smoothness. Its skin was of a pale, beige color, while its eyes were like those of a doll, with a mouth that had no lips but was wrinkled all over and opened up to reveal… teeth. Its teeth, however, were anything but ordinary. They were all adjoined together with not a single gap in between. That was when Ciemnosc’s eyes constricted absurdly, and a headache emerged within his ‘that’ something.
Cusshh, trickle~.
Ciemnosc’s eyes snapped open smoothly. Right away, he sensed his body in pain. His neck was being bitten by that person in white. Its head was buried in his neck, and its teeth clamored against his skin. He could even feel his esophagus dancing tremblingly as the person in white began clattering nonstop at his skin and neckbone.
Blood was already streaming down all around from his neck, from 2 different origins as the person in white had its crooked head absurdly around his neck. Unnaturally bent and twisted, it somehow managed to get its teeth to comprehensively ‘hug’ his neck, and they were already an inch deep, gaining more strength as more blood streamed down.
Click-pshift, …
First came the sound of Ciemnosc’s Claws Out, his fangs and claws appearing on the tip of his teeth, fingers and toes - respectively. Then, a tenebrous soundless noise went out as his Vocón Link came out from his right palm.
“Grraaaaaaaaaawwhh!!” Ciemnosc roared, threw his hands to the back and then plunged his head into the back of the person in white to return the favor. Blood directly entered his mouth, his lips and teeth coated in black as its taste became obvious to Ciemnosc. His irises dilated, and his pupils shrank. With more blackish blood coming out of the person in white, it stopped eating at his neck to lift its head and roar silently to the black sky.
“GRWWRR!!” Ciemnosc didn’t stop there. His left hand directly slapped with his smallish claws at the person in white’s head, becoming stuck at its teeth but breaking through them successfully. On the other hand, his right-handed smallish claws went to the person in white’s collarbone and pulled tight after clawing his way through that skin!
Ciemnosc was looking for its heart, for its core. For its Spirit Heart-Link; for anything that it had of value not just to kill it but to also steal it away from it!
His right hand wasn’t finding anything, though. Only its collarbone was at its place, while whatever was below was like an extension of flesh and blood. There was no organ nor bone except for its shoulders and arms. However, he also noticed that whenever he ate away a large piece and chunk of its back, it would reattach itself with its own flesh, pulling it up and attaching it to its wound, healing it completely.
MUNCH… ckrsheerr… MUNCH… ckrsheerr… MUNCH… ckrsheerr… …step…
What followed was simple. So simple, in fact, that it should have been incredibly monotonous for both Ciemnosc and the person in white, if it was even a person.
Ciemnosc had a face filled with savagery and feral. His nose and glabella wrinkled up with utter fury, and his teeth no longer appeared human or from any living, existent being. His mouth was coated with blackish blood in its absoluteness, though his lips continued to be slightly pale and red.
His claws were also coated wholly black, and his limbs became blackish. But somehow, they fit him. Only his shins, feet, wrists, and hands were smudged in such blackish blood, while his clothes had been eaten away before by the person in white, leaving him totally bare. In return, Ciemnosc had eaten its arms, leaving it hopeless. At times grabbed tightly with his left smallish claws, or Ciemnosc simply stuck his jaw, biting down on its head or neck to keep it from struggling.
He was an animal tightly clinging to his prey while his prey was viciously trying to escape, in terror, instead of Ciemnosc being the one to feel terrorized. All of Ciemnosc’s limbs contributed to finding the heart of the person in white.
However… as he did… Footsteps sounded from afar. The black space they were in for a small portion of a long time began to be filled with the sounds of who knew how many rushing to where Ciemnosc and the person in white were. But more than anything… towards Ciemnosc.
Even now, as Ciemnosc continued to cut and eat the person in white, forcing it to bring whatever vulnerability it could hold, many monsters surrounding Ciemnosc and coming at him could be seen just a few tens of meters away from his position.
…