AN: WARNING! THIS CHAPTER IS DARK AND MATURE! On a brighter note, this is probably going to be the most fucked up chapter in the entire story. I'm giving you guys the proverbial bad news first so please expect plenty of good new to come!
Please leave a comment if you have any constructive criticism, questions, or... comments... hehe.
Chapter 2
“KAHAHAHHAHAAHA!”
Elder Lich Yemen cackled madly as he focused on the dark cauldron floating before him. After harvesting the rest of the class, the lich had erected a darkbarrier around the lecture hall as insurance against interruptions.
“In order to create a Tortured Soul, there must of course be torture!”
Muttering to himself, a dark flame coalesced in the lich’s bony hand. The flame’s appearance, rather than casting light on the surroundings, casteverything with shadows as it appeared to hungrily absorb the light essence from its surroundings. The temperature of the room also dropped severaldegrees, with the area around the flame condensing into visible fog. The lich made a pushing gesture at the flame, and it slowly floated over to encompassthe entire Lich Cauldron, resulting in a spot shrouded in shadows and chilling mist.
“In my thousand years of imprisonment, I finally cultivated my Undead Heart to the degree of manifesting theUndying Flames. For now, I can only do this much but once this Tortured Soul is refined, I will be able to use it togather the souls of any beings that are weaker than it and develop the Inferno of Punishment, KAHAHAHAAHA!”
In the hierarchy of the undead, Elder Lich Yemen truly deserved the title of Elder. Just forming an Undead Heart out ofone’s soul required hundreds of years spent as a mere skeleton mage, on the level of fodder. Between the formation of the Undead Heart andthe cultivation of Undying Flames within the heart, not to mention actual manifestation, another 700 years had passed. However, the undeadentity known as a Tortured Soul began at the level of the Undying Flames, since its body itself would be composed of asingle chilling ember. Elder Lich Yemen could only hope to lord over such a being by soul-binding it before its formation, otherwise the crazed soul wouldtear out the souls of anything near it, including the lich’s own Undead Heart.
Seeing that the refinement process was well under way, Elder Lich Yemen began condensing portion of his Undead Heart to be used as thebase of the shackles that would bind the Tortured Soul to his commands. This portion would be added to the Lich Cauldron at a crucialpoint in time, when the soul fragments within the cauldron had all combined, and the fragmented consciousness began warring with each other. Such fragmentswould be absolutely unable to resist the might of even a small portion of an Elder Lich’s soul, and would be easily brought under control
Within the Lich Cauldron
“AAARGGHHHH!”
What I had initially believed to be a good enough idea to pass the time away was rapidly turning into a nightmare. The first couple soul fragments weren’ta big deal, just a few lances of pain and they would be successfully incorporated into my mass.
Well, after I absorbed about a few dozen soul fragments, something changed. The soul fragments flying about in random directions all quivered andthe surroundings simultaneously began giving off a sense of pressure and all the fragments began slowly condensing toward a point in thesurrounding black space.
The change I felt, after absorbing dozens of fragments, was decidedly more dramatic. First, there was the shaking. I felt as if I had been put inside of anenormous oscillator (that’s something that vibrates really fast… or slow, depends on how the setting haha). What I had come to think of as my body felt asif every single organ was trying to fly in a separate direction and explode at the same time.
The pressure was even worse, though I guess it could have been an indirect blessing. I suppose it’s likely that the pressure was the main reason I didn’tfly into a million pieces. On the other hand imagine what it would feel like to be exploding and imploding at the same time.
Not only was the environment trying destroy me, I was also sucked in far more swiftly than the surrounding soul fragments. Since all of us were beingpulled to a point of convergence, I naturally collided with many of my brethren along the way. And for some reason, instead of being able to decide whetheror not to absorb them, any soul fragments that collided with me stuck to me instantly and forcefully began the absorption process.
At first it was only bad to the extent that I was forced to absorb soul fragments at least three times as frequently as before but soon multiple soulfragments began colliding with me. Each soul fragment only brought five or six waves of piercing pain, which by this point wasn’t that big of a dealanymore. But clusters of three, four, or even more was on a whole new level. Then waves overlapped and compounded each other, multiplying the pain to aridiculous extent. It seemed that absorbing multiple soul fragments increased the pain to an exponential degree.
I began to feel my consciousness slip away for the first time since I had absorbing soul fragments and I had a bad feeling about losing my mind in thecurrent circumstances. The only problem was, I had no idea what today. Thinking became harder and harder as more and more clumps of soul fragments stuckonto me. I panicked, sinking under an unrelenting maelstrom of pain, almost incoherently, I screamed out my rejection.
“NO”
Meanwhile in Cliffhanger University… err some other part of campus (also MATURE content here, don’t skip though, otherwise this character’s going tolose a lot of depth and other important literary stuff).
It had been a week of hell, Lea thought to herself during one of her few moments of lucidity. Flashes of the nightmare rose before her vacant stare,visions that she could hardly believe. Yet the torture of the aftermath, she could never forget. Ever.
The chemistry lab suddenly erupting with glass and chemicals… The things that had accompanied the explosion. They were huge, at least 7 feet tall(sorry I’m used to the English system, though I agree metric is way better), bull-headed humanoid creatures, bound in slabs of muscle and a loincloth.Minotaurs, Lea had thought before the one in front of her, wielding an enormous double headed axe had cut her lab partner into two lopsided pieces.
She wasn’t particularly attached to him, but she had still made it through several mind-numbing lab procedures with him… Seeing him fall apart, in theliteral sense, shocked Lea into passivity. She stared dumbly as the Minotaur picked her up by the neck and flung her into the back corner of the room.There was a flash of pain, but Lea hardly felt it, as she saw the rest of her class.
There were a total of five minotaurs it seemed, and they had gone on an absolute rampage. She had no idea who was who anymore. Everywhere, the sound ofscreams was accented with splashes of red, and there were pieces of gore flying as panicked, terrified students were chopped down. Soon, several morebloody figures came flying at Lea’s corner, and the only sounds left were her own ragged breathing, and the snorting grunts of the minotaurs.
Soon, a minotaur walked up to where Lea had been tossed, and picked up a body from the pile that had buried her. The body was slim, and it let out aterrified shout, cut short by its ragged breathing. Lea’s eyes widened as she realized that the body was still alive, and moreover a female. Her eyes feltfrozen as she saw the girl’s clothes ripped off by five pairs of massive hands, before… before…
There it was again, the Wall. Every time Lea tried to remember what brought her to this state, she would come across the Wall. To her, it was infinitelylong, and just as tall. It wasn’t a real wall, she supposed, but there was definitely something wrong with her brain. She could feel a blank zone, a deadspace where her thoughts came to an abrupt end. All she could really recall, was that by the end of that first day, more than half of the bodies that shehad been piled with were broken. They laid on the ground in a mess of blood, limbs, and fluids. Lea herself hadn’t been spared. It was just, as soon as theminotaurs reached for her…
All Lea understood about her Wall was that it had caged something terrible. Behind it was a ravenous beast, waiting to devour her mind. Of course, tryingto not think about something is far harder in practice than on paper. After the flashbacks, she realized that although she knew a week had passed,her memory accounted for less than a day’s worth of time. The rest, she surmised, were locked behind the Wall.
And now, Lea found herself within her mind again. It was far more peaceful than reality. At least in here, Lea wasn’t nailed to the floor with a table legthrough each limb; at least here, her every breath didn’t send burning pains through her chest and back; at least in here…
Lea found herself standing before the Wall again, despite all of her efforts. She stared at it with hope and terror, willing it to hold, to stand, tobe.
Yet, Lea could feel that it wasn’t enough anymore. As infinite as the Wall was, it had been weakened by time. Nearly an entire week’s worth of time, minusthe few moments when Lea could actually feel and think, was locked behind that Wall. And it was weakening. Lea knew that the Wall had to be tied to hermind somehow, but she could not figure out how to reinforce it. She just didn’t have enough time to figure things out. And now, she stared at the endlessWall before her, as it came crumbling down…
Cliff… Lich Cauldron
“NO”
I stopped.
Relative to the black space around me, the point of convergence, the speeding souls.
I stopped
The pain didn’t.
I could hear voices in the pain, nothing coherent mind you, but incoherent screams and wails send their message just fine. The message of pain, of agony,of despair, of terror; they were all there. Jumbled and disparate, yet they assaulted my mind with a perfectly cohesive attack. At some point during thismental siege, I realized that the enemy forces were diminishing. Sure each wave was soon replaced by another, but it appeared that the ocean was slowlyrunning dry. I also noticed that after each wave of assault, a small portion of my ‘body’ that had been vibrating madly since this whole mess started wouldcalm.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Slowly, as I finally was able to clear my mind of the pain, only my ‘singular’ body was faintly buzzing. That was all that was left of the violentexploding sensations of a while ago. Damn, my time perception still sucks. On the other hand, although the vibrating pain had diminished greatly, thepressure I felt increased exponentially.
While originally I had been stationary, I felt myself drawn inexorably toward that point in the cauldron. However, it wasn’t just an invisible point ofconvergence now, it was the center of a blazing ball of souls. Looking at it as I approached, it seemed to be roughly the twice my size, though the surfacelooked rather amorphous. Flares, loops, and all manner of things bubbled and shifted across the surface of this ball. Honestly, it was reminiscentof a picture of the sun I had seen that one time… Ah shit, talk about useless thoughts, my approach only accelerated as I neared and with a mental shout, Iplunged through its surface, and into the abyss.
Huh.
Maybe I exaggerated the danger of this soul ball thingy.
It’s actually kinda warm—
The pain I felt previously was like a gentle breeze of wind.
I was caught in a raging inferno, frozen into an iceberg, and plunged into the bottom of the sea, all at the same time.
It hurts.
It really hurts.
At least I was kind of lucky. Instead of the amalgamation of souls attacking me at the same time, the soul fragments in this ball were more like headlesschicken. Sure the sheer density caused at least thirty to fifty souls to collide with me at the same time, but once my ‘body’ was completelysurrounded, the soul fragments served to insulate me from the rest of them. Still, the most soul fragments that I had absorbed simultaneously had barelybeen more than ten, but at least I didn’t have to deal with all of the hundreds of soul fragments this stupid ball contained.
For the sake of brevity, I absorbed roughly 6 layers of soul fragments. I estimated that with 30-50 souls per layer, I had absorbed what must have been atleast 200 souls. Now that I think about it, before I had come in here, I had probably absorbed about 100 souls… so I guess I’m now the entire class ofCalculus 0100.
Congratulations!
You have fulfilled requirements for preliminary evolution.
Your Race has changed from Soul Fragment to Lost Soul.
Racial skills and passives have been updated.
Congratulations!
By evolving, you have qualified for higher level
System access. Additionally, you will be granted a System Manual,
as well as a Basic Class Guidebook.
Notice!
Due to racial restrictions, Basic Class Guidebook
cannot be rewarded. System Manual will have limited access.
Status corrections will be rewarded in lieu of
Basic Class Guidebook.
That same organic chemistry lab from earlier in this chapter, you know, ‘that’ one (and same MATURE warning as the last Lea section).
The minotaurs had continued appearing in that chem lab until there were nearly 500 rampaging throughout the building. The entire building was now entirelyoccupied by minotaurs. All the humans had been slaughtered except for the fifth floor. The topmost floor. There, each room held several females, studentsand professors alike. Some were tied to the ceiling, some were strapped to a desk, others simply sat there, staring at nothing.
Lea was nailed to the floor, forced into a position more widely known as doggy style. Her vacant eyes had long ceased to see anything. A minotaurapproached her from behind, snorting at its anticipation of pleasure.
However, it could not see Lea’s eyes.
With each step, each snort, a flicker could be seen in Lea’s eyes. As the minotaur neared, Lea’s eyes were suddenly wide open, pupils dilated to the pointwhere her sea green eyes looked purely black.
Then, she started trembling.
It begin with a shiver down her entire body, soon followed by shaking that rattled her limbs against the hard floor. The minotaur, sensing that somethingwas wrong roared angrily and brandished his axe at the female slave before him. The roar made something break within Lea, and with a violent scream sheripped her arms from the floor, gouts of blood spurting from a jagged wound in her forearms. Next, came the legs. Holes pouring blood appeared in themiddle of each calf as she stood up world around and roared at the minotaur. After a week of passivity, the minotaur most certainly did not expectthese actions. It only took half a step back, pausing as its tiny monster brain tried to figure out why its prey suddenly decided to shout back at it. Inits surprise, the minotaur’s grip on the axe also loosened for a split second.
It was enough.
As if possessed, Lea’s eyes looked like bottomless pits in a red sea as she leapt forward grabbing at the axe handle, and ripped it away from theminotaur’s slackened grip. Turning in a full circle, the axe that was taller than its wielder whirled into the minotaur’s body, crushing ribs and leaving abloody gash across its chest. As it struggled to stand up through its rage and pain, the axe come spinning by again, this time lodging deep within itsskull.
It wasn’t enough.
Lea screamed again as she yanked the axe out of the minotaur and slammed it back into that hated body. Another bloody gash on its chest, this timesplintered bones could be seen amidst the blood.
It wasn’t enough.
Scream after wail after shout, Lea raged with the weapon of her captors, sending blood and bones splattering across the room.
It wasn’t enough.
Minotaurs all over the floor and even from two floors below had heard the enraged howls from above and came stomping to investigate. As each minotaurentered Lea’s room, it would be set upon by a deranged demon, leaving nothing behind but a defiled carcass. Soon, all of the minotaurs within the buildinghad been alerted to their brethren’s deaths, and all came filing into a single room on the fifth floor.
It wasn’t enough.
Lea’s mouth leaked rivulets of blood, the screams had ripped apart her vocal chords. It was hardly visible though, her entire face was a mask of blood, andher naked body was covered in pure red, except a few patches of pale white skin that had somehow escaped the carnage unscathed. Lea panted heavily, theholes in her limbs had disappeared at some point throughout the slaughter, though her entire body now trembled from exhaustion.
Before her, a minotaur stood, foot long horns digging into the ceiling. It was over 9 feet tall, its skin was jet black, and its red eyes glared angrily atthe slave standing before it. The slave that had murdered all of its subordinates. In the Chief Minotaur’s eyes though, it was still a slave, a female tobe dominated and controlled. It bellowed in rage, and Lea leapt forward.
All of Lea’s exhaustion seemed to disappear as she struck wildly at the Chief Minotaur before her. Each blow swung the axe that likely weighed more thanLea at blinding speeds toward her foe.
One strike.
Two strikes.
Three strikes.
Each one was blocked by the Chief Minotaur with contempt before a backhanded sent Lea and her axe flying in separate directions. Lea skidded across severaldesks before coming to a crunching stop against the back wall. The Chief Minotaur roared in triumph and swaggered proudly toward the crumpled slave infront. It still had plenty of slaves, and this one’s rebelliousness required punishment, if only to vent its rage. As it neared Lea’s body, she suddenlyrocketed off the floor, past the Chief Minotaur and lunged for the axe. By some instinct, as soon as she grabbed hold of the axe, she whirled it around, awild swing originating from below her waist and twisting across her shoulder before severing meat and bone.
The Chief Minotaur stared stupidly, battle axe raised high above its head. The axe fell first, slipping from a lifeless grip, clipping the Chief Minotaur’shead as it clattered onto the floor. The head followed the axe, severed completely from its thick neck as blood spurted in a geyser. A loud thump cameamidst the patter of blood.
Lea sat against a wall, clutching a double bladed battle axe taller than herself.
Bloody teardrops dripped down from her sea green eyes, leaving behind a pair of snowy white tracks in a blood red mask.
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P.S.
As you guys can see, my mastery of tables is now at Beginner Lvl 1. In the future I will be grinding this skill alot and it may take some time so please bear with me.
Also, status updates in the upcoming chapter (fk tables though, seriously)