His heads-up display (HUD) flooded with urgent warnings as the spider aimed to pulverize him by scraping its abdomen against the coarse cobblestones.
Trapped with limited space to maneuver and lacking leverage, Ren's attempts to stab the spider's armored abdomen proved futile. A deep groan escaped his lips as he exerted his enhanced strength, desperately trying to lift the spider and create enough room to roll away. However, the spider, accustomed to grappling with its prey, exploited the small gap Ren had managed to create and thrust a claw through his stomach.
Somewhere across the grand plaza, the sound of someone crying reached Ren's ears, but the agonizing pain caused by the sharp spider claw piercing his abdomen consumed his overwhelmed senses. Gasping from the excruciating torment, Ren stubbornly clasped his hands around the claw, preventing the spider from retracting it. His HUD confirmed what his body already conveyed—the bleeding needed to be stopped within a few minutes, or his system would force him into a hibernation state for repairs.
Realizing he had run out of viable options, Ren accessed a channel in his core, allowing pure radioactive essence to flow into his meridians. He directed all of it to his left hand and made another attempt to thrust the golden knife into the spider. This time, he felt the blade penetrate about an inch, provoking an enraged screech from the creature. However, the knife failed to penetrate any further, compelling Ren to consider a drastic measure. His trump card had not proven sufficient to slay the spider as he had hoped.
Driven by desperation, Ren attempted to infuse the radioactive essence directly into the knife itself. Initially met with resistance, as if the essence refused to taint the purity of the blade, anger surged within Ren's chest, and a torrent of curses erupted from his mouth.
"Get in there, now!"
A resounding pop echoed in Ren's mind, swiftly followed by a release of pressure as the essence finally flowed into the golden blade. Energy coursed through every inch of the knife, permeating each atom and inducing irreversible changes. It seemed as though Ren's radioactive energy possessed sentience, understanding the significance of the Knife as its owner's prized possession. Since Ren insisted on infusing the Knife with the essence, it chose to elevate the weapon to a state where it would not succumb to the corrosive nature of the energy.
The crying was getting closer, but the clash of cultivators and monsters alike made it difficult to be certain. Was that a child’s voice?
Ren was frustrated that the spider's body blocked his view, but between balancing the need to minimize further injury and his determination to imbue the Knife with the destructive essence, his mind teetered on the brink of overload. To compound matters, the insatiable knife continued to consume his Essence without displaying any signs of satiation, leaving him no choice but to draw more energy from his rapidly depleting core.
Moments later, a visible manifestation of the radiative essence was seen as a green glow coating the knife’s blade. Ren roared with effort as he pushed the knife once again but this time it pierced the abdomen unimpeded, like a hot knife through butter. The screech of anguish that tore out of the spider’s throat was so ear piercing that several fighting warriors shot curious glances towards the pair's location. The spider slammed its abdomen on the ground, once again trying to crush Ren, but he held on to the claw sticking in his torso, and kept pushing the knife deeper into the arachnid’s stomach.
With inhuman strength, the spider yanked its limb free from Ren’s grip and swiped at him in an attempt to dislodge the thorn from its underside. Ren’s right hand, free from holding the stabbing claw in place, darted towards one of the chitinous plates underneath the monster and held on with everything he had. He was just in time too, as the spider did another body slam on the ground.
Unfortunately for it, Ren used the force to drive the energy coated blade deeper within its body. At this point, the blade had gone so deep that Ren’s entire left arm was within its body. With a vicious glint in his eyes, Ren started moving his submerged arm around, doing his best imitation of a blender. A revolting stench assaulted his senses as bloody viscera poured out of the spider, coating him in the foul smelling goop. But Ren didn’t care. He was laughing maniacally as the spider squeals of pain soothed his tired body.
A running Acolyte tripped and fell a few meters from Ren’s battle. Based on her Temple belt, the woman was a Tier 7 Essence Cultivator, so she was one of the strongest people sent into this Fractured Realm. However, the look of pure terror on her face sent chills down his back. She scrambled on her hands and knees, looking fearfully behind her until her terror stricken brain managed to get her legs working and she sprinted away in a flash.
Ren finally noticed that the sounds of the battle had changed. There was more panicked shouting intermingled with the creepy weeping sounds of thousands of children. The air felt heavy with the scent of blood and death. Here and there, cultivators activated their best movement techniques as they raced away from the plaza and into the darkened streets between the dilapidated buildings. Surprisingly, the terrifying spiders who had been viciously fighting the cultivators moments earlier, abandoned their prized cocoons to flee in terror.
Even the spider Ren was battling went into a panic. It abandoned its attempts to crush him and simply raced across the rough terrain, dragging Ren along with it. Hanging on for all he was worth, Ren finally got a view of the source of panic. The creatures were made up of swirling shadows, hovering above the ground. The smallest of them hovering about two meters tall.
Amidst the perpetual swirl of darkness comprising the creatures' amorphous bodies, Ren discerned the apparitions of tormented souls, their forms flickering intermittently as if caught in a perpetual struggle for liberation. The countenances of these souls bore an expression of unimaginable dread, forever trapped within their eternal prison.
Among the ever-changing mass, the only stable features of these Wraith-like beings were their skeletal arms and their heads. Their arms took the shape of scythes, while their faces were composed of bleached bone, accentuated by twin black voids serving as their eyes. No mouths or ears were discernible, yet their collective agony resonated through the air—an anguished chorus of countless children's cries that tore at the heartstrings.
Ren watched in deranged fascination as dozens of Cultivators unable to outrun the Wailing Wraiths, were cut down by ethereal scythes. Their bodies were disintegrated into nothingness and their souls were stolen while their executioners became more tangible. Just looking at the Wraiths, Ren felt a foreign will clamp over him, trying to make him submit his soul for consumption.
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Ren frowned and shook his head. For a moment there, his hands had loosened slightly from his death grip on his unwilling spider mount. But the compulsion to submit his ‘soul’ woke him up from the trance. He had no soul. The incredulity of the compulsion had managed to kick his system back into gear. Tightening his grip, Ren held on as the frightened and rampaging spider sped into a side street, moving haphazardly through twists and turns as they escaped the slaughter of the Wraiths.
The first few minutes of their escape had been spent running past structures in various states of disrepair. Some of the buildings had completely collapsed upon themselves, with the crevices and sheltered ruins becoming dens for rodents and critters alike. Stubborn plant life grew in patches wherever enough soil had landed over the years, taking nourishment from the feces and decomposing corpses of their new rodent overlords. Occasionally, Ren spied stores, far from their glory days, with broken glass fronts, giving a peek at empty shelves. One thing was for certain: years of relentless pillaging by Greendale Cultivators had stripped the area around the Summoning Plaza of all the readily available treasures.
By the ten minute mark, Ren was a bloody mess, with most of his skin peeled off from the grating floor. The spider started slowing down only after another fifteen minutes of skittering through broken buildings, tight crevices and numerous streets. Its movement first turned lethargic and before long, its hind legs collapsed. His quick reflexes helped him escape being completely crushed, as he rolled away pulling the bloody knife with him. He watched impassively as the spider whimpered and pulled itself forward using its front two legs. Dashing forward with lightning speed, Ren jumped on the spider’s back, moving to its thorax and raised the bloody knife. Using as much strength as he could, he rapidly stabbed at the creature's head.
Ren watched as a thick surge of Red Kill Energy materialized from the Spider's corpse and shot towards him, splashing on his chest. The energy immediately began seeping into his chest, pouring through his pores and meridians, then trickling down to his core. Unsatisfied with the speed, the energy separated into smaller streams, forcing its way into his body through his nose, mouth, and ears. As the energy suffused his aching meridians, Ren felt his perception of time stretch for an instant, reminding him of his encounter with Kringles' avatar, the boisterous Bryjnar.
Turning his attention inwards, Ren observed the Red Energy as it made its way to his depleted core, rejuvenating it so thoroughly that the hair-line cracks he had observed over the past few weeks visibly healed. However, only a fraction of the Kill Energy was siphoned off to heal the core. The majority of the energy rapidly rotated in his core, losing its red color and turning into the familiar white color of essence. He also noticed that his meridians had become slightly thicker, some straightening while others curved with machine-precise smoothness.
“I could get used to this!” Ren chuckled aloud, feeling such euphoria that his chuckles turned into manic laughter.
[ Yes! Let the lifeblood of our enemies become the nourishment to our godhood! ]
Now that was an idea. Ren had been ignoring the whispers until now, but the voice just made a good point. Becoming the strongest being in the world of cultivators he had found himself was already part of his plans but Ren was not sure if actual godhood was feasible. He was willing to pave a path of bodies to get there and he smiled in anticipation of fighting against other gods. But he had already met a potential deity in Brynjar and Ren was self aware enough to know that he was not yet ready to face entities such as him just yet.
[ Bah! That was no True God. That cur was merely an avatar for a cultivator who has managed to shed his mortal coil for a chance at immortality. True God’s grovel at my feet. That cur should be gifting me his cut out heart as penance! ]
“Sure” Ren scoffed. “I didn’t see you standing up to him the last time we met.”
The voice didn't respond, but Ren felt a deep sense of righteous indignation. Ren just shook his head, with a small smile on his face. As long as the voice stopped its whispers and did nothing to hinder him, Ren did not care what it did with itself.
But its earlier whisper about getting stronger through killing others in this Trial Realm required further analysis. In Greendale Village, Ren had received no energy when he killed the thugs who’d tried to ambush him. Neither did he receive any energy for killing the direwolves in Harosheth Forest. Something about this Trial Realm must have changed the fundamental laws of cultivation to allow the absorption of Kill Energy. A glint of madness quickly flashed through his eyes as he thought of all the energy he could receive by killing the cultivators he had come here with. Ren began to curse when he thought about all the free energy he had wasted by letting the Spiders rampage through the group. After a few seconds, he calmed down realizing the error in his line of thought.
“Hmm. I did not receive any energy from using that Acolyte as a shield against the Spider,” Ren mused aloud. “I wonder if I have to strike the killing blow to receive the energy. Or is it a case of not getting Kill Energy from Cultivators?” He decided that it required more testing. He would need to find a way to kill the next Cultivator he came across to test his theory.
Glancing around, he noticed that he was in a different district in the Trial Realm city. The buildings were built like mini fortresses with large stone blocks forming the squarish structures. The roofs of the buildings were flat unlike the few intact one’s he’d seen by the Plaza, and they ignored traditional windows replacing them with arrow slits. An old rusted sign on the building behind him said something in a foreign language that was indecipherable to him. But the images of falling coins at the end of the sign gave Ren enough context clues to bring out the greedy glint in his eyes.
Taking a look around once more, Ren decided that this must have been the financial district of the fallen city. He had missed it the first time, but now he could see how fortified most of the buildings were, even having energy barriers still protecting the long abandoned structures. The few doors that had survived the cataclysm were made of metal reinforced wood. Leaving an obvious weakness on such valuable buildings left Ren puzzled for a moment, before he decided it was done more for aesthetics than security. The presence of the barriers after so long was a poignant reminder that the doors were more for decoration than protection. What type of magic did these people cultivate to have their enchantments survive their demise? Truly fascinating.
Before exploring the buildings, Ren took his knife and began the butchering process on the dead spider. Thirty minutes of rummaging through the entrails and gore of the carcass, Ren stood with a disappointed look on his face. What a pity. He had been hoping to get a core from the monster but it seemed like the creatures in this Trial Realm did not have any.
His head snapped left as the skittering sounds of spider feet resounded in the distance. He looked back at the carcass with reluctance, briefly wondering how roasted spider legs would taste. Then a distant screech resounded through the street, bouncing off the walls.
“You know what? I think I’m done here. Time to get inside! Err...Explore the buildings!”