Chapter 50

“…”

“For… get the de… ceitful… bal… ance… forged by… the Scales… and at last… be re… born… as the most… mag… nificent… ex… istence.”

Crreak. Creak

Perhaps from clawing the sheets so violently, the ragged bandage around his thumb peeled away, exposing a mangled fingertip. Blackened blood and pus oozed from beneath the nail, steadily staining the fraying gauze.

And there, coated in foul fluid, an eerie sigil was etched into the flesh.

A solitary eye, mirroring the terrible gaze of the Shadows from his past life, was branded onto the skin like a living tattoo.

“…Ah.”

Realization struck like lightning. A searing certainty cut through the haze, piecing the truth together in an instant.

That sigil is what summoned the Fragment.

It was almost instinctual.

An intuition rooted in the piece of the Fragment he harbored whispered that destroying that sigil would sever the connection entirely.

Suddenly, a hot heave surged from deep within his chest, filling his sinuses with a sharp, copper tang. Gritting his teeth against the crushing pressure, Eui-rim wiped his upper lip, only to find that his vessels, unable to withstand the violent mana drain, had burst into a nosebleed.

I won’t be able to hold out for long.

Realizing he had no time to lose, Eui-rim moved on pure instinct. Darting out into the hallway, he scanned the frozen guards standing like stone statues. Slipping up to a combat hunter, Eui-rim drew the dagger from the man’s scabbard and dashed back into the room.

The razor-sharp blade cut through the air in a split second. Putting the full weight of his body behind the strike, Eui-rim drove the point straight into the sigil branded upon the thumb.

“Khhk!”

A choked gasp devolved instantly into violent retching. Pitch-black fluid erupted from the healer’s mouth, and before long, the sigil on his thumb squirmed like a living leech, boring straight across his arm and into his open eye.

The timer flashed crimson, signaling that the stasis was nearing its end. An even heavier stream of blood dripped from Eui-rim’s nose.

“Grrkh, khhk, gahk…”

Spewing foul black ichor in writhing heaves, the healer flailed both arms. Even after the sigil burrowed into his eye, his sight had evidently not returned, as the bloodied pupil darted erratically.

Yet the strangest aspect of all was the healer’s thumb, where the sigil had been etched only moments before.

Eui-rim had driven the dagger with everything he had, yet far from leaving a gaping wound, not even a prick of blood remained on the skin.

Crreeak

A moment later, the sigil nested within the eye warped into an arthropod monstrosity. Using the hollow socket as its burrow, it gnawed through the optic nerves and dragged its glistening, ink-black carapace out into the open air.

The orbital bone shattered under the monstrosity’s footing. From the ruined socket, the torn eye rolled away, and the sigil—now fully three-dimensional—reared up like a grotesque insect.

Ssshhk!

Eui-rim adjusted his grip and slashed with the dagger, but the creature was a fraction faster. As it lunged straight for his face, its shadow-slick pincers snapped around the blade.

Clang!

“Ugh!”

The shockwave was shockingly heavy. The sensation of striking hardened steel threw Eui-rim backward, and losing his balance, he slammed hard onto the floor. By the time he scrambled back to his feet, the creature’s bulk had swollen. Sprouting eight spindly legs, it scuttled across the ceiling overhead.

Frowning, Eui-rim tracked the skittering horror with wary eyes.

What do I do now?

Trying to gouge out the sigil in a single strike had been pure instinct. Acting on sheer reflex, he hadn’t thought it through. Yet Eui-rim could never have imagined the sigil would manifest a physical body. He had only intended to sever the link to the Fragment, never anticipating such a grotesque mutation.

The only silver lining was that the sigil remained incomplete. Even as its stolen eyeball rolled wildly in all directions, it lacked the apocalyptic ruin of the Shadows’ gaze from his past life.

Right. Maybe this is for the best.

Had anyone else stumbled into this, the casualties would have been catastrophic. For now, the creature recognized him as one of its own kind, but it would show no such hesitation toward others. The danger of innocent people being infected as hosts like this healer was all too real.

“…A host?”

The word slipped out unbidden, detonating in Eui-rim’s mind.

As forgotten memories flared, an icy déjà vu washed over him. Luring victims through hallucinations, turning them into parasitic hosts, and expanding their domain—that was precisely how the Shadows had operated in his previous life.

Don’t tell me this healer was turned into a host for the Fragment, too…?

It was entirely plausible.

The debuff that triggered the dungeon incident had been rooted in hallucinations from the start. If the healer had succumbed to mental contamination, become an incubator, and been selected as a vessel to anchor the Fragment in this world, every anomaly clicked into place.

Then I can’t let it expand its domain any further.

Now that the host was outside the dungeon rather than sealed within its walls, everything had to be ended inside this room to prevent an outbreak.

“Khhk…!”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Eui-rim dredged his depleted mana from the very bottom, sending the agonizing pressure tearing through his veins. Following a ragged cough, hot copper welled up like liquid fire, spilling past his lips to stain his chin and collar.

His vision, which had momentarily blacked out, snapped back into focus. Eui-rim immediately locked onto the Fragment across the room, only to see its erratic eyeball swivel toward him.

[There… fore, sub… mit to… us.]

The collapsed healer’s split lips peeled back in a ragged laugh. The voice was grotesque—entirely distinct from before—as if an old man and a child were speaking in discordant unison.

[SubmitSubmitsubmitSubmitsubmitSubmitsubmit]

“…Crazy bastard.”

The only consolation was that Seo Hae-gun wasn’t here. If the creature reacted this violently to Eui-rim, who merely bore a piece of him, he didn’t even want to imagine how it would run amok if Hae-gun himself were present. Though Hae-gun’s absence left him suffering from a severe mana deficit, confronting this horror alone was nothing short of a stroke of fortune.

Clang!

Kicking off the floor, Eui-rim lunged at the monstrosity, blade meeting carapace in another jarring clash. Impact shuddered up his arms as if to snap his wrists, and the iron-hard Fragment threw its weight forward, shoving him back.

“Dammit!”

In a flash, fleshy suckers sprouted along the legs clamped around his blade. Where it had hardened into a curled metallic sphere moments ago, the creature now flexed its eight limbs like a mollusk, coiling tight around the steel. Eui-rim tried to wrench the dagger free, but it refused to budge. The solitary eye fixed upon him curved into a grotesque sneer, and from behind its carapace, an elongated limb whipped out like a tentacle.

Crash!

He ducked on reflex to evade the strike, and a violent shockwave shook the room. The limb twitched against the fractured plaster before sprouting saw-toothed thorns alongside its suckers.

Crrrack

Simultaneously, immense pressure surged through the eight limbs coiled around his weapon. The suckers engorged like knotted muscle, grinding into the tempered steel until spiderweb fractures splintered across the blade.

Eui-rim released the hilt without hesitation. Clinging to the weapon would only leave him exposed to a fatal counter. Facing raw strength capable of crushing an enchanted combat dagger, his meager stats stood no chance. He had hoped to manage since the Fragment had yet to achieve its complete form, but that had clearly been a reckless miscalculation.

Sensing his retreat, the creature’s eye curved into an even wider crescent. Crunch As its limbs bore down with crushing force, the fractured blade disintegrated into fine metal dust.

Creak!

His body reacted before his mind, spurred by survival instinct flaring like a siren. Rolling sideways across the floor, he watched nine thrashing limbs whistle through the space where he had stood a heartbeat before.

“Urgh…”

The real problem was that Eui-rim couldn’t sustain this frantic evasion indefinitely. The blood pooling in the back of his throat threatened to choke him with every ragged breath.

“Shit.”

To think my body would fail me this badly.

He had assumed he would be fine given how much his baseline stats had improved. Was it still not enough to keep pace with this ruinous level of mana consumption?

The voice demanding submission dissolved into shrieks of euphoric laughter. Celebrating its prey’s inevitable doom, perverse malice flared within its solitary eye.

Its limbs, multiplying yet again, now splayed wide enough to engulf the entire ward. At this rate, the ceiling would collapse in seconds.

If I cancel the skill, will it stop?

“…”

No, it wouldn’t.

Though it had awakened prematurely after sensing Seo Hae-gun’s trace within him, this horror had been inevitable. From the moment it had burrowed into its human host, the parasitic cycle was already set in stone.

Which was precisely why he had wanted to purge it with his own hands.

Yet with his mana scraping rock bottom, that resolve was empty bravado. Before he lost consciousness from hemorrhaging, canceling the skill and shouting for the hunters stationed outside was his only logical move.

He had no desire to drag them into harm’s way, but if this anomaly was reenacting the catastrophic nightmare of his previous life, that cycle had to be shattered at all costs.

“Khh…!”

Yet before he could dismiss the skill, a rubbery sucker slammed over his mouth and nose, cutting off his airway.