Chapter 85: Boiling anger 2
Lightning coiled around Philip's body like serpents made of raw fury. He directed it downward, and the bolt struck the captured Gutterborn like divine judgment. The moment it touched flesh, the result was catastrophic like pouring molten steel into ice water.
The creature's body spasmed violently, limbs flailing in unnatural directions as arcs of lightning danced through its veins. Its mouth opened in a silent scream, eyes bulging, then igniting from within as the searing power of Philip's wrath scoured every trace of resistance. The lightning struck with a thunderous crack, slamming into Philip's raised fist like a blessing from the heavens.
He didn't hesitate.
With a flick of his hand, he redirected the torrent straight into the Gutterborn leader's chest.
Steam hissed from every pore as its bones cracked from within, bursting under the pressure of divine electricity.
Philip didn't blink.
His eyes were twin furnaces of fury.
Where are they?
Where are my parents?
He glanced at his brother. Still breathing, just unconscious but pale and bleeding.
His sister's light had dimmed slightly. Exhaustion was written across her face.
His thoughts began to spiral.
No signs of his mother. No trace of his father.
He pushed the dread down like a stone beneath the tide.
These monsters would pay.
Approaching the half-charred Gutterborn leader, who still trembled at his feet. The creature's breaths came in ragged gasps. Its blackened face twitched. It tried to move.
Philip reached out and grabbed its skull.
And without ceremony, he invaded its soul.
For ordinary soul-searching, he had been taught caution to thread his spirit gently, not to harm the subject, to preserve the mind intact.
But this wasn't an ordinary moment.
And this wasn't a person.
Philip tore through the soul like paper. ripped into it.
The creature's soul screamed in silence
As Philip read through its fragmented past orders from the Church, memories of shadowy rituals,
The creature convulsed violently, blood and spittle leaking from its mouth as its eyes rolled back. He didn't care. His own spirit surged into the Gutterborn's soulscape, a realm of twisted memory and thick corruption.
What he saw was filth. . Black tendrils of corruption weaved through every memory like mold over fruit.
A human soul unawakened but blackened, tainted beyond recognition.
Rot spread like veins of oil across the memory fragments. He skimmed past them rituals in caves, offerings of flesh, whispers of darkness in foreign tongues.
Then something moved.
From the shadows of the memory-scape, a thick black sludge reared up, lunging at Philip's soul like a predator. It wasn't just memory anymore it was alive. An embedded curse. A failsafe.
The moment it touched him, Philip's internal world reacted.
In his soulspace, where his innermost power resided, the World Tree's roots had long since grown quietly mystical and ancient, though still half-submerged in mystery. Until now, only the roots had been visible, stretching into unseen depths.
They moved.
The moment the sludge made contact, the roots surged forward, golden-white in hue and wreathed in quiet divinity. They wrapped around the sludge with speed unnatural, coiling, tightening.
the roots attacked, bursting forth like spears of light and fire.
The black sludge hissed and writhed, trying to retreat but it was too late.
The roots latched on, drawing the corruption into themselves, purifying it inch by inch. Philip realized then: this wasn't just taint. This was a piece of something far more ancient and malicious.
A cursed anchor of something far below.
As the roots drank the corruption, the sludge panicked sensing the risk of being fully consumed, it lashed inward and did the unthinkable: it devoured the host soul itself to protect its secrets.The Gutterborn's body stiffened, eyes going dull.
Inside the soulscape, the memory-link snapped. A scream raw, silent, and eternal echoed through Philip's mind, then vanished.
The World Tree's roots sizzled with absorbed power, but the answers were gone.
Almost.
Just before the soul collapsed, Philip had seen one final image a massive, shifting maw of teeth and shadow, buried deep beneath the earth.
The Maw Beneath Ibadan.
The moment the soul was consumed, across the continent, in a subterranean temple lined with bone and obsidian, the High Priest of the Church of Darkness staggered back.
He clutched his chest as black liquid leaked from his eyes.
"The Saint..." he whispered.
"The Saint has awakened… and the Seed is lost."
Panic settled in his hollow heart. The Gutterborns he had bred with care infused with the Great One's seed, empowered with whispers of the void had been slain. Their souls, consumed and purified.
Worse someone had fought the seed and won.
The High Priest stumbled toward a brazier filled with blood-ink, scrawling signs of protection.