Chapter 45: Corrupted Terror
A cold pang of fear hit Hugo's chest as Sunny's words echoed in his mind.
A corrupted terror.
He knew sunny somehow possessed an ability allowing him to gaze upon the souls of others, making This confirmation both harrowing and, in a grim way, validating.
The sheer, oppressive pressure emanating from the spire's peak was now a both a force and a psychic weight that pressed down on the Sleepers causing some of them to stumble and gasp. Hugo, with his heightened senses and stronger soul felt it as a crushing vise around his own spirit.
Yet, the pressure was not as absolute... not as suffocatingly dominant as the stories of Corrupted creatures suggested.
Hugo was now confused... 'Did it evolve just now? Right as we arrived?'
That certainly would explain why the sleepers were still alive...
And Thankfully, it had only ascended in rank, not transcended into the realm of Titans, this should have made Hugo feel some hope But the realization of how it happened was dawning on him with a sickening clarity.
The reason Nephis had received no soul fragments from the hundreds of abominations they had slain… it was because of this. The souls of the slaughtered horde had been harvested. Drawn into the crimson spire as fuel, a massive infusion of souls to catalyze the Terror's evolution from the Fallen rank to Corrupted.
And so, In a very real, very direct sense, Hugo's e brutal plan to clear the path had provided the monster with the banquet it needed to become something far worse...
The weight of that responsibility settled on him, making his stomach turn... He was the one who created this greater horror.
With a tired expression, He looked at Sunny and Nephis, his expression hardening into one of grim resolve. "Take the Sleepers and find the gateway as soon as possible", then His gaze then snapped to the mind-controlled Gunlaug, standing inert like a golden statue, Hugo sent A silent mental command through the [Spirit Seed] embedded inside the Tyrant:
Follow me.
"What?! Are you crazy!?" Sunny shouted, his voice panicked.
He grabbed Hugo's gigantic arm, his enhanced strength as a domrnat demon futile against Hugo's tyrannical form.
"That's a Corrupted Terror! That's beyond us! Even a Saint would struggle against that thing! It's suicide!"
Hugo looked down at his friend's terrified face and managed to let out a small, wry smile that felt alien on his crystalline features.
"I guess you were right about me, Sunny. Maybe I did gain a bit of a hero complex after all."
With that, he pulled away.
"Omnitrix, switch to [Playlist 0]"
The core on his chest flashed slightly then Hugo slammed it causing his body to change once again.
The graceful, multifaceted crystal of his Petrosapien form shimmered and morphed. It condensed, gaining a denser, smoother texture, darkening from prismatic green to a deep, stony grey. He shrank slightly in height, his form becoming more refined, more… humanoid in its underlying architecture.
Within him , a bizarre sensation unfolded: his internal crystalline structure softened, rearranging into something that faintly mimicked human biology... He could feel it, flesh, blood and all of the things that made a human... Human.
It was a bit haunting to say the least but it was nice. To be something similar to a human Once again.
In a flash of blue light, the transformation completed. He stood now as a [Stone Saint], a being of living, sacred rock created by a daemon. His form was clad in sleek, onyx-like armor that seemed to have grown from his body, with two crimson eyes burning beneath his visor. The Omnitrix symbol glowed calmly on his chest.
The feeling of being in a form so reminiscent of a human was strangely comforting But sadly, the soul-rending scream that echoed from within the Spire was running the mood
Without much delay, He summoned [Nothing]. The Transcendent memory materialized in a torrent of white sparks, its grey mist coalescing into a long, vicious spear.
Without another word hugo begun his Ascent, His stone body was not as blindingly fast as his other forms but it possessed a terrifying momentum. He leaped across the shattered coral, each step cracking the ground, closing the distance to the source of the wrongness with the inevitability of a landslide.
Beside him, Gunlaug's Echo shifted and morphed around it's master. The mind-controlled warrior's body swelled as the golden liquid transformed into a harrowing, twelve-foot-tall behemoth of molten gold, the Bright Lord was finally living up to his title.
Hugo as a stone saint was resistant to soul attacks while The Echo's golden armor protected gunlaug from the soul destroying sunlight as it began to scale the coral outcrops with a strange simian grace
In mere moments, Hugo reached the peak of the spire where the Terror was waiting.
He came face-to-face with the harrowing abomination, and the sight was a lesson in profane agony.
The creature was a monument to suffering, its entire body a tapestry of screaming faces and solidified crimson Coral.
Hundreds of faces , all frozen in expressions of eternal torment writhed across its form—its torso, its multitude of limbs, even the shifting mass that served as its head. Each face was unique, contorted in a silent scream, eyes weeping black tears or burning with maddened crimson light. The limbs themselves were not simple appendages; they were twisted columns of fused coral and petrified flesh ending in claws, bony blades, or simply more screaming mouths. It moved with a jerky, painful spasm, its own limbs sometimes raking across its body, tearing away chunks of face-studded skin in a futile attempt to stop some unseen, internal agony...
Faintly, beneath the crushing pressure of its unholy power, Hugo could feel its weeping the long suffering and despair it had gone through for centuries turned into a silent plea, begging to be released from its corrupted prison.
Hugo felt bad for the creature, but there was nothing he could offer it besides death.
In his other free hand, darkness slowly condensed into something a he Drew upon the innate darkness within the Stone saint forming the [Blade of Darkness] which manifested as a short dark purple spear
Normally, anye type of energy projections from an Awakened being would shatter harmlessly against a Corrupted creature's hide, But this was different. This darkness didn't just cut flesh, it also pierced i the soul itself.
[Nothing], his Transcendent spear, could pierce its physical form while This dark spear could aim for its spirit.
The Corrupted Terror, sensing a direct threat to its existence reacted. It exploded forward with impossible speed for its size unleashing A dozen limb shot toward Hugo from all anglee sealing off all escape.
Hugo moved with the graceful form of a true stone saint, dashing under the coral tendrils and utilizing his awakened form to shift between attacks seemingly.
He stepped into the trajectories of one of the tendrils, using minimal movement to trick the creature into locking itself on it's own tendrils.
The process was hard considering all the coral was a part of it's body but Hugo managed to evade most of its attacks. Which was already miraculous enough, considering the difference in rank and class.
Then, he saw an opening. As one particularly thick limb thrust toward his chest, he chose to not fully evade. Instead, he dropped his center of gravity slightly and brought the [Blade of Darkness] up in a precise, reverse grip.
Colliding the spear with it's body and letting it strike it's soul.
The effect was instantaneous and horrific.
The spear of darkness sank into the coral-flesh, Where it touched, there was no physical wound as the spear couldn't pierce it but the faces along that limb screamed in unison sharing the agony of soul damage.
The entire limb recoiled as if burned by holy fire with strange black Viens spreading from the point of impact.
The Terror's main mass shuddered slightly, a wave of distress and confusion running through its countless faces.
That moment of distraction was all Hugo needed, He augmented his body soul essence and hurled [Nothing] with all his tyrannical strength. The Transcendent spear became a grey streak, piercing through the air and burying itself deep into the central mass of faces—what might be considered the creature's head. It pierced coral, flesh, and bone seeking the corrupted brain within.
It was a grievous wound but not a killing blow for a Corrupted entity. The Terror shrieked trying to remove the transcendant memory from its body, But unluckily for it, Hugo had learnt a couple of tricks from a certain treacherous shadow.
He mentally commanded [Nothing] to change once again.
The Memory obeyed its master's will. Inside the Terror's body, the spear dissolved into its base form becoming a swarm of grey mist then, that mist condensed and turned into pure tendrils that burrowed, expanded, and began to consume the corrupted terror from within, using it's special properties to unravel the magical and spiritual bonds that held the abomination together.
The Terror convulsed once again its attention violently torn inward, trying to combat the parasitic memory eating it alive.
It did not see the eight-foot golden behemoth that came rushing towards it from the side.
Gunlaug echo was formed into a gigantic golden axe that came down in a devastating arc onto the Terror's side cutting a large portion of it. The creature's entire body was thrown sideways, a crater of shattered coral and pulped faces falling into the ground.
Hugo, using this opportunity, closed the distance in two strides, the [Blade of Darkness] becoming a blur as He thrust, slashed and stabbed at the creature soul , each strike slowly destroying the abomination soul.
'It's stronger, but it's clumsy...' Hugo realized, his mind racing even as his body fought against an impossible opponent. 'It just evolved which means It hasn't mastered it's new powers....'
Nightmare Creatures, following the Path of Profanity, lacked the Spell's guided Awakening which meant They had to adapt to new strengths through brutal experience and mastery over their unholy powers.
This Terror had just received a massive power boost by rising in rank but it was currently unstable and roaring in confusion like a newborn.
Then, Suddenly, the Terror stopped moving altogether.
All of its thrashing, all of its screaming ceased becaming a statue of crimson coral...
An eerie, absolute silence fell over the chamber broken only by the clicks of Hugo's armor as he and gunlaug hacked away at it's body.
'What…?'
Hugo's battle enhanced senses screamed at him that something was terribly wrong... He yanked the [Blade of Darkness] back and mentally commanded [Nothing] to disengage and return to him.
At the heart of the Terror's coral body, a pinpoint of red light suddenly appeared. It was the color of clotted blood but something about it was simple wrong... It pulsed once, then began to glow with terrifying intensity, casting the entire cavern in a hellish crimson light.
[Nothing] reacted just in time, the swarm of tendrils reforming into something.
This time it didn't take the form of a spear. Instead, the mist expanded, flattened and wove itself into a massive shield of swirling grey mist interposing itself between Hugo and the Terror.
SWOOSH!
A beam of condensed crimson energy, thin as a needle but blazing with violent power capable of destroying a city lanced from the Terror's core. It struck [Nothing]'s shield, The sound from the impact was a high-pitched, soul-rending tear, as if reality itself was being effected by the terror's ability.
Hugo muffled his scream as he felt a terrible agony wash over him, Even behind the Transcendent shield, the attack wasn't completely nullified. It was infused with condensed soul essence, a corrupt, weaponized version of it that held the ability to Pierce the soul.
Stone Saints were naturally resistant to soul-based attacks, but this was not a mere spiritual assault. This was more like being hit by a tsunami of liquid poison meant to destroy the soul and the body at once.
Although there was something strange about it... the attack wasn't destroying Hugo's body in the regular sense, instead it was unmaking it, Literally.
The attack bypassed much of his physical defense and seared his body.
Cracks glowing with malevolent red light, spiderwebbed across his stone chest and arms as he felt the stone making up his body disintegrate into nothing.
The beam persisted for a second, then cut off leaving a smoking, melted trench in the Spire wall behind where Hugo had been pushed back several feets, his stone boots carving grooves in the floor.
The Terror's single, baleful eye swiveled a little then, It ignored Hugo for a moment, its beam reactivating and slicing toward the the Bright Lord himself. Gunlaug immediately scrambled away, the beam chasing him like a rat carving destructive paths through the ancient architecture of the spire
Hugo saw his chance. He couldn't win a direct confrontation and so He needed a new angle...
He slammed his crumbling stone hand onto the Omnitrix symbol.
In A flash of blue light, The Stone Saint form dissolved. In its place, Hugo body lost its flesh and stone and turned into a shadow.
His body was now a long, dark serpent with beautiful onyx scales that seemed to drink the light from the World, with the Omnitrix symbol glowing like a ghostly eye on his forehead.
Then, Hugo lost whatever physical substance his form had and , mergex seamlessly with the deep shadows of the ravaged chamber.
He slid through the darkness unoitced by The Terror who was focusing on the golden Echo.
Hugo's consciousness expanded in this form, granting him a unique sixth sense—the ability to perceive the shadows around him. (Shadow sense)
He moved toward the Terror's own shadow, that resembled a monstrous, pulsing blotch of darkness that writhed in sympathy with its master's form.
To his shadow sense, it was an abomination through and through.
A corrupted shadow was a wrong thing, something mangled, sickly pulsing with jagged edges and inverse light that made no sense whatsoever.
It should not have existed and yet, it did.
It was also a Transcendent-tier shadow, vast and powerful but fundamentally diseased, it was if the shadow of the corrupted abomination was begging to be set free from it's master.
Or to be precise, fundamentally different from its master in the sense that it possessed no corruption Within it.
As he was observing it, A revelation suddenly clicked in Hugo mind.
His [Soul Serpent] form possessed the [Soul Weapon] attribute—its touch could harm anything wether it's spiritual or physical. It also possessed the [Shadow] attribute, allowing it to interact with shadows as an intangible medium.
'If shadows are connected to the soul… and I can attack souls directly…'
Wanting to test his new theory, Hugo's serpent form wrapped around the Terror's corrupted shadow like a hungry serpent, his shadowy body merging with the dark blotch and beginning to dissolve it from within, harming it's shadow simply by interacting with it.
The physical Terror's reaction was immediate and volcanic, similar to when Hugo attacked it's soul . It ceased its beam attack, its entire body seizing up in a spasm of unprecedented pain.
It thrashed wildly, blindly even, its limbs flailing and smashing into the walls and ceiling.
Huge chunks of the Crimson Spire's internal structure shattered and collapsed. The distant sounds of the Sleepers rushing through the gateway was drowned by the roar of falling stone. It was a catastrophic reaction and that was putting it mildly...
'It' shadow is more sensitive then it's soul...' he thought, making z mental note to target the shadows of others in the future...
But unfortunately, Hugo had made a fatal miscalculation.
He had underestimated the intelligence buried deep beneath the Corruption's madness.
In the midst of its thrashing, the Terror's central cluster of faces—hundreds of them—all twisted in unison, Their screams of pain morphed, warping into something else.
Their features contorted and jaws unhinged stretching into a grotesque caricatures of smiles revealing thousands of needle-like crimson teeth in each maw.
It was a smile... The abomination was smiling...
The many-faced head turned slowly toward its own shadow on the ground.
"I… CAN… SEE… YOU…"
The voice was wrong and managed as if spoken by thousands of people and creatures...
No It was not sound, but rather a corruption of the meaning itself, a psychic weapon that made Hugo's very essence recoil as if he was hit physically.
If he had a body right now, he would have been paralyzed by fear.
Then, Before he could disengage or continue his assault, every grinning mouth on the Terror's body opened wide... Not to scream this time , but to focus.
At the center of each maw, the same hellish crimson light coalesced, but this time it was tuned, aimed with malevolent killing intent.
A dozen thin beams of annihilating crimson soul-light lanced out converging on the spot where his serpent form intertwined with its shadow.
This attack was the same as the previous one carrying the ability to Pierce souls... And this time Hugo did not have an immunity to soul attacks.
Hugo had no mouth, but his soul screamed in terrible agony.
The pain was beyond anything he had ever felt before almost eclipsing even the agony of his own corruption.
It was the sensation of being dissolved in acid and stretched on a rack simultaneously. The beams weren't just unmaking his soul, instead they were trapping him, pulling the threads of his soul toward the Terror's countless, hungry maws.
He tried to morph again using the omnitrix but the device was intangible in this form and to make it worse, the crimson light seemed to possses the ability to paralyze a creature locking him in place.
'YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!' His thoughts were a raw scream as he tried to do anything, to summon his memory and even command gunlaug to kill the abomination.
But it was useless, the abomination crimson beams were also attacking the mind controlled bright lord, leaving now opportunity to save him.
[Host life in critical danger!]
A voice, cool and mechanical cut through the spiritual agony...
It was the Omnitrix.
[Soul integrity breach detected.]
[Failsafe protocols activated.]
[Scanning… Identifying threat parameters…]
[Selecting a suitable counter-form...]
A flash of blue light, brilliant and pure, erupted from within Hugo's trapped soul releasing a large portion of omni-energy within the divine relic. The crimson beams shattered against the sudden overwhelming energy.
Then, When Hugo's awareness snapped back, he was tangible again. But he was not himself. He looked at his hands, they were not hands in the regular sense.
Instead They were sleek, shapeless appendages made of a smooth, white, ceramic-like material, crisscrossed with glowing blue circuitry. His entire body was a flowing construct of black and white segments with vibrant blue lines tracing patterns all over him, like a living motherboard... On his head was a single, large blue circle that served as his eye, glowing with intense, analytical light.
He felt… modular... As he was currently Composed of billions of interconnected, intelligent particles called nanites.
'A Galvanic Mechamorph…' Hugo recognized one of his imprint instantly, after all it was one he had used a lot when upgrading the memories and equipments of the sleepers
It was A transformation not meant for combat and so, did not possses any strength whatsoever, instead, it shined in adaptability and technological manipulation...
The Omnitrix's Failsafe had chosen it as the optimal form to survive a soul-based disintegration field by turning his body into millions of small creatures.
'The omnitrix is truly Worthy of being called a divine relic...'
The Corrupted Terror momentarily stunned by the burst of alien energy quickly recovered. Its many faces contorted in renewed rage, the smiling horror replaced by snarls of infinite hatred.
Then, It lunged once again.
Hugo, in his new form, didn't fight, instead he let His body turn into iquid, a mercury-like stream of nanites that slipped between the crashing limbs to avoid the myriads of attacks the abomination was launching at him.
'What am I supposed to do with a form that upgrades tech? There's no tech here!'
he thought frantically as he dodged another tendrils of coral.
His time was running short, hugo had utilized his awakened ability a lot in this fight, draining a lot of his soul essence.
Then, the innate knowledge of the galvanic Mechamorph resurfaced in his head, as he examined the spire around him...
Upgrade.
Bond.
Assume control.
His Imprint didn't just upgrade technology, it could bond with and assume control over any sufficiently complex enchanted or mechanical structure...
His single, glowing green eye swept the chamber, the shattered coral, the pulsating walls of the Spire filled with intricate runes and the artificial sun handing in the sky like a distant god...
The Spire itself suddenly begun to make sense.
It wasn't just a tower, instead It was a machine.
A giant, arcane machine designed to trap power a false sun and hold back the dark sea... It was exactly the kind of complex system a Galvanic Mechamorph could interface with.
With a a last desperate gamble, Hugo allowed His nanite-based body to liquefy into a cascading stream of black , white, and blue. He poured himself onto the floor, the nanites spreading into cracks, up the walls, across the ceilings and merging with the very fabric of the Crimson Spire.
The blue circuitry on his body began to spread, tattooing itself across the red coral and the ancient complex runes.
Hugo's consciousness suddenly expanded once more, this time differently from his soul serpent from....
He was no longer in the Spire.
He was the Spire.
Multiple Sensations flooded him, manifesting as an overwhelming centuries-old data stream...
He felt the immense sealed chamber of the Dark Sea with the complex runes holding the cursed sea, runes created by a far greater sorcerer then himself.
He felt the agonized presence of thousands of sacrificed souls, each trapped Within the heart of the spire, their essence slowly being drained to feed the artificial sun, which functioned as the battery, while the souls represented the energy stored inside said battery.
He also felt the sun itself, a raging, captive sphere of forged light that was meant to purge and banish the dark sea...
And then there was the Terror itself, the conduit and anchor of the spire and also the same living component that perverted the machine's purpose.
And yet, Hugo did not feel anger for the Terror... for it was a victim.
the memory of the saintess who had willingly become the conduit of the spire to save her people, only to be slowly eaten alive by Corruption over the millennias. The terror's agony wasn't just madness, it was the endless scream of a heroic soul alongside the thousands of sacrificed soul within it being defiled...
Hugo's own consciousness, distributed across the Spire, almost shattered under the weight of that shared, historical pain...
All of these deaths...
All of this suffering...
And for what? in the end, the civilization of the forgotten shore still went extinct, leaving nothing but corruption behind... The Heroes who sacrificed themselves, the people that were sacrificed... It was all in vain...
'I'm sorry...' he thought, the sentiment echoing through the circuits which were now now fused with the Spire's heart.
'I'm so sorry for everything that happened to you... All of you, now, please Let me end it... I... I hope that you find peace in death.'
The idea of talking to dead souls and a corrupted Terror wasn't Hugo's brightest idea, but he simply couldn't leave it in his heart for long.
Then, With grim determination, Hugo seized complete control over the spire bypassing the corrupted conduit.
He directly accessed the artificial Sun in hope of using it's power against the terror.
The amount of stored soul essence stored within it was staggering, dwarfing his own reserves, it was a Transcendant-tier power source, vast and almost overwhelming...
Although this time, He didn't try to craft a spell or an enchantment using the stored energy, as He was a galvanic Mechamorph merged with a machine.
And so, He simply released the energy inside the sun and rerouted it elsewhere.
It was like opening a massive floodgate, and unluckily for the crimson terror, it was right Infront of it
A section of the wall near the Terror reconfigured, nanites and coral forming a perfect aperture, then From it, a beam of concentrated energy erupted.
But it wasn't crimson, nor was it blue, instead It was a pure, blinding white, the color of untainted soul Essence carrying within it the final memories—Hope, resolve and determination—of all those who had been sacrificed to the spire.
The Corrupted Terror immediately sensed the threat.
In its final, desperate act, it tried to do one final act of blasphemy...
To consume the sun and devour the source of its suffering.
And so, It lunged toward the distant light...
But It never made it.
The beam of condensed Transcendent soul essence struck it head-on.
It washed over the screaming faces, and one by one, they fell silent, their expressions smoothing from agony into something resembling relief, then dissolving into motes of light as they were devoured by light. The corrupt coral body flaked away before turning into ash.
The beam persisted for only three seconds and yet, that was enough for it to illuminate the entire world in pure light, blinding the last of the sleepers who passed through the gateway down below.
When the light faded, nothing remained of the Corrupted Terror but a faint, shimmering dust settling on the floor and a profound, silence...
[You have slain a Corrupted Terror: Saint Mary.]
[You have received a Memory: Nameless Sun.]
The spell notification reverberated in Hugo's mind.
And Then, a profound sense of tiredness hit him as the omnitrix suddenly started beeping and glowing in red light.
Controlling the Spire, channeling that much energy and surviving the onslaught of a corrupted Terror was simply too much for Hugo's soul and boys.
The connection between him and the spire severed violently. The blue circuitry flared brightly and then vanished from the walls.
Hugo's nanite body was instantly expelled, coalescing in the center of the chamber, at the same time, The Omnitrix timed out.
A flash of red light was all it took for Hugo to collaps onto the cracked floor, back in his vilagax form.
He was gasping violently and drenched in cold sweat, feeling every muscle trembling with a violent aftershocks.
His soul felt scorched and injured, the small parts that were torn apart were healing but the pain was still there.
Even his mind was not spared, reeling from the echoes of a thousand deaths and the intimate touch of corruption. He clutched his chest feeling emptier and more exhausted than he ever had in his life.
Just then, Hugo heard the spell's voice reverberate in his head one more time.
[You have aquired an attribute: soul conduit]