The spiral staircase seemed endless, winding upwards through the darkness like the intestine of a giant stone beast. Vaelen ran up the steps with light treads, no longer dragging his feet.
Gareth's short sword felt cold and balanced in his right hand. The Head Guard's dried blood was still sticky on his knuckles, a reminder that the path of retreat was firmly sealed.
As he moved, Vaelen focused his mind on the status screen floating in the corner of his vision. He had just leveled up. He needed every advantage available.
[Status Update Available]
[Attribute Points: 3]
Without hesitation, Vaelen gave a mental command. "All to Agility."
He didn't need the strength to hit hard right now; he needed speed. His next opponent was Lady Elara. A mage—albeit only a low-level one, an Apprentice Mage Rank 8. If he gave her distance to cast a spell, Vaelen would be dead before his sword could touch the hem of her dress.
A strange sensation coursed through his leg muscles. The cramps and stiffness from lying in the coffin vanished instantly, replaced by an unnatural lightness. His muscles compacted, his nerves sharpened. The world seemed to move just a fraction slower.
Vaelen reached the secret door behind the mansion's library bookshelf—a passage used by servants (and assassins) to move unseen. He peeked out.
The corridor was deserted. The storm outside muffled the sound of footsteps.
He slipped toward his own bedroom—the initial crime scene. His instincts told him Elara was there. The woman was a paranoid perfectionist; she would be anxious that Gareth hadn't returned with the signet ring.
Sure enough. His door was slightly ajar. Flickering candlelight spilled onto the dark corridor floor.
However, it wasn't the sound of Elara's annoyed cursing that he heard.
What he heard was chanting.
A low, rhythmic murmur that sounded wet. The language used was not the common tongue of the Kingdom of Eisenwald. It was full of harsh consonants and hisses that made the hair on Vaelen's neck stand up.
"Nag'a thul... moroi... sanguis... egestas..."
Vaelen peered through the crack in the door.
The scene inside his room shifted the atmosphere of this revenge story into something far more insane.
Lady Elara wasn't looking for a ring. She was kneeling in the center of the room, right over the stain of Vaelen's vomited blood left on the carpet before he was taken away. She held a small silver dagger, slicing her own palm, and dripping her blood onto Vaelen's old bloodstain.
There was an intricate pattern drawn on the floor using a mixture of both their blood. Black candles burned around it, their flames not orange, but a sickly pale purple.
[WARNING: Abyssal Ritual Detected]
[Type: Soul Binding (Failed)]
[Target Entity: Unknown Outer Resonance]
Adrian narrowed his eyes. This woman wasn't just a wicked stepmother crazy for wealth. She was trying to do something to Vaelen's soul after his death.
You didn't just want to kill me, did you, Stepmother? Vaelen thought coldly. You wanted to make my soul a sacrifice.
He didn't wait for the ritual to finish. The element of surprise was the only ally he had.
Vaelen kicked the door wide open.
BANG!
The oak door slammed against the wall hard. A draft from the corridor rushed in, extinguishing half the ritual candles.
Elara's chanting stopped abruptly. The beautiful golden-haired woman jerked, turning with wide eyes toward the door. Her elegant silk nightgown was now soiled with ritual bloodstains.
When she saw the gaunt figure standing in the doorway, her face went drastically pale—paler than a corpse.
"G-Gareth?" she called out hesitantly, her voice trembling.
Vaelen stepped into the remaining candlelight. He raised Gareth's short sword, letting the pale purple light reflect off the steel blade coated in fresh blood.
"Gareth is busy downstairs," Vaelen said with a terrifyingly polite smile. "He sends his regards. He said it's a bit cold in hell, so he wants you to join him to keep each other warm."
"Y-You..." Elara's eyes widened, her pupils vibrating unnaturally. "Impossible... I watched you die. Your heart stopped!"
"Death rejected me, Elara. It seems it didn't like the taste of your poison."
Elara scrambled to her feet, her legs wobbling. The momentary fear on her face was slowly replaced by pure hatred and panic. She looked at the sword in Vaelen's hand, then the bloodstains on her stepson's shirt.
"You killed him? You killed Gareth?" Her voice rose an octave, becoming hysterical. "A crippled brat with no Mana Core like you?!"
"This cripple is the one who's going to slit your throat," Vaelen hissed. He lunged forward.
Thanks to his new Agility points, Vaelen darted across the room in two seconds. The five-meter distance was cut in an instant.
However, Elara was still a Rank 8 Mage. Her reflexes were trained.
She raised her bloody hand, her fingers forming a strange magic seal.
"Get away from me, MONSTER!"
Magic formed in her palm. Not a fireball or lightning, but a blob of pitch-black shadow shaped like a undulating spear.
[Skill Alert: Corrupted Shadow Bolt]
Vaelen saw the projectile coming. His instincts screamed to dodge right. He threw himself down, rolling on the hard wooden floor.
WHOOSH!
The shadow spear struck where his head had been a second ago, smashing into the wardrobe behind him.
Hiss!
There was no explosion. What happened was more horrifying. The wooden wardrobe door didn't shatter, but rotted in seconds. The sturdy wood turned into a grey, slimy mush, as if it had been eaten by termites for a hundred years in the blink of an eye.
Vaelen swallowed hard. If that hit him, his flesh would melt off his bones.
"You think that kitchen knife can touch me?" Elara screamed, her confidence returning as she felt the flow of magic. She cast a second spell, faster this time. Three small shadow orbs formed around her head.
"You are nothing but a mistake, Vaelen! Your father's mistake, the universe's mistake!"
Vaelen rose from his roll and hid behind a thick bedpost.
"Mistake or not," Vaelen shouted from behind cover, "Tonight I hold the eraser!"
He spotted a glass bottle of lamp oil on the bedside table. Vaelen snatched it.
As Elara fired the next shadow orbs which destroyed the bedpost, Vaelen broke from cover. He didn't run straight. He ran in a zigzag, using the chaos of the furniture in the room.
"Die! Die! DIE!" Elara fired magic blindly, destroying mirrors, paintings, and windows. The luxurious room now looked like a surreal war zone full of rot slime.
Vaelen got closer. Two meters left.
Elara panicked. Her magic cooldown wasn't finished. She stepped back, tripping over her own long gown.
Vaelen threw the oil bottle at Elara's face.
Crash!
Glass shards and oil soaked Elara's face and eyes. She screamed, thinking it was an acid attack. The sting of the oil entering her eyes blinded her momentarily.
That was the opening Vaelen needed.
He lunged, tackling Elara's body, knocking her to the floor—right on top of the blood ritual circle she had made herself. Ironic.
Vaelen pinned her chest, his knee pressing down on Elara's right arm so she couldn't make hand seals. His left hand gripped the woman's throat.
Their faces were close. Adrian could smell Elara's expensive rose perfume, mixed with a strange foul odor coming from her breath—the smell of old meat.
"Look at me," Vaelen growled, raising his sword high. "Look at the person you called trash as he takes your life!"
However, Elara didn't beg for mercy.
Under Vaelen's grip, Elara suddenly smiled. Her lips tore wide, far beyond normal human anatomy, until they touched her ears. Her rows of teeth seemed to change, becoming small sharp points like shark teeth.
Her beautiful blue eyes turned pitch black—no pupil, no sclera. Black like squid ink.
"You think..."
The voice coming out of Elara's mouth was not her voice. It was the voice of many people speaking at once—men, women, old, young, echoing overlapping with a distortion tone that hurt the ears.
"...death is the end for us, Little Meat?"
[CRITICAL WARNING!]
[The Veil is thinning!]
[Detecting entity: Lesser Spawn of The Thousand Young.]
"What the hell..." Vaelen was stunned for a second. Elara's body beneath him began to churn. The skin of the neck he was gripping felt like it was moving, as if large worms were squirming under the epidermis.
Elara's chest swelled, and suddenly, her ribs snapped from the inside, opening outward.
Pale pink slimy tentacles shot out from Elara's split chest cavity, aiming straight for Vaelen's face.
"SHIT!"
Vaelen tilted his head to the side.
The tentacle grazed his cheek, leaving a stinging chemical burn, then smashed into the room's ceiling with force that cracked the stone.
Vaelen rolled away, falling onto his back on the floor. He crawled backward frantically.
What used to be Lady Elara was now standing up. Or at least, the remnants of her body.
Her silk dress was tattered. Her human body was torn from the inside, becoming merely a "cocoon" for the horrific creature now emerging. Half of her beautiful face remained, hanging loosely on the side of the creature's head like a detached mask. The rest was a mass of red flesh, eyes growing randomly on shoulders, and three whip-tentacles replacing her right arm.
The creature—that Abomination—shrieked. The sound wasn't a human scream, but like the sound of a bone flute blown out of tune.
Vaelen, sitting on the floor holding the short sword with trembling hands, didn't feel the paralyzing terror a normal human would feel.
Instead, The Entropy System in his head vibrated wildly. Not a vibration of danger warning, but a vibration of enthusiasm.
A red dialogue box appeared, its pulsation synchronized with Vaelen's frantic heartbeat.
[ABOMINATION IDENTIFIED]
[Source: Cosmic Parasite (Host: Elara Blackwood)]
[Grade: F- (Newborn)]
[HIDDEN QUEST TRIGGERED: The First Feast]
[Objective: Do not run. Do not hide. CONSUME the aberration.]
[System Advice: Eat, or be eaten.]
Vaelen stared at the monster, then looked at the sword in his hand. He wiped the blood from his burned cheek, and slowly stood tall. The corner of his lips lifted to form a crazy smile.
"Alright, you bastard System," he whispered to the empty air, his eyes locked on the monster that used to be his stepmother.
"You want to eat? Let's eat."