Chapter 14: Chapter 14 — Peace
Suddenly, I felt an intensely familiar sensation. A small electric bolt burst from the point of contact, surged through my entire hand, climbed my arm, and lodged itself directly into my brain. My eyes rolled white for an instant as hundreds of disjointed images began playing at vertiginous speed inside my head.
Zzzzzt—flash!
Memories. Memories that didn’t belong to me. I was witnessing this bastard’s past.
I could see the image of a small boy, dressed in rags, hugging his mother tenderly in a humble hovel. The scene shifted abruptly: a corpulent man—his father—burst into the place completely drunk, brutally beating the child and the woman. It seemed physical abuse and savage aggression were daily bread in that household.
Thud! Crack! Sobs...
Sick of the constant agony and of watching his mother bleed, the boy turned to forbidden texts, performing a blood magic ritual that tore open a small rift, dragging dark entities into this plane. The entities helped him, yes—but in the most twisted, sadistic way imaginable. They killed the father in a horrendous fashion, then immediately abducted the mother and child.
The boy was subjected to systematic torture for forty days and forty nights, his brain exposed directly to massive quantities of pure dark magic to shatter his sanity. Meanwhile, the mother was turned into a breeding slave, used to spawn abominations of the flesh.
Screams... wet tearing... crackling black energy...
With his mind completely washed and transformed into a living puppet, the entities forced the child to murder his own mother for pure entertainment. They forced him to strangle her with his own hands while they cackled in the shadows. After the act, they simply grew bored of the experiment and abandoned him beside the corpse.
Gasp... choke... silence...
The boy, his psyche shattered, remained beside his mother’s body for days on end in that underground laboratory. He spoke to her with tenderness while the woman’s flesh began to decompose and rot little by little. The body filled with pus, pooled fluids, and necrosis, leaving the bones exposed to plain sight.
Drip... squelch... the low hum of flies...
Far from being frightened, the boy smiled with an empty expression. He curled up among the putrid flesh and fluids of his progenitor, caressing the remains while whispering:
"You are my queen, Mother... you are my beautiful, beautiful queen... we will stay here forever."
The images accelerated. The boy grew up in total isolation in that laboratory abandoned by the dark entities. Eventually, he began surfacing to the outside, stalking a nearby village to kidnap children and adults to continue his flesh experiments. He repeated that macabre cycle for the following four hundred years.
One detail in the memories seized my attention fiercely. How the fuck had a monster like this spent four centuries kidnapping and experimenting right under the noses of adventurers and town authorities without anyone noticing?
Ah, I see. The bastard was meticulous. He didn’t stay in one place perpetually; he kept moving from village to village across the decades. When a settlement began to grow suspicious, he simply orchestrated a mass massacre using hordes of wild monsters, passing off the disappearance of the inhabitants as tragic accidents caused by the world’s fauna. He was a damn cunning bastard.
The flow of memories ended abruptly, slamming me back to the reality of the obsidian sanctum.
---
The white light of the transmutation began to dissipate, revealing the result of the process. From the disgusting rotten meat of the former Lich, the silhouette of a woman began to emerge. She had pale skin traced with subtle black stitching that gave her a gothic, unsettling look; her eyes were heterochromatic—one a bright crimson red and the other an icy blue. Her hair was black as night, and when she parted her lips, she revealed sharp fangs. Yet her figure was undeniably slender, with pronounced curves and a sensually sexy appearance.
Shiiing... fwoosh...
All the dead skin, the pus, and Gollmun’s original rot shrank, gathering into a single point until it detached completely from the woman’s body, transforming into a viscous, shapeless, dark mass that possessed a single grotesque red eye at its center.
Squelch... plop...
The viscous mass began to thrash, emitting a shrill, terrified voice from its single eye:
"Wh-what have you done to me?! What is this body?!"
Wobble... squish...
"I warned you that you’d become my bitch, and I always keep my promises," I answered with a sly grin, observing the scene. "I transmuted your existence and split your essence into two perfect halves. On one side, I extracted all your residual energy and intellect to forge my new personal girl—an obedient waifu. On the other..."
I made a brief pause while I took a reinforced glass jar from my inventory, scooped up the viscous mass from the floor, and locked it tight inside, sealing the lid.
Clink... click...
"...On the other side, your original consciousness remains trapped in this putrid bitch you have for a body. You’re condemned to spend eternity locked inside this jar, watching front-row as I fuck and enjoy your sexy other half, while your current form is constantly tortured by the light magic I’ve imbued into the glass."
Hisssss—the glass glowed faintly, and the eye inside spasmed in silent agony.
A system chime interrupted the atmosphere:
Ding!
[Congratulations! Due to the successful transmutation of a high-level immortal being, you have unlocked and obtained several exclusive Necromantic Abilities. Do you wish to assimilate them at this moment?]
I momentarily ignored the floating screen. I held the jar at eye level, watching as the single red eye of the viscous mass dilated with pure panic and impotent hatred while it stared at me from its small glass prison.
Glub... glub... twitch...
I offered it my most soulless smile and said:
"Welcome to your new eternal nightmare, Gollmun."
---
As I walked away from the altar, I took a second to process what I’d seen in his memories. I knew perfectly well that he had suffered a shit childhood and was a victim as a child, but let’s be completely honest: that bastard had stopped being an innocent boy four hundred years ago. He had turned into a merciless monster without any possible remedy or salvation. I didn’t feel a single shred of remorse for what I’d done to him.
What did leave a thorn lodged in my mind was the mention of the "dark beings." Apparently, there exist entities far stronger, more ancient, and more fucking psychopathic scattered across the hidden corners of this new world. I hope I don’t have the bad luck to cross paths with them anytime soon, though knowing my luck with this gacha system, something inside me told me that encounter was going to be completely inevitable.
Snap!
I snapped the fingers of my right hand, activating the system’s teleportation command to exit that isolated sanctum.
Vwooom—flash!
In a blink, the obsidian environment vanished, returning me instantly to the main corridor of the underground laboratory, right where I had left my party standing.
"Master! Master!" the waifus exclaimed in unison, lunging slightly forward with faces full of relief at seeing me return unharmed.
"You did it, my lord," Domack added, stepping forward with an expression of deep respect and awe on his man-at-arms face.
"Of course I did," I answered smugly.
With a casual motion, I tossed Domack the glass jar containing the Lich’s paranoid eye for him to guard, while I took the hand of the beautiful, sexy gothic waifu I had obtained from the forced transmutation. I guided her toward where Samira stood.
Clink—catch!
"Keep an eye on her for now, Samira. She’s extremely docile thanks to the system, but her nature is still peculiar," I instructed.
I took a few minutes to explain to them in summary everything I had discovered and what had happened in the obsidian sanctum. Once the explanation was finished, the party advanced in silence, descending the stairs toward the deepest, most infected section of the laboratory—the exact place where the gigantic mass that was once Gollmun’s mother lay chained.
Clank... clank... drip...
The abomination emitted a dull moan, a mix of physical pain and spiritual agony that resonated through the basement.
Rrrrumble... keeeen...
I approached the colossal, grotesque being. I mentally invoked the interface:
"System, can I reverse the biological process of this mass of flesh and grant eternal rest to her soul?"
The screen blinked immediately:
Ding!
[Response: Yes. The application of high-grade divine purifying energy can dissolve the necromantic bonds and free the soul from the corrupt container.]
"Understood."
I stepped forward and laid the palm of my hand directly on the surface of that grotesque flesh. I evoked the white light with a gentle intensity—not to destroy, but to cleanse. In an instant, the sacred flashes enveloped the woman’s entire deformed body, dissolving the corrupt tissues and unraveling them into a beautiful tide of thick, luminous particles that ascended toward the ceiling, illuminating the basement’s darkness.
Fwoooooosh... shimmer...
Amid the rain of lights, the spiritual silhouette of a young, beautiful woman materialized for a fraction of a second. She offered me a gaze of profound gratitude and a faint smile before fading completely into the air.
Soft chime... silence...
I gazed at the now-empty space, exhaling a long sigh.
"Now you can finally rest in peace... alongside your true children."
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