Chapter 58: Slumber Bellfish
Rudy stared at the cavity’s opening with a pained grin, and then suddenly noticed something. For some reason, he couldn’t feel any pain in his left arm, as if he no longer had it, yet he could sense the cold water caressing it.
Confused, he glanced down at his left hand, and just as his gaze landed on the gelatinous arm, his eyes widened in terror.
The arm still held its original shape, yet the skin and flesh had turned transparent and jelly-like.
"W-What?!" he stuttered as he saw the pumping veins and pristine bones that made up his body.
"H-How...?" he stammered in pure horror, and before he could finish wallowing in his misfortune, a sharp cry snapped him out of his thoughts.
He tore his gaze away from his arm and toward the deviant horror that now looked slightly weaker than before.
Seeing the wretch that had caused his arm to turn into a monster like itself, Fury burned in Rudy’s eyes.
The borrowed essence permeating his body exploded as he used plenty of it to dive toward it.
Horrified, the jellyfish swung one of its tentacles at him.
Rudy instinctively raised his arms to block the attack, and as the tentacle struck him, he was thrown backwards. However, the attack wasn’t as powerful as he thought it would be.
Confused, Rudy mumbled, "What just happened?"
For now, he pushed away the confusion and shot toward the jellyfish with his left arm glowing red due to the blood essence flowing in it.
The jellyfish tried to stop him with its tentacles, and by using the overflowing essence, Rudy swam past them and reached it.
He grabbed two of its tentacles by the base and pulled them with all of his strength.
The other tentacles coiled and tightened around him as they tried to make him fall asleep, but due to the overflowing essence in him, it didn’t work. The dreadborn abandoned the sedative effect and began crushing him like a tin can.
Rudy’s bones creaked under the dreadborn’s grip, but he didn’t stop. He dug his fingers into its gelatinous flesh and tore off two of its tentacles.
Its jelly-like pink blood clouded the water.
Marks appeared all over his body as the dreadborn continued to crush him with all of its might.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Rudy flooded the blood essence outward, gathering the pink blood in his hands before he turned them into crude crystalline daggers and plunged them into the jellyfish’s tentacles.
More and more blood poured out of the dreadborn, and Rudy wrapped that blood around him. Then, he solidified the blood, turning it into crude armor.
His ribs, shoulders, and arm bones cracked and stabbed him from within as he swung the daggers with gritted teeth.
Bits of thick, transparent flesh floated around them as he severed more than five of its tentacles and freed himself of its grip.
He channeled most of the essence into the daggers and thrust them into the jellyfish’s body.
The remaining limbs wrapped around him, but Rudy completely ignored them and went deeper inside the jellyfish, entering its body.
Agony was clearly visible on his grim face, yet he didn’t stop and continued to go deeper into the jellyfish. His goal was the four corrupt cores that kept it alive.
Being unable to stop him, the dreadborn thrashed around and slammed itself into the cavity’s wall.
However, it did nothing because its own flesh absorbed all of the impact. The only thing it did was make itself bleed even further.
"It’s taking too long!" he growled, and using [Blood Manipulation], Rudy created gauntlets ending in razor-sharp claws with his own and the dreadborn’s blood, then he turned them solid with [Crimstone Construct] and dived forward like a mole.
The dreadborn’s flesh was far softer and easier to cut. He moved through it almost freely.
"I can do this..." Rudy mumbled through tired eyes. His body was covered in the dreadborn’s pink blood and jelly-like flesh.
The dreadborn tried everything, but it couldn’t stop Rudy, who was destroying it from inside like a bloody parasite.
After a few minutes, Rudy’s claws struck one of the four corrupt cores, and it burst instantly.
The other three followed. The jellyfish shook for a moment and detonated.
The explosion sent Rudy crashing into the wall, and Final Will’s melodious voice whispered in his ear.
[You have slain a Deviant Horror: Slumber Bellfish.]
[Your blood has grown pure.]
"Ha...ha...haha!" A broken laugh escaped his blood-soaked lips, and his gaze fell on a glowing orange symbol resembling a knight’s helm with runes circling it.
"Heh. Epic armor." His grin widened even further, and he forced his body to swim toward it.
He grasped the symbol, and it broke into glowing orange sparks that entered his chest with Final Will’s words.
[You have obtained an artifact.]
[Obsidian Aegis.]
The weight of what he had just done caused a genuine smile to appear on his face, which disappeared right after as he looked at his left arm.
"Blood usurpation is a double-edged sword..." He mumbled, and only then did he notice something strange.
He blinked a few times and whispered, "How am I breathing underwater...?"
"Don’t tell me." He looked back at his hand, and just as he was about to revel in his unexpected fortune, a sharp hum filled the water and slammed into him.
He crashed to the ground, his head spun wildly, and his gaze fell onto the clam that had closed itself and was shedding a purple light.
"What?" Rudy activated [Scarlet Sight] and focused on the clam.
Much to his fear, the clam was indeed a dreadborn... though it didn’t have a core inside it, or at least the part that it used to harvest the essence shards didn’t have them.
He pushed himself off the ground and looked into the cavity’s walls.
"One, two, three, four...five...six... S-Six corrupt cores."
The reality sent shudders through him, and he whispered,
"It was neither the jellyfish, nor the pearl... it was the clam. No, it was the oasis itself. This very place is a dreadborn... a deviant disaster."
