Before Lucaren's swors could pierce flesh again, Phaser's stab wound sealed. The gash in Phaser's chest closed, black ink rising like smoke before hardening into flesh, stitching together bone and muscle as if nothing had happened.
Lucaren froze, his eyes widening.
"Wha—"
Phaser lifted his hand.
From the snow-covered ground beneath Lucaren, a surge of black crystallized tendrils erupted. They weren't normal ones either. Each was studded with sharp thorns. They lashed around his arms, legs and torso, constricting him in a second. Lucaren roared, his Flux flaring as he tried to tear free. The thorns bit into him, plunging through skin and muscle with wet cracks. The pain ripped through his body and for the first time since he transmigrated, Lucaren screamed.
Phaser walked forward slowly. His tall silhouette loomed in the fog of his own inky haze, distorted like some nightmare given form. His face came into view and it wasn't human anymore. His sclera had turned jet-black. His irises were molten silver. The contrast was unnatural, eerie, and paired with his half-smile, it looked like something that belonged at the bottom of the abyss.
Lucaren gritted his teeth, jerking his body violently. He could break walls with his Flux, but the vines didn't budge. His veins bulged, sweat streaking his temple.
"What is this!? What are you—"
Phaser crouched down so his face hovered just above Lucaren's. His silver eyes flared, reflecting every shred of Lucaren's fear.
"Thus is the true power of Phasnovterich's Concept Flux."
Lucaren's body froze, not because he wanted to, but because his instincts screamed that something worse than death was being whispered to him.
"It was never written in Masquerade of Dreams: Shattered. He was a hidden character and I'm glad he was."
The tendrils pulsed, and Lucaren's blood hissed against the thorns. Black inky veins began to spread from the punctures across his arms, crawling like spiders beneath his skin. He gasped, horror dawning in his eyes. Phaser's grin sharpened.
"Anyone touched by these thorns experiences Flux Corrosion, the most dangerous disease of Fluxers. You know, the curse that rots their gift? The longer you're bound, the faster you turn into one of them. A Fluvium."
Lucaren thrashed, his voice breaking.
"No—NO!"
Phaser leaned closer. His breath was cold against Lucaren's ear.
"Don't fight it. Accept it. You're strong, Lucaren. Strong enough to be a Class Four Fluvium. Which means, your Fluveheart is mine for the taking."
Lucaren's face went pale. Phaser reached up and tapped the crown of black thorns hovering above his head, its spikes pulsing faintly with lightless energy.
"My crown needs three Fluvehearts to increase its potency. And yours will make my strings harder, sharper and stronger."
Lucaren's muscles trembled as he forced out a roar of defiance, but the sound broke halfway into a strangled gasp as the black crystal tendrils spread faster, wrapping around his neck, down his chest and across his jaw. His skin began to discolor, dark patches spreading in grotesque shapes. The tendrils writhed as the thorns dug deeper. Lucaren's scream split the air like a beast being flayed alive. His body convulsed as the corrosion coursed through him. His skin blackened further, not like burn marks, but like ink seeping from inside, staining every fiber of him. His features twisted. His cheeks hollowed, his jaw sharpened unnaturally as his veins bulged in warped, branching lines across his face.
His proud, muscular form shriveled in places, leaving him with a grotesque, malnourished look. His eyes sunk to dark pits surrounded by grayish, cracked skin. His once-glorious Combat Flux aura fizzled, leaving only whispers of shadow. Lucaren was still humanoid, but barely. His skin gleamed like wet tar with his shoulders hunched. Each breath came as a hiss. Phaser looked down at him with something between pity and exhilaration.
"Outer_110,635. That's me. You should at least know who I am before you die."
Lucaren raised his head, his once-fierce eyes now wide, trembling, but behind the horror was still a flicker of the warrior's spirit.
"I… won't… be your pawn..."
Phaser tilted his head, his grin widening until it seemed to split too far.
"Oh, Lucaren. You already are."
The crown above his head pulsed and the vines tightened further, making Lucaren's body seize with another inhuman scream. The vines writhed violently one last time as Lucaren's body contorted and snapped into something utterly alien.
With a rattling moan, his transformation stopped. Lucaren was no longer a man. He was a Fluvium, humanoid yet monstrous held together by nothing but Flux corrosion. The sword that had once been an extension of his Flux dropped from his trembling hand, hitting the snow with a muted clang. Phaser reached down and plucked Lucaren's fallen sword from the ground. It felt strange in his grip. Without hesitation, Phaser drew the blade back and swung it.
The corroded neck split clean. Lucaren's head tumbled into the snow with a muffled thud. The malnourished, monstrous face twisted permanently into a grotesque half-scream. The body spasmed, twitching once before collapsing.
Phaser exhaled slowly, twirling the borrowed sword once in his hand before letting it drop into the snow beside its former master.
"You look like a zombie. Ew."
The crystal-black tendrils with thorns stabbed downward, piercing the chest of the headless corpse. They dug deep, searching. Then, with a sickening crack, they ripped a small, pulsating purple crystal, suspended between the thorns.
It was the Fluveheart of Lucaren.
Phaser plucked it from the vines with care, holding it up in the light. It glimmered faintly. His eyes narrowed. He actually hoped for more. He glanced up at the black crown of thorns hovering above his head.
"As much as I'd love to give my crown more power, this one's too weak."
He sighed and pulled out his weapon from his System Inventory, The Atomicus Structure. The weapon glowed faintly as it emerged. It resembled a model of an atomic system with six crystal orbits spinning slowly around a core, each orbit empty, waiting to be filled. Without ceremony, Phaser pressed the Fluveheart into one of the empty orbits.
For a moment, nothing happened. The orbit simply swallowed it, the Fluveheart rotating slowly as if it had always belonged there. The weapon gave off no surge, no shockwave or flare of new power. Phaser frowned and turned the weapon over in his hand.
"Nothing, huh?"
He flexed his fingers. His strings burst to life, stretching outward, with dozens of black threads glimmering in the dim light. He pulled them taut experimentally and felt it instantly.
His strings were stronger and harder. When he twisted his hand, they didn't fray or warp under pressure. They gleamed with a darker sheen. A small smirk tugged at the corner of his lips.
"So the Atomicus Structure and my biological string weapon fused. Perfect."
He dismissed the weapon with a flick, the strings fading back into the air. The black crown of thorns hovering over his head dimmed, then vanished as well, his Flux dispersing.
His body was fully healed, the earlier stab wounds and bruises gone as though they had never existed. Not even a trace of fatigue weighed him down. If anything, he felt stronger. He rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck, and exhaled deeply.
In the distance, a faint blue glow shimmered through the haze of snow and acid-scorched ground. It was the clue to the Azure Sword. Thales had done it. He had slain the Slime Octopus.
Phaser's long stride carried him across the ruined valley, leaving behind the headless husk and the grotesque severed head half-buried in the snow. The corpse twitched faintly as though unwilling to accept its own end, but the vines had long since drained it of meaning.
Phaser didn't look back. He had killed someone powerful and yet he felt nothing. This wasn't the first time he had killed someone.
After all, he was a murderer long before he was transmigrated into this world.