The moment Kuro's tentacle brushed the corpse, the world tightened.
Not the water—
the Abyss itself.
A low, gravitational pull rippled outward, drawing everything inward as if the slain creature still had a heartbeat large enough to command the trench.
The Strider's body twitched.
Not alive.
Just… reacting.
Kuro felt the shift immediately: the water vibrating, mana twisting into spirals around the dead flesh.
> [Assimilation Initiated.]
[Warning: Mutated Core detected — stability below 12%.]
[Unpredictable neurological influence likely.]
Kuro lowered his tentacles further.
He had already decided.
The Strider's throat split open without touch—like the corpse itself wanted him to enter.
Tendons curled back.
Mana surged upward in dark ribbons, flooding the trench with a metallic tang that felt like the taste of rusted water.
The core appeared.
A lump of bioluminescent tissue, pulsing irregularly like a broken heart trying to mimic life. Threads of mana leaked from cracks in its surface, each one writhing like thin tentacles.
The core sensed him.
And it reacted.
The water blackened with mana-laced blood, coiling around Kuro's limbs, tugging him closer—
not violently,
but hungrily.
Kuro didn't fight it.
He reached out and wrapped a blunt tentacle around the core.
Everything broke at once.
—FLASH—
A vision tore through him.
A corridor of lightless stone.
Flooded.
Rotting.
The remains of the Strider's kind dead in heaps along the floor.
Evolution Trials.
Failure.
Failure.
Failure.
Each corpse bore the same deformities:
twisted jaws, shattered spines, eyes ruptured by pressure they were never meant to endure.
Then—
A scream.
Not sound.
Pressure.
A crushing, infinite pressure that turned bones to dust and snapped minds like brittle shells.
The Abyss Imitated God.
The Strider Could Not Become One.
So It Was Left Broken.
—FLASH—
Kuro's consciousness staggered as the vision snapped away.
The core ruptured in his grip.
Mana burst outward, slamming into him like a storm current. His shell rang with the impact as raw evolutionary energy flooded into his body and mind.
His limbs convulsed.
His chromatophores flickered uncontrollably.
His vision blurred into streaks of gold and black.
It felt like drowning inside his own skull.
> [Assimilation in progress…]
[Neural Overload detected.]
[Foreign instincts invading cognitive layer.]
[Stabilizing…]
[Failing.]
A new presence pressed against his thoughts.
Not a voice.
Not a memory.
A hunger.
An instinct to latch, to bite, to tear anything that changed.
The Strider's broken evolution trying to overwrite his own.
Kuro snarled—an ugly, guttural sound that vibrated through the water.
"No."
His mind twisted against the invasion.
He forced the Strider's instincts inward, compressing them, dissecting them, reframing them not as commands—
—but as data.
What made the Strider blink through water?
What allowed it to twist its spine beyond natural limits?
Why did it leak mana like a wound?
Understanding came.
Painfully.
Kuro felt his body shift.
Evolution Log
> [Core Consumed.]
[Abyssal Strider Traits Assimilated.]
[New Mutation Unlocked: "Phase Ripple."]
Allows instantaneous micro-displacement by folding water pressure.
(Unstable — may cause internal damage if repeated too quickly.)
[New Passive: "Instinct Lock."]
Foreign instincts are forcibly bound rather than integrated.
Prevents mental corruption at the cost of increased neural strain.
[Shell Plates Reinforced — composition altered by chaotic mana exposure.]
The changes hit him physically.
His shell darkened, lines of faint gold tracing across the plates like scars of light. His tentacles grew denser, more muscular, their tips subtly barbed with sensory spines that sharpened water vibrations to razor clarity.
His vision adjusted—
he could see movement not by light,
but by pressure.
The Abyss felt alive.
Breathing.
Watching.
Waiting.
The Strider's broken hunger still whispered inside him, trapped but present.
He allowed it to exist.
But not control.
"Another instinct," he murmured inside his mind.
"One more voice in the dark."
Then something deeper answered—
"Not a voice."
"A door."
Kuro froze.
That wasn't the Strider.
That wasn't memory.
That was the Abyss.
A pulse of pressure brushed his mind, almost gently.
"You open it by evolving."
The message faded.
The trench returned to silence.
Kuro drifted above the ruined corpse of the Abyssal Strider—
stronger, heavier, more aware than before.
And more watched than ever.
Far in the darkness below, something stirred.
Something that had felt the ripple of his mutation.
Something ancient.
Something hungry.