When the old man saw the fresh wounds on his own skin and the blood seeping out, the arrogant smirk melted off his face, replaced by absolute panic. For the first time, he saw the shadowy edge of his own mortality staring back at him. He didn't want to die—not like this, and certainly not here.
Ignoring his bruised pride and the heavy boot pinning his chest to the floor, he began squirming like a frantic insect, thrashing wildly in a pathetic bid to cling to life.
"I'll talk! I'll tell you everything! Just keep her blade away from me!" he shrieked, all composure completely shattered as he spilled every detail he knew.
The pulsating bulbous meat mass had been discovered in the subterranean flooded vaults beneath the fortress. The manor had been built over a forgotten escape route leading out into the surrounding wild lands—a passage that rarely saw any sign of sea beasts.
What the manor's owners hadn't realized was that the deep subterranean pool within the route connected directly to subterranean rivers flowing into the ocean. The twisted entity had crawled up through those black waters from the depths of the sea.
"The holy messenger granted me gifts beyond human comprehension!" the old man babbled, his eyes wide and unblinking. "It restored my youth! Before this, I was confined to a wheelchair, reduced to watching my own servants whisper behind my back! I lived in terror that they would betray me or throw me aside!"
His face twisted with bitter resentment as he remembered those days of helplessness, back when his staff had grown bolder and far less subservient.
"The messenger returned my youth! It promised me immortality! All it asked for in return was food... simple sustenance! So I..."
"So you started feeding the local villagers to a horrific abomination just to buy yourself a few more years of luxurious living?" Irene's voice turned lethal. If not for the need to gather every last bit of intelligence, she would have driven her rapier through his gullet right then and there.
"They were not food!" the old man shrieked, his fanatical fervor flaring back to life as he glared at Irene with burning hatred for her disrespect toward his sacred entity. "They were granted the honor of joining a far greater collective! They became part of a divine, elevated existence—a life form so vastly superior to fragile human flesh!"
Hearing his delusional self-justification, Irene let out a cold, venomous laugh.
To her, the man was nothing more than a pathetic hypocrite. He dressed up his greed and fear of death in grand, sacred rhetoric, sacrificing innocent lives to fuel his own selfish longevity while convincing himself he was performing a holy divine act.
The old man caught the sheer disdain in Irene's eyes. Gazing at her rigid Inquisition coat, his teeth ground together in fury as he spat out his next words:
"It's all because of people like you! You interfere with the grand arrival! You block the path of true perfection! I cannot leave this world yet—there are so many lost souls who still need my guidance to join the grand process!"
He thrashing was so violent that the fear in his eyes was replaced by pure fanaticism and rage. He looked ready to hurl himself at Irene's throat.
While Irene interrogated the cultist, Jeanne and Skadi turned their attention back toward the charred central mass. To their surprise, despite taking a direct blast of dragonfire from Fafnir, the creature still possessed a faint flicker of life.
Part of this was due to Fafnir holding back his flames to avoid collapsing the subterranean chamber upon their heads, but even so, surviving a direct blast of dragon fire proved the entity possessed terrifying biological vitality.
Several thick, muscular tendrils burst from the charred mass, whipping through the air and slamming against the stone floor. Yet its movements were uncoordinated and blind; unlike the previous creature, this monster lacked any distinct sensory organs to track its prey, flailing its appendages around aimlessly.
"Looking at this monstrosity..." Jeanne muttered, her eyes narrowing as a dark memory surfaced. "It brings back some very unpleasant memories."
It reminded her all too vividly of a certain bug-eyed comrade from her past, and the horrifying madness he had unleashed.
"Stay sharp," Skadi warned, holding her heavy sword at the ready. "I've never encountered a Seaborn of this specific form before. It seems many unsettling changes have occurred in the ocean during my time on land."
Before they could plan their next strike, the pulsating mass began a hideous transformation. Small, malformed outgrowths sprouted from its sides, twisting into crude approximations of limbs.
"Is it trying to adapt on the fly?" Jeanne watched the grotesque display with a look of disgust. "Is this thing some kind of living egg?"
Whatever it was, allowing it to complete its transformation was out of the question. Nothing good ever hatched from an unnatural biological mass.
Gazing around the enclosed chamber, Jeanne quickly formulated a plan.
"Fall back!" Jeanne shouted to Skadi and Irene. "My Arts are going to cover this entire room. Get outside now!"
Though surprised by her sudden instruction, neither Skadi nor Irene hesitated. Questions could wait; survival came first.
Before retreating through the broken doorway, Irene raised her hand-cannon and put a final heavy round directly through the old cultist's heart, putting an end to his wretched life.
Even knowing that Jeanne was about to unleash an attack that would destroy everything in the chamber, Irene refused to leave even the slightest chance of the cultist surviving.
As Irene ducked out of the threshold, she glanced back just in time to see a stray tendril coil around the old man's fresh corpse, dragging his lifeless body straight into the pulsating core. The monster absorbed his remains in a single sickening gulp.
"I almost regret killing him so quickly," Irene said coldly as she stood in the outer corridor. "I would have loved to see how his fanatical mind reacted to being swallowed by his own god."
Her hands gripped her weapon tightly, the faint tremble in her fingers revealing the anger she was keeping under tight control.
Having consumed the corpse, the central mass thrashed with renewed vigor, its malformed limbs sweeping across the floor as it searched for more bio-matter to absorb.
"We need to end this fast," Irene said, turning to look at Jeanne.
A startling change had come over the maiden. Her immaculate white armor and holy aura had vanished, replaced by a dark, sinister armor that radiated an intense, suffocating heat. Dark crimson flames licked around her boots as her eyes glowed with a terrifying intensity.
Irene stared in shock, entirely unfamiliar with this dark, menacing form.
"Let my wrath gather..." Jeanne murmured, her eyes closed as she channeled the overwhelming power within her core.
Sensing the sudden spike in dangerous energy, the creature whipped dozens of tendrils toward Jeanne, attempting to crush her before she could release the attack.
Skadi and Irene moved as one, their weapons forming an impenetrable barrier of steel and Arts strikes. Every tendril that dared approach Jeanne was sliced into ribbons before it could reach her.
"Burn to ash—!"
Jeanne opened her eyes and thrust her dark blade forward.
In an instant, dozens of massive, pitch-black iron stakes erupted from the stone floor, skewering the heavy mass of flesh from every direction and lifting it high into the air like a piece of meat pinned upon countless needles.
"Roar, my hatred!"
A catastrophic torrent of dark dragonfire erupted from the ground, carrying with it the agonized wails of every innocent life cut short within these walls. The dark flames devoured the monster, consuming every cell of its flesh.
The creature struggled violently, but its physical resistance meant nothing against the hellish flames. Without any innate resistance to pure, condensed magical fire, the abnormal Seaborn could only writhe in agony as its entire body turned into a falling pillar of black ash.