CHAPTER 56: RISING FROM THE DEATHBED, NEEDING TO FILL THE STOMACH

The wind blades sliced through the bird monster, and it crashed to the ground in pieces. White foam writhed and stitched itself back together, rebuilding its body. This time, it was even shorter.

The bird monster stared blankly at Wayne’s dramatically transformed appearance, its brain a jumbled mess. It wanted to say something, but struggled to express it. In the end, it asked in confusion, “Blasphemer, you also know life magic?”

After merging with the Book of Greed, Wayne shot up to three meters tall with sickly grey skin covered in veins and wrinkles. Although he remained humanoid overall, his face was featureless, and his chest had split open with a massive eye lodged in the cavity.

Black lines extended from the eye’s corners to his abdomen, adding a soul-shaking terror to his grotesque form while highlighting the core—the giant eye in his chest.

The eye shifted, focusing on the bird monster. Intense psychic rays condensed into a beam and shot at it.

“Ahhh—”

The bird monster shrieked, its knightly swords crumbling into sludge with its faltering control. It raised its broken hands to clutch its head, shoulders sinking as its chest dissolved. Its entire form collapsed like a candle melting under high heat.

It was obvious that Wayne was the greater source of corruption.

The bird monster continued to scream, vomiting white matter out of its bulging spiral-shaped mouth. Half of it was brain, and half of it was minced flesh. The two parts were fused and inseparable.

The neurons pulsed with the bird’s last rational thought, but its body didn’t seem to see value in that. To escape the tormenting state it was in, it chose to abandon its rationality by stomping and crushing its brain.

The bird monster raised both hands, its body no longer melting but reverting to its tentacled humanoid form gradually. In that moment, it found peace.

Holy shit, how can you get even creepier?

Wayne shuddered in horror, swinging his blade hands at the bird monster. It cackled and raised its knightly swords to meet his strike head-on.

Two abominations grappled, one a tentacle abomination, and the other a humanoid creature with a giant eyeball in the chest. Ten out of ten people would look at them and see two villains fighting among themselves.

Wayne grew more energetic as he fought, while the bird monster became increasingly sluggish.

Like Archbishop Ivor, the bird monster, after losing its brain, transferred its consciousness to its tentacles. It thought it had gained an immortal body, when in reality, its thoughts were being corrupted and assimilated, gradually losing self-awareness until its death.

Less than five minutes in, the bird monster started ramming into trees, ignoring Wayne in favor of wrestling with Mother Nature.

Puzzled, Wayne stopped to observe it. This was his first encounter with such a bizarre specimen. He considered the possibility of capturing it and keeping it in the manor’s basement for research. He abandoned the idea soon, though. The bird monster collapsed physically, going from barely maintaining its humanoid form to becoming a muddy mess. In the end, it was nothing but writhing white sludge that repeatedly tried to manifest tentacles, but was unable to maintain the shapes.

The bird monster died. Its death was sudden and confusing to Wayne. It had been a formidable enemy, yet it collapsed before he could make a proper attack.

He suspected it had something to do with the Lord of the Void. The corrupted legendary mage bestowed corrupting knowledge upon followers, and like expired laundry detergent, the knowledge seeped into and damaged the followers’ thoughts and judgment. They craved ever-greater power under the influence and walked step by step toward the abyss.

Thoughts were the key to everything, without which nothing could exist.

“Tsk, I’ll never follow anyone!”

Wayne separated from the Book of Greed, summoning slithering vines by curling his fingers to bury the repulsive, rotten flesh. Leaving it as it was would contaminate the environment. Heat treatment to sterilize it before burial was the safe way to go!

Just when he was going to set the flesh ablaze, the pendant of the divine statue floated up from the mud, the golden light it radiated morphing into the Lord of the Void’s tentacled humanoid form, roaring curses at Wayne. He faced the threat gravely, his eyes glinting with green light. After the minions, elite monsters, and the demon chancellor, the demon king was finally making a move in person.

Isabella, you’ve disappointed me! I knew I was right about you!

He prepared to give his all. The Lord of the Void wasn’t just some thugs. He only hoped that Isabella had struck him before dying and critically wounded him, preferably leaving him with only one hit point.

Various thoughts flashed through his mind. He came up with a dozen plans for fight and flight, but the Lord of the Void never attacked. It shrieked for a full ten minutes like a betrayed lover. Only then did Wayne realize that this wasn’t a demon king confronting the hero, but a sore loser howling in frustration.

He flipped his opponent off in silence.

The Lord of the Void raged. It had already been toeing the line between rationality and madness, and Wayne’s taunt pushed it into a hysterical fury.

“I’ll come for you! I won’t let you off the hook...”

“Just you wait. I’ll tear you into pieces and trap your soul in the void forever!!”

With a bang, the statue suspended in the air shattered into pieces, then dissolved into golden powder.

“You better hurry.” Wayne scoffed, flipping off again. “Or I may just be the one tearing you apart.”

“Young Master Wayne!”

From afar came Veryl’s voice. The butler had come to his aid with the three maids armed to the teeth.

Wayne waved his hand to clean up the scene, restoring the grove to its original state before turning toward the butler and maids, directing everyone to go back to the house and maintain defensive positions. It was hard to tell whether the Lord of the Void had any more tricks up his sleeve, or what state the town was in now. Just in case, they should return to their home base and prepare for battle.

Evening slowly arrived. Enrod was frighteningly quiet with no single light, like a gate of terror sitting in wait for the overconfident to intrude. Feeling anxious, Wayne rejected Veryl’s suggestion to send a maid to investigate and called Silvia instead. Again, the assistant said that his master wasn’t in the office.

“Strange... doesn’t Master work overtime until late at night every day? Why would she leave the office so early today...”

Wayne hung up. An hour later, he received a call from the maid sent to deliver Isabella’s report to Londan. The maid had raced to the city and met Silvia two hours ago, finally having the time to contact Wayne now.

He nodded. The intelligence had to be important for his master to suddenly skip work. She had always been a career woman.

Unable to reach Silvia, he couldn’t ask about Isabella’s situation or update her on the current state of Enrod. He sat restlessly, desperate to enter the town to investigate, but decided to wait a little longer for prudence’s sake.

The night passed uneventfully.

Wayne had lain low all night. No more attackers came knocking, and at dawn, he tried again to contact Silvia, but failed. Unable to contain himself any longer, he had Veryl and the maids arm themselves before they took the underground tunnel to the town’s sewers.

The sewers they traversed were only known to the Lando family. They were dry and clean with no unpleasant odor. Wayne followed behind Veryl. At the exit, he released his messenger bird to observe the situation outside through its eyes.

He saw townspeople collapse all over the streets. All dead and no survivors!

Frozen in shock, he cursed the Geocentrism Sect and swore that he, Wayne, would never tolerate cults, gambling, or drugs.

But then he quickly realized his mistake and discovered that the townspeople were merely sleeping. He sighed in relief, crawling out of the sewer and shaking a lady sitting against a nearby wall. She was in such a deep slumber that he couldn’t wake her. He raised his hand for a hard slap... but couldn’t follow through. Instead, he lifted the man beside the lady and delivered a forehand and backhand slap to awaken him.

“You’re a true gentleman, Young Master Wayne,” Veryl said.

“You have a good eye for people, Veryl.”

Wayne humbly waved his hand in denial. Then, seeing that the man was still sleeping like a dead pig even after the slaps, he realized that the townspeople were in a magically induced sleep that they wouldn’t just wake up from with physical stimulation.

Only magic could counter magic!

He gave up on waking them up. Cautiously, he headed toward the Geocentrism Sect’s base. Five mages dressed in the cult’s white robes lay asleep. Wayne hadn’t seen them before, so he chose to ignore them. And because he was ignoring them, he carelessly stepped on one of their faces.

He wasn’t going to apologize. They deserved it.

The town was eerily quiet. Residents could be seen sleeping soundly everywhere. His supernatural sense didn’t trigger any alarms, so he walked to the chicken farm, meeting no pushback.

He had a rough idea about the outcome of the battle. The Geocentrism Sect was powerful and able to even summon the Lord of the Void to curse out their opponents. Isabella was likely to have fought a whole town of cultists all on her own, sacrificing herself to ensure mutual destruction with the evil forces to protect the civilians.

She was a good person. Wayne planned to go down and collect her remains.

He told Veryl to wait outside and not to touch the eggs under any condition. Then he followed the route he had taken before to the underground courtyard.

It was ravaged and in ruins after an intense battle. He stepped around the debris with difficulty and found Isabella in a nearly collapsed corner, sitting against a wall. The woman smelled like her, and she was alive, only unconscious from exhaustion.

But...

Her figure had changed dramatically. Whether from stomach problems or starvation, she had become so thin that her face became distinct, along with her legs, and her chest and waist were no longer drowned in fat. She lost so much weight that she was barely recognizable.

By now, the divine art had lost its effect, and the marks on her face were gone, her pointy elf ears reverting to human ears. Only a streak of dark green remained in her hair.

Wayne wasn’t sure how to describe it. She had looked round from every angle, and now, there were peaks and valleys, and one could only wish to venture into the landscape.

“Wake up. It’s dawn.”

Isabella didn’t wake up. Wayne frowned and patted her face, trying a different tactic: “Time to eat! There’s so much delicious food!”

She shot up suddenly, staring at him while gulping. “What food?”

Rising from the deathbed, she really needed to fill her stomach. She was going to starve to death.