CHAPTER 30: BRANDED ABOMINATION

The dungeon’s darkness felt alive. Cold. Damp. Utterly silent. A blackness that swallowed the light. Darkness swallowed the light. Silence broke as the punishment beasts shrieked behind him.

He couldn’t wait for his eyes to adjust. No time to assess the new threats deeper in the dungeon. He was a cornered animal. Caught in a deadly pincer movement. His only option was to fight.

He spun around. The Shadowfang Dagger was a cold comfort in his hand. The punishment beasts were fully formed. A horde of at least thirty shadow-spawned horrors. Twisted mockeries of the wraith-hounds from the Abyss. But larger. Faster. Their forms coalescing into humanoid shapes with long, scythe-like claws. The system’s own personal hit squad. Their glowing red eyes were all locked onto him.

No room for strategy. No time for clever tactics. A battle of pure, brutal survival.

The first wave surged forward. A silent, flowing tide of darkness and claws. Edward met them head-on. His body was a whirlwind of controlled violence.

His dagger was fast. The black blade was almost invisible in the gloom. Every movement was a killing blow. He stabbed. He slashed. He spun. His blade struck the creatures’ weak spots with deadly accuracy.

For every beast he killed, two more appeared. They never stopped coming. A seemingly endless horde. They began to overwhelm him through sheer, suffocating numbers.

A claw raked across his back. Three deep, fiery gouges in his flesh. Another swipe caught his leg. He was being swarmed. Shadowy claws slashed at him from every side. Pain screamed through him without end.

He ignored it. His mind was a place of cold, clear focus.

He needed more power. He needed to heal. He was wounded. Bleeding. Being systematically torn apart.

He made the choice he knew he would have to make. He let go of his restraint. He let the monster out.

As a beast lunged for his throat, he didn’t just stab it. He drove his free hand into its chest. And activated Soul Assimilation.

The effect was instantaneous. The beast gave a soundless cry of pain. Its very essence was ripped from its form.

A torrent of raw, corrupted energy flooded into Edward. The familiar, icy rush of power was a welcome, intoxicating relief. He felt the deep cut on his back begin to knit shut. The pain receded. Replaced by a fresh surge of strength.

But there was a price. The sheer volume of raw, corrupted energy was too much for his human form. His body, already shaking on the edge from the 5% corruption, was pushed over the edge.

A deep, rough growl tore from his throat. A sound not entirely human. He felt his body begin to change. Not the slow, creeping transformation. A violent, explosive mutation. His body desperately trying to adapt.

The black, iridescent scales of the Basilisk Queen erupted across his arms and chest. A crude, natural armor. His nails grew into sharp, black claws. His jaw changed, and his teeth became fangs. Through his new slit-like pupils, the world looked like a land of hunters and prey.

The other punishment beasts recoiled. A flicker of primitive confusion in their glowing red eyes. The prey they had been swarming had just become a predator. A monster even more terrifying than they were.

Edward, or the creature that now wore his flesh, let out a roar. A horrifying fusion of a man’s rage and a beast’s dominance. He was no longer just fighting. He was slaughtering.

He moved with a terrifying, bestial grace. His new, partially monstrous form granted him a level of speed and strength beyond anything his human body was capable of. He tore through the horde.

His dagger and his new claws were a whirlwind of synchronized destruction. He wasn’t just killing them. He was feeding. With every beast he killed, he absorbed its soul. The surge of energy healed his wounds as fast as they appeared and fed his berserker rage.

The fight was a storm of shadows, blood, and the silent, screaming end of souls—a brutal, ugly, and terrifyingly powerful display of pure predation.

Edward didn’t realize that the battle’s violent forces, the Inquisition’s holy power outside, the dungeon’s high-level magic, and the corrupt energy of his own rampage were causing an unexpected effect.

The very fabric of reality at the dungeon’s entrance started to tear.

High above the academy, in the clear afternoon sky, a new phenomenon appeared. It was not a rift, not a tear in the sky. It was a shimmering, mirage-like projection, a window into another place.

The thousands of students, instructors, and nobles saw the sky itself turn into a screen. They were given a front-row seat to the horror show.

They saw Edward. But it was not the boy they knew. It was a monster. A demonic, half-scaled, clawed thing. Moving with a terrifying, inhuman grace. Its eyes glowing with a malevolent, predatory light.

They watched in stunned, horrified silence as he tore through the horde. As he plunged his hand into their chests and seemed to drink their very essence.

Every doubt, every whisper of him being a cheater, was erased in that single, horrifying moment. The truth was laid bare for the entire world to see. Projected onto the sky in a vision straight from the deepest pits of hell.

He was not a boy with a secret. He was an abomination.

Down below, in the bloody darkness, Edward was oblivious. He was lost in the red haze of combat. A perfect, unthinking engine of destruction. He killed the last of the punishment beasts.

The immediate threat was gone. The berserker rage receded. The cold, clear mind of the man returned. The physical mutations began to retract.

He stood there, panting. In the center of a circle of dissipating shadows. He had survived. He had won.

And then he looked up. Through the mouth of the dungeon, he could see the sky. He saw the projection. His own monstrous, terrifying face looking down at him. He saw the thousands of tiny figures in the academy courtyard, all staring up. He couldn’t hear their screams. But he could feel them. A palpable wave of terror and revulsion. A cold, final judgment from the world he had just been so violently cast out of.

He had saved himself. He had embraced the monster to survive. But in doing so, he had lost any chance he ever had of a normal life.

He was no longer just a fugitive. A person of interest to the Inquisition. In the eyes of the entire world, he was now, publicly and irrevocably, a monster. An abomination to be hunted and destroyed.

The projection in the sky flickered, wavered, and then fizzled out.

But it had happened. The image was now burned into the collective consciousness of the kingdom.

Edward stood alone in the suffocating darkness of the dungeon. He was truly, utterly, and completely hunted now. By everyone. Everywhere.

The world of men was behind him. A door slammed, locked, and barred forever. Before him lay only the darkness.