Chapter 206: Bugs And Hands
No one could believe what they were seeing. Out of every possible location John could have appeared, standing in the middle of the enemy camp, completely alone, wouldn't have been anyone's guess.
The moment Min saw him, bald and wearing that tattered brown coat, a pressure built behind her eyes. Everything Seo-jin had tasked her with was starting to spiral, one bad decision stacking onto another until it felt impossible to keep hold of any of it. She shoved herself to her feet, dirt sliding under her boots, and drew in a breath—
Then she saw something that made it painfully clear she had never been in control to begin with.
John's body started to swell.
The cultists below erupted into motion. Shouts tore through the camp as sickly auras burst to life, and one by one the scattered altars ignited with dim corrupted light. Black flames, red mist, shifting symbols carved into bone and concrete. Every face turned toward the figure rising above the camp.
Feeling his body stretch, tear, and split apart from the inside, John braced for agony.
Instead, pleasure flooded through him.
A deep, overwhelming release that made his nerves twitch and his thoughts blur.
'You lied to me.'
'We did. And for that we apologize, but we had no choice.'
The sound that followed was wet and violent, like rotten fruit smashed against stone. John's arm exploded first, spraying blood and chunks of flesh across the concrete. Another burst followed from his ribs, then his legs, then his torso, until the cracking and rupturing blended into one continuous noise.
Within seconds, nothing resembling a human body remained.
Only John's head stayed intact.
Now hovering in the center of the camp, his head rested atop a massive swirling mound of insects. Vent bugs. Thousands of them crawled and churned together beneath him in a living tower, their bodies clicking and writhing as sickly vapor seeped from the mass.
The cult leader's gray aura surged in alarm, heat rippling off it as his eyes exploded with light. At the same moment, every altar in the camp erupted into towering beams that painted the concrete in pulsing shadows.
"Kill the intruders! Spill their blood in honor of Lord Baal!"
Shouts and blazing auras answered the cult leader's command.
But so did John.
The towering mound of vent bugs finally burst apart. Hundreds of insects poured across the camp in a living wave, their clicking bodies spilling over concrete and altars alike. Cultists closest to the swarm vanished beneath it almost instantly, screams choking out as the mass crawled over them.
Now fully exposed in the center of the chaos, John was a nightmare to look at.
Only his head remained human.
Everything beneath it had changed. Green chitin covered him in uneven plates that still looked soft in places, like the shell hadn't fully hardened yet. Extra arms twitched at his sides, too long and jointed wrong, while his legs bent like a massive insect's, thin at first glance but packed with coiled strength. He looked like some half-formed humanoid grasshopper dragged out before it had finished molting.
'What'd you do to me?!'
'We fulfilled our bargain.'
'This isn't what we agreed to!'
His body moved without permission, turning toward the cult leader as the vent bugs swarmed through the camp around him.
'This is my body! I didn't agree to this!'
'Please remain calm. Your body is still yours, but it is also ours. We are only controlling it to ensure our survival.'
'If you wanted to survive, why the hell are we down here?!'
'We are hungry. Very hungry.'
Back in the Vent Cathedral, John had made a deal with the Vent Mother. He would take care of the young vent bug, and in exchange for protecting her and carrying her beyond the dungeon, the mother promised him strength. She said she would grant him the accumulated power of their race, that it would grow alongside him until one day it could be returned to the young bug once she matured.
Something had clearly gone wrong.
Through the shared connection twisting inside his skull, John could feel the Vent Mother's confusion the moment he spoke after transforming. He wasn't supposed to still be here. Whatever that truly meant, one thing had become painfully obvious.
The Vent Mother had tricked him.
And now, with his limbs moving on their own and foreign instincts crawling through his body, John could only focus on not losing his sanity. Every time he saw a part of himself, it was all he could do not to lose himself to mindless panic.
Seeing all of it from above, and still having no idea what had happened to Ash, Min finally snapped.
"Goddammit! Everyone! Kill 'em all! Lynn and Teal, stay with Synapse! Widow, find Ash!"
A massive yellow aura exploded from her body as she launched into the air, dirt and loose stone blasting from the hill.
Watching her with a fang-filled grin, Bile turned toward the broodlings clustered behind him, his tail lashing hard enough to crack the ground.
"Honor the Broodfather with death!"
"For the Broodfather!"
"The Broodfather!"
The chants crashed together just as two enormous abyssal shark projections slammed into the camp below, their watery bodies smashing through tents, altars, and cultists alike in a spray of blood and broken concrete.
Then a heavy chord rolled across the battlefield.
Hex had started the war hymn.
"Realmjunky bastards can't even fight!"
Rising from the bloodied rubble beneath her, Min looked like a monster dropped into the middle of a feast. Dust and blood clung to her skin, her grin stretched ear to ear, and the pressure pouring off her aura made nearby cultists stumble as she turned toward the cult leader.
"Hey John! Mind telling me why you look like that?"
His head tilted toward her at an angle no human neck should have allowed, and when he answered, the voice barely sounded like John anymore.
"Questions later."
Ignoring the crawl of unease spreading across her skin, Min slammed her fists together.
"Fuck it. You better spill it later."
As the chaos around them intensified and screams spread through the camp, the cult leader looked between the two of them and burst into laughter, gray aura boiling around his body.
"More offerings for my lord. He shall devour your souls! Only through him will you—"
"Shut the fuck up!"
The ground exploded beneath Min and John as both closed on the cult leader.
But instead of defending himself, the leader slowly raised his arms and smiled beneath his mask.
"Fools."
Just before they reached him, two enormous black hands ripped out from the nearest altars and swatted them away. The impacts cracked through the camp like artillery fire, sending both Min and John hurtling through bugs, stone, and bodies as debris and flesh burst into the air.
Wet, bubbling laughter spilled from the cult leader while black hands began tearing themselves free from every altar across the camp, thick fingers dragging trails of black ichor over the concrete.
The chaos stilled. Only for a breath.
Then screams tore through the silence as two massive hands slammed down beside Bile and Fang hard enough to shake the camp, pulverizing some bugs and cultists they had been fighting into bursts of blood and bone.
Outside the camp, while Teal hid behind a boulder, Lynn and Synapse kept firing from cover, the recoil kicking through their arms while spent casings bounced across the stone. Both stared in shock as the battlefield filled with towering black limbs that attacked anything within reach.
Even the cultists.
A black hand came crashing down toward Hex hard enough to bend the air around it, but Hex never stopped playing. Fingers dragged across the strings while the heavy chord vibrating from his guitar rolled through the camp in waves, cultists dropping to their knees clutching bleeding ears beneath their masks.
Just before the hand hit, it stopped.
The fingers twitched. Trembled. But it couldn't move another inch.
Invisible tendrils dug into the wrist from behind while Grimm strained silently against the thing, his massive body hidden from sight as the ground beneath the hand cracked under the pressure of the deadlock.
Hex blinked once, looked up at the frozen hand hanging over him, then calmly stepped aside while still playing.
A second later, Grimm let go.
The hand slammed into the concrete where Hex had been standing, blasting shattered stone and corpses into the air while the guitar hymn never missed a beat.
Nearby, Fang and Bile tore through the cultists trying to push foward. These weren't normal enemies. Their auras flared with system power, skills activating one after another as blades, chains, and warped flesh erupted across the battlefield.
A low rank cultist thrust out his necklace, the charm hanging from it splitting open like wet skin before a smaller black hand shot toward Fang.
The second it reached for him, Fang vanished from sight.
The hand closed on empty air.
A wet crunch sounded behind the cultist as the broodling appeared in his blindspot, driving a hand like a spear through the base of his skull before ripping it free in the same motion. The corpse dropped twitching while Fang was already moving, weaving between enemies like something impossible to pin down.
Beside him, Bile's bloodmask churned violently.
Thick streams of blackened blood spilled down his neck and shoulders before wrapping around both arms, hardening into massive spiked gauntlets that dripped steaming red sludge onto the ground. A cultist rushed him with a glowing spear skill active, only for Bile to catch the thrust barehanded before smashing the man's upper body apart with one punch.
The battlefield had dissolved into total chaos.
Through it all, Sin walked.
His eyes looked distant, unfocused, almost bored as bodies moved around him. A casual slash here opened a throat. A lazy stab there punched through ribs. He drifted through the fighting without urgency, claws carving apart cultists almost absentmindedly while blood sprayed across his skin.
Then the sun vanished as a shadow swallowed him whole.
Looking up, Sin saw one of the enormous black hands descending straight toward him, massive fingers spread wide enough to crush him flat.
But he didn't move....he just closed his eyes as crimson system light washed across him.
The explosion that followed ripped across the camp.
Concrete folded inward beneath the impact as dust and blood blasted outward in a violent ring. Cultists and broodlings alike turned toward the sound while the black hand shuddered violently.
Standing over Sin was something enormous.
Tomb.
He'd eaten the Giant's Gallbladder like he was told and leveled during the fight, luckily mutating just in time to intercept the black arm before it crushed Sin.
Standing over thirty feet tall now, Tomb's feet sunk into the broken ground beneath his weight. Legs thick as tree trunks held up a body built like a fortress, while a heavy tail dragged behind him with a stone-like mace fused onto the end. His muscles looked cast from steel, shoulders broad enough to carry a mountain, and a short black beard had started to spread across his jaw. His horns had changed, grown massive and now curving inward toward each other above red glowing eyes. Skin the color of ash stretched over a body that looked less like flesh and more like something carved for war.
Bloodlight burst across the camp as every broodling roared.
Following his siblings, Tomb threw back his head and let out a roar so deep the nearby trees bent from the force. Then he planted both feet, veins bulging across his arms as he twisted the black limb gripping him until a crack like a snapping tree ripped through the camp. The arm ruptured apart into a shower of black sludge—
At the same moment, the cult leader screamed as one of his own arms blackened from shoulder to fingertips. Still holding both hands raised, his grey aura flared violently around him.
"Heathens! Network whores! I'll kill you—!"
The promise died in his throat.
The pressure of incoming death slammed into him as two black hands crashed down around his body, forming a shield an instant before Min and John struck.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the dark surface beneath Min's fist and John's kick, the impacts blasting dust and shattered stone into the air. The hands swung outward immediately after, forcing both attackers back while the cult leader staggered and spat blood through his mask.
"Enough!"
Finally lowering his arms, the leader dragged one long black nail across his own throat. Flesh split open wetly beneath the cut.
But no blood came out.
Instead, every giant arm dissapeared, and the black ichor fueling the countless hands erupted from every altar in the camp and surged into the wound, pouring down his throat in thick streams.
"Stop him!"
Min launched forward the second she shouted, her voice cutting across the battle just before an oppressive aura rolled outward from the cult leader. She was too late.
John wasn't.
The bug-man appeared beside the cult leader almost instantly, body twisting midair as his kick slammed into the side of the cultist's head. The impact rang out like metal smashing against stone, launching the leader across the camp as he skipped through bugs, rubble, and his own allies.
He only stopped when Tomb moved.
Timing it perfectly, the giant brought his fist down like a falling hammer. But instead of an impact shaking the earth, Tomb's fist stopped just above the ground, trembling there against something unseen.
A split-second later, a giant black-and-red fist erupted from the ground and caught Tomb beneath the jaw before he could react. The impact boomed through the camp, lifting the giant clean off his feet before he crashed back down hard enough to flatten numerous bugs and a screaming cultist beneath his body.
"What a blessed day. So much death! So much bounty! Praise Lord Baal, praise be his eyes upon me!"
The place where the cult leader had landed began to convulse.
Black ichor surged upward in violent waves, twisting over itself as bones cracked and wet flesh stretched beneath the sludge. The mass kept growing, rising higher and higher while cultists nearby fell to their knees screaming prayers through bloodied mouths.
Within moments, an enormous demonic torso towered over the camp.
Its body looked unfinished, built from layers of writhing black flesh and pulsing red veins that bulged beneath the surface. Massive arms hung at its sides, fingers ending in hooked claws large enough to crush vehicles, while a hollow ribcage split open across its chest like a second mouth. The thing kept twitching as though it still hadn't settled into its own shape.
"Witness me...and witness death."
A black miasmic aura surged from the demon, swallowing the entire camp.
In seconds, everyone's vision blackened.