Chương 17: Considerations

He didn't immediately descend. Despite his arm hurting, he resolved to sit there for as long as it took to get more information. Grabbing higher up, he unspooled more rope from his hand, then looped it over the seed as it hung from the wall. With enough slack, he'd managed to create something of a loop hanging from the seed. A bit of positioning later, he sat in the loop, held up by the seed in the wall. This way, not all of the force was on his arms, and he wouldn't get tired as easily.

True, he wouldn't be able to fall with it being attached to his hand, but it would still damage his arms over time, and based on what he'd seen, he might need both arms very soon. *'I really wish I had two whips,' he thought, looking remorsefully upwards. If he did, he might've been able to swing from one to the other and crawl further up the tunnels, traveling above the monsters. If he tried that with one, it'd only take a single slip up to fall, and now wasn't the time to practice.

With nothing else to do, he counted the seconds, so he could actually keep track of time. It felt like he'd been waiting for hours before he heard a groaning once more, but considering he stopped at one-thousand-four-hundred-fifty-six seconds, he knew it'd been…

'I can't do that in my head man. Okay. Sixty seconds in a minute… sixty minutes in an hour… so, six time six, thirty six, add two zeroes because hours to minutes and minutes to seconds add a zero each… Thirty six hundred seconds in an hour? Half that… uhhh… eighteen hundred. Which is more than my original number… hm… I guess I've been here a bit less than half an hour?' By the time he was done figuring out how long it'd been, the creature was much closer, and he had a decision to make.

When it appeared beneath the hole, would he drop down and cut through it? Or would he let it pass, and collect more information? If he let it go, he might have to fight it later, but if he killed it now, was there some mastermind out there who would notice? Such as someone with a Primary that could turn corpses into monsters, then puppet them? It passed below him, this time much more slowly, and he got a cleaner look at it.

The rib bones it walked on were blunt at the bottom, and in the middle of its back, just below the surface, something glowing pulsed, emitting a low red light, as if something immensely bright was barely contained within it. He decided to let it go. It was the safest decision, and would give him time to… The gray's face came to pass under him, and some of the milky white look had faded, its eyes darkening… and tears spilling free.

When it saw him, it twitched, its mouth moving slightly, eyes following Aaron as it passed… but only groans came out still. And on it walked. He nearly vomited as he realized… this was not a corpse. Nor was it a mind parasite. It was a body parasite. Horrifically, the gray must've still been conscious in some form. He closed his eyes. By the time he resolved to mercy kill it, the monster was no longer directly below him. But he wasn't willing to let it go, not anymore.

Carefully untangling himself from the rope, he absorbed most of it, then slowly created more, lowering himself from the ceiling. The creature was about seven feet further by the time he did. Swinging his body back and forth, he quickly built up momentum. It took seconds, and the creature got further away… then paused. He didn't hesitate any longer. Next he swung forward, he commanded the seed to unlatch from the ceiling.

Flying through the air, the seed snapped back into place on his palm, and his sword pointed downwards. The trajectory was perfect. The creature jerked to attention, turning around in a single motion and giving him a perfect view of the single round eye, little more than a pupil and sclera with blue veins running through it, placed just below the point where its body started to bend. Beneath the eye a mouth unfurled, its lower jaw stretching down and along the gray's distorted neck, rows of teeth lining it.

It barely glimpsed him before his sword plunged directly into the glowing spot in its chest, his weight carrying them both forward as he knocked it back several steps. Something resisted his blade for barely a second, then crunched and collapsed, his sword cutting all the way through It wheezed and gurgled, from its own mouth and the gray's; it began to thrash, its entire body seizing wildly for several seconds, but that simply did more damage than it helped.

Aaron never let go of the sword, so every attempt to buck him off pulled his weight further towards the ground, the blade tearing through its torso. It managed to try and buck him off twice, then suddenly went limp without warning. Aaron went with it, and as his blade sheared through the rest of its body, he fell backwards, landing on his back. He scrambled to get to his feet, but it was proven unnecessary when the monster remained unmoving.

He remained on guard, but the pool of blood slowly expanding around its body made it hard for him to believe it was faking it. Still, he summoned his whip and sent it out several times, piercing through the corpse in multiple places. It didn't respond, but during that time, he felt the brush of something against his mind. Focusing, he found that there was something in it responding to his new sense for Underworld magic: Sensitivity.

'Yea, I could've told you this thing wasn't natural or biologically possible using my eyes.' His Primary seemed to have other priorities, and he felt a sense of desire from it involving the thing's corpse. It was much weaker than what he'd felt from the Mushki, but still, it was something of note, and he was hopeful that meant this alien might be able to give him another Secondary. Reeling his whip in, he walked closer to the body, observing the grotesque facsimile of the person it'd once been.

Folded in half and misshapen by whatever had done this, it was almost unrecognizable. Hesitantly, he reached down, grabbing the edge of its arm. It didn't jump at him or snap awake, so he carefully unfurled it, laying the body flat on its back. Seeing it laid bare was even worse. Just as he'd seen, its main body appeared as if it were meticulously pulled in all directions, stretching the normally four-foot-tall humanoid into a twelve-foot-tall monstrosity.

All of its bones were rubbery and weak, bending under his grip. The arms and legs tapered down into the fingers, each of them atrophying and black at the tips. Its face was the worst, screaming into eternity. Tearstreaks stained its skin, dark lines that showed exactly where it'd cried countless times.

"How long were you trapped," he said quietly.

"How long were you wandering aimlessly, in pain, unable to do anything, not even able to taste the release of death?" Aaron had experienced many things in his time since arriving here, but the unstoppable Mushki, giant bugs, and cannibals held nothing to the horror of this fate. It was the first time he understood, really accepted that this place wasn't just another distant land. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

It was the Underworld, and it was called that because it was hell, a place of unfathomable torture. He'd been here for maybe two days, if this was something he'd found early on, just how bad could it get? That wasn't the only reason it bothered him though. He still hadn't forgotten the disgusting energy his Primary had almost pumped through him back when he nearly died in the cannibal camp. He'd thought it would just kill him if he let it through, but would it have?

His Primary only wants one thing, and that is to keep him alive. When some of that energy got out, what did it do? Change him biologically, making flowers grow from his skin. What if that was taken to the extreme? What if he couldn't vent the energy faster than it could pump through him? What if… it reached what the System called "Critical instability," would it really just kill him? Or would it warp him?

He looked down at the puffs on his chest once more, each taking on a much different tone now that he had more context. Yes, he got along with his Primary quite well… but was that true? Or was his Primary only helping him to make him drop his guard? He considered slicing the puffballs off now, even if it would hurt, but stopped himself; if his Primary didn't hate him yet, it wouldn't help to antagonize it by spitefully removing the one thing it could control.

Putting his concerns aside, he gave one last look to the body. If he flipped it over on its back, he knew he would see the monstrous face so he simply left it as-is. If his Primary made the body disintegrate as it had the Mushki's tongue, he at least wanted the last moments of the gray to resemble the person it'd once been Even distorted and with a large slice through its chest where he'd broken the glowing light within it, the gray was easily recognizable as a person when placed like this.

After paying the proper respects, he finally gave in to his Primary's beckoning and bent down, placing his hand over where the core had once been, right in the middle of the gash. His palm became slick with blood, but that was of little concern at this point. It was not the first blood on his hands, and it wouldn't be the last. His Primary flared at the same time that he received a System pop-up. {Interlink Fragment - 1/?} {Warning: excessive absorption of fragments may lead to unexpected outcomes.} His Primary tried immediately launching for the fragment anyway, but hit an instant barrier- something set up by the System, likely to give him a chance to read the text and verify this is what he wanted. It said excessive though, so one was likely fine. He pressed against the System's barrier himself, intending to let his Primary through, and it fell instantly, not even trying to resist his decision. It was good to know the System could do that though. Who knew?

He might want to absorb something in the future that the System didn't want him to. His Primary flowed from his hand into the body, and he watched a swirling mixture of energy roll over it, seeping down into the gray's skin. His Primary produced this slowly, kneading at the energy in a way that was much different than how it'd attacked the Mushki. Gradually, golden lines ran through the body, and it began to flake away, floating into the air before breaking apart and turning to nothing.

Below the layer that'd floated off, more intense yellow light swirled; very quickly, all of the top layer had fallen away to reveal a humanoid-shaped silhouette of light. The last piece of the skin disappeared, and the body seemed to pulse for a second, then collapse inwards. The light flowed into a ball just below his hand, where his Primary surrounded and pulled it inwards.

The energy coursed through him like an electric shock, scouring most of his body, looping around the same sections two, or perhaps three times in a closed loop, but quickly fizzled out, failing to do whatever it was trying for. By the time the light disappeared, there was nothing left of the corpse- not even blood. Despite his misgivings about his Primary, he thought this was actually a very respectful way to treat a body; at least it was better than allowing it to rot in a random hallway.

Standing up, he looked around, seeing little more than the still black grass and occasional hole in the ceiling pockmarking the way. Now that he knew it wasn't safe here, he decided to turn back. Yes, the fragments were interesting, but he was coming to find that The Nothing was truly more full than he'd first expected. Was this because there were tons of things flooding in? Yes, absolutely, but he could afford to go now, and maybe find something safer later.

Now that he knew the path was clear, the trip back went much faster, and soon, he stepped out into his original hall; he glanced at the black flower again… and froze in realization. He'd only seen it because he was on guard and suspicious, looking closely at the landscape. This flower is what Nothing wanted him to see, and it did intentionally make him suspicious. That might've been enough to make him walk away, just to be spiteful… but was that a good idea? After all… as he'd noted before…

this path led closer to the rest of his convoy, Nicole's group and the others. What if… he was meant to meet back up with them. Or, worse, what if he was meant to save them from whatever was in there. It would be a perfect situation. If he didn't take out the monsters, Nicole and her group would likely attract the attention of whatever else was in the area, not nearly as sneaky as Aaron. He had the chance to hide and assassinate, but would they? No…

with how packed together the convoy would be, it'd be unlikely that everyone would reverse in time before the front car- namely, Amelia and Squeaky- would face an assault of monsters. If he did take out the monsters, he would both meet back up with them and save them once more; he even had the potential to earn those strange little fragments. The carrot and the stick.

As unlikely a scenario to be, he already knew he was being manipulated, and if he didn't follow along, the tragedy of losing his friends would almost certainly knock him into line next time. He could just be paranoid… but was he? He sighed deeply, turned around, and trudged back into the cave. He would, at the very least, scout it out more. * It was eerily silent this time around. No groaning, no monsters.

The flowers grew in frequency- not by much, but there was perhaps a single one every twenty feet or so, randomly placed. Coming up on a four-way intersection, he looked around and- predictably- saw another "Conveniently placed flower" right on the threshold of the forward path, making his jaw clench. * It took over an hour of walking- he counted- before something changed. Though nothing actively spoke out or made noise, in the silence of the Underworld, it was impossible to hide fully if nothing covered your steps.

Around the gently curving tunnel, he heard faint rustling. Footsteps. Looking around, he felt like clicking his tongue when he realized there weren't any openings in the ceiling close to him- none that he could reach before a monster as quick as the last could get to him, at least. He thought about running, but if it was half as quick as the last, he wouldn't get away without exhausting himself. He decided to stand his ground. At least this way, he had the chance to pierce it with his whip before it gained on him.

Readying himself, he kept his focus sharp on the point just around the bent. Yet, nothing came, and when he listened once more, he heard only the silence again. He grimaced,'is there more than one type of monster, and only some of them rush forward?' After a minute of waiting, his frown deepened, and he decided to test something. Stomping his foot, he winced as it made a noise that carried through the empty tunnels… but still, nothing responded.

Walking forward, he saw that there was nothing here, and felt like pulling his hair out. Had he imagined the rustling, or was there something here that ran once it heard him, perhaps to report back to others of its kind? He doubled his pace aiming to either catch up or find some sign of its passing. The grass remained undisturbed ahead of him, implying there'd been nothing atop it to begin with. Checking behind him, he could even see that the grass did remain bent and broken as he walked, making him bite his cheek.

Had he imagined it? Maybe he heard his own rustling. * Another path, another flower… and more rustling. This time, he was paying attention- he heard a change, but it wasn't what he expected it to be. He stopped, and it went silent too. He moved, and the grass was back to the same noise level it did normally. A handful of minutes later, his steps suddenly became twice as loud, making his face contort.

'Is the grass randomly getting louder at times?' He didn't stop this time, though, just listening to how his own footsteps echoed with twice the normal noise. Glancing behind- The rustling went away, this time while he was moving.

'No… no no no,' He went back the way he came, but found only his path, only the grass he'd disturbed. But did that really mean anything? Or was it simply following in his footsteps exactly?