Becoming a Monster

Chapter 259: Chapter 259: The Player Who Didn’t Know They Were Participating

With Ailetta entering the battle, it allowed Noah a momentarily respite, one that was lived. A miniature explosion repeated itself as the zombie repulsed the massive serpents away from its body. And what followed afterwards was a bellow so loud, the nearby buildings’ windows completely shattered.

As the dust settled, and the zombie recovered. Its figure would make one unable to understand how it could continue going. Half of its stomach, gone, four of its limbs were only bones, its skin, alongside every ounce of its muscles, ripped away. Unknowingly, it had aided the serpents in their objective. Each of their mouths were filled with two rows of razor-sharp teeth whose purpose was more so for ripping their prey apart instead of swallowing them whole.

As they attempted to tear into the zombie early, their teeth ripped through its flesh with little effort, but the deeper they dug, passing the muscles, the tissue underneath clung stubbornly to the zombie’s bones.

Their initial strikes didn’t bring about the desired outcome, however, their voracious mouths continued to bite, rip, and tear until the zombie’s repulsive force ejected them away, along with the tattered remnants of its own flesh.

The state it was left in was repulsive, yet Ailetta’s and Noah’s eyes only narrowed as they took in the sight. The zombie appeared more enraged rather than being affected by its grievous wounds. Despite chunks of its body being torn away, despite the amount of time that was left of its transformation, its aura only appeared to be growing stronger.

Its rage was more than just pure blind anger, its mind was being overcome with winning, with victory. The desire to win at all costs even outweighed its wants to consume the creatures around him. A mindset that it was unaware of that was affecting him from his very soul. Regardless of its awareness to its own mental state, that very desire seemed to be draining the energy within it, strengthening its aura to levels that far ascended what it was prior. Its eyes subtly change for a moment, a fleeting moment that was so fast that Noah wasn’t even able to pick up on it.

However, there were two beings’ who weren’t physically there that did. The slime aberration that was always subconsciously observing Aletta’s soul peaked through Ailetta’s soul as it felt the partial divine energy leaking. Energy that humans believed were that of gods only lived up enough to catch the slime entity’s interest for a breath of time before it re-entered its subconscious slumber once again.

Meanwhile, Noah felt a pressure within his own soul, eliciting him to inspect the source to ensure nothing was going wrong with the ticking time bomb within himself.

The looming being’s glowing planetary eyes were now fully conscious. The silhouettes of its limbs were constantly moving as tendrils of shadows descended, moving carefully as they prodded around Noah’s safeguard. Noah didn’t understand why, but the being was eager, far too eager. Something had grabbed its attention, something so important that it stirred it once again to attempt to break past the barriers that held it at bay.

A pulse of foreign emotion flooded through Noah as the shadowy tendrils touched the barrier. Excitement, hunger, anticipation, the same drastic emotions the entity had shown before when Noah’s soul was merging to its own.

But why now?

Noah steadied himself, his gazed hardening even more towards the only source of the entity’s change. Whatever had caused it to stir could only have been caused by the zombie.

_______

Elsewhere, a being adorned in the most fashionable and glowing set of armor that appeared to be made for gods was currently left distracted.

Her eyes vacant as she tried to find the source of the one that was so attuned with her most valued concept, victory.

The more she tried to decipher the source, the deeper her frown became. Something was blocking her from being able to connect with her lingering divine energy, something that has never happened before. The aura around her flared, her army of women warriors vigilantly looked in her direction.

For a moment, the woman could see it. She could see someone, no, something staring back at her. Her vision didn’t focus on the figure itself, but it was the vibrant green eye that was centered in the being’s chest that drew her attention before she was completely shut off from the source that was tied to her.

”Nike?” A worried voice drifted towards her as the woman, Nike, finally acknowledged her surroundings.

Nike didn’t initially respond. Her thoughts were spiraling down a deep rabbit hole as she tried to recollect where the worshipper of her power was, and yet she couldn’t pinpoint it at all.

Nike exhaled sharply and turned to face the speaker. A familiar presence, one of her trusted companions, stood at her side with concern.

Nike hesitated, her lips parting before she closed them again. How could she explain it? That for the first time, the worshiper tied to her power, the one she should have been able to sense no matter the distance, was simply... gone? Not severed, not dead, but unreachable.

She clenched her fists. Not just because of her failed efforts, but because she believed she had an inkling who was behind it all.

The eye she witnessed was an eye that was a powerful source of power that beings even such as herself could only dream of having. There was only one God who was able to even come close to being able to wield its power, making him a god that was far out of her reach. A power that allowed him to govern and rule over the concept of the soul.

Nike’s breath was steady, but her mind churned with frustration. The pieces were falling into place, and she didn’t like the picture they painted.

Her eyes furrowed into slits as anger bubbled within her. Instead of answering her companion directly, wings unfurled from behind her as she took powerful strides forward.

”I need to seek out Zeus.”

___________

”Give me some time,” Noah requested, quickly taking a step away to prepare.

Aieltta didn’t have to ask why, she could tell too that something was different about the zombie. Unlike the time the zombie had the inner faces surface before they moved to an area to heal it, an almost whitish blue transparent energy covered its limbs before every damaged area began to rebuild itself.

The scene was mind blowing. The zombie’s ”healing” didn’t seem like the effects of one being healed. The process of which its injuries healed was as if the injuries were being repaired in reverse!

”Fenrir, no! Just keep everyone back and don’t let anything else interfere.” Noah quickly shouted as he perceived the massive beast about to challenge the zombie after seeing him step away.

Fenrir, who was already poised and ready to fight against the creature that he now had no odds of contending with, still hesitated at Noah’s command. The massive wolf’s piercing gaze never left the zombie. But as his ears flattened in uncertainty, he reluctantly obeyed, his massive form bounding back towards the others.

His legs moved with a weight that showed his struggle to comply. As he made his way back, his ears twitched when he realized someone was missing. Immediately he released an annoyed grunt, his nose sniffing in the air as his head snapped in a further direction.

Fenrir was too distracted to notice, he didn’t know how long Dummy was out of the picture. The beast that was too simple minded to understand their circumstance was hunched over a corpse that was mangled and torn apart as if it was selectively picking at its insides as if it was a casual meal. The body was far too disturbed to be recognized, but the location of the body would serve as a stark reminder, if Noah had taken the time to look over.

Since the start of their battle, the woman that stayed continued to linger despite her fear of the zombie. Her personal grievance made her ignore her instinctual warnings to flee. As the fight drew on, she began to sense hope. Hope that brought herself to tears as she believed the traumatic and guilty weight in her heart would finally be put to rest as she witnessed Noah’s companions fight toe to toe with the zombie that meld so many of them into its flesh, ”his” flesh.

She was so absorbed into the fight that when she witnessed Dummy being blown away, landing not so far near her, its body lacking strength to get up, she was filled with the urge to check on the creature that would help obtain her redemption. She was too distracted that she ignored the sounds coming from the beast hand as it didn’t attempt to move, fully invested in what it was able to grab.

But its body stiffened when it felt something near it. Its gluttonous gaze that was left unsatisfied with the little bit of flesh it acquired immediately set itself on the figure that held no physical relatedness to the others.

”No!” was all the woman managed to shout before the mouth within the hand that had engulfed her claimed her life.

___________

”It really is getting stronger,” Her final moments went unnoticed to everyone there while Noah prepared to jump back into the battle.

He couldn’t rely on brute strength anymore, not when the zombie had grown stronger once again.