Becoming a Monster

Chapter 323: Chapter 323: I Am What you Made Me

When the envoy’s beams were swallowed by the slime, it didn’t follow up. It just... stopped.

The Angel’s breath hitched.

Why?

She scanned the envoy’s expression, but its non-expressive face betrayed nothing. No confusion. No concern.

Her thoughts spiraled. Why did it stop?! Why wasn’t it attacking again? What was it waiting for?

A cold sense of unease gnawed at her.

Both the Devil and the slime were unrecognizable; their form was a disfigured junction of slime that bubbled and slithered as if the two became a concoction of the most sinister fusion.

The surface of the creature rippled unnaturally, limbs rising and dissolving at random.

Then that was when the substance finally began to settle. Slowly a figure was emerging, rising to an upright position. But something was wrong. It was wrong.

As the shape took form, the slime beneath it spread outward like a living tide. The floor around it was being devoured and replaced, tainted, as if the creature was claiming the ground itself, creating a domain stitched together by a portion of its own body.

The figure itself was finally taking form, but whatever that form was, it was no longer the same as what the Devil once was. There was no longer an exoskeleton, only slime. There were still small traces of the Devil’s former shape, the outline of a shoulder, the vague contours of his waitstaff and arms.

But nothing else existed, he was simply a silhouette of a being that was formed from the darkest existence. Tendrils of slime whipped around behind him, tendrils that perhaps were once his appendages but now were devoid of solid mass. Eight elongated tendrils drifted about with no conscious pattern, yet they never once touched.

Spines sprouted from his back, and retracted just as quickly, as if the creature itself hadn’t decided what it wanted to be yet.

Still, nothing about the devil was truly visible...until an eye opened at the center of his chest. An eye similar to his Nexus eye but the eye was much more alive than it has ever shown before. No matter when the pupil was directed, nothing seemed to escape its gaze, and all secrets felt as if they were laid bare.

All this time, the slime on the floor was still stretching endlessly. Half the room was now in the devil’s domain.

The moment Noah’s sole eye opened, watching, piercing through the envoys with a gaze that shook the foundations of their soul. The envoys quickly reacted, but not in a way that anyone could understand.

The envoy that confronted the spawn fired beams of energy towards Noah’s creatures to make a path. The other envoy was of the same idea. The two clearly were triggered by what the spawn was becoming.

Under the twin barrages from the envoys, Kratos and the others were forced to fall back. None could dodge every strike, especially from the envoy unaffected by Arachne’s debuff. Fenrir’s wounds weren’t healing as swiftly as before, but Kratos wasn’t as lucky; one leg was obliterated, and a gaping hole pierced through his stomach.

Only Arachne escaped barely unscathed, not because she was faster, not because she was able to sense the danger of the attacks before they were released, but because she was the only one out of the three who truly held the title of the fallen.

Divine holy energy proved to be stronger against those of the opposite element and both Kratos and Fenrir were creatures whose origins revolved around the undead. However, the purity of Arachne’s being, the purity of the abyssal energy in her soul was far more resistant.

Even as they moved, their eyes remained on Noah. The gaze between Fenrir’s and Arachne’s was filled with heightened vigilance, but beneath their battle-hardened instincts, there lay a conflict of interest.

For, this would be the strongest energy they had ever felt before, and the cause of that wasn’t because of them. The companion that could make Noah the strongest he has ever been had been taken from them by Ailetta.

The same time Noah’s creatures were fascinated by his power, the envoys felt something else. It was not awe; it was loss. Not in the form of defeat, not even in the shape of fear. It was the recognition of a truth they could no longer ignore.

They had already crossed the threshold of the forbidden, invoking divine energy in a mortal realm, power meant only to answer hell’s flame.

And now, they were forced to cross another taboo, one that would subject their souls to damnation, but sensing what the spawn was becoming...What it truly was. The envoys were willing to damn their souls for their Lord.

The two envoys’ bodies glowed with the same blinding light and which they were summoned as they came together. The moment the two echelons of light intercepted the radiance they released had stopped the progress of Noah’s ”domain” from spreading any further. Just the light itself caused Noah’s slime to burn, not to mention all of his creatures who fared much worse.

In order just to maintain their strength, all of Noah’s creatures were forced to retreat as far from the energy as they could as the energy burnt at their soul. Merely trying to endure it was foolish. They could feel that if they were exposed to the energy for too long then the damage would be irreversible.

That light seemed to be the trigger to awaken the spawn from its transformation. The flood of slime suddenly moved all at once. Eyes, dozens, maybe hundreds of them, scattered across the floor and the walls that were claimed by his every growing slime opened.

And when they did, the air grew dense. Not as in growing heavier, but one could literally feel the air as they breathed it in. It was an uncomfortable feeling, almost unbearable. It wasn’t just hard to breathe, it felt wrong to breathe.

Before the feeling could affect the envoys, the two invisible energies class in the center. For a moment, cracks in the air began to form. Cracks that seemed to distort and crumble the reality in which they were in.

At the same time the cracks began to fracture, they magically closed by themselves. But during that brief moment, there was a world seemingly beyond the world they were already in. The speed at which the fractures closed were too fast for anyone to actually see what was on the other side.

But they all noticed it, an overwhelming pressure behind the fractures, greater than both opposing energies combined. It came from something that didn’t belong in their world. That presence reached out, piercing through Noah’s emotion-driven stupor and dragging his consciousness back into control.

Yet awakening wasn’t quite the right word. It was more like the dissociative trance of arriving at a destination without remembering the journey, aware of the outcome, but not the exact steps that led there.

It was the same now. Noah found himself merging with Ailetta, yet made no effort to resist. His mind was still his, but distant, as though merely observing a choice already sealed. There was no panic. No hesitation, just the knowledge that this was necessary.

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Their expression was twisted with discontent, not out of fear, but out of a fuming, irritation. The battle had not gone as expected. And that, more than anything, was the source of their foul mood.

The divine being had once found Noah’s journey... thrilling.

His unpredictability, his raw potential, the way fate seemed to bend and break around him, these things stirred an excitement they hadn’t felt in eons. For a time, watching Noah had been entertainment.

A delightful anomaly. Something they couldn’t quite control and thus couldn’t quite look away from.

But now? Now they regretted him.

Their plan was almost destroyed! Everything they had done in the past few days, all of it was almost completely destroyed by the very specimen they made them remember what it felt to be alive.

If that monster broke through and annihilated every soul in the realm, including Noah, Fenrir, Arachne, and even the envoys of light, then so be it. That would simply be the fate humankind had brought upon itself.

But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was the plan. The grand, meticulous design they had worked so hard to maintain. They didn’t mind Noah being the only outlier, they would not allow their control, their order, to be destroyed.

And so, the being was forced to break a rule that they had set themselves...They intervened. Restoring the fractured distortions before everything went awry.

And in a contradictory fashion, the being was once again watching Noah’s battle with an earnest expectation that they were not aware of themselves.

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With the fractures healed, the two opposing energies finally settled. On one side stood Noah, his appearance changing from what his soul spawn was crafting.

Subconsciously, he shaped himself into what they all saw him as.

What they feared he would become.

What even he had tried to deny.

His body became more humanoid; the silhouette figure took on that of an armored being. Six tendrils writhed behind him, ending in pointed spade-like tips, twitching like the tails of predators.

Two massive horns curved forward from his crown, reaching like jagged blades toward the heavens. And his face remained blank, however, eyes now enveloped the entirety of his body and not just his domain.

And opposite him, floated an angel, no... a seraph, a holy creature of war with 3 pairs of wings.