Chapter 37: Eat or be Eaten

"Peace!"

Dita’s screams barely threaded through the rampaging blood beasts’ gurgles as they spun and ran after him.

Peace himself was in utter shock at his body’s aerodynamics being altered. He’d barely even registered what had happened.

All he could do while sprawled out on the ground, pinned by the spear, was tilt his head toward the Blood Warden.

Even if he was still, he was much too close for stillness to hide him. Its gaze was already locked on him.

Eye to eye with certain doom, rationality had been stolen from Peace.

Thoughts as he stared back at the protruding eye?

None.

Thoughts as a few of its tendrils shot toward his battered body?

None.

Thoughts as bloody arrows barely missed his head and neck?

None.

Thoughts as those slimy tendrils wrapped around his body and began reeling him in? As one of them snapped his wrist, twisting it a full one-eighty degrees?

None.

Death was implicitly beyond comprehension. The only thing he was allowed to instinctively understand in that moment was its iron grasp on him.

It wasn’t like rational thought would save him anyway.

Thoughts alone couldn’t save him from a situation that had already strayed beyond the bounds of reason. When no rational solution remained, the only thing capable of overturning the impossible was irrationality itself. A variable accounted for by no one.

Red...

A red glint appeared in the corners of his eyes, different from their natural hue.

His nails grew slightly, the keratin stretching outward into hooks.

His snapped wrist suddenly spun all by itself, twisting and cracking until the bones realigned.

No sooner had they corrected themselves than Peace’s neck jerked to the side, his mouth suddenly clamping down on a bloody tendril.

The blood was coagulated, viscous enough that it was practically solid, and tough to tear through... but it wasn’t tough enough to escape the jaws of the embodiment of Terror.

Ravenously, Peace munched and chewed, swallowing everything his mouth could reach. But it wasn’t enough; whatever he ate was quickly replenished from the main mass.

However... something was happening as he consumed more and more blood.

Unlike before, his body wasn’t mending.

Instead, it was simply growing stronger.

He still wasn’t nearly strong enough to escape the Blood Warden’s grasp, which had now dragged him all the way to the base of its grotesque mound.

Even when he freed a hand and began clawing at the loose bones beneath him, none of them provided a stable enough anchor to resist the pull.

All he could do was thrash and bite fruitlessly as the Blood Warden lifted him from the ground, suspending him before its exposed core. Hundreds of tiny tendrils sprouted from it, attaching to Peace’s body like leeches.

Time felt as though it had slowed... or perhaps it had sped up.

Maybe neither was true.

Perhaps Peace’s mind had simply deteriorated to the point where the passage of time itself had become impossible to comprehend.

[Your health has dropped below 15%]

A sudden yank momentarily pulled his arm free from the tendrils.

"Pull it together, Peace!"

’Serene...?’

An agonizing pain flared from Peace’s shoulder, the heat instantly spreading through his entire body.

"Who the hell do you think you are to make a dainty girl like me do everything?!"

Peace felt another pull at his arm.

’No... that’s not sis...’

Dita yelled as she let go of his arm and clutched the hem of Peace’s robe with one hand, swinging the Bone Sword at the few remaining thralls with the other.

"You promised to help me?! Why am I saving you?!"

Like breaking the surface after being held underwater, the gears of Peace’s mind shifted back into motion.

Dropping the Bone Sword, Dita grabbed Peace’s robe with both hands, dug her feet into the bones below, and pulled.

"All after saying, ’Let’s dance, freaks.’ How cringey can one guy be?!"

Her words ignited the embers of life still fluttering in his heart.

’Damn!’

Peace looked at his right hand, seeing that it was still warped into a claw-like form.

’That is embarrassing!’

To say that line like he was hot shit, then accomplish next to nothing before getting ragdolled and strung up by tentacles?!

This fight...

This fight was not going as planned at all, to say the least.

But embarrassment meant he was thinking again.

And now that he was, the battlefield came rushing back into focus.

Glancing around, Peace counted only two thralls still standing.

Much more than a few seconds had passed since the spear had pinned him and he’d been nabbed by the Blood Warden. Apparently, Dita had spent that entire stretch carving through the others while he’d been too far gone to understand any of it.

That wasn’t the only proof of how much time his mind had lost.

The Skeletal Stalker was much closer...

The weird fog clouding his mind hadn’t lasted for mere seconds.

’Eurgh...’

With his rationality returned, Peace took stock of his body in the span of a heartbeat.

His left arm was out of commission from the shoulder injury. His left oblique had been punctured in several places by blood arrows. His entire body was caked in sores from the leech-like tendrils that had already been plucked off, while tens more remained attached, steadily draining him. His head felt light from the bloodloss.

But his right arm and hand still worked!

Somewhat...

Then there was Dita.

A gigantic gash marred her left thigh, and blood was pouring down the left side of her face, her features twisted in pure agony.

Still, she had both hands twisted into his robe now, her feet scraping against the loose bones as she tried to drag him away from the Blood Warden.

But no matter how hard she tried, there was no question which side would win this tug-o-war...

Fighting the Blood Warden’s strength directly was the rational answer — and the rational answer had already failed.

’The only thing able to overturn an irrational situation was irrationality...’

His eyes flicked to the Skeletal Stalker as it threw its arm back, a spear at the ready. Then his gaze dropped to Dita.

He screamed.

"Push me! Hurry!"

"Huh—"

"Just do it, then duck!"

Dita immediately got the memo about the incoming threat.

Pushing Peace toward the beast, she barely managed to duck the spear that sailed over her head and off into the distance. Sadly, it completely missed the Warden’s hulking body.

Yet, that wasn’t what Peace was gambling on...

Peace’s world was suddenly swallowed by blood.

He was pulled inside the Blood Warden’s incubator of blood beasts.

How had it even come to this?

What ability had randomly activated and allowed him to stall long enough for Dita to reach him? Why had his body partially transformed? Why had his regenerative ability been momentarily replaced by raw physical empowerment?

It didn’t matter.

All that mattered was that the Blood Warden was consuming him.

’Let’s dance... freak.’

Peace opened his mouth.

With his vision gone, he didn’t know what his jaws had found themselves around, but he bit down anyway...

And began devouring.