Chapter 38: Devourer

It started with his eyes.

[Your health has dropped below 15%]

Peace’s body felt like it was being incinerated.

The Blood Warden’s blood had the same corrosive properties as the blood rain’s field effect, only far more concentrated.

And that corrosive blood, like some horrid tailor, was taking his measurements to remake him as a Blood Beast.

It was attempting to drain the blood from his body and replace it with its own, slowly burning away his skin, muscle, and bone until nothing remained but a hollow outline of Peace given shape by the creature’s blood.

[Your health has dropped below 15%]

At the same time...

Peace thrashed within the thick, pulsing muck, clawing, biting, and swallowing endlessly. He was willingly slurping up the blood it had been trying to force inside of him.

Only, the blood he drank didn’t corrode his intestines; it had the opposite effect.

It healed him.

The mending effect had returned with his rational mind. Whatever frenzied state Peace had been in had almost completely subsided.

And...

The sheer volume he was consuming created a grotesque equilibrium where his body healed nearly as quickly as the blood managed to burn his skin.

[Your health has dropped below 15%]

The two remained locked together in a dance of terror.

The Blood Warden devoured Peace from the outside in.

Peace devoured it from the inside out.

The battle was not one of might, but of Peace’s will — of how long he could hold out.

’Hurts...’

After all, even if his wounds were being healed, the pain remained.

’This fucking hurts!’

His eyeballs felt like they were being melted inside their sockets. His exposed wounds soaked directly in the acidic blood for fleeting moments before his skin closed over them, only for the wounds to immediately reopen.

His blood was drained and replenished simultaneously.

’I hope you feel pain too, bastard!’

It felt like he was in an electric centrifuge, being tased every time he made a full rotation.

[Your health has dropped below 15%]

All around him, the Blood Warden’s body contracted and churned, pressing in as if begging him to finally die.

Though, there was something in his favor.

The bastard’s core was somewhere in the bloody muck with him.

Buried inside this fleshy incubator, beneath the blood trying to erase him, was the one thing keeping the creature alive.

All he had to do was find and consume it.

Thankfully, there was one telltale sign of its location: the leech-like tendrils attaching to his body all originated from the core.

They were hard to isolate, but throughout his thrashing, Peace finally managed to grab one with his right hand.

He began pulling, inching his body forward.

Instantly, the tendril went limp, detaching from the core.

Peace found another and pulled again.

It too detached, but he gained another sliver of distance.

One after another, Peace grasped the tendrils and hauled himself, gaining centimeters at a time.

[Your health has dropped below 15%]

As he drew closer, the Blood Warden switched tactics. Unable to keep him away, it doubled the number of leeches attaching to his body directly from the core.

But doing so left it with fewer tendrils to control outside its body.

Still...

Peace’s sheer tenacity was beyond anything the almost pitiful Blood Warden had or would ever experience in its short lifetime.

Peace began biting and chewing through the thin tendrils, consuming the highly dense blood within them while clawing his way closer to the core.

[Your health has dropped below 15%]

[???] — (condition to unlock: 13/100)

Finally, his right hand, barely retaining any sense of touch, nudged something it couldn’t move.

There was no doubt in his mind what it was...

’The core!’

Hooking his hand around the far side of it, Peace dragged himself forward, jaws opening wide.

’No!’

Just as he felt his tooth press against the hard core, a sudden yank at his ankles stopped him cold.

The Blood Warden had snaked one of its external tendrils back inside and was dragging Peace away.

’Like hell you’re calling it quits! You started this!’

Whether that was true or not didn’t particularly matter...

What mattered was that, suddenly, everything around him shook...

The Blood Warden convulsed violently.

Peace didn’t know exactly what had happened, but one thing was certain: the tug on his ankle had stopped.

[Your health has dropped below 15%]

Peace drove his head forward.

His jaws clamped around the edge of the core, and he bit down on the crystalline orb.

At this point, nothing would stop him.

He ground his teeth against it and pressed until, finally, glass-like shards broke free into his mouth.

[You have slain a Tier 9 C-Class, Blood Warden]

[+2 EXP]

Its body began collapsing, the gelatinous blood sloughing away from the core that had once held it together.

Peace felt a brush of wind against his back.

But...

Death was simply too kind a mercy for what the ’bloody sack of shit’ had put him through.

Blind, Peace continued to devour the core in his grasp, crunching through the crystalline shards. Eventually, his teeth found the Spirit Stone hidden within. He ate that too.

The pain of pure, undiluted spirit force flooding into his body barely fazed him.

He ignored it and kept eating until the final shard disappeared down his throat.

Still, he wasn’t done.

He threw his head around, searching for any remnant of the Blood Warden. The scent of iron led him toward the pellet-like bones scattered across the ground.

Peace scooped up clumps of the tiny bones still coated in the Warden’s blood and shoved them into his mouth, crushing them between his teeth and swallowing everything he could.

Yet... it wasn’t enough.

He needed more.

Between mouthfuls, Peace licked the blood from his arms and face, smearing whatever remained toward his mouth.

He must have looked utterly insane...

No, it was no stretch to say the naked man covered in blood, crawling on all fours and eating bones off the ground, was insane.

However, Peace had his reasons beyond vengeance...

He needed to exploit whatever strange property of his class or trait was healing him.

Bone after blood covered bone, he chewed and swallowed until his eyes began to heal enough for the world to return as a blurry haze.

Still on all fours like a dog, healed to a sufficient state in which his bleeding was mostly stemmed, Peace looked for Dita, finding her blurry outline sitting near the divot he had carved, pushing herself away from him.

"What the hell are you?!"

It seemed his hearing had also returned...