Chapter 802 who Am l?
Before Ruby"s head could regenerate, he grabbed her left shoulder with an iron grip to keep her from toppling over, and then struck Ruby"s right temple with the sharp edge of his other hand, the impact distorting the air across several meters and releasing a violent shock wave. The young woman"s head slammed against her shoulder and taking advantage of the momentary dizziness he began to incant numerous Aether Spells.
Within seconds, dozens of weakening, slowing, and sleeping spells. .h.i.t the creature and Ruby began to waver, her heavy eyelids threatening to close at any moment. Not stopping there, Jake disarticulated every single one of her joints with wicked meticulousness, then shattered every one of her bones before nailing her to the ice floor with his G.o.d Slayer Katana.
The Digestor roared hatefully at him, her jaw hanging limply in the air as her mandible rapidly regrew itself. Aware that he didn"t have much time, Jake channeled his willpower and carved into Ruby"s flesh the Words of Power that he hoped from the bottom of his heart would make a difference.
"I Am Not A Digestor."
At that moment, the Ruby-like monster began to convulse, her amethyst eye bulging as it emitted an eerie purple light. Her grayish, slightly translucent skin regained a springy, slightly tanned texture.
"It works!" Jake grinned as he saw the young woman resurface completely naked before him.
But when he believed to have definitively solved the problem, a wrenching headache wracked his brain, a pain beyond imagination radiating throughout his Spirit Body and welling up from the depths of his Soul. Jake immediately fell to his knees, both hands weakly grasping his skull with a wince of agony.
Suddenly the situation was reversed and now it was not one but two people, a man and a woman, convulsing on the floor, squirming like worms thrown into a pot of boiling water.
Jake tried to refocus his attention, to remember who he was, but all he could make out was that his Spirit Body and Soul were clas.h.i.+ng fiercely against a spiritual ent.i.ty even more feral than himself. With each clash, a portion of his spiritual energy was consumed and he could feel some invasive power seeping into his soul and affecting his emotions.
Soon his own skin turned gray and an urge to devour everything, to destroy this unholy world began to cloud his thoughts, quickly engulfing his mind, rewriting his sense of reality.
Jake, who had been writhing on the ground, began to pull himself up, the Miniaturization Spell fading away to reveal a gray t.i.tan over 20 feet tall. Adamantium and Chitin began to coat his skin, the two materials fusing to form a sinister armor of spikes, horns and sharp edges.
Bloodline Ignition self-activated to resist this mutation, and a Myrtharian Digestor, an abomination that should not have appeared on a planet like Quanoth, began to flicker at an uncanny frequency, flashes of light and heat pulsing non-stop from its flaming veins.
Then, the humanoid creature stopped shaking and sniffed the air. Following the intoxicating scent that whetted its appet.i.te and hatred, its galactic eyes focused on a recently thawed black man.
Craig, who had struggled to free himself from the ice, met Jake"s gaze and his heart skipped a beat.
"f.u.c.k. I"m dead."
Prepared to confront Ruby, the chubby Player summoned a strange shotgun whose tapered shape vaguely recalled that of a fis.h.i.+ng pole and opened fire. A bullet made of an unfamiliar metal shot out of the gun"s barrel, but Jake easily caught it with two fingers.
"Hehe, good idea but you would have been better off dodging."
BANG!
A steel fiber net shot out from the tiny projectile in all directions and Jake was pinned to the ground with Ruby, the end of the net piercing the ground to reconnect from beneath them. Craig pressed another b.u.t.ton on his shotgun and the net instantly retracted and the two prisoners trapped inside were squeezed together belly to belly.
The steel net that not even Jake"s bloodline could control or break sank into his skin, cutting into the silver Adamantium and chitin alloy like b.u.t.ter. A flash of pain, much more down to earth this time, a.s.sailed his senses and the monster regained some semblance of lucidity.
Sensing danger, Jake"s survival instinct kicked in and he let out a roar of defiance,
"NO! I will not let a f.u.c.king Corruption dictate who I am!"
Gathering what little consciousness he had recovered, he brought out the Spirit Sh.e.l.l in his right hand and called out for help.
It was an act of desperation, he had no way of knowing if it would work from such a distance. But it did. Someone heard his call.
Asfrid, who was in the middle of a briefing with the faction leaders of Laudarkvik, stiffened in her seat and without bothering to understand projected all her energy into the artifact. The other Eltarians didn"t hesitate either and threw all their spiritual energy not at Jake, but at Asfrid.
Hade and the others didn"t know what was going on, but when they sensed her restlessness, they knew it was urgent, and they in turn poured their own mental energy into their Spirit Sh.e.l.l.
Asfrid"s Spirit Body level skyrocketed, surpa.s.sing that of the vast majority of Quanoth natives in the blink of an eye, and with this heightened awareness she then projected her Soul in Jake"s direction.
Jake, who felt his consciousness about to fade again, was suddenly buffeted by a torrent of welcome spiritual energy and his True Will, which was rapidly losing ground to the Corruption, suddenly received an uninterrupted stream of nourishment.
Asfrid merged her Soul with him and Jake"s Spirit Body level rose in turn, becoming hundreds of times more powerful than before. His human intelligence and composure returned like a boomerang and he decisively activated his Oracle s.h.i.+eld.
His gray skin turned pale bronze and like Ruby the moment before, the chitin covering his skin crumbled away from his body like dead skin. The fire in his galactic eyes kept the same sharpness, but it was no longer the gaze of a ferocious beast living only for destruction.
But the most glaring miracle was something else. Ruby, who had already transformed back into a Digestor, immediately reverted to human form. Even her eye, with its amethyst iris, changed color, becoming deep-marine blue like its neighbor.
Craig, who had watched the scene with bated breath, didn"t dare call the net back, unable to determine if it was another trap. The Digestors" deviousness was not well known, but what he did know was that these monsters had not become the Mirror Universe"s arch nemeses without reason.
"You can call your net back." Jake rolled his eyes with a groan. "Don"t worry, I"m back to my old self. I don"t feel like eating humans anymore."
"I- Who am I?" Ruby murmured weakly, her shocked face screaming confusion and incomprehension.
Craig froze.
"Ruby? Is that really you?" He asked, blus.h.i.+ng slightly.
Then Jake and Ruby noticed they were completely naked. The chubby Player was not gay and it was obviously not Jake"s fault that he was acting embarra.s.sed. Noticing where her teammate"s gaze roamed, the young woman remained inexpressive, but a tight fitting uniform like Craig"s covered her body.
Jake grunted and his muscular body also disappeared under a suit of Adamantium armor conjured with a single thought. The mind merge with Asfrid was not over and his Soul was so powerful at that moment that every one of his thoughts slightly affected the reality around him.
His Extrasensory Perception was also magnified and he had an acute awareness of what was going on in his Spirit Body and Soul like never before. This was why he knew at once that he had not really eradicated Ruby"s Digestor half.
The clash between their wills was still going on, but the Digestor half-Soul had been pushed to its limits, contracting its essence to the extreme, becoming dense to the point of being virtually indestructible. The Words of Power etched into Ruby"s skin were no longer potent enough to erode it.
Jake obviously couldn"t maintain this status quo indefinitely. For he could sense another problem and so could Craig.
Ruby was gazing at the ice palace around them with a childlike curiosity, as if she were discovering this place for the first time. With his current senses, Jake had no trouble identifying the root of the problem.
She was missing half her Soul and with it, half her memories. It seemed Ruby hadn"t lied. She couldn"t erase her Digestor nature. Because that would mean annihilating herself.
But more importantly, as long as his Words of Power were in effect, the Corruption would worm its merry way into his soul in a way he couldn"t fathom. It was as if it could flow upstream from his True Will as if it were a mere river and then automatically contaminate the source.
Jake had no way to defend himself and could only watch as the lake of consciousness representing his Soul and Spirit Body gradually corrupted, as if it were being filled with ink.
Before the damage became unsalvageable, with a sigh of regret he turned off the Soul Cla.s.s Spell.