Chapter 43: Pain Doctrine
There was too much.
Too much movent. Too much growth. Strange plants sprouted from the cracked stone, coiling, pulsing, unfurling in flashes of color that didn’t belong.
Too many numbers, climbing, blinking, never stopping. System warnings flared through his skull like burns. New tastes flooded his tongue. Iron, ash, rot, nectar. All of it at once.
Everything ca at him. Sound. Sll. Thought.
And his body—
It bloated. Fought to co apart. Skin stretched thin. Muscles twitched out of rhythm. Heaving and coughing violently. Pressure behind his eyes throbbed like sothing trying to dig its way out. His thoughts circled but never landed. Locked between pain, pleasure, and panic.
Blind to the mont, he didn’t see the bloodlight finally fade, the Soul Stone darken. He couldn’t feel the spectral hands recede, slowly drawing back into his swelling and splitting flesh. Not that it would have mattered.
None of it slowed the numbers.
[Fuel Source Absorption: 120%]
[Fuel Source Absorption: 121%]
His skin split along the ribs. Blood hissed as it hit the cold floor. A maniacal laugh as horns cracked, swelling at the base. Vision narrowed to pinpricks while his throat closed.
The last of his strength began to flicker. Then sothing in him pushed back. For a split second...his mind broke free.
’DO SOTHING!’
The words exploded.
The bloodlight hands froze for a breath. Wavered. Then clawed faster back into him. Dozens scrambling past each other, almost desperate.
His cleavers thrashed beneath his skin. Butcher’s Wrath dug at his forearms from the inside, blade edges cutting through shallow slits, as if trying to claw their way free.
[System initializing // Ergency Override Protocol active]
[External surge authorization previously overwritten // Soul Stone integrity forcibly redirected to secure shard validation....Dungeon rejection averted]
[Reconstructing administrative link...Routing excess soulmass into foundational anomaly anchor...Interface expanded]
[Integration // Confird]
[Fuel Source Absorption: 125%]
[Fuel Source Absorption: 123%]
[Fuel Source Absorption: 121%]
[Fuel Source Absorption: 118%]
[Fuel Source Absorption: 115%]
[Fuel Source Absorption: 112%]
[Anomaly Status Registered // Dungeon Network Access Rewritten // Temporary Clearance Made Permanent]
[Shard classification updated // Anomaly // F Access Tier]
[Visibility suppressed..work trace minimal]
[Dungeon entry restrictions // lifted]
The imp twitched. The pressure under his skin didn’t vanish, but it shifted, less like bursting, more like bleeding out through too many cracks. His lungs pulled in shallow air. The weight in his chest lifted just enough to remind him it had nearly crushed him.
[Remaining soulmass // Unstable]
[Redirecting...]
It wasn’t over. But it was no longer killing him.
Sothing unspooled inside, sore, trembling, stretched raw. He could feel himself adjusting to the strain. Barely. Bones still ached. Blood still hissed beneath the skin. But now there was space to feel sothing other than panic.
His body remained tense, pulse staggered. This wasn’t balance. Just delay. The edge had moved, not disappeared.
[Comncing Phase II Conversion]
[Function // Experintal]
[Outco // Unknown]
[Stability // Not Guaranteed]
[Auxiliary pathway opened...Beginning transformation...Consuming Remaining Soulmass...]
[Fuel Source Absorption: 112%]
[Fuel Source Absorption: 110%]
His skin sagged in places. Bone pressed from beneath, shifting back into alignnt with dull, scraping snaps. His body found its old shape, but everything inside still felt wrong. Like organs had been stitched in place backwards.
His mind unlatched from the pressure. Not released, just... unhooked. Like lifting your face out of water, but realizing your lungs were full of sothing else. But he could at least think.
[Fuel Source Absorption: 100%]
’Whatever you’re doing, it’s working...’
[Beginning compression in 5...4...]
’Wait—Why are you counting?’
[2...1...Initializing]
’Don’t—!’
The thought broke like a brittle tooth.
A coil of white heat punched through his sternum, wet, pulsing, like a spike dragged through a raw wound. His breath caught halfway up his throat and didn’t co back down.
His vision swam in pus-yellow halos.
[Compression rate // 40%]
[Increasing....50% // Increasing....60%]
It wasn’t pain anymore. It was annihilation. His organs churned. Muscle clotted. His arms locked around his middle, claws scraping chest, trying to peel the fire loose.
[Compression Rate // 100%]
[!! WARNING !! // Finalizing Codex ...Mapping Sprite....Developing Structure Models...Results Unknown]
Suddenly—sound pulled him back to reality, a twitch of green movent. His eyes snapped to it. Vines swayed. Leaves curled in thick, humid spirals. From within them, a rabbit stepped out. Furry. Curious. Alive.
Mocking.
It stared. Sniffed.
He didn’t get to process it. A scream ca next and the rabbit fled.
[Initializing New Subjugation Protocol...]
His chest locked. Breath seized.
[Converting Energy Source...]
The molten agony condensed, flipped, froze. Like soone stuffed winter into his lungs. A thousand tiny teeth dragged through marrow, scraping out warmth. He bit down so hard his gums split.
[Imprinting....Imprinting....Imprinting...]
[Successful]
Then the cracking started. Deep and heavy. Like a glacier breaking from within.
His back bent hard, arms flung wide, spine bowing up until only heels and skull touched the floor.
[!! Conversion Complete !!]
He couldn’t see it...his vision had iced over. Couldn’t move...nerves shot raw.
But he felt it.
Sothing out of place. Sothing too soft, and too real, peeled free from his chest. A puff of rolling black and grey smoke, dense and alive. It hovered...weightless...waiting.
Then it popped. Gone.
He dropped like a severed puppet. Limbs loose, chest caved in with the effort of staying whole.
The system still flashed as new prompts read out. But he didn’t care. Not yet.
"Please tell it’s over..."
[Negative.]
His jaw tightened. Claws dug into the floor.
A breath.
Then—
"Hurry up. I wanna kill things."
The system obliged.
[System // Notification]
[Soul Foundatio—]
For once his body gave out before the pain.
Despite his conviction, nothing was left. He passed out cold.
The forming of his soul had finally broke Azakh-Tur.
----
Getting farther from where the imp lay...down a collapsed tunnel of cracked cent and rusted pipe, through corridors that slowly transford into packed dirt and overgrown roots, the small brown rabbit ran like its fur was afla.
It leapt, paused, sniffed. Ears pinned back. Then it bolted again.
Faster. Deeper.
Then, without warning, it stopped. Head high. Nose twitching.
It scanned the shadows, still and silent. Then lowered itself close to the earth. One ear raised. A slow, cautious hop forward.
The darkness shifted.
Without sound, a large hand reached down. Furred, clawed, and gentle. It lifted the rabbit with care.
Around them, the dark pulsed.
One pair of eyes opened. Then another. Then four. Then dozens.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
All watching. All waiting.
The air thickened. The scent of sothing new...blood, brimstone, and rot.
The imp’s scent carried on the kit.
And hunger stirred.
----
Back in the crawlspace where evolution had torn through him, the last remnants of system light finally bled out.
Minutes passed as the imp’s breath steadied. His eyelids twitched. Then opened.
System glow still lingered.
He winced. Swiped the panel aside.
"I’ll deal with it later..."
He nearly threw up trying to stand. His tail caught him, barely, then again when his legs buckled. It took a mont, but he got upright.
Balance returned in pieces.
"Tell it’s done."
[It’s done.]
"....."
Suspicion built.
"Is it actually done, or are you just saying that?"
[User has trust issues...Noted. Evolution complete. It is really done.]
He did feel different. He just didn’t trust it. Not yet. His eyes were still flickering, but he squinted past the static, watching the numbers slowly settle in his Ui.
"Only ten? Doesn’t feel worth it."
[HP // 300/300]
[SM // 36/36]
Apparently, so of the excess energy from the Soul Stone had gone into expanding his pool. A surprise gain, but it didn’t feel like enough.
Once the spinning stopped and his nerves cald, he exhaled. Hard.
Then snarled.
"Why did you make do that?! I almost died because of this!"
He kicked the drained Soul Stone. It bounced off the wall and rolled into darkness.
[During evolution, a random dungeon instance descended. To prevent rejection or deletion, a high-grade power source was needed to bypass embedded firewalls.]
The earlier prompts returned to mory. Fragnted, but enough. It slowly started to make sense.
"And that’s where the excess went. So it’s permanent? I can enter these dungeons now?"
[Affirmative. System generated a Shadow Key. Firewall bypass now tied to User’s anomaly signature.]
He didn’t respond right away. He hated that he was grateful.
"So this is a dungeon. How does that even work?"
The system hesitated.
Too long.
"What is it?"
[User’s evolution is finished. However, one final process remains. mory Assimilation was delayed until physical recovery. Focus is required to prevent personality bleed.]
He sighed. Deep. Loud. Tired.
"Painful?"
[Affirmative.]
He scratched at his horns. Fast. Aggressive. Then said flatly:
"Just do it."
[Affirmative.]
He didn’t scream this ti.
Didn’t curse.
He just took it.
If the system told him there’d be more after this, he wouldn’t flinch. He was beginning to understand.
Pain wasn’t a punishnt.
It was a fact. A universal truth.
And in that quiet mont before the storm, he made a choice. Pain wasn’t sothing to endure, it was sothing to end. If this was all there was, it had to change. He didn’t know how. Not yet. But the outline was there. A shadow. A goal.
His final thought before lightning carved through his skull.
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