Clyde erged into another kind of ruined world.
Agatha had told him this place was the result of a failed experint conducted by a Celestial. That alone set it apart from the other ruined worlds he had stepped through.
This wasn’t the aftermath of so grand battle or monstrous invasion. There were no corpses, no craters from desperate defenses. No signs of struggle.
This world and everything in it had been annihilated outright. There were no survival, no resistance, just complete and silent erasure of lives.
"What a ss," Clyde thought grimly. He shook his head, letting out a quiet exhale.
This place was even more tragic than the others. At least those worlds had a chance to fight back. This one didn’t even get that.
Around him, chaos seeped into everything.
The sky above was split open like torn cloth, streaked red and bleeding static lightning. Thick black clouds churned unnaturally, coiling around the fractures in the atmosphere like snakes.
The ground beneath his feet was cracked crimson and black, like dried blood fused with scorched earth. Every step crunched softly on fractured stone, so of it pulsing faintly because they were alive with residual of the unstable magic.
What little flora remained had long since stopped being recognizable. Trees twisted upward like spires of bone and molten glass, their branches spiraling in impossible angles, dripping translucent sap that hissed upon contact with the air.
Fungal growths clung to the sides of warped boulders, breathing in slow pulses. Their textures part stone and part of it were so kind of flesh.
And the rocks themselves... So floated, so sank into the ground, others shimred with veins of shifting color as if caught between being solid and liquid.
Agatha hadn’t said much more about the place. But she didn’t need to.
Clyde could feel it. Whatever artifact exploded here hadn’t just corrupted the surface, it had rewritten the entire world on an atomic level. Every law of nature twisted, rewritten, shattered.
He took his first step forward and the corrupted land groaned beneath his boots.
The air here was heavy and feels wrong. Breathing it felt like inhaling rust and ash soaked in oil.
It clung to Clyde’s lungs, not choking him exactly but pressing in like it didn’t belong inside a living being.
If his body and soul hadn’t already been elevated to a higher form, he doubted he could have even stepped foot into this place.
A regular mortal would’ve died the mont they crossed over. Their mind shredded, organs liquefied, bones crystallized from the pressure of corrupted magic pressing in on them.
He paused for a mont, glancing around the fractured landscape. His gaze thoughtful behind that sharp stare.
"Maybe I should collect so material for myself too," he thought. "If Hamr can refine them... maybe I can get sothing new and stronger."
He wasn’t sure. Not even Hamr had worked with magic this unstable. Chaotic essence this deep wasn’t just dangerous, it was alive and unpredictable.
But if anyone could mold it into sothing usable, it was Hamr. And if it worked, the weapon born from these fragnts would be like nothing else in any realm.
Then, a happened. The air buzzed with low static.
A sudden stench wafted past him. It was thick and wet like rotting at left in the sun, layered with sothing sharp and tallic like the sll of death, old and fresh at the sa ti.
Clyde turned instantly.
The ground behind him cracked and swelled. Sothing was crawling out of the crimson earth like corpse raising from the grave.
The creature was grotesque, its body a patchwork of raw muscle, stone, and glassy tendrils.
It had no eyes, only a gaping vertical mouth splitting its upper face that filled with layers of jagged black teeth. Its limbs were long and jointed in the wrong places.
Bones jutted from its spine, shaped like broken blades. Its skin shifted in texture. One mont it was flesh, the next mont it was crystal, then tallic, then sothing Clyde couldn’t even na.
It twitched as it stood fully upright. Its towering over five ters. Its form trembling with barely restrained violence.
Then it let out a sound that sounded like a shriek and scream of a human.
"AAAAAA!!!"
A long, grinding, unnatural wail that bent the air around it like glass under pressure.
Clyde narrowed his eyes. "Hmm,," he muttered. "Their appearance looks exactly like I thought would be."
He rolled his shoulders once, his magic beginning to stir.
The monster charged.
Its heavy limbs slamd against the corrupted earth, sending cracks spiraling with each thunderous step.
The ground itself seed to recoil, and the sky flashed with a burst of static lightning as if reacting to the creature’s fury.
But Clyde didn’t move yet.
His eyes narrowed, focusing on sothing inside the thing’s grotesque maw.
Within that vertical mouth beneath the rows of jagged black teeth he caught a glimpse of sothing that looks disturbing.
A round and bloodshot eye that looks like a human eye.
And watching him.
It didn’t blink or flinch. It just watched with clarity and awareness.
Clyde’s expression shifted. From calm to cold.
"It’s still in there," he thought, gaze sharpening. "There’s a mind. A person. Trapped inside that abomination."
A frown tugged at the corner of his mouth. The creature shrieked again. Its scream less a roar and more like a cry for help now, distorted by the monstrous shape that carried it.
"Must be painful..." Clyde thought, his chest tightening—not with fear but with sothing heavier. "...To still be conscious and aware in that form."
He didn’t hesitate.
"I’ll release you."
In a single movent, Clyde raised his hand.
A quiet hum built in the air around him, rising like a breath before a storm. The corrupted land recoiled, and the lightning in the fractured sky seed to stutter.
His magic flared. Not loud or explosive but precise. He channeled hisn [Pure Lightning] skill and aid.
And death finally co to that poor thing.
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