Chapter 136: Feast of the Primordial

The forest was quiet, not a single thing dared to make a sound in this dangerous place.

The smell of blood and death overpowered everything else; the nauseating stench was enough to make a normal person vomit out their guts.

Standing in a battlefield, surrounded by the corpses of the [Void Echos], stood the lonely figure of Valerian. Purple blood dripped off his whole body, staining the grass wherever he went.

His hands, clad in the dark scales of his [Primordial Scales], were dyed in the purple liquid, and his silver-white hair lost its brilliance, being drenched in the blood.

The corpses of the monsters around him created an image of pure savage carnage. Their bodies were ripped apart, their heads squashed or impaled by his sharp claws.

The smell of the blood entered his nose, and a primal excitement coursed through his body, chasing away any kind of reason.

He picked up the closest body of the [Void Echos], its head had been ripped off by his strength. Holding the headless body over his mouth, he let the blood directly flow into his throat.

It went down like the sweetest drink he had ever tasted, causing the euphoria to increase as his eyes dilated.

He drank and drank until there was nothing left inside the body of the beast, then he would rip their chest, rip their core out, and swallow it. When he was done with the first one, he went ahead to the second and repeated the same process again.

With every core he ate, his body began to change on a fundamental layer. But he ignored it, too deep in this feeling to stop now.

He devoured one after the other, drinking their purple blood like it was the last water in a scorching hot desert. When he finished with the last one, and all the blood had run dry, he stood in the middle of the carnage, and for the first time really looked around himself.

The ecstasy disappeared from his eyes when he saw the dry, coreless bodies of the monsters.

’What... was that?’

He was scared. He completely lost control over his own body, and like a beast, he slaughtered them with a big grin.

He looked down on his hand, which he had previously licked clean from the blood, as he slowly stepped back from the bodies.

’Why... why did that happen?’

He couldn’t understand why he would lose his control like that just because he drank a little of the blood while eating the core, but at the same time, just thinking back to the taste of it brought an involuntary smile to his lips.

’Maybe it wasn’t that bad.’

The fear he felt for losing himself slowly dissolved and turned into a deep desire to taste it again. The smooth feeling of the blood sliding down his throat, the sweetness of it, the filling feeling when the core entered his body.

All of it only increased the desire for blood he felt. His purple eyes didn’t shine in the cosmic light of a divine ruler, but in the predatory light of a predator that found a new kind of prey. His slitted pupils contracted, and he turned them down to the bodies.

’I wonder how their flesh tastes.’

The thought of eating their flesh made his mouth water. Unable to resist it, he licked his lips and walked to the bodies. Kneeling down in front of one, he raised its arm and brought it up to mouth level.

His jaws opened and he bit down on the flesh hard. First, it gave a bit of resistance, but it couldn’t hold on for long and gave away under his teeth. When the flesh entered his mouth, a wave of pleasure tore through him, and before he could even swallow, he already had the next bite in his mouth.

The sweetness of the flesh, paired with the remnants of blood that hid inside it, stripped away anything resembling reason that had managed to survive until now.

With every bite his body changed, but not in the same way it did when he ate the cores. Black scales crawled up his body, covering it in patches, and his jaw cracked and widened further than humanly possible. 𝑓𝑟ℯℴ𝓂

His teeth turned from human teeth to fangs sharp enough to cut the space itself, his horns grew in size while his fingers cracked and elongated, fusing with his [Primordial Scales] into sharp claws.

The scales covered his body like an infection; patches of his pristine pale skin were enveloped by them. The animalistic drive to devour took hold of his very being as he ate the entire [Void Echo], leaving nothing behind.

His eyes snapped to the next with dark primal desire burning in them. He ravaged the bodies until there was nothing left, and the little clearing where the fight took place was left empty, with the only being still standing being Valerian.

Even after devouring the bodies, his gluttony didn’t die down, and now with the corpses gone, he broke out in a fit of rage.

With a roar that didn’t sound like it could come out of a mortal, he howled at the sky. His mana spread around him, mapping out everything in the surroundings. After eating all these cores, his body changed fundamentally, and his senses were able to locate the [Void Echos] clearly. The second he found one, his body disappeared.

An unassuming [Void Echo] wandered through the trees, hiding between the folds of space, searching for a target, when suddenly a being appeared right before it.

Crossing the distance by repeatedly teleporting, he arrived at his destination in seconds.

Before a sense of danger could reach its head, Valerian’s claws ripped through the space, crossing the planar boundary, and decapitating the head.

Catching the head out of mid-air, he opened his jaws and took a big bite out of it like a large apple. Swallowing quickly, he finished the rest of the head in a second bite before devouring the rest of the body.

When he was finished, he sent his senses out again and locked onto another monster, but this one wasn’t hiding like the [Void Echoes] were; this one was walking around normally.

But in his state, Valerian wasn’t able to think about the risks of engaging a monster he knew nothing about and teleported away again. His body slipped through the space without resistance; his partial scales reduced any kind of resistance he would feel when teleporting in rapid succession.

Appearing at his target, for the first time he saw a different monster in this separate dimension. It looked like a larger version of an elk with the same white skin pulled taut over its body, with small strips of a starry window covering the body.

Its antlers were the same color and extended in a branching design. It was huge, standing over 5 meters tall, with eyes that glowed in a purple light.

But Valerian didn’t care what it was or how it looked; he could smell the sweetness of its flesh and blood, and it drove him crazy. Crossing the distance by slipping through the space, he arrived before it, his claws already aiming for its body.

The elk let out a soul-curdling scream and moved to stomp on Valerian’s body. Before the hooves could crush him, he disappeared again and appeared over it, with his claws already moving for its neck.

A wide grin was plastered all over his face, and his claws began to glow as a purple layer covered them. When they hit the skin, there was a bit of resistance, but it wasn’t able to hold on for long, and they were burying into the flesh. The elk moved around and tried to kick Valerian off, but he anchored himself on its back with his claws.

He opened his jaws wide and sank them into the flesh, drinking in the blood of the monster.

Wave after wave of ecstasy tore through him; this monster’s blood was so much better than the [Void Echos] that his eyes rolled back in his head.

With a yanking motion, he ripped out a chunk of the monster’s flesh and devoured it instantly. The elk screamed out in pain, and in a desperate attempt to shake off Valerian’s form, it turned around and slammed its back into the ground.

Caught in this feeling of pure bliss, Valerian wasn’t able to notice when the monster slammed him down and was buried underneath the towering giant.

The elk stood up and looked down at the crater created by its slam; a small dust cloud formed at the impact zone, blocking out its vision.

From the cloud, Valerian’s body rushed out fast, his face warped in a wide animalistic smile, his body aimed straight for its head with his claws already glowing purple.

The elk cried out again and tried to intercept him with its antlers, but Valerian’s body disappeared, and the world went dark for the elk as its head left its neck.

Standing on the falling giant, Valerian didn’t even wait until it hit the ground to start his meal, ripping away the sweet flesh and swallowing the large core.