Becoming a Monster

Chapter 417: Chapter 417: The Hallucinations That Kill

Baka didn’t savor the kill; he merely crushed the brain within his hands until all the juices were wrung out.

His head snapped towards another direction. His rage was still unquenched; the other source of his anger had yet to feel his rage.

But someone else was already fighting it.

A woman...

She moved around the troll without it being able to do anything, her wings flicking open and closed behind her. Her armor resembled gothic plating but was forged from miasma, with areas that contained the same dragonic-like scales that Noah now exuded.

Her skin was extremely pale and partially hollowed, as if she stood halfway between life and death. When she turned her head, for an instant, one could see behind her bright, toxic red eyes, with a glint of gold.

Baka’s mind was still filled with unbridled rage; he didn’t recognize the identity of its helper.

Eve.

If not by her aura, then it should’ve been more noticeable by the silent skeletal guardian fighting alongside her.

Diablo fought the troll head-on, making sure to keep the troll’s aggression away from his most precious.

Against the troll one-on-one, if Eve had merged with Diablo, then the fight would’ve been as doable as if she’d merged with Ava. Yet, she still chose Ava.

She had learned from their previous battle. With Diablo, against opponents who don’t rely on mana, whose strength overwhelmed their own, they were at a disadvantage. Not because Diablo was weaker, but because overall, the two still needed to become stronger to navigate through their weaknesses.

What she needed was speed, the capability not to allow herself to get hit by the trolls’ atrocious strength. And Ava gave her that.

But she didn’t let Ava’s will take control of their fusion. She knew Ava, the one she insisted was her "mother". Ava would always prioritize her own safety and Eve’s. That wasn’t acceptable in this battle, not to Eve.

In a fight where Eve wanted to carry Noah’s burden, she couldn’t let Ava do as she pleased, which led to her current transformation. With her taking control of their merge, her form grew older, and mysteriously, her skin paled and turned into a mixture of stone and flesh, becoming a state that resembled the hollowfied creatures from the mall.

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Diablo’s strength was as strong as before, now that he wasn’t merged with Eve, but he was still as relentless. He steadily attacked the troll’s legs, the most accessible parts he could reach. His sword couldn’t slice through its bone, but it didn’t have to.

Every cut Diablo made leaked miasma. Every place his miasma touched never healed.

The troll should have focused on him. Any creature with instinct would have recognized a wound that refused to heal as a threat, especially a troll whose entire way of combat relied on its regeneration. At the very least, it should’ve turned toward the smaller figure latched onto its neck, feeding.

But the troll wasn’t reacting to anything in front of it.

It swung in the air, swinging at nothing. It thrashed wildly, moving without warning, roaring in pain, wincing from areas that went untouched. Its eyes swivelled faster than ever, tracking something that no one else could see.

It wasn’t fighting them. It was fighting something else entirely.

It started the moment Eve’s fangs sank into its neck.

Before draining its blood, the moment her teeth pierced its skin, she injected something into the troll. A concentrated energy; the same aura that flowed through her hair, the same aura leaking from her grimoire, the same power she used when she’d merged with Diablo.

The troll never understood the sensation. Its body just felt unnaturally cold. A frigidness that was rare for its species, creatures that could survive winters without wearing a single layer of fur or armor.

Then, when it was about to squish the bug that implanted that feeling into it, it suddenly caught three tangible, shadowy figures manifesting into its view.

Three creatures that looked almost identical to Ava appeared. These Avas immediately attacked the troll before it could react. It could only stumble from the sudden ambush, swinging out of pure instinct, its massive arm crashing directly into one of them.

Despite their ghostly materialization, the physical sensation in the troll’s arm was real.

The Avas hit the ground hard. The troll wasn’t given the time to observe what happened. It didn’t notice that despite the resistance it felt when it hit the enemy, when the Ava hit the ground, the dirt didn’t stir at all. The grass didn’t bend under its weight. When she rose, she recovered as if the impact had been nothing; not a scratch was on her.

If it had noticed, it would have begun to doubt what they really were, but the other two crossed in too suddenly. Their movements were unnatural as they moved through the air, flying without wings.

Their attacks were uncoordinated, almost erratic, and yet every angle they attacked made the troll feel on edge. Every attack seemed to make it vulnerable to the other. There was never a correct answer.

Time barely passed when it felt their attacks for the first time. Their sharp nails slashed across its ribs; the other tore at its cheek, which was swatted away like a rag doll.

The wounds were tiny, laughably small for a brute like the troll. But the pain... the pain was worse than the biting miasma digging into its legs.

The troll staggered, clutching its ribs, expecting blood, torn flesh. It was expected to cause an injury that would match the abnormal sensation of pain.

Yet there was nothing. Its skin was perfectly intact. But the agony was real. The confusion finally made its heightened nervousness grow into panic.

With two of the Avas down, the troll was resolved to hold out long enough for help. It was impossible not to hear the footsteps of its tribe coming in its direction. Its panic began to ease.

Until it noticed three figures approaching it again.

The Avas weren’t done with their attacks. Only now did the troll notice that its early attacks didn’t do anything to hamper them. Its panic spiked, but that didn’t divert their attacks. However, it made the troll more focused on defending itself rather than attacking.

A claw raking against its forearms that protected its face. Nails digging through its sternum, feeling as if its heart stopped beating during the initial pain. Then another scratch on its side, causing its body to jerk in the opposite direction.

The sensations piled onto each other. Its instincts shrieked louder than its own roars, warning that something was terribly wrong.

It felt as if it was dying.

All the while, Diablo’s strikes to its legs were accumulating. Its legs flared with pain just by placing weight on it, while the miasma continued to burn inside it. Slowly, it found its stance, beginning to falter under the numbing of its legs. Yet it was unable to address the threat below it. Its world was consumed entirely by the three nightmares circling it.

When its despair was at its highest, aid finally arrived.

However, there was only one. Arachne wouldn’t allow Eve, the weakest out of the creatures bonded directly to Noah, and the one Noah pampered the most, to fight more than she could handle.

When the other trolls were about to attack, Arachne’s soldiers quickly interrupted their attacks. Layers of webs shot the troll’s face. The webs that missed and landed on the troll’s body did nothing to hinder them; their strength easily overpowered the webs. But the webs that landed on their face were different. The web’s tenacity made them a hassle to remove. It was no different than having layers of glue plastered over their face.

One of the trolls was forced to stop its advance, its giant fingers struggling to pry off the fine webs plastered on it. And if that wasn’t enough, the moment the troll stopped in place, the two spiders targeted it with everything they had. An unending stream of webs flew at it, intending to keep it busy until their webs ran dry.

That left three trolls free. Kratos moved before they even finished their first step towards Eve. He’d been watching from the moment Eve revealed her transformation. As Noah’s general, he had the job of not only being Noah’s shield, but also protecting the ones close to him.

The three trolls closed in on Eve’s position, one in front, two angling to flank. Before any of them could fully converge, Kratos simply vanished, too fast for the common troll to keep up with, reappearing at the back of the formation.

The rear troll never even realized he was there.

Kratos’ tail lashed out, the serrated tip piercing straight through the side of its throat and out the other side. Troll regeneration was powerful, but it meant nothing when the creature couldn’t draw a single breath. It clawed at the gap immediately, an instinctive, yet pathetic attempt to allow it to breathe.

Immediately after, he leapt off the troll’s shoulder, aiming a destructive point-black blast at the next target.

That still left one enemy unattended.

But that enemy was no longer targeting Eve.

The troll’s gaze was looking upwards, a shadow forming over its figure, a shadow that was growing larger and larger.

It was a spider, bigger than any spider it ever encountered, one whose exterior defined what a spider should be. And atop of that spider was the small visage of Arachne’s royal Dreadguard.