Chapter 48: The Curious Case of the Headless Giant

The enormous body of his opponent collapsed backward in the ground along with the fragments of the wooden mask and the buzzsaw. Rhos landed on his feet and looked at the now headless giant.

His expression was difficult to read because he did not expect that to happen.

When he increased the force of his fist and cloaked it with spiritual energy, he had expected to pierce through the giant’s durability, send him flying again and perhaps knock him unconscious.

He hadn’t expected to blow his head off with a single punch. He looked at his blood soaked fist, then back at the giant’s remains.

The man was dead. Really dead. Rhos had killed him.

It wasn’t exactly the first time Rhos had been responsible for someone’s death. As a Ranger who had spent years being thrown into the wilderness as live bait, he had experienced enough near death encounters to understand that survival sometimes demanded unpleasant decisions.

His morality wasn’t spotless, and neither was his conscience. Killing another human being didn’t immediately send him into a state of panic or guilt, especially considering the kind of world they lived in.

The old world had apparently treated murder as one of the most serious crimes imaginable, with entire systems of law enforcement dedicated to punishing those who took another person’s life.

Murder was technically still a crime, but society’s attitude toward it had changed drastically. In the modern world, murder was as serious as jaywalking or pickpocketing. Killing a person wasn’t necessarily the worst thing you could do anymore.

Leaving their corpse behind was.

Humans in this world didn’t have the luxury of just remaining dead.

When a person dies, the spiritual energy that had once been regulated by their consciousness becomes unstable. That instability often resulted in corruption that transformed their corpse into a Wrath.

The process could take minutes, hours or sometimes much longer depending on the individual and multiple other factors that determined the transformation. There were rare cases where a corpse had transformed immediately after death.

In a sense, humanity had been cursed with a second life.

The first life belonged to the person themselves, the life they lived as a human being with memories, relationships, ambitions and fears.

The second life belonged to whatever emerged after that life was snuffed out. A mindless creature that remembered nothing of the person they once were and possessed only an instinct to consume. And whatever remained of the strength and spiritual energy its former self had accumulated.

That was why leaving a corpse unattended inside a Biome was treated as a far more serious offense than simply killing someone.

If one appeared inside Elderwood, especially somewhere in the densely populated lower rings, the consequences could be catastrophic. A single Wrath could multiply the numbers before the Rangers Corps can act. If a stronger Wrath appears, it could turn an entire section of the Biome into a disaster zone.

There were two possible ways to avoid this.

The first was to get eaten by a Wrath and have your corrupting spiritual energy be absorbed by it, thus thwarting the transformation.

The second was to alert the Exterminators so a team could be dispatched immediately to deal with the body before spiritual corruption completely takes hold.

Since he didn’t have access to the first option, Rhos reached toward his clothes before remembering that he had not brought a communicator with him.

"Shit"

He immediately turned and began running down the corridor, intending to find one before the giant’s spiritual energy could begin corrupting. These bastards had to have a communication terminal nearby right?

If the giant became a Wrath before the Exterminators came here, Rhos would have another problem on his hands, and considering how much spiritual energy that man had possessed, he didn’t want to find out what kind of horror his second life was.

He had only taken a few steps when something made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. He stopped and turned around to look.

The giant’s corpse was moving...

At first, he thought he had imagined it because the giant’s body was still exactly where it had fallen, seemingly lifeless.

However, its fingers twitched. Rhos paled.

"No..."

The headless body began to convulse violently against the stone floor. Its fingers curled inward, while the muscles beneath its skin spasmed as though something inside the corpse was attempting to force its way out.

Like always, Rhos’s mind immediately jumped to the worst possible conclusion.

’Already?!’

"Don’t tell me you’re already becoming a Wrath"

He felt his stomach drop, and just when he was about to get the heck out of here, a brilliant golden light suddenly erupted from the corpse, flooding the corridor with an oppressive radiance.

Rhos raised his arm to shield his eyes as the overwhelming pressure washed over him. His instincts screamed at him to move, but he couldn’t. There was something about that spiritual energy that made his body hesitate.

It didn’t feel like the same spiritual energy the giant man had. This one was different. It felt powerful...

Rhos had encountered powerful spiritual energy before. Keeper Taru’s presence had been overwhelming, and the Wrath that had nearly killed him had possessed a terrifying aura that still made him shiver at the thought of it. Neth itself was something entirely beyond his understanding either.

But this was different.

The golden spiritual energy wasn’t merely powerful, it felt as though it had existed in ancient times, before the Ranger Corps, before the Biomes and maybe even the current world.

Rhos’s pupils contracted, his mind trying to wrap around what was happening now.

"What the hell?"

The golden energy gathered above the corpse. At first, it was just an amorphous mass, but it soon started to take shape until a vague humanoid silhouette with long golden hair emerged, its full figure obscured by the swirling light.

He couldn’t determine whether the figure was male or female.... Or even human, but it took the form of one. But when it opened its eyes, he felt something cold crawl down his spine.

Those knowing eyes locked directly onto him. There was no confusion or instinctive hostility. Even though Rhos didn’t move a single muscle, the figure knew he was still there.

Through his two years of being a Ranger, Rhos had never seen something like that before. Some primitive parts of his mind were screaming at him that whatever stood before him was something he absolutely did not want to make an enemy off.

Once it was satisfied, a simple smile crossed its lips before its golden form began to unravel. The spiritual energy dispersed into the air like golden dust, fading until the corridor returned to its previous darkness.

Rhos remained frozen for several moments, his eyes fixed on the corpse. With the radiant pressure gone, his body could move freely now.

He waited a little longer before he let out a loud breath of relief. But he wasn’t in the clear yet. There was something wrong with the giant’s body.

"What...?"

He approached cautiously and stopped several meters away from the corpse. He was already close enough as he was but he wanted to be closer to confirm that he was not seeing things.

But there was no mistaking it now.

The overwhelming spiritual energy that had previously poured from him was gone. Completely gone. He could still sense spiritual energy within the corpse, but compared to what had been there before, it was pitifully weak. Worse, it already carried the unmistakable signs of corruption.

His face grimaced. That made absolutely no sense. Where did all that spiritual energy go?

Rhos stared at the dead man a little longer, then at the empty space where the golden figure had appeared.

His thoughts raced as he began to wonder if that thing had been inside the giant. Had it been responsible for his absurd amount of spiritual energy? Or had it simply been using the corpse as some kind of vessel?

In their crazy world, all of that was possible.

Rhos clenched his bloodied fist and shook his head. He didn’t have the luxury of delving into that mystery. He had to find that little girl.

And maybe come up with a name for her in the meantime.

"What the hell was that thing?