The Watcher

"It's here…" Lao Huli whispered under his breath. His voice trembled with excitement."What- What just happened?!"The nearby Cultivators all distanced themselves from the dead man when they heard a loud shriek and an even stronger rumble.The part of the canyon above the Drake nest carved into the rock began to crack and crumble, getting pushed outward by long, thick, gray, scaly tentacles.Lao Huli secretly took talismans and stuck them on his body as he took a few steps back.Large boulders began falling down, rolling over the entrance and into the river, splashing water meters high. More tentacles emerged, pushing the rocks away and making the hole bigger. Slowly, under the watchful eye of everyone present, a beast emerged. A round, tentacled monster with way too many eyes all over its body.The floating monstrosity blinked its dozen eyes independently of each other as its tentacles squirmed and stretched out, reaching for things to grab. The dark gray scales covering its body glistened in the light of the evening sun.There was a quiet peace for a moment, while the two sides looked at each other. And then the people began screaming."It's a Watcher!""Ruuuun!"The Cultivators split up and dashed in every direction away from the beast, some of them using techniques, others relying on relics or even just their own powerful limbs to distance themselves as they escaped in a blind panic.Lao Huli was the only one who remained rooted in place, only glancing at the escapees. Instead of running, he braced himself as the beast opened its terrifying maw beneath its body, and shrieked.A wave of energy flared out in a sphere at lightning speed, catching every escaping Cultivator and breaking their spirit.Powerful men at the peak of Golden Core had their internal energy scrambled in a split-second, making them spit blood as they fell from the sky, bouncing off rocks and landing back in the canyon, looking worse for wear."It's no use!" Lao Huli shouted, the talismans having protected him from the worst of the effects of the attack. "The monster will not let us leave! We need to fight!""Impossible! That's a Spirit Beast!" A man cried in despair."I have a way!" Lao Huli roared to get his voice to carry over the disrupting waves of energy from the Watcher. "Just keep it busy for a short while! We can do this!"The Cultivators looked at each other and gritted their teeth. The burly, bearded man stood up first and extracted a crystal bowl out of his pouch."I can keep it contained for 20 seconds. Let's do this!"Others, copying him, also took out their relics with determination clear on their faces."We are not going to die today! So what if it's a Spirit Beast?! We'll kill it all the same!""That's the spirit! Now go!" Lao Huli shouted and took out a metallic dodecahedron and let it float in the air in front of him as a barrier encased him completely. He then began drawing runes with his finger, and the thing began sucking in enormous amounts of energy. So much so, that the Spirit Stones he was constantly providing were getting drained one after the other.And, of course, the beast noticed. He became the main target."Protect me!" He roared as gray beams were fired at him.***It all started with that first scream from the guy as his body inflated like a balloon and then exploded. That was gruesome… and weird. His energy especially. I've seen it, it was messy, chaotic, and absolutely not under control.Nobody paid him any attention until he started to scream. Nobody has seen what happened, as he was the furthest away from the Drake. But then the rumbling began, and an absolute eldritch monstrosity emerged from the rocks, a creature between a jellyfish and an octopus, covered with gray scales, and with way, way too many eyes.I felt uncomfortable just looking at it. For some reason, it disgusted me. And I wasn't usually squeamish about such things.But then everyone began to panic and shouting about the monster, and instantly began running away. Where was their bravery, their willingness to fight? They ran away like scared little children.I understood why almost immediately. That thing was a Spirit Beast. A beast in the Spirit Realm. That was trouble, but not as much trouble as I thought.Its screech practically incapacitated every single Cultivator, preventing them from running away by scrambling their energy. I felt it, felt its iron will, ordering me to fold over and die. I mentally sent it a middle finger back.Mentally flexing my energy and Soul, I repelled the feeble attack and stayed standing while everyone else fell to the ground, spitting blood. No, not everyone. The old man, Lao Huli, remained standing as well. I even thought I saw him smile for a moment, but then his expression turned to a hardened gaze.After giving a morale-boosting speech, people actually prepared to fight. I wasn't against it, but I somehow seriously doubted we could kill that thing. The Watcher. What a horrible creature.Oh, yeah… That man with his crystal fruit bowl… That was an interesting relic. He threw it and it expanded, locking the monster inside it. It lasted exactly 7 seconds. Far from his promised 20.He appeared just as shocked as the rest, watching his treasured relic burst apart like shattered glass.Then he got hit by a gray beam from one of the many eyes. It struck his arm as he tried to defend himself, and I saw growths begin to sprout from it. It grew like cancer. Fingers, nails, hair, and even scales began to grow at a rapid pace from his arm as he screamed and flailed around. It was spreading at great speed as his energy became messed up.It was some sort of wicked technique that forced transfiguration into a messed up, sickly form. Someone took a sword and cut off his hand above the elbow. His hand fell to the ground and continued to wriggle and grow until it eventually reached the limit and burst into a shower of blood."Don't let its beams hit you!" Some smartass shouted. As if we didn't all already realize the beams were dangerous. Devastatingly so. Defenses didn't matter if your body turned against you.But then the beast suddenly closed all its eyes.I began running away immediately, yet I was too slow. The monster opened its eyes a moment later and all of them shot out a scattered beam of cursed gray light. I ducked down and to the side, yet a beam still grazed my shoulder.I felt a searing pain as the foreign energy invaded my body. I immediately mobilized all my energy and pushed back, localizing the damage at the tip of my shoulder and only skin deep. I thought I had done it, but then I watched with wonder and horror as four small gray tentacles grew from my skin.They were wriggling and I could feel them moving, yet I couldn't control them. It was disgusting!I took a blade and cut them off, roots and all. I cut way more than was necessary to not let a single hair of it stay inside me.I then blasted the piece of flesh and disintegrated it completely, after which I used Fire Mending to regrow my shoulder.[What the fuck!]The tentacles were back! My regeneration regrew them![How?!]I realized how soon. The damage wasn't just a simple physical alteration. It touched the Soul, corrupting it. I was corrupted. Me! The man with strands of Divinity![Son of a bitch!]I turned around and began running towards the monster. Like hell, I would let it curse me without consequences. My eyes turned to a blaze and I fired a beam at one of the monster's eyes.It shrieked and quickly closed its eye. I was stunned and then began to laugh. My firepower increased after consuming and merging with the Drake. My Fire Affinity was at the top of its class!But then the other eyes all turned against me and fired at once.[Crap.]I was hit by multiple beams at once as their movement was nearly instant, just like mine. I fell back with tumors and growths forming all over my body. I managed to keep them contained, but that didn't mean they weren't extremely dangerous.Energy raged inside them, and I struggled to calm it down. My flesh was saturated with Qi, making it difficult to alter at a distance, but at the same time, the alteration was just as hard to reverse.As I was dealing with curses to the body and Soul, the other Cultivators took the opportunity to keep the monster contained. They were failing miserably, but their effort was admirable.I once again used the Divine threads of my Soul to help me, but instead of fixing the curse damage, I just scraped it off. I had plenty of Soul Essence to spare anyway, and the damage was superficial. I cut off those chunks of my Soul and destroyed them, losing about 10% of my gathered Soul Essence in the process. Not my total Soul Essence, of course, just the part that was supposed to go towards Golden Core Second Layer. Maybe a Cultivator or two's worth. It was nothing. Half a century of Cultivation for a common man.That was sarcasm. The damage was huge!"AAAH! MY LEG!"I looked from behind a boulder and saw a man's leg turning into a large insectoid limb. Bone and flesh swapped places, forming a chitin armor around his growing tumor. It was dis-gust-ting!I turned away and looked into the sky where Lao Huli was still powering up his weapon, and noticed something… strange. The Watcher was constantly shooting him, yet the old man remained unaffected. He was throwing out a bunch of talismans that guarded him against the corrupting beams. They also seemed specifically made to counter that effect. Almost as if he knew they were coming and prepared in advance.Suspicious…Then again, he might just be a paranoid old fart who prepared for every scenario. He didn't get to be a century and a half old by being reckless.But then I noticed something else. His weapon. The dodecahedron, it was fully stuffed with energy. Whatever he wanted to do, surely it was enough to kill or at least severely disable the creature. So why was he still pumping it full of energy? The air around him began changing and I began feeling uncomfortable just by looking at that thing. It felt dangerous. Way more dangerous than the Watcher.The beast realized it too, and suddenly stopped caring about other Cultivators and focused solely on him."Don't let it get to me!" Lao Huli suddenly shouted and jumped even higher into the sky. "Hold it down, I'm almost done!""We can't take it anymore! Do it already!" A man shouted back. The remaining group of Cultivators combined their powers to create another barrier and keep the Watcher from flying up. Yet even a few seconds later, the barrier began to crack and dissolve as the Spirit Qi corroded it."Almost…"Suddenly the Watcher stopped ascending and flashed to the side in a panic. Its body smashed into the barrier, breaking it like brittle glass. At the same time, Lao Huli stopped charging his relic, and the land below him was painted in white. The Watcher froze in place and turned towards the glowing white sun in the sky, eyes wide."Wait… What are you doing?!" A Cultivator suddenly shouted."Stop! You are targeting us as well!" Another one roared. He had tumors across his body and was crawling on the ground, covered with a white light."Hehe, sorry fellas. This thing is very hard to control." Lao Huli cackled.The blinding light expanded and I felt danger. The entirety of the canyon was bathed in it, the density and chaotic nature of Spirit Qi preventing any outside Mystic Arts from triggering."You bastaaaaard!" A man roared towards the sky, the hum of the grand magic overpowering his voice.The Watcher shrieked as the white light suddenly descended, its wild emotions for all to see and feel.I just looked up and saw death. But I refused to die. My Qi flared, contained by my flesh, but instead of pushing it outward, I pulled it all in. I triggered a reverse transformation, my body contracting inwards as my organs shriveled like a raisin. Then the dodecahedron fully activated, and I was hammered into the ground. Then the world went white, and my flesh turned to dust.At the same time, something heavy slammed into my Soul, and I lost consciousness.