THE TUBEMAN

The last thirty minutes or so were uneventful for morzerk, Just the same putting notes in his bag, or some septillium samples if he was lucky.

That was until he came by the large human sized tubes, Most of them were broken, And had thick green fluids spilled from them, From those fluids structures that were similar to spiderwebs rose up.

'those are probably septillium virus hybrids' morzerk thought and covered his face with his sleeves, he for sure wouldn't enjoy capturing whatever mutated virus that was developed here, Best he could do was to ignite the golden flames on his body, Specially without the insignia of corruption being active.

speaking of the insignia, the butterfly had left him when he finally found the opening to the underground, well it probably liked swimming in the weird slushes as far as morzerk could guess, the butterfly behavior was obviously weird, And nobody could tell what it was doing.

While strolling morzerk saw glimmers of golden right at the end of the long tubes, And being bored out of his mind, He walked towards the butterfly and see what it was doing with so much excitement.

"SoB, sO-, soB, egh, SOb, sob..." Morzerk quickly stopped after hearing weird mismatched sobbing sound, and it was coming from where the butterfly was, it sounded like the one sobbing had their throat filled with mucus while their sounds cords were half broken.

morzerk remembered writing that no test subject was alive after the raid to SP.R4, Was he wrong? or was that thing not a test subject? He didnt know and didnt want to know, he decided to dip.

The butterfly didnt seem to enjoy his survival instincts so much, as it started to inflict a lot of pain to morzerk, But morzerk was not detered by such puny thing as pain, Instinctual fear of death was by far a greater motivator than mere mental pain.

Of course he was clenching his teeth hard enough for them to crack, He did not want to scream from the pain

And when the sobbing stopped and was replaced with mad broken laughter, the pain stopped.

shatter

Morzerk just ran, scared by the closing monster and its mad laughter, the glasses around him were all shattering one by one, and glancing backwards for a moment morzerk fear spiked.

The monster was a 2 meter tall humanoid that was crawling on the wall on all fours, its whole body was covered mostly in fur, with the exposed bits not having skin and being burnt, its hands were covered in constantly melting metal, and its mouth was completely skin less, being burnt in a acid like material while leaking blood, "it" had about 3 extra eyes that were located at random parts on its face and throat, with the original two being burnt away.

And the glasses tubes close to him all shattered due to the metal below them becoming heated.

Without turning back around morzerk quickly made a wall of light behind him, which was effective at holding the monster for a few seconds, morzerk quickly unsheathed his sword and quickly turned towards the wall of light he had made.

While light constructs were only fatal towards those that were related to eviler faiths, They were still very resilient, hence why fellow paladins made an armor of light around themselves.

THUMP THUMB CRACK

The wall held on, but the ground below didnt, the monster noticed this and started melting the ground out

morzerk quickly started filling the hole with light, while his light mastery was considered above average and he spent a whole month in a forest of corruption unmoving while using them, the monster wasn't harmed by them nor was it dumb, unlike beasts of corruption.

And it was proved when the monster apeared behind morzerk all of the sudden, with its body being encased in reddish sparks, morzerk also in response activated his own jikan, and its mind empowerment.

quickly parryin the claws of the monster morzerks thoughts were on full turbo

'if i dont kill it, i wont live, how should i kill it? does cutting its neck suffice even? or does it have a heart?" his thinking speed had been sped up by two times, and while the time was slowed, in his mind everything was even slower.

'if only i could switch my insignia marks freely' he thouht while barely dodging a piece of molten rock the monster tried to throw at him

'my life is a mess' he thought when his eye's saw the claws of the monster cutting his legs, the pain of them sizzling would hit any moment now

'ah, it hurts' he thought while stabbing the monster through its exposed back, the monster screeched in its broken voice in response, which was a mistake when fighting while using jikans, as it earned itself a slash to its claws in response.

The only reason morzerk could ignore the pain was because of his jikan, but for some reason he... felt excited? why? was it adrenaline?

he never even fought in the third world war, so was this a weird thing that was true about him since day one?

while morzerk was busy with his thought the monster glared at morzerk and suddenly opened its palm and swiped... at the air?

'what is it doing-' morzerk's thought were cut short when the ground in quick succession started to melt, and curved upwards with a sharp edge.

and with that his left arm got cut in half.