Pressure Change

I found myself in a wet darkness I had experienced once before when the Left Arm was...assimilating. When I opened my mouth, I could feel some of the viscous darkness slip in and fill my throat, but it didn't make me gag or heave, it was almost welcome. Like I was back being a baby in a womb. The darkness filled me with comfort but also left me feeling absolutely alone.

I couldn't tell whether or not I was upright or lying down, there was no gravity, nothing to orientate myself against.

B̸r̷a̷v̵o̵, a voice seemed to have simultaneously manifested in my head as well as coming from behind me.

This voice caused a weird sensation to crawl up through my body. Almost as if it was otherworldly, out of the scope of the System and all of existence, yet so familiar.

"Who's over there?" I called out, my voice shaking as I couldn't turn myself around properly to see who it was.

I̸t̷'̷s̷ ̵n̴o̵t̸ ̸t̵i̶m̶e̵ ̷f̴o̵r̶ ̸u̶s̴ ̷t̶o̴ ̶m̴e̶e̷t̷ ̸e̷a̷c̵h̶ ̵o̷t̴h̴e̶r̴ ̷y̴e̷t̴,̶ ̶b̸u̶t̶ ̶s̶o̵m̶e̵h̵o̸w̵ ̴y̶o̵u̸'̷v̷e̶ ̵c̵r̴a̵c̵k̸e̷d̷ ̴t̸h̵r̸o̶u̶g̷h̶, the voice continued.

"What's happening to me? Am I dead?" I asked as I continued to turn myself around to face the direction of the voice.

The voice ignored me one final time, t̵h̷e̶ ̴C̶o̴m̷p̴l̶e̶t̸i̶o̸n̷ ̷Q̸u̶e̶s̸t̸ ̶i̷s̸ ̶k̶e̵y̵.̶ ̴Y̶o̸u̷ ̴h̸a̴v̵e̸ ̸t̸o̵—̶

***

Almost as soon as the boy landed heavily on the ground, the little girl that was being dragged by her two captors screamed his name. This caused the monster — a poor amalgamation of a number of beasts merged into one physical body designed to spawn terror in those that witness it — to pause and turn towards the three of them.

The bald adventurer who had just been filled with terror and adrenaline upon the sudden appearance of the monster jumped up and rushed over to the collapsed boy. As he got closer to the boy, the bald man noticed that the boy was still breathing.

The bald man saw how the boy had been hit and thrown by the forehead of the monster which was in the form of an Ulbu, the male variant of the cattle raised by meat farmers, complete with horns that were proportionate to the engorged size of the monster's head. Somehow the boy had been lucky enough to not be impaled by the large, sharp horns and probably passed out from the lack of oxygen and the pain.

The monster ignored the other three and turned back around towards the boy and the bald man. The monster's giant, almost-humanoid form consisted of four large limbs that were covered in bulbous muscles that made the bald man's own look nonexistent, and its broad chest was covered in battle scars caused by blades and magic from previous encounters with other less lucky Users. One pair of limbs that were high up on the torso looked like an equivalent of human arms, while the other pair of limbs, about halfway down its massive body was longer and was almost like an ungodly mix between knuckles and sharp hoof.

As if it was drawn towards the boy and the bald man, it continued to ignore the girl's screams and her captors' attempts in hushing her and took a step towards the bald man who took half a step back in fear. The monster's large, hoofed, muscled leg slammed down on the ground underneath it from the weight of its body and the bald man took another half step back in fear as he saw how the muscles visibly bulged as it became weight-bearing.

The bald man's back foot nudged on the boy's body and he realised that he couldn't take another step backward without risking the boy getting hurt. He cursed at the fact that he promised his colleague that he would keep the boy safe during the Quest and tried to lunge at the monster.

The monster shifted its weight and brought up its other massive leg and extended it to create a makeshift kick motion, that was quite a lot faster than you would expect from a creature so big.

The bald man managed to react in time and brought his great sword up in a defensive position and activated one of his main tanking skills, designed to be able to absorb a huge amount of damage. However, the force of the monster's attack was so strong it negated the bald man's defensive skills almost immediately.

In the split-second after the bald man's skill was overwhelmed, the monster's kick slammed into the abdomen of the bald man, causing the man's great sword to be embedded into his body and he flew through the air, his blood rained down on the boy.

The man landed a couple of metres away from where the boy landed and realised that the gash that his blade had created from the shock of the monster's attack had severed his spinal column. The man couldn't move, not even to grab a healing potion from his Inventory to buy himself some time.

While this was all happening, the little girl had tried to make her escape from her captors to run towards the boy, her saviour, but it didn't work. The evil woman had realised that this was their best opportunity to run away from the monster and to give herself some time, she swiped at the ankle of her follower with a blade she kept on her person for sacrifices and in the hustle, the girl managed to slip away from her captors' clutches and run towards the boy.

He cried out to his religious leader and to their god in anguish as the evil woman ran away in the opposite direction of where the monster was, all the while justifying her actions as once the monster had finished with the boy, the bald man, and the girl, it would hone in on the follower first, giving her more time to find the key and get away from the monster.

All that was going on in the girl's head was that she didn't want the boy to die. After the death of her parents and community, and the torturous treatment that she experienced by the Churchgoers, he was the light in the dark world that she learnt about. No matter what, the boy couldn't die.

As the girl got closer to the boy and the monster, she tripped over from a sudden change of pressure in the atmosphere of the area. The air around her felt heavy and vile and she struggled to breathe, like the air itself was trying to escape the surroundings. The girl's mother had been a mage-classed User so the girl had experienced magical pressure before, but this overbearing sensation was something more intense and tangible. It felt like it affected gravity — existence overall.

When she looked up, something scared her very core and sent an icy chill down her spine, more than the sight of the monster standing right nearby her. In fact, it seemed like the monster itself was also taken aback by the sudden increase in pressure.

The boy was standing right in front of them and was in the centre of the area. The pressure originated from him, but it wasn't him. It looked like him, as much as someone being completely covered by blood can look like themselves, but something seemed off.

With blank, completely black eyes (pupil, sclera and all), the boy — or what seemed to reside in the boy — looked at the monster and said in a chilling, gravelly voice that seemed to be impossible to create in the human throat with absolute authority:

"You are needed elsewhere."

The monster's hoofed feet seemed to buckle and it quickly supported itself using its lower pair of arms and made an almost-bowing motion before it headed towards the follower who had limped away to the best of his ability. A short scream followed and the System updated the remaining Users that there were only nine Users left in the task.

The boy ignored the girl who was still pinned down to the ground from the pressure and turned and leisurely walked towards the body of the bald man who was barely hanging on to his dear life.

The boy knelt down and looked over the mangled body of the bald man with blank, unreadable black eyes.

"I know you have many questions," the boy started as the bald man looked with tear-filled, questioning eyes, "but know that this is but the tip of the iceberg of what you actually deserve."

The boy lifted his left arm into the bald man's view and the man watched in horror as the left arm started to morph viscerally into the dark grey, taloned form that it had turned to before, this time the scale-like pattern was more defined and noticeable in the lighting of the clearing. The makeshift mouth that appeared in the boy's left palm was a source of the man's true terror.

The man's terror-filled eyes communicated clearly what he was experiencing even though he was too exhausted and weak to say anything, especially since he was also being pinned down by the pressure.

"My host remembers you and your beloved weapon," the boy said as he traced the edge of the blade of the bald man's great sword that dug deeper into the man's cleaved body.

"He remembers everything," The boy said as he stared into the man's eyes, "know that this all became a possibility because of your, and your colleagues' actions all those years ago."

The boy sighed and hovered his hand over the blade, "my time is nearly up, and you have no use for it all anyway..."

When the boy pressed down on the blade that pressed deeper into the man's wound, the man felt the sensation that his life force was being sucked away. He started to feel cold and light-headed as he could literally feel his blood getting sucked into the makeshift mouth of the boy's palm.

As his consciousness started to fade, the boy leaned close and right up into the man's face and whispered as the empty black eyes became the last thing that the man saw, and the boy's haunting words became the last that he heard.

"Thanks for the meal."