As we made our way back through the dungeon, I faded towards the back of the group, putting distance between myself and the litter carried by Dave and Alex. Putting distance between Matt and me, or rather, whatever was wearing Matt's face. I only grew more certain moment by moment as we crept closer to the dungeon exit with every step. Whatever was on that litter might look like him, might talk like him. Hell, for all I could be certain of that might even really be his body, but it wasn't Matt Thorne. Not anymore.
The question haunted every step I took, and the answer was cold comfort.
How much is left? Just remnant flesh and bone, nothing of the mind, the soul.
Just the meat suit left behind, devoid of its original occupant, being driven onward by something malevolent.
In so many words, nothing that mattered.
It was a brutal, cold and indifferent answer. A savage reminder that the life of a Ranker could often be short, bought and sold cheaply in an uncaring universe. It was also a lesson, out in the wide world, death was not the worst thing that might be waiting in the dark.
While I was at times prone to bouts of angst and edge lord behaviour, this was not one of those times. I was distinctly not prone to imagining monsters under the bed when I could crack that bed open with the barest twitch of my strength. Yet as we trudged steadily for the exit, each step closer to sunlight was a tick-tock from the clock counting down for the bomb of my own certainty: the Matt we knew was dead, and we were ferrying a stranger in his skin. Or something far, far worse.
Aiden, Vipera’s voice sounded softly in my mind, this is not something we can let pass. I understand you don’t want to do this when they believe they just got their friend back from the dead but…
I know, I wanted to snarl back, but I managed to keep it down to a dull growl. By this point, I considered Victor and the rest to be friends. Perhaps not as close as family, or Cade, who may as well have been an adopted brother. Still, they had crossed the dividing line and became part of the pack in my mind. It made me want to look after them.
Denial and delusion could be the strongest forces in the human psyche when one desperately wanted to believe in them. What I was going to have to do was not going to be pleasant for them, and they might never forgive me for it. After all, emotions weren't logical. The strength of the denial was equivalent to the suffering of having that delusion shattered; this one would hurt deep, and it would bleed everywhere.
One big spike, Aiden, that should be enough. Vipera echoed softly in the back of my mind. A heavy sigh escaped me, almost loud in the quiet confines of the tunnel we walked. This was going to be unpleasant no matter which way I went about it.
Like a bandage then.
Pulling on my [Aura Manipulation], I condensed my aura down to a fine point, slowly building up power behind it. Victor and the rest shouldn't have been able to sense what I was doing, but that was no excuse to be sloppy about it. Slowly, I built up power in the aura construct floating invisibly overhead, with every step, it grew denser. To [All-Seeing Eye], it was barely a crude conical spike; my will shaved away the roughness, leaving only clean, strong lines behind while the aura construct grew denser. The more I poured into it, the more it seemed to take on an almost physical weight. I could see the tension growing in the others; it seemed they could sense that there was something dangerous nearby, but not what or where. The flickering light of the blue flames torches cast us all in dancing shadows, leaving Matt's sallow face looking decidedly inhuman at times, like a caricature.
I was out of time.
The moment I launched the aura spike directly at the thing wearing Matt's skin, it sat up, eyes coming around to stare directly at me.
Then the spike hit.
It hit the thing on the stretcher like a bullet, an invisible lance of aura and killing intent that should have done nasty things to any aura it came into contact with. I had no idea what it would do to the soulless thing lying on the litter. I doubted it would be pleasant, after all, it had no aura of its own to blunt the force of such an attack.
In my mind, in my soul, I braced for Matt's scream, for the horrified shouts of his team, for Victor to turn on me with murder in his eyes. Instead, the thing froze like it had been injected with arctic ice for a brief moment, then tumbled sideways off the litter to the floor as a marionette with its strings cut.
The panic set in within a fraction of a second as the others turned and looked to where Matt had fallen from the litter. Looks of shock and worry were on every face.
"Back!" I barked at them, battering at their auras with my own to drive the command home. I couldn't afford for them to do something foolish here. I rapidly interposed myself between the rest of the team and the thing on the floor as it began to vibrate and shudder, the sound of crackling bone permeating the chamber. Whatever it was, it was changing, quickly, now that the masquerade was over.
I wanted nothing more than to dive on the monster in Matt’s form and tear into the impostor until it was nothing more than scraps on the floor of the dungeon, Vipera’s voice held me back.
Wait, we need to know what it is first.
My teeth creaked from the force while I ground them in frustration, the creature's movements went from shudders to full body convulsions. From behind me, I could feel the horrified reactions of Victor and his team. The tunnel was filled with the sound of snapping and cracking bones as Matt's limbs flailed wildly, at times bending in ways that no human's should. After a moment, the convulsions were reduced to shudders, then stillness for a single moment. No one breathed for a single moment before Matt slowly began to make his way to his feet with awkward jerking movements. Movements like that of an uncalibrated machine, smashing its limbs against its surroundings as it learned its limits.
All of us watched on with a mixture of horror and disgust while Matt's body rose, and its flesh began to bubble.
"Oh god…" I heard Sofia mutter from somewhere behind me. I paid her no mind. I was laser focused on only two things at the moment. Matt's ongoing transformation and Vipera's reaction to it. I had never felt her so hyper focused before; she was like a wire pulled taut, vibrating at a high speed, moments before snapping.
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The bubbling flesh soon began sloughing off in steaming chunks of meat and fat to reveal something black, hard and glossy beneath. Like a crustacean shell, or lacquered chitin. The effect was repulsive: the smooth transition from once-living flesh to something that looked grown, patterned in ruthless logic, like a beetle’s carapace made to mock the memory of a man. Clotted hunks of meat slid to the ground, hissing and steaming as they hit the stone.
The body—no, the thing—straightened. Its arms unfolded, joints clicking and rearranging into new angles. The arms lengthened, fingers cracking and fusing into long, razor-edged talons. The mouth, so still and slack before, split open from ear to ear. The sound that came out was not a human scream but a warbling, two-tone shriek that hammered the back of my skull with a violence that almost staggered me.
The wire that was Vipera snapped.
KILL IT! AIDEN KILL IT NOW! Vipera screamed in my mind, her thoughts were drenched in desperation and something I had never felt from my familiar before.
Fear.
I didn't question, I didn't ask, I just reacted. I pulled on every attribute point I had, flexing every physical stat for all it was worth to launch myself across the short space. My dagger materialized in my hand from [Inventory] at the speed of thought. I blurred forward, dagger on a perfect trajectory to bury itself in the creature's neck, where I could cleave into it. My senses narrowed as I pressed on, discarding all other details in favour of perfect forward awareness.
The creature pivoted with incredible dexterity, legs snapping in and out of shape, shedding ruined flesh until its lower body was free of any remnant of humanity. The body was now more humanoid bug than man: a slick, glistening carapace glazed in a sheen of mucus and blood, back legs jointed the wrong direction but powerfully built, long claws that looked deadly.
I struck it full force, I felt my blade bite into its carapace; first an inch, then another. It wasn't enough. I could feel the chitin rapidly hardening around my blade, the way a crustacean would after a fresh molt, but much, much faster. The momentum of my charge carried me up and over the monster, then past it. I growled in frustration, then triggered [Insight Analysis]. I needed to know more about this unknown enemy.
For a brief second, it felt like someone had reached into my skull to give my brain a squeeze, then the Skill pushed through the resistance backed by stats. At least partially. What it came back with left me with nothing but questions and a terrible feeling in the pit of my gut.
Nothing, just a series of question marks. A complete unknown. I didn't believe for a second that the System didn't know exactly what it was, which meant the system was choosing not to tell me. It was actively hiding something. I growled low in my throat and activated [Insight Analysis] again, this time pushing the Skill to its limits. The result was nausea and a headache comparable to an ice pick through the eye.
That and a pair of garbled lines of text.
The creature whipped around to face me as I passed behind it, and one of its clawed hands lashed out towards me with blinding speed. I barely managed to interpose my dagger between myself and its claws. The blow carried a weight I had not been expecting, however, and my arms were shoved back into my chest, the tips of the long claws digging into me through my [Chitinous Cuirass] as if it weren't there at all. I was hurled back spinning end over end, wounded, armour shredded. I grit my teeth and slapped a hand to the floor to halt my rotation, eyes flicking back to the monster at the moment it decided to turn on the others rather than pursue me. I couldn't fire an [Edge Glare] or other ocular Spell back down the corridor; there was too much risk it would hit Victor or the others. My hands covered in [Reach of Webs] came up, and I was suddenly very grateful for a property of the gloves I rarely made full use of. The ability to fire Web lines as a human.
Strands of web arced out from my extended hands, latching on to the sides of the corridor, my momentum stretched the lines almost to breaking, before turning me into a human sling shot projectile. I rocketed back along the corridor towards the monster and Victor's team. I slammed bodily into the bug-like monster from behind; it felt like hitting a wall. It was enough, however. We were both sent sprawling by the impact. Thankfully, I was once again between the monster and Victor's team.
"Back, back down the corridor to the intersection, I need room!" I shouted, urging them back without taking my eyes from the monster. It rose from the ground, chittering and screeching angrily in what I presumed was some sort of language that sent shivers up and down my spine and made my skin crawl. Whatever the hell this thing was, it was monstrously fast and physically strong. I knew that much from our brief clashes; I didn't have much confidence in being able to take it down solely as a human. I would need the additional stats offered by my spider form.
I didn't wait for the team to respond. Vipera was already streaming off my shoulder, her coils expanding, a lattice of pitch-black scales and root with seething blue arc-light as she boiled into her full form. I could feel her intent, searing and ironclad, pouring down our bond. She wanted that thing dead in a way I'd never felt before, not even in the depths of the dungeons we'd already faced. Her fear was animalistic, primal.
The bug-thing lunged, angling for the departing forms of Victor and crew. I threw myself between them and the monster.
It came at me with a shriek that left my ears ringing while the last vestige of Matt's face sloughed away, leaving only hard chitin and mandibles. For a split instant, I caught a glimmer of intelligence in its cluster of eyes, something calculating and hungry. Then the world turned into a blur and violence. My dagger met one of its clawed hands in a shrieking clash, my free hand came up to snatch its wrist. I struggled to keep my grip on it's viscera slick chitin. We tumbled to the ground rolling end over end as we struggled against one another.
The fight was a blur as we struggled back and forth, each struggling to disengage a limb from the clash to strike at the other. A pair of additional arms burst forth from the monster's abdomen, each ending in the same wicked claws as its main arms. With only a moment to spare, I brought my foot up between myself and the monster and kicked it in the chest with all I had. I was sent sliding across the floor in one direction and the monster in the opposite.
——-
He shoved the horror and disgust down. Victor locked it all away in a box he was sure he would have to unpack and deal with later, just like every other bit of nastiness he'd seen since he became a Ranker. Victor turned and began pushing his team down the corridor despite their protests. Sofia was the worst—she screamed Matt's name over and over again, tears streaming down her face, in a way that made him sick with grief. He wanted to stay and fight. With every fibre of his being, he wanted to stay. He knew deep down that Aiden was right; they needed room to fight this monster, Aiden himself most of all. Victor had seen the way it moved; its physical stats were higher than even a monster like Aiden. In the corridor, if it got them up against the walls, it would be able to crush them into paste, and there would be nowhere to escape it.
"Alex!" Victor roared, looking to his, he saw the moment Alex reined it in. Watched the focus come back to his eyes, harden into resolve. "Take her, we have to move!" He shoved a sobbing, screaming Sofia at Alex even as she tried to force her way past him. Then he turned to find Dave, who already had an arrow nocked and nothing but madness and vengeance in his eyes. Victor didn't try to reason with his friend, instead he bulled him over and tossed him over his shoulder like a sack of flour. He bolted off down the corridor in the wake of Alex wrestling his sister further from the battle.
