Chapter 144: The Parasites I

Chapter 145: The Parasites

"Man down!" an auxiliary shouted, instinctively reaching forward. "Grab his vest—!"

"DO NOT TOUCH HIM!"

Vaelric’s roar shattered the stillness, but the warning came half a second too late.

The fallen soldier’s torso violently convulsed.

CRACK!

His spine arched backward at an unnatural ninety-degree angle, his vertebrae popping like dry twigs. His hands slammed into the mud with enough force to shatter the frozen earth.

Then, he rose.

Slowly. Spasmodically. Like a puppet hoisted by tangled wire.

His eyes had turned completely black—not the glossy black of an animal, but two hollow, lightless voids that wept thick lines of necrotic fluid down his cheeks. Swollen, purple-black veins pulsed beneath his skin, squirming like tangled nests of earthworms.

A wide, grotesque smile spread across his lips, splitting the skin of his cheeks until dark, congealed blood dripped onto his collar.

"Kill..."

The voice that scraped from his throat was layered, metallic, and completely detached from humanity.

"Kill... flesh... more..."

The soldier beside him froze in absolute terror. "Jonas...? What happened to your face? Jonas, it’s me—!"

The corrupted soldier vanished.

BOOM!

He crossed ten meters in a fraction of a microsecond.

His bare, blackened fist slammed straight into the speaker’s chest plate!

BANG!

The iron armor caved inward like paper. The healthy soldier was launched twenty meters through the air, crashing violently against the glowing golden perimeter of Roan’s reinforcement barrier, vomiting a fountain of bright red blood before slumping into the mud.

Vaelric’s eyes narrowed into slits of silver. "Fall back! Second and third ranks, raise tower shields! Clear the radius!"

The corrupted soldier dropped onto all fours, crouching like a starving hunting hound.

Thick, oily black Qi erupted from his pores, swirling around his frame in suffocating gusts. His biceps swelled to twice their natural mass, his military fatigues tearing along the seams as his muscle fibers thickened into dense, fibrous cords.

His aura surged—violently and unnaturally.

Estelle Argon’s wind-sheathed sleeves fluttered as her eyes widened in disbelief. "His dantian... his cultivation is spiking!"

Lemo Drackar stepped up beside her, silver lightning hissing in tight, volatile coils around his fingers. "He was barely an early-stage awakened three minutes ago.

Now his energetic density is rivaling a veteran squad commander. That is not mere corruption."

ROOOOAAAR!

The infected soldier threw his head back, letting out a shriek that rattled the teeth of every man present.

CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!

Black, chitinous scales erupted from beneath his skin, tearing through his flesh to form overlapping plates of armor across his shoulders and forearms. His fingernails elongated, thickening into four-inch claws of dense, blackened bone.

The curse had not simply eroded his mind.

It was actively remodeling his biology into a dedicated killing construct.

"Something is germinating inside his meridians," Estelle murmured, her knuckles tightening around her wind-crest talisman.

"A parasite," Lemo spat, his jaw tight.

Vaelric didn’t waste breath on speculation. His eyes flared with blinding white light as he pushed Qi into them.

The physical flesh of the thrashing soldier dissolved into translucent anatomical layers before the General’s vision. He tracked the circulation of the boy’s newly awakened Qi—and his expression turned colder than iron.

"There," Vaelric pointed an armored finger.

Deep within the soldier’s chest, directly entwined around his nascent spiritual core, sat a writhing, fist-sized mass of jet-black tendrils.

The parasite pulsed with an organic, predatory rhythm.

THUMP.

With every beat of the soldier’s heart, the black tendrils squeezed his core, drinking the boy’s pure spiritual vitality like water from a well.

THUMP.

In return, the parasite pumped concentrated, necrotic palace-energy back through his main meridians, forcibly tearing open unopened pathways, calcifying his bones, and supercharging his muscular tissue with borrowed, dying power.

Roan Blackwood stepped forward, the earth groaning beneath the sheer gravitational density of his presence.

"It’s using him as an engine," Roan observed, his eyes analyzing the energetic parasitic loop. "It consumes his life-force and converts it into pure, violent physical output. When his natural Qi is completely drained, the parasite will consume his organs to maintain the burn."

Vaelric glanced at the patriarch. "Can your technique sever it without destroying the core?"

Roan fell silent for a heartbeat. He looked at the screaming, clawed husk of the young soldier, then up at the sheathed greatsword floating in the clouds above.

"I can," Roan said slowly. "But do not mistake precision for ease."

Roan raised his right hand toward the heavens.

HUMMMMM—!

High above the valley, the sheathed black sword—the Aegis of the Unbroken—vibrated with deafening resonance.

The colossal golden array spanning the clouds flared with blinding intensity. From the rotating celestial rings, dozens of gossamer-thin golden threads descended like falling starlight, wrapping around the thrashing, scale-covered soldier.

The corrupted soldier shrieked, black lightning detonating from his claws as he attempted to sever the lines.

ROOOOAAAR!

Roan’s face remained carved from ancient granite. "Pin him, Vaelric."

Vaelric’s gauntlet clenched.

[Kinetic Command: Absolute Stasis.]

WHOOM!

A column of superheated White Qi descended upon the soldier, locking his joints in an invisible, gravitational vise. The creature’s claws ground against the air, unable to move forward by even a millimeter.

Roan’s fingers danced through a rapid, complex sequence of ancient Mudras.

The descending golden threads did not slice through the soldier’s skin. Instead, being formed of pure, sovereign metal intent, they slipped directly through his pores, riding the flow of his spiritual circulation like needles threading through silk.

Down the shoulder channels.

Through the chest cavity.

Directly into the dantian.

Roan’s eyes sharpened. "Target acquired."

The parasite felt the foreign intrusion. Instantly, its black tendrils tightened into a desperate knot, burying its barbed ends deeper into the boy’s spiritual core, deliberately using the fragile foundation as a living shield!

Roan’s brows furrowed. "Vile thing. You hide behind the hostage?"

His golden aura flared with unyielding resolve. "Then I will peel you off fiber by fiber."

BOOOOOOM!

The golden threads tightened like surgical snares.

A high-pitched, psychic shriek tore through the air—a sound that did not come from human vocal cords, but from the spiritual plane itself!

The black tendrils were forcibly dragged backward, tearing away from the glowing core millimeter by millimeter.

The infected soldier let out an agonizing, bloodcurdling scream as his internal channels caught fire.

Roan’s teeth clenched until blood seeped from his gums. Thick beads of sweat formed along his forehead, sizzling into steam against the ambient heat of his aura. His golden light—usually as steady as an imperial mountain—began to flicker erratically.

Lemo’s eyes narrowed as he watched the patriarch’s chest rise and fall. "Roan... your reserves."

"Quiet," Roan grunted through his teeth.

The parasite’s roots were deeper than anticipated. It had already begun fusing its metaphysical nerves with the boy’s soul-seat. To tear it loose without shattering the core required Roan to channel his crushing Metal Qi with the delicate precision of an embroidery needle through a hurricane.

Roan’s right hand trembled violently.

BOOM!

With a final, explosive surge of golden light, the parasite was ripped violently from the soldier’s chest!

A writhing, squelching mass of black tar and jagged tendrils was dragged through the boy’s skin, suspended mid-air inside a cage of golden chains.

Roan’s open palm snapped shut into an iron fist.

"Shatter."

CRACK!

The golden chains contracted. The parasitic entity detonated into a cloud of harmless black ash, dissolving into the freezing wind.

THUD.

The soldier collapsed face-first into the mud.

Dead silence fell over the perimeter.

Five seconds passed. Then ten.

The young soldier gasped, his chest heaving as he drew a desperate lungful of air. The black scales across his arms crumbled into dry flakes. The swollen, bruised veins across his neck receded, leaving behind pale, exhausted flesh.

He was human again.

Estelle exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. "It worked. The core is intact."

Roan lowered his arm slowly. His fingers were locked in a slight, unnatural tremor.

"Intact," Roan rasped, his voice rough and heavy.