Becoming a Monster

Chapter 433: Chapter 433: When the Limit Was Already Broken

The drake’s head turned to the sound. It was a pitch that it recognized instantly.

A goblin. More specifically, the goblin shaman.

Noah, too, had followed the sound. Their gaze landed on the shaman force, suspended slightly in the air. Behind it was Noah’s golem, who had brought it over. The golem’s grip was firm, its hand wrapped around the back of the goblin’s neck, holding it just off the ground.

It was then that they understood the reason behind the estranged wailing. The goblin was suffocating. Its arms, which prior to this were grasping hard at the golem’s arm, were now twitching weakly, only able to hold onto the golem’s arms to barely prevent its neck from giving way. If the golem were to tighten its grip even slightly, its neck would completely snap.

"Oh," Noah muttered, more to himself than anyone else. "Right, I almost forgot about you."

Noah approached slowly, his attention fully on the shaman now. He stopped in front of it, studying it with the same detached focus he used when evaluating materials.

Eve crossed his mind briefly.

If he were to store this creature’s soul, she would have been the most compatible choice. Her nature aligned well with soul manipulation, and the shaman’s abilities would have integrated cleanly into her existing structure. But the thought of fusing her with something so physically disturbing made his stomach tighten.

He dismissed the idea almost immediately.

That left him with fewer options than he liked.

Taking a skill was possible, but that would mean choosing which of his creatures would receive it. Three of them could no longer accept another skill this way until he improved himself.

His gaze lingered on the goblin. "I still haven’t tried that yet..." he murmured.

The skill had been sitting unused for a long time. Back then, the cost had seemed unreasonable. Using his own soul as a catalyst to mutate another forcibly wasn’t something he had ever wanted to risk. The backlash depended entirely on the soul being altered, and the recovery time wasn’t something he could afford lightly.

But standing here now, Noah realized he had been limiting himself.

"No," he corrected quietly. "I’m still focusing too much on what’s directly in front of me."

The goblin didn’t understand the words, but it felt the shift immediately.

A sharp tendril pierced forward without warning, drilling cleanly into the center of its chest. The pressure on its neck vanished at the same time, leaving it suspended only by the very thing that had decided its death.

"Gwwarrk!"

Blood spilled from its mouth as its body convulsed, arching reflexively before sagging again. It should have been panicking. It should have been clawing desperately at anything it could reach.

Instead, there was a brief, twisted sense of relief. At least, the oni wasn’t taking its soul. That comfort was shattered seconds later.

The world spun as something pulled at it from within. Not its body, but something deeper. Its vision blurred, then sharpened unnaturally as awareness refused to fade.

It was still alive. And yet, it wasn’t.

Summoning strength it had no right to possess, the goblin forced its eyes open. What it saw broke whatever remained of it.

A distorted, translucent version of itself was being dragged free, its form stretched and twisted as it was pulled into darkness that closed in from all sides. Nails clawed uselessly at the slime, shrill cries filling the air as its soul was dragged somewhere it couldn’t comprehend.

"I told your kind before," Noah said calmly. "When you try to take what’s mine, you repay it with your soul."

The shaman’s soul drifted through the darkness, weightless and disoriented, its form still unstable as fragments of its consciousness clung to it. At first, there was nothing but the endless void that distorted its sense of time, its own screams fading into nothing before it could escape its mouth. But then it saw something.

Another presence.

Its distorted form jerked, eyes widening as it recognized the shape ahead. Another shaman. The same one that had stood beside it when they believed they could take something from the oni and survive.

Hope surged violently through what remained of its consciousness.

It waved frantically, arms flailing as if they could cut through the emptiness between them. It shouted, though there was no sound, its mouth opening and closing in desperate attempts to draw attention. It didn’t matter if it was trapped. It didn’t matter if this place was hell itself. As long as it wasn’t alone, it could endure it.

Its efforts paid off.

Slowly, the other shaman’s head turned. Relief flooded through it instantly, but that relief froze the moment their eyes met.

There was no surprise, no excitement. There was only a deadened feeling of quiet madness that the shaman didn’t perceive. To the shaman, there was only a deadened stillness that sat behind those eyes.

Still, the shaman refused to give up hope.

It moved forward, or at least it tried to. Its limbs pumped as if it were running, but there was no ground beneath it, no resistance to push against. The distance between them didn’t shrink, no matter how desperately it struggled.

It didn’t matter.

It was still satisfied just being near its own kind.

But as time dragged on, anxiety began to creep in. The stillness of the other shaman felt wrong. The silence felt intentional. The darkness around them seemed to thicken, pressing in from all sides as if this moment was being observed.

But as time dragged on, anxiety began to creep in. The silence felt intentional; it was beginning to believe that this was the torture that drove its kin into what it was now.

Then, without warning, the distance began to close.

The other shaman drifted toward it, slowly at first, then faster. No, it wasn’t that its kin was moving faster, the shaman’s body was also being tugged at the same time. Something was pulling them together.

It should have been happy. It should have welcomed the closeness. Instead, dread crept into it. The closer they became, the heavier the pull felt.

It held what passed for its breath, bracing itself for whatever was coming.

When the two finally met, what happened wasn’t the comforting reunion the shaman believed was going to happen. Their bodies continued to grow closer. When they were about to collide, the shaman tightly closed its eyes.

And before it could register what happened, it felt its conscious being filled with something else, someone else. Spite, Bitterness... and a suffocating madness. It realized too late that it was being fused with its kin before it could no longer differentiate its own thoughts from those of the other.

As the fusion was completed. What stood within the darkness now was no longer a goblin shaman.

The soul that emerged was larger, denser, its silhouette towering over what it once was, nearly the height of a hobgoblin. It stood still within the void, its presence eerily calm, no longer concerned with escape, no longer aware of pain, time, or torture. Endless darkness meant nothing to it anymore.

Outside, Noah felt the cost immediately.

His body weakened slightly, his limbs feeling heavier as a dull pressure settled over him. The sensation wasn’t crippling, but it was unmistakable. Both his physical body and his spirit were weakened by roughly a quarter.

The drain was expected, though not guaranteed. Even though he hadn’t created the fusion from nothing, molding a soul still required his own essence as a framework. It was the price of forcing something that went against nature.

But Noah didn’t regret it.

If he never tested the skill, he would never understand its limits. And now was the safest moment to do so. His creatures showed they could protect themselves, and he also now had the drakes’ complete backing.

"Noah, you— sigh..."

Ailetta’s presence flared sharply. Anything that had something to do with Noah’s soul couldn’t escape her senses. Her alertness triggered immediately, frustration bleeding through before she could restrain it.

But there was nothing she could do now except accept it, just as she always did. Noah had a talent for reckless experimentation, especially when answers were within reach.

This wasn’t a discussion to have while the drake was still nearby.

Ailetta knew that, and Noah knew she knew it. Her irritation was tucked away for later, buried beneath more pressing concerns.

Meanwhile, Noah turned his attention inward.

Through his Eye, the newly formed soul was laid bare before him. Every secret, every structure, every mutation was visible now that it belonged to him.

And what he saw surprised him.

No one would ever mistake this soul for that of a goblin again.

It resembled something closer to an evil warlock, its spiritual structure was more refined, and dangerously efficient. The fusion hadn’t merely combined two weak souls into a stronger one. It had amplified their nature, refining their abilities into something far more threatening.

It was the strongest spiritual soul Noah had ever obtained.

Not solely because of the fusion, but because shamans were creatures whose essence was rooted in spirituality to begin with. Their bodies had always been frail, almost decayed compared to other goblins, precisely because their souls were too strong for the vessels they inhabited.

Now, freed from those limitations, the results were terrifying.