Chapter 449: Parasite Part 1

The moment Ethan reached out mentally towards the parasitic entity, he felt something stir deep within his soul. He had barely begun to examine the strange presence when the space around him distorted.

‘What the-?’

The emptiness before him rippled like the surface of disturbed water. Darkness seeped through the cracks in reality, spreading rapidly as though something on the other side were forcing its way through.

Ethan instinctively stepped back.

‘I really must’ve been getting complacent to have missed this.’

The darkness twisted.

Then it emerged.

A colossal mass of blackness unfolded before him, its body seemingly composed of countless layers of writhing shadows. There was no discernible head, no limbs in any conventional sense, and certainly no face. Instead, its entire form revolved around a gaping, lightless centre – a hollow abyss that seemed to swallow the very space surrounding it.

From that central void extended hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tentacles.

Some were thin and whip-like, snapping through the air with unnerving speed. Others were thick enough to crush a human body, their surfaces covered in smaller, constantly shifting tendrils that writhed like a mass of black worms.

The creature had no eyes, yet Ethan felt its attention settle on him.

No mouth, yet he could sense its hunger.

It didn’t merely look monstrous.

Its very presence felt wrong, an unnatural intrusion into a place where it had no right to exist.

For a moment, Ethan could only stare.

‘So this is what that vampire bitch left inside me?’

He had expected something unpleasant.

Perhaps a way to track him, or maybe something she could use to try to control him in the future, which he assumed he would be able to resist. He hadn’t expected it to be some sort of curse that was literally eating away at his soul.

The creature hovered before him, its tentacles swaying as if testing the air.

Then its central void contracted.

Ethan felt a sudden, instinctive dread.

‘Something’s about to happen.’

He tried to move, but it was already too late.

The darkness erupted towards him.

Countless tentacles whipped through the spiritual space like living chains, converging on Ethan from every direction. He twisted aside as one swept past his head, only for another to coil around his leg. A second wrapped around his waist, and a third seized his arm before he could wrench himself free.

Then they pulled.

Ethan’s spiritual body lurched forward.

Pain exploded through him.

His eyes widened.

It wasn’t physical pain.

There was no flesh being torn apart, no blood spilling from an open wound. This was something far more fundamental, a sensation that reached beneath his body and into the very core of his existence.

Something was being ripped away from him.

Something he hadn’t even known he could lose.

His very essence.

‘What the hell is this thing?!’

Ethan grabbed the tentacle wrapped around his waist and tried to wrench it away. His fingers sank into its shifting surface before finding something solid beneath the darkness.

He gritted his teeth and pulled with all his strength.

The tentacle didn’t budge.

Instead, the black mass dragged him closer to its centre.

As he approached the gaping void, Ethan felt himself weakening. His thoughts became muddled, and his memories began slipping out of focus. For one horrifying moment, he couldn’t remember the colour of his mother’s eyes.

‘It’s like what was happening to Mark…’

Then he couldn’t remember the sound of her voice.

Panic struck him harder than the pain.

‘No!’

He fought desperately, kicking and twisting, but the tentacles only tightened. The darkness crept over his spiritual body, spreading like ink through water. Wherever it touched, Ethan felt himself disappearing, as though the creature were erasing him one piece at a time.

He understood then.

This thing wasn’t trying to kill him.

It was trying to consume him and, even worse, trying to replace him.

A cold shiver ran down his spine.

This thing had been growing inside him all this time.

It had burrowed into his soul, which he had only recently begun to truly explore, and patiently eaten away at him while he went about his life, completely unaware of the danger lurking within.

‘That fucking bitch…’

His anger flared, but it did nothing to loosen the tentacles.

The creature pulled him closer.

Its central void expanded, opening into an endless abyss that seemed to exist beyond the boundaries of reality itself. Ethan could feel it probing him, searching through what remained of his spiritual essence.

It wasn’t simply devouring him.

It was learning him.

His memories, his emotions, his sense of self – everything that made him Ethan Crowe was being stripped away and absorbed. He could feel the creature pressing deeper, as though it intended to hollow him out completely before occupying what remained.

‘Get off me!’

He summoned every ounce of strength he could muster and tore one arm free. He struck at the nearest tentacle, then another, desperately trying to create even a moment of breathing room.

His attacks barely mattered.

Some passed through the darkness as though striking smoke. Others connected with something solid, tearing the tentacles apart, but the severed ends immediately began to regenerate.

Before Ethan could exploit the brief openings, fresh tendrils lashed out to replace them. Every second he spent fighting, the creature continued to consume him, and even when he managed to break free, it simply reached for him again.

A cold realisation settled over Ethan.

He couldn’t win this fight through brute force.

He couldn’t overpower it. He couldn’t outlast it. And whatever this thing was, it didn’t seem to care how strong his physical body had become.

His newly achieved B Rank status meant nothing here.

His abilities also meant nothing here.

This wasn’t a battle fought with muscles, wind, fire, lightning, or even water.

It was a battle over his soul.

And he was losing.

The blackness crawled up his chest, tightening around his throat.

Ethan clawed at it, but his fingers trembled as his spiritual form continued to weaken. His own name seemed distant, like a word he’d once heard but could no longer remember.

He had spent most of his life fighting.

He’d learned to endure pain, swallow fear, and keep moving when every instinct screamed at him to stop.

He’d survived by adapting and finding another way.

But how was he supposed to fight something that was eating away at the very thing that made him himself?

‘Think, Ethan. Think!’