Chapter 198: The Wailing of the Unborn (2)

“Impossible…”

I retreated several steps, slowly beginning to understand why he had remained so calm throughout our conversation.

“You should never have pursued me. You should have stayed with your miserable companions, because by following me here… you’ve thrown yourself straight into my trap!”

Without warning, Aldrich lunged toward me, thrusting one of his unnaturally long arms in my direction.

I immediately unleashed my Aura Armor at full strength, tightening my grip around the Executioner’s Sword before delivering an extremely fast horizontal slash aimed directly at his chest.

Aldrich was right in front of me, well within my reach, and I was confident that my attack would connect.

But to my astonishment, the blade passed straight through his body without encountering the slightest resistance.

It was as though I had swung my sword at a ghost.

“YOU BELONG TO ME, BEARER OF THE BLOODY ECLIPSE CURSE!!”

Aldrich roared as he passed through the Executioner’s Sword and plunged directly into my body.

His enormous form sank into me completely, disappearing as though it had never possessed any physical substance in the first place. The moment that happened, my heart began pounding violently, while thin black lines spread across the skin of my hands and continued crawling over the rest of my body.

“FUCK!!”

I screamed in panic.

I had walked straight into a dead end.

How the hell was I supposed to defend myself against an attack like this? An ability that targeted the body itself, allowing its user to seize control of another person’s flesh?

As far as I knew, there were only two ways to resist something like this. Either someone capable of wielding holy power had to intervene and expel the invading creature, or the victim needed an item imbued with that same power.

And I had neither!

“It’s over, Curse Bearer. From this moment onward, you are my new host.”

His voice echoed inside my mind.

Almost immediately, I began losing control of my body, as though something were forcibly pushing me out of it.

My vision gradually darkened, resembling ink being injected directly into my eyes, while my awareness of the world around me slowly faded. I could no longer feel my body properly, and even the simplest sensations began slipping beyond my reach.

‘Am I really… going to lose like this?’

I wasn’t ready.

I wasn’t ready to lose.

I still hadn’t proven anything. I hadn’t even begun my journey in this world, so how could it possibly end before it had truly started?

I refused to accept an ending like this!

I refused this fate!

Every part of my being rejected what was happening, but my refusal changed nothing.

The world had already turned completely black.

And just like that, my consciousness sank into darkness.

…

…

…

Within a bottomless abyss of darkness, surrounded by cursed fog, poisonous miasma spread in every direction, filling the seemingly endless void.

In the midst of that fog, a dark monster suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It turned its head from side to side, cautiously examining the unfamiliar dimension in which it had found itself.

“What a cursed dimension… I’ve never seen such a horrifying inner world before, not even when I took possession of the Golden Dawn Knight, the bearer of the Full Eclipse Curse…”

Aldrich seemed genuinely frightened by his surroundings.

Compared to the inner world of the Golden Dawn Knight, who had carried a Fourth-Level Mark Curse, this place was something else entirely. The knight’s inner world had been a paradise compared to that of the bearer of the Fifth-Level Mark Curse.

Ethan Heart.

“He may be weak now, but his potential is enormous. I can start over with him.”

With that thought, Aldrich ventured deeper into the cursed inner dimension hidden within the depths of Ethan’s consciousness.

It was a dark, seemingly endless void, unlike anything he had encountered before.

As he continued forward, however, a strange sound began reaching him from somewhere within the surrounding darkness.

The deeper he traveled, the denser the dark miasma became, until the poisonous fog seemed to engulf everything around him.

And as the sound grew clearer, Aldrich finally began to recognize it.

“Is that… crying?”

It was the sound of someone crying.

Or rather, the cries of an infant.

A newborn baby, sounding as though it had only just emerged from its mother’s womb, crying over and over again as if demanding that the world acknowledge its existence.

“How strange… This place should be empty. So why am I hearing something like that?”

Aldrich began to realize that something was wrong.

There was an intruder here, something that shouldn’t have existed within this inner world, and he would have to deal with it before he could establish complete control over Ethan’s body.

Following the cries, he ventured much deeper into the dark void.

And with every step he took, the miasma surrounding him grew thicker.

“Where is it? Where is it hiding?!”

Anxiety began creeping into Aldrich’s mind, brought on by the ominous miasma surrounding him. The cursed fog concealed everything from his sight, leaving him unable to make out anything beyond the darkness immediately around him.

The infant’s cries were just as sinister, and with every passing moment, his unease grew into something far worse. Before long, his entire body had begun trembling uncontrollably.

“W-Why… Why am I so terrified?!”

Aldrich raised a trembling hand before his face, staring at it in disbelief. Without even realizing it, his fear had reached an almost unbearable intensity, as though the gates of hell themselves had opened before him.

“WAAAAAH… WAAAAAH!”

The infant’s wailing grew louder, reaching a deafening intensity. It was close now, so terribly close that it sounded as though the child were crying directly in front of him.

‘It’s so close…’

Aldrich turned frantically from side to side, searching for the source of the sound.

“WAAAAAH… WAAAAAH!”

It was frighteningly close.

Right beside him.

“WHERE ARE YOU?! SHOW YOURSELF!!”

Aldrich screamed into the darkness, but no answer came. He continued stumbling blindly through the unknown, and the helplessness of his situation only made his terror grow.

“WAAAAAH… WAAAAAH!”

“WAAAAAH… WAAAAAH!”

“WAAAAAH… WAAAAAH!”

“WHERE ARE YOU?!!!”

The monster screamed again, only to feel something wet running down his face.

He raised a hand and touched his damp cheeks.

And at that moment, Aldrich finally understood why the crying had sounded so close.

“WAAAAAH… WAAAAAH!!!!”

The monster burst into tears.

He began wailing like a helpless little child, his cries spilling out uncontrollably as his body shook with every sob. He cried and cried, continuing for what felt like an eternity, unable to stop no matter how desperately he tried.

An unbearable tightness gripped his chest, accompanied by overwhelming sorrow and agonizing pain. It felt as though the entire world were closing in around him, crushing him beneath a weight he could neither understand nor escape.

“WAAAAAH… WAAAAAH!!!!”

And then, at that very moment, the source of the crying finally appeared before him.

The infant.

The child that had been crying alongside him.

The sight sent Aldrich collapsing to the ground. He desperately tried to flee, but his legs no longer obeyed him, leaving him helpless before whatever had emerged from the darkness.

A pale, unnaturally smooth hand appeared before him.

Its skin possessed a horrifying, almost polished perfection, so unnaturally flawless that it seemed as though it might melt at any moment. The fingers were excessively long and slender, each ending in a sharp, black nail.

The hand moved forward with slow, measured precision, carrying the source of all that ominous crying.

It was indeed an infant.

But it was no ordinary child.

It was a demonic fetus, bleeding profusely as dark blood spilled across the pale hand holding it. Droplets fell toward the dark ground below, disappearing into the endless void.

The fetus had dark crimson skin, its tiny body horribly deformed and grotesque. Its enormous red eyes radiated a disturbing light, while its swollen face was twisted into an unnatural, asymmetrical shape.

Its mouth hung open, bleeding as it screamed without pause, as though it were suffering an agony beyond anything imaginable.

An umbilical cord extended from the fetus’s abdomen, connecting it to the thing whose dreadful hand held the child.

Little by little, the owner of that hand stepped forward, gradually revealing itself.

And the moment Aldrich saw what stood before him, he began screaming like a madman, his terror so overwhelming that he seemed on the verge of dying from fear alone.

“NO!!!! NO!!!!!! STAY AWAY FROM ME!!!!”

Aldrich shrieked as he crawled backward through the miasma, desperately trying to put some distance between himself and the creature.

Then a single eye turned toward him.

It was yellow, the color of rust, with a horizontal line running through its inverted form.

“You are not him. You have no right to be here.”

The thing spoke, and Aldrich’s screams grew even louder.

“AAAAAH… AAAAAAAH… AAAAAAAAH!”

Amid Aldrich’s screams, beneath the gaze of the thing’s eyes, and accompanied by the endless wailing of the demonic fetus, a fourth presence was suddenly expelled from the darkness.

Someone else had been watching from afar.

“Gladius… You dare, Wisdom of Night?”

The thing spoke with unmistakable anger, staring toward some distant point within the void where the hidden observer had been.

But its attention soon returned to Aldrich.

“Go, then, and die by his hand. For death at my hands is an honor that the likes of you do not deserve.”

As though the world itself had responded to its voice, Aldrich was immediately expelled from the dark void, stripped of whatever right he had possessed to remain there.

In less than a second, he was hurled back into the real world.

He found himself cowering before Ethan, his entire body trembling so violently that he could barely control it.

Ethan looked utterly bewildered, unable to understand what had just happened.

But Aldrich was already crawling away from him, pointing a shaking finger in his direction.

“M-Monster… YOU’RE A MONSTER!!!”

“What the…?”

Ethan frowned even more deeply, but Aldrich only screamed louder as he scrambled to escape.

“STAY AWAY FROM ME! DON’T TOUCH ME! DON’T EVEN LOOK AT ME!”

The monster shrieked like a lunatic before fleeing from the cursed hunter as fast as he could.