This Beast-Tamer is a Little Strange

Chapter 822: Chapter 822: The Tiny ‘Boogiemen’

Then there was the dream. After Aegis looked like he was being turned by Abyssal energy, Kain had expended all of his spiritual energy in order to fuel his resistance and collapsed. But that collapse had led to what felt like a very real ‘nightmare’. That nightmare had plunged him into a writhing abyss where he stumbled blind through pulsing tunnels filled with worms, stumbled upon a city of abyssal horrors, and felt the terrible gaze of a Demigod and even a colossal eye open beneath the world itself.

He had jolted awake convinced it was a dream, yet every detail—the squirming masses, the harvested captives, the altar-lined pit—had felt too vivid, too real. So much so, that Kain even wondered if his mind had indeed been briefly connected to the Abyss.

Were the seeming connections he and his contracts had to the Abyss, also ‘coincidences?’

He masked his turmoil, and refocused on Airalai’s words.

Airalai’s eyes gleamed. “The Abyss may not be what you think. It’s hard to believe, Kain, when it’s invisible to the eye. But there are tiny spiritual creatures—what we at the Black Dawn call Etherites, though others name them Abyssalspawn or Invisidaemons due to the toxic nature of some—that exist all around us. Too small to see. Some harmless, others dangerous, like diluted Abyss corruption. The Black Dawn built an incredibly powerful unprecedented machine to reveal them, something no spiritual skill could do. I doubted it myself until I saw them through its lens—squirming, swarming, alive.”

Kain’s thoughts surged. ‘Does she just mean a microscope? I have like ten in the System lab…’

But that wasn’t the focus. He had a feeling that he knew what she was talking about. But to him, they weren’t ‘Etherites’ or ‘Invisidaemons’.

They were ‘bacteria’, ‘viruses’, ‘fungi’—the invisible world that seemed to be scrubbed from existence at some point…Kain suspected by the Five Founders of the Empire.

He remembered the relic in his first year, its halls swarming with thousands of these sealed pathogenic microbes. The College had prepared enchanted items against the ‘poison’ in the relic that no known poison cures had been effective against, because the poison had been no venom—it was a disease.

Every artifact designed to resist it proved that the founders once understood. And at the relic’s heart, sealed beside the microbes, he had glimpsed a fragment of something more terrifying—a dragon-shaped portion of what Kain now suspected to be an Abyssal Demigod. As if microorganisms and the Abyss were connected from the start.

Jax scoffed loudly from behind the viewing panel. “Invisible boogiemen? Please. What’s next, the Cinder Hag my neighbour swore would crawl out of the oven and snatch me if I stole bread dough?” Miya snorted, her feline’s tails flicking. Darius shook his head, unimpressed.

But not far away from them, Malzahir twitched slightly when reminded of the old tale his deceased grandmother used to warn him with—that if he misbehaved, desert spirits would creep into his tent in the tribe and chew off his toes as he slept…as a result, once entering the Celestial Empire his favourite discovery had been the thing called ‘socks’. He’d immediately bought hundreds and never took them off except when bathing…

Airalai’s voice sharpened. “You may not believe me Kain, but this isn’t a fairy tale. They are so tiny they’re invisible, beyond the perception of spiritual senses. But they exist. And worse, they seem to serve the Abyss. Our machine revealed that they emit an unconscious signal, a call the Abyss follows. That’s why the founders sealed them away and scrubbed all knowledge of them from existence—to cloak our world from the Abyss’s gaze. But not all were contained. Some slipped free. Some could even be around you!”

‘Oh you have no idea…’ Kain avoided her gaze while thinking about his spiritual affinity that is those invisible boogie men that he has now learned may be drawing the Abyss.

His own contracts, or their ancestors, were those ‘monsters’ that had likely slipped through the net long ago.

Kain’s heart pounded at the picture that was gradually becoming clearer. A picture that he really didn’t want to look at.

‘My rebirth, twelve years ago—the exact day the signal began. My awakening, two years ago—the exact week the Abyss sprinted toward us. My contracts’ resistance to the Abyss. The relics created by the founders around the world that locked away pieces of Abyssal Demigods left on earth along with all the spiritual microbes they could find. The Abyss, which likely killed me in my last life, taking on the form of an infection on Earth. My mind seemingly entering the Abyss in a dream.’ The pieces slammed together. It felt too precise. Too deliberate.

‘Am I the source?’ He buried the thought, his expression a mask of calm.

“Do you have proof any of this is real?” Hoping that he could get more information from her…preferably something to refute that idea that he is related to the Abyss in some way.

Airalai smiled almost pityingly at him. “Join us, Kain. The Black Dawn strengthens humanity against the Abyss. I’m sure you see now that the ends justify our means.”

The interrogation stretched on, her words weaving truth and manipulation. Kain pressed harder, but she deflected with chilling poise. The team grew restless—Jax pacing, muttering about “cult nonsense,” Miya’s feline snarling, heat waves flaring, Darius coordinating silent signals, his barriers shimmering. Malzahir stood nearest the cell, his wyrm hissing, his bundled form tense. Kain resolved that later, Bea would probe Airalai’s mind herself. If anyone could sift truth from lies, it was her.

Kain opened the door to the cell to leave, and coincidentally right as he was leaving, Malzahir sneezed in his direction.

Kain quickly side stepped the disgusting corrosive spittle, but it splattered on the bound Airalai’s sleeve, eating through fabric.

A faint rune shimmered beneath the surface of the fabric. The team froze, eyes locked on the glowing mark.

Jax’s voice boomed, shattering the silence. “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!”