Chapter 19: Evil is of the Earth (4).

Tenacity is a disease.

Just as the inability to call it quits was troublesome.

From underneath the writhing mass of abominable flesh…

The Silver Blade sang through the air.

Somehow, whilst being eaten alive, Nero had found the strength to move. To crawl, rolling out from underneath the creature’s mass.

His fingers stretched out, almost to the point of tearing, miraculously snatching up his weapon as his fingers dragged across the coarse earth.

His fingernails all but shattered, Nero dug up the strength to swing his blade once more.

He groaned and cried out.

He was in pain.

Everywhere hurt.

It hurt like hell.

His eyes bulged out of their sockets as though they would burst right out of his head.

The edge of the silver blade carved through three of the creature’s arms before they could react, severing them cleanly. Black ichor sprayed across the chamber.

The voices of the thing screamed in unison, a sound that would have driven a normal man mad.

But Nero barely heard it. For he was like a man possessed with madness himself. His mind was entirely focused on the best possible way to tsar this foul creature to shreds.

The creature lashed out with its other arms, but Nero had decided to completely abandon all forms of defense.

Gritting his teeth so hard he tasted blood, he pressed forward, the Silver Blade cutting through flesh and bone with newfound vigor.

Each strike was maddend, reckless, and wasteful as he simply cut without aim or purpose.

But for whatever reason, it seemed to be working.

His strategy of hacking away with wild abandon was working!

But the creature was far from helpless.

One massive arm swept his legs out from under him, sending him crashing to the chamber floor. Before he could recover, another arm slammed down where his head was supposed to be, cracking the stone beneath.

Nero rolled aside and came up bleeding. The wounds caused by the thing’s talons raking across his ribs were bleeding heavily, each one burning with an unnatural coolth.

More arms erupted from the mass, each one larger and more twisted than the last. They moved with increasing coordination, forcing Nero to give ground as he dodged.

For some reason, he was able to keep up, albeit just barely…

And even then, he could tell that the exhaustion was soon to kick in. The momentary high he got from narrowly escaping death was beginning to fade away.

A talon caught him across the shoulder, spinning him around. Another struck his thigh, nearly dropping him to his knees. Blood flowed freely from a dozen wounds, and his vision was starting to blur again.

The creature sensed his weakness. With a horrifying screech, it surged forward, its flesh flowing around him like a twisted tide of corrupted life. All its arms descended from everywhere, far too many to dodge.

One of them caught his left arm at the elbow.

The talons bit deep this time, crushing bone and severing tendons. Nero screamed as the creature lifted him off the ground, his arm hanging by threads of muscle and skin.

The faces in the creature’s flesh twisted into horrid smiles of anticipation some of them opening their mouths to reveal the same razor teeth that lined the creature’s various maws.

Hanging there, feeling his blood flowing from his almost severed arm, Nero felt a certain realization dawn on him.

’I was right.’

Regardless of how hard he wanted to believe, there was nothing that could save him.

If he dropped the sword in his arm, his fate was more or less sealed.

’Power.’

The only truth in this world.

If he had power, he wouldn’t be about to become the shit of some twisted Anathema’s shit.

Truly ironic…

His left arm was useless now, a mangled mess of blood and shattered bone. But his right hand still gripped his blade.

And so, in a final act of defiance.

With the last spurt of strength left in him, Nero stabbed forward.

He drove the blade forward with every ounce of strength he had left.

There was nothing more too it.

A final display of Tenacity. Of Stubbornness.

A concentrated form of all his frazzled emotions and frustrations.

Of his dread and his fears…

Of course, that much was not enough.

The force of a blade, cannot be heightened by mere tenacity alone.

Instead, it required just a bit of luck.

Or as some would like to call it; Destiny.

The enchanted edge of the Silver Blade punched through a protruding lump on what seemed to be the creature’s central body.

Perhaps it had become too cocky, so much so, it had left itself open.

But that wouldn’t have been a problem, if not for a few factors.

The heart, or rather, the core of the Soul Amalgam, constantly shifted within its large body.

Even the abomination could not control what part of its body its heart would shift too next.

Its core, was its only weak spot. The one place it could not regenerate.

Nero’s blade was sharp, so it easily pierced through the layers of hard muscle and fat, impaling its heart right through.

Nero felt his blade come into contact with a hard object.

The hundreds of eyes on the body of the Soul Amalgam went wide with shock and pain.

With a furious shriek, it struck at its body with everything it had.

But fate seemed to be in favor of the weak human today.

With a final baleful groan, Nero twisted the blade. The sharp edge worked like magic, slicing through the solid object like butter.

The creature’s scream was cut short as its entire form began to unravel. The faces embedded in its flesh began to melt away like lumps of fat above an open fire.

Soon, the mass of flesh collapsed, dissolving into black ichor that steamed and hissed against the chamber floor.

Nero stood over the remains, swaying on his feet. His left arm hung useless at his side as a pool of dark blood began gathering beneath him.

“I… I won.”

His body was billed and wretched.

His veins had turned dark purple, filled with black, corrupted blood.

But he had won.

In this moment, nothing else seemed to matter.

{Congratulations, Heretic. You have slain a Soul Amalgam}.

{Seals of Sin: 3/1000}.

The Silver Blade slipped from his nerveless fingers, clattering to the chamber floor. His knees buckled, and he fell beside it.

The heartbeat of the cave was gone with the death of its owner. There was silence amidst the damp stench of blood and rot.

With a steaming pile of rapidly dissolving flesh and bones, Nero decided to call it a night.

He fell unconscious.

Again.

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