Autophagy

The night fell onto the fields of the Eye Orphanage. This place had been home to a lot of organization members since the time it was first established.

Breezing through the ranks of London's criminal organizations, the Poison Eye managed to make himself renowned throughout the world, all the while conquering more than half of the London Underworld. Drugs trade, bribery, assassination... He had an incredible amount of influence on the United Kingdom.

However, in the heart, Poison Eye was just a lonely orphan. In the end, what he wanted was to make sure that no other children had to live a life like his. After being stained and corrupted by the Underworld so much, his only remaining wish from his old self found form as the Eye Orphanage. He would make sure that these children would grow up to be independent adults. And in some cases, he would even put them into the ranks of the organization. At least, that was what he thought it would be like...

With time, under the rule of its department head, the orphanage became more like a hitman production factory. All of these happened without Poison Eye even realizing it. After all, he never had the time to come and check up on how things were going in the orphanage.

This hitman production factory was like a perfect unitary machine that would pump out human weapons on a yearly basis. The education was incredibly high level and all the trainees were provided with the best possible resources.

However, things had started changing a little bit. There was a storm brewing among the trainees of the orphanage. And this was definitely no kid's quarrel. After all, behind this storm were two geniuses; Aston and Song Lei. Aston with his logical-mathematical thinking capabilities surpassing that of any other geniuses in history and Song Lei with his inhuman adaptability accompanied with him being a master of all trades, they very well had the ability to overturn the country, let alone a small orphanage.

With Song Lei coming to the orphanage, it didn't take too long for him to realize there was something very wrong going on with the orphanage. Almost all the trainees in this place were infected by something that he couldn't really put his finger on. These infected trainees would lose their minds during the night. At least that was what Song Lei had thought...

After meeting with Aston, Song Lei had managed to encourage him to take action. Although Aston was a genius, he couldn't find the courage to pick up a fight against the infected. Fortunately, with time, they managed to uncover mystery after mystery about the soul worms.

Soul worms were spiritual parasites that spread around by food. After getting consumed, these worms would become ethereal and enter the host's soul. In no time, the host's soul would be taken over to some extent. This infection would vary from person to person. For example, Clark, who was being treated as a god amongst the soul worms was the most infected trainee Song Lei and Aston had seen.

The fact that he was infected to this degree didn't only affect his social status in the soul worm society. Normally, soul worms would go dormant during the day, wiping out the memories about the nights from the trainee's minds. This would cause the trainees to be totally oblivious to the fact that they were infected. In exchange, however, they would get to keep their sanity and minds to themselves during the days.

Clark, however, was so infected that the soul worms in his body wouldn't go dormant even during days. This caused his real personality to be completely wiped out. Now, he was just a human body being piloted by a wriggling ball of worms.

Such was the situation Song Lei had found himself in. It looked grave, however, not everything was going bad. After Aston made breakthrough after breakthrough in his new scientific discipline with the relaxed environment provided and protected by Song Lei. This, in turn, led Aston to be able to produce a substance called soulite.

Soulite was an incredibly peculiar substance. It was something that could affect the 4th dimension pretty easily even though it was a 3rd-dimensional matter itself. Most matters didn't have this aspect unless they had incredible mass to them such as the Sun.

As Aston kept going on with his research, he managed to make an immunity injection. Using this, they managed to gather themselves allies that would help them with their Reconquista of the orphanage.

However, there was a small problem with this. They couldn't kill anyone. After all, even inside the orphanage of a criminal organization, it wasn't okay to start genociding people. Aston had to figure out a way to extract the soul worms from people's bodies without hurting them much. Injections were out of the question as they would take too much material and would be incredibly hard to use. So their only choice left was to forge weapons with them.

The main  problem was the fact that the orphanage didn't have the necessary equipment to do so. Song Lei and Aston didn't want to start their plans without proper preparation, so they laid in wait for months.

Fortunately, they had gotten their chance of forging soul weapons after these tiring months. After finishing their field training with ease, Song Lei and Aston managed to secure themselves and their allies enough soul daggers. Now was the time for them to shine.

Song Lei sighed and raised his head to look at the starry sky. Unlike the modern-day earth, there wasn't much light pollution yet. He could see the beautiful stars illuminating the sky all by themselves.

When he lowered his head, the gross festival reflected in his eyes. The midnight festival was going on as always. This was a weird custom of these worms. Song Lei and Aston still couldn't put a finger on it. After all, pumping out mathematical and physical theorems wasn't the same thing as figuring out the social behavior pattern of these monsters. Although Aston could do the former, he couldn't do the latter.

Pulling back the curtains, Song Lei turned towards the room. Aston was sitting on his bed while supporting his head with his hands. His eyes were closed as he sat still, making him look like a statue.

"It's time," Song Lei said. His voice was tranquil. In reality, he was holding his excitement back. After all, they had worked a lot in these last six months just for this day. If they were to fail, his soul would be taken over by the soul worms. He would probably be trapped in this dream space for eternity. However, if they were to be successful, his stressful days would be partially over. Instead of dealing with a bunch of worms, he could focus on his main task which was to find a way to conquer this dream space.

Hearing Song Lei's voice, Aston got up from his place and stretched. They were wearing the uniforms provided by the orphanage. Nothing fancy like those bodysuits you would see in an action movie.

After wearing their backpacks, they both put their toolbelts on. After that, they attached their sheaths onto those toolbelts and put their soul dagger inside those sheaths.

These daggers would be the most important part of their plan. After all, they had no proper way of beating the soul worms unless they had the daggers.

Carefully leaving the room while avoiding the night guard soul worms that would patrol the dorm corridors, Song Lei and Aston went to the laboratory that they were using as a secret base. Fortunately, there was no disturbance in the dorms, indicating that everyone from their group had managed to go unnoticed by the patrols.

Opening the door of the laboratory, a medium-sized room filled with shadows was revealed to their eyes.

"Boss," Someone whispered. None of them dared to make a sound as they were afraid that they would trigger a patrol of the soul worms.

"Is everyone here?" Song Lei asked calmly as he walked to the middle of the room while clasping his arms behind his body. All of the trainees gulped loudly. They could feel their blood boiling inside their veins with excitement.

"Not yet, boss. We have four more people we are waiting for. Then we will be ready," The trainee explained the situation. Song Lei threw himself on the couch and started tapping the ground with his foot.

Unlike his calm appearance, he was incredibly excited. He felt like he was about to take an exam he had studied for six months. At the end of everything, if he were to fail, he would lose everything he had. If he were to win, he would be able to proceed with his life somehow.

Of course, Song Lei couldn't show this excitement to anybody. After all, he was like a commander in this plan. All of their allies looked up to him. If he were to get all fiddly because of excitement, it would also affect his soldier's morale.

While Song Lei kept trying to keep his cool, the door of the laboratory was opened. Four more trainees entered the room, indicating that everyone had finally gathered.

"Let's hunt some Worms...."