Autophagy

"You're right..." Aston muttered. He tapped his chin calmly and thought about Song Lei's words a little bit more.

"Why didn't they..?"

As Aston kept thinking, the noises started crawling back up. It was faint but noticeable.

"It's coming," Song Lei said. "You guys should step back a little," Song Lei ordered to the trainees that were lying on the ground. Heeding his words, all of them crawled away slightly.

As the noises became more and more disturbing, Song Lei's face soured.

Suddenly, the earth Clark was lying on shook and cracked. As if the world was ending, this crack turned into a rupture. If it were to expand a little bit more, Clark would probably fall into it.

"Shit..." Song Lei muttered.

Suddenly, the whole field went silent. This made every little voice more audible to the people there. Then from inside the rapture that had formed on the ground came out a wave of red gas. This red gas started condensing around Clark.

This gas forced the two daggers out from Clark's body and threw them away. It then started penetrating into Clark's body from all of his orifices. After all the gas disappeared into Clark's body, he started shivering.

Once more, everything calmed down.

"What happened?" Song Lei asked. Aston shook his head as he had no idea what was really going on.

Clark's body rose up from the ground. It was as if there was an invisible force pushing him up. As he stood there motionless, his blank expression made Song Lei and Aston feel creeped out. Slowly, his eyelids parted. Revealing two, completely white eyeballs.

"You've made a mistake," he said. However, he didn't sound anything like Clark. Instead, he sounded more like a god that had descended upon this world. His voice was genderless, echoing throughout the whole orphanage.

"If you were to just ignore everything that was going on here," the godly voice said. Even though the voice was loud and clear, Clark's mouth didn't move at all. "You would have left this orphanage by graduating safely," it continued. Song Lei gulped loudly and took a step back. The being in front of him wasn't Clark anymore. Its soul was incredibly intimidating, maybe as much as Isabel's. "Now, however, you shall perish alongside your foolish friends!"

After finishing its monologue, more than ten tentacles that were made out of pinkish flesh protruded out of Clark's orifices. The pressure it was spreading around in waves made Song Lei take another step back. The others, however, were already crumpled down on the floor. None of them could even properly lift their heads other than Aston.

Song Lei raised his senses to their utmost and inspected every move of the monster in front of him. Because of its anatomy, it wouldn't be easy to foresee its movements, however, it was still better than nothing.

In the blink of an eye, the monster arrived in front of Song Lei. What was weird was the fact that it hadn't made any movements that gave away he would move. This caused Song Lei to get caught unprepared.

With a swing of its tentacle, the monster threw Song Lei five meters away into the distance. To stop, Song Lei had to roll on the ground a few times. When he finally managed to stop, he quickly pushed himself up from the ground.

'Fuck... That must've broken a few bones,' Song Lei thought. He felt an incredible amount of pain in his chest.

Spitting a mouthful of blood, Song Lei prepared his mind for what was to come. He had been put to such a state with a single move of his enemy. Moreso, he wasn't even able to catch a glimpse of his enemy coming towards him. In such a situation, Song Lei couldn't rely on his eyes anymore.

His only choice was to predict his enemy's movements and according to them. Unfortunately, this would be incredibly hard to do. After all, his enemy was a humanoid monster that he had never seen before. Because of this, Song Lei couldn't fathom what it was going to do a few seconds later.

After swatting Song Lei away like a fly, the monster didn't break eye contact with him for a single second. Its deadpan expression constantly followed Song Lei as if it was staring right into his soul.

"Fucking hell..." Song Lei muttered as he raised his head. Kicking the ground, he launched himself towards the tentacle monster. The monster swung one of its tentacles casually. However, just because it was a casual one, it didn't mean that it wasn't strong. It could very well knock Song Lei out in the case that he was hit.

Seeing the tentacle closing in on him, Song Lei ducked and slid forward on his knees. The tentacle brushed past his head. Fortunately, it didn't harm Song Lei in any way.

Currently, Song Lei had no choice left but to fight with all of his might. Even if he were to accidentally kill Clark, it would still be better than being killed or enslaved by this monster.

After dodging its initial attack, Song Lei saw another swing incoming from his left. This time, he quickly recovered his balance and propelled himself upward. The attack passed under him. Utilizing this chance, Song Lei stepped on the tentacle that had just attacked him and ran on it. His weight slowed it down a lot, making the monster slightly lose its balance.

He then swung his soulite dagger and severed another incoming tentacle in half. Although the tentacle regenerated quickly, it still helped Song Lei get past the monster's seemingly absolute defense.

This way, after weaving through the tentacles time after time, Song Lei managed to reach the main body of the monster. Being in close proximity with the source of these tentacles wasn't very ideal. After all, they could wrap themselves around Song Lei and entrap him. In such a case, Song Lei would have no choice but to succumb to the monster. For this reason, he had to act quickly.

Raising one of his hands, Song Lei smirked and stabbed the taser in his hand onto the monster's neck. After pulling the trigger, the monster started flailing its tentacles around. Seeing this, Song Lei got even more closer to the main body, making sure that he didn't get hit by any attack with a meaningful amount of force behind it.

Song Lei kept firing the taser until its relatively small battery depleted. Not being able to hear the slight crackling of the taser, Song Lei understood that it had depleted. He threw the taser away, stabbed the monster with his dagger once more, and launched himself away from the monster.

There was smoke coming out of the monster's main body. Its movements had become much more sluggish, making it look tired. Song Lei wasn't in that good of a situation too. After the first time he was hit by the monster, he had puked blood. Which probably indicated that his lungs had been punctured. With internal bleeding of such degree, he felt himself wavering in and out of consciousness.

*SLAP!

Song Lei slapped himself on his cheeks and woke himself up.

'I can't give up now...' Song Lei thought. He hadn't spent his five months going through hellish training and sleepless nights just to get beaten up and enslaved. Moreso, he wasn't the only one that he had to win for. To get the freedom of every other trainee in this orphanage, he had to beat this monster.

No other trainee, including Aston, would be able to help him in this situation. He was all alone, carrying the weight of hundreds of orphans on his shoulders.

Charging ahead once more, Song Lei ignored the stabbing pain running through his body. Fortunately, electricity worked wonders on the soul worms, making their hosts stunned and unable to function properly. This made the tentacle monster's movements much more sluggish, relieving Song Lei from some of the pressure he was under.

Closing in on the monster once more, Song Lei ducked, dodged, and weaved. This time, however, he made sure to keep cutting the tentacles of the monster while doing so. Time after time, swing after swing, he would slowly tire the monster out in hopes of beating it.

"It's..." The monster muttered. Its godly and ethereal voice was slowly leaving its place to an angry and vicious one. "Useless! It doesn't mean anything! Just submit to my might!" It started shouting crazedly. Its agitated soul made every single soul in its premises shake with anxiousness. Although Song Lei and Aston could somewhat cope with it, it wasn't the same for the other trainees on their side.

Using its newly gained energy that had come alongside anger and hatred, the monster released a burst of steam from its body, pushing Song Lei away slightly.

After doing so, it readied all of its tentacles as if they were a rapier and pointed all of them towards Song Lei.

Song Lei could feel the upcoming doom....