Awakening of the Weakest Slayer

The curtain slid open, revealing the one who had been controlling them, the one who had been trying to turn them into mindless, obedient slaves.

As they looked at it, a wave of visceral disgust washed over Sezel and Vesta. Vesta immediately turned her face to the other side, her hand flying to her mouth.

Sezel was frozen, his eyes wide, his mind struggling to process the impossible, grotesque sight before him.

Suddenly, he felt as if the world had become clearer, more vivid, more real. The pain in his head was instantly gone. The weakness, the bone-deep exhaustion that had been weighing him down, dissolved, and everything came back to normal. It was as if a thick, suffocating fog of mind-altering illusion had been lifted from his mind.

He felt a few changes, subtle, almost imperceptible shifts in his perception, in his very being, that he couldn't quite describe. He was not just shocked, but stunned, his mind reeling from the revelation.

"What… is exactly this thing?" he asked, his voice a low murmur.

The thing behind the curtain was not what he would have ever thought it would be. It was beyond their wildest, most terrifying imagination.

Sezel took his first, hesitant steps beyond the threshold of the curtain, his heart slamming hard against his ribs. Suddenly, the assessment device in his pocket chimed, its mechanical voice a startling intrusion into the otherwise silent, reverent chamber.

[Elite Beast - Human Detected]

[Rank - 4]

Sezel's eyes widened, his pupils shrinking to pinpoints, his mind racing to make sense of what he had just heard. A… What? he rasped.

'And why the hell did this thing say Elite Beast for a human? What does that mean?' Questions filled Sezel's mind. The words made no sense. How could a human be classified as a beast? And why had the device, silent for weeks, chosen to announce its presence?

This whole thing had just become more twisted than the Spirit Realm itself.

And the biggest question was why did the assessment device even announce the presence of a beast, when it clearly stated it was a human.

But one thing was certain. The creature before him, the 'Lord' they had been slaving for, was human.

He drew closer, a strange mixture of disgust and a flicker of unwanted pity warring within him.

In front of him, on what one might call a makeshift ventilator, a grotesque, cobbled-together mockery of life support, lay a body that was barely human at all.

There was not a single shred of muscle, just a skeleton covered up by a thin, translucent layer of skin. Seeing it, only one thought came to Sezel's mind: how can a human body become like this?

It was a living corpse, a husk kept breathing by the cold hum of technology.

But this was the Spirit Realm. Even if things didn't make sense, even if they defied every law of nature, of reason, they were very well possible. A terrifying, unsettling thing to consider.

Sezel gulped hard, his eyes scanned the body, taking in the tubes that snaked into its flesh, and then he saw them: faint, silvery scars tracing a perfect circle around the creature's forehead.

He squinted his eyes and looked carefully, and now he was sure. They were surgical marks, the faint, tell-tale signs of a procedure that had been performed long ago.

"Hey... can you speak?" he asked, his voice cold. Letting his sympathy take over would be a foolish action.

But there was no reply. Sezel already knew that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for such a thing, for a body so broken, to speak. But he wanted to check, to be sure.

Sezel closed his eyes and stood there for a few moments, his mind a whirlwind of calculations. He slowly opened them, and the first thing he saw was Vesta's shocked, horrified face, her ruby eyes wide with a mixture of disgust and a strange, almost pitying sorrow.

"Hey, Vesta," he spoke, his voice a little awkward.

Vesta looked at him indifferently. "Yes," she replied, her voice a flat, emotionless monotone.

"So, do you… umm… kind of feel some change in yourself?" he asked.

Vesta pondered over his question for a bit, her brow furrowed in thought, and then she nodded. "Yeah," she said, her voice a little stronger now. "I feel like there was this invisible illusion on my mind that has been lifted."

His eyes squinted. 'So, it wasn't just me. Something did change the moment we saw his body.' There was something, and there was only one way to confirm it.

Sezel placed his hand on the chest of the body. It was as if he were directly touching the rib cage, the thin, brittle bones were a fragile, pathetic shield for the heart that was beating, ever so slowly, beneath. "Start speaking, or you know," Sezel threatened, his voice dangerously low.

"I know you can still use Shiki's body. So get to it," he declared.

Vesta turned around to look at Shiki's unconscious body, which once again stirred and, with a series of jerky, puppet-like movements, slowly stood up.

His face was twisted in fear. "Please don't. Don't do anything to my body," Shiki scrambled.

Sezel looked at him, his eyes a cold, calculating look that sent shivers down even the broken body under his hand. "Answer my questions," he started. "First, what were these machines used for?"

Shiki gulped hard. "These machines… I was using them to create a new, indestructible body for myself," he accepted.

The confession hung in the air, audacious and insane. "Indestructible?" Sezel asked, dazed. "Why? Do you want to be immortal?"

"No," the entity admitted, its voice dropping to a low, defeated murmur. "Not immortal. It's… something I can't tell you."

Sezel's eyes squinted even more. "You can't tell? Why? Is someone stopping you?" he asked, his curiosity pressing on.

Everything went silent, nobody spoke.

Then, Vesta's voice, sharp and clear, cut through the tense quiet, her single question reframing the entire mystery.

"What exactly are you?"