SSS- Rank Awakening: Soul Devourer

The world narrowed. A single, savage, and desperate moment. Korgan's greatsword, a descending meteor of cold, final judgment, was inches from his throat. But Edward's clawed hand, a blur of dark, monstrous desperation, was faster.

His sharpened nails tore through the soft and unprotected flesh of Korgan's throat. A wet, ripping sound. Not a clean, surgical cut. A brutal, animalistic act of pure, survivalist violence.

He dug his claws in deep. Shredding muscle. The mercenary lord's windpipe. A single, horrific motion.

Korgan's victorious grunt was cut off. Replaced by a choked, gurgling sound. A fountain of hot, crimson blood erupted from his mangled throat.

The greatsword wavered. It fell from his grasp. Clattering harmlessly to the stone beside Edward's head.

The mercenary king's eyes widened. A look of pure, uncomprehending shock. He looked down at the slender, dark-clad boy pinned beneath his boot.

Then at the monstrous, clawed hand still buried in his own throat. He tried to speak. Only a wet, bloody gurgle escaped his lips.

He was a mountain. But he had just been felled by a single, perfectly placed, and utterly savage viper's strike.

In that moment, as the life began to fade from Korgan's eyes, Edward felt the familiar, cold, and now-inescapable hunger stir. He had sworn to himself he would not do this again to a human. Chris had been a necessary, monstrous exception.

But Korgan… Korgan was just a man. Brutal. Greedy. Ruthless. But a man nonetheless.

He looked up into the mercenary's dying eyes. He saw not a monster, but a warrior. A warrior who lived and died by a simple, brutal code. Who had just been bested. No hatred in his gaze. Only a final, grudging, almost respectful flicker of surprise.

The choice was a cruel and pragmatic one. To let Korgan's powerful, S-Rank soul dissipate would be a monumental waste. His people were at war. Wounded. Desperate. Fighting for their very existence. He needed the power. The strength. The knowledge locked within that dying mind.

The needs of the pack outweighed the fading, tattered remnants of his own personal morality.

With a grim, cold resolve that felt less like a victory and more like a contamination, Edward made his choice. He kept his clawed hand buried in Korgan's throat. With his other, broken arm, he reached up. He placed his hand on the dying man's forehead.

He activated Soul Assimilation.

The process was not the chaotic, explosive overload he had experienced with Lord Alaric. This was the consumption of a pure, powerful, and remarkably disciplined warrior's soul. A torrent of raw, physical power. Of tactical knowledge. Of a thousand different battles fought and won.

He felt Korgan's lifetime of experience flood into him. The weight of the greatsword. The crunch of bone under his boot. The grim satisfaction of a contract fulfilled. He learned strategies for siege warfare. For open-field combat. For breaking a shield wall. He gained a veteran general's intuitive understanding of logistics. Of morale. Of the brutal, bloody calculus of war.

But he also absorbed the man's darker aspects. The unbridled avarice. The cold, pragmatic cruelty. The belief that strength was the only law. It was a poison. A cynical, worldly corruption.

A stark contrast to the arcane corruption of the Lich. Another voice. Another ghost to add to the screaming choir in his head. A gravelly, contemptuous baritone that would forever whisper to him of the virtues of pure, unrelenting force.

Korgan's massive body, its life force and essence now drained, did not dissolve into dust. It simply withered. Its powerful muscles shrinking. Its skin turning grey and brittle. Until it was little more than a desiccated, mummified husk. A grotesque, empty shell that finally collapsed on top of him.

Edward lay there for a moment. Pinned beneath the dead mercenary king. The world was a dizzying, nauseating swirl of pain, power, and a profound, soul-deep sense of self-loathing. He had won. He had slain the leader of the Iron Vultures. He had won the guild war.

But the victory felt hollow. A contamination. A necessary evil. But evil nonetheless. He had taken another, significant step away from the boy he had once been. Closer to the cold, pragmatic monster he was being forced to become.

He pushed the desiccated corpse off of him. He struggled to his feet. His broken arm was a dangling, useless weight. He looked across the now-silent Mana Spring. Korgan's elite Carrion Guard, who had been watching the duel with a stoic, unwavering confidence, were now staring. Their faces were a mask of pure, uncomprehending horror.

They had not just seen their invincible leader defeated. They had seen him consumed. Unmade. His very essence devoured by a creature they had mistaken for a boy.

They were hardened, veteran mercenaries. They had seen every horror a battlefield could offer. But they had never seen anything like this.

One of them, his face pale, dropped his massive axe with a loud clang. Then another. And another. Their discipline, their courage, their loyalty—all of it shattered.

They broke. They turned and fled. A disorganized, panicked rout. Scrambling over each other to escape the basin. To escape the quiet, slender, and monstrous figure who had just eaten their god.

The guild war was over.

Edward stood alone in the center of the ruined, blood-soaked Mana Spring. The victor. But as he looked down at his own clawed hand, at the monstrous, physical manifestation of the choice he had just made, he felt only a cold, empty sense of loss.

He didn't see her arrive. But he felt her presence. A soft, warm flicker of light in his dark, chaotic inner world. Sarah. She was standing at the edge of the basin. Having followed him against his orders. Her face was a pale and horrified

She had seen it. The final, savage, desperate blow. She had seen him tear a man's throat out with his bare, monstrous claws. She had seen the cold, pragmatic look in his eyes as he had consumed the man's soul.

Their eyes met. The look on her face was a dagger in his heart. Not the awe she'd had in the arena. Not the concerned empathy she'd had in the training grounds. A new, terrible look. A mixture of profound, soul-deep fear and a heart-wrenching, disillusioned sorrow.

She was struggling to reconcile the boy she knew, the hero she believed in, with the savage, soul-eating predator who now stood before her. Their relationship, the very anchor of his humanity, was straining. Threatening to snap under the weight of this single, necessary, and monstrous act.

He was about to say something. To try to explain the inexplicable. When the final, damning piece of Korgan's soul settled into his mind. Not a memory of a battle. A piece of recent intelligence. A secret the mercenary lord had been holding close.

His eyes widened in a new, dawning horror.

The Iron Vultures. They hadn't been acting alone. Their entire war against The Unchained, their attack, their ultimatum—it had all been a contract. Funded, secretly and lavishly, by a third party.

Their benefactor, the one who had hired them to eliminate Edward and his fledgling faction, was the still-powerful, still-vengeful remnants of the House of Valerius. Chris's noble family.

And Korgan's soul showed him their next move. The next phase of their bitter, vengeful plan. Not an attack on Asylum. Not another assassination attempt. Something far more insidious. Far more monstrous.

They were planning to acquire a unique, high-level dungeon plague. And release it into a major, densely populated city. An act of pure, indiscriminate terrorism. Designed to cause mass chaos and death. All so they could frame The Unchained for the atrocity.

He had won the battle. He had won the war. But he had just discovered that he had been fighting on the wrong front all along.