SSS- Rank Awakening: Soul Devourer

The press of the detonator was a small, insignificant click. A sound almost lost in the din of the battle. But its effect was immediate. Catastrophic.

The container at the back of the wagon began to glow. Not a soft, magical luminescence. An angry, malignant, and sickly green light. It pulsed with a life of its own. The light of a plague about to be born. A high-pitched, whining sound began to emanate from the chest. The sound of a containment seal about to fail. Growing louder and more frantic with every second.

Chris's laughter, a wet, gurgling, and utterly triumphant sound, filled the small space. He had lost the duel. He had lost his honor. He had lost everything. But in this final, spiteful, and suicidal act of pure, nihilistic vengeance, he had found his victory. He was going to die. But he was going to take a city with him. And he was going to take the man who had ruined his life along for the ride.

Edward's mind, a place of grim, exhausted satisfaction just a moment before, was now a vortex of pure, adrenaline-fueled panic. He saw the glowing, whining container. He saw the mad, triumphant look in Chris's eyes. And he saw, in his mind's eye, a vision of Silverstream. A hundred thousand innocent souls being consumed by a tide of incurable, spiritual pestilence.

He had to stop it.

He lunged for the container. His mind raced through a thousand different options. Each one more impossible than the last. The anti-magic field was still active. A suffocating, leaden blanket. It rendered all of his unique, monstrous abilities utterly useless. He couldn't use Soul Rend. He couldn't use his newfound control over the fortress-golem's systems. He couldn't even use his own, nascent, system-altering abilities.

He was just a man. A wounded, exhausted, and desperately mortal man. Faced with a problem that required a god.

He reached the container. The iron of its surface now radiated an intense, unnatural heat. The whining sound was a piercing, deafening shriek. He had seconds. Maybe less.

He tried to force the lid shut. To reseal it through sheer, brute force. But the internal pressure was too great. The heavy, iron lid was bulging outwards. The glowing, green light of the plague seeped through micro-fractures in the metal.

There was no way to contain it. No way to stop it.

And in that final, split-second of absolute, hopeless desperation, a new, terrible, and utterly insane choice presented itself. A choice born not of strategy or logic. But of the same, deep, innate, and suicidally protective instinct that had made him throw himself in front of a goblin's spear.

If he couldn't contain the explosion… he would have to become the container.

He didn't hesitate. No time for a second thought. No time for self-preservation. Only the stark, brutal, and utterly heroic calculus of his own life, weighed against the lives of a hundred thousand strangers.

With a final, desperate, and utterly defiant roar, he did the only thing he could. He embraced it.

He wrapped his arms around the glowing, shrieking, and impossibly hot iron container. He pulled it tight against his own chest. He curled his body around it. A living shield. A sarcophagus of flesh and bone. His back to the rest of the world.

The container ruptured.

But it was not an explosion. It was an implosion. The containment field, in its final, catastrophic failure, collapsed inward. It focused the entire, virulent payload of the Plague Spores directly into the single, soft, organic target that was pressed against it.

Pain.

The word was utterly, laughably inadequate. Not the sharp pain of a blade. Not the hot pain of a burn. This was a violation on a level he had never before experienced. The feeling of a billion microscopic, venomous insects, made of pure, spiritual poison, burrowing into his every cell. His every nerve. His very soul.

It was a living, sentient plague. And it was devouring him from the inside out.

He screamed. A raw, ragged, and utterly inhuman sound of pure, unimaginable agony. He felt his own soul, the complex, chaotic mosaic of his own identity and the ghosts of the creatures he had consumed, being attacked. Corrupted. Unmade.

The anti-magic field, its power source now destroyed, collapsed.

Edward's connection to the system, to the Core, to his own monstrous power, came rushing back in a tidal wave. And the system, a silent, impartial observer, registered the catastrophic event unfolding within its most valuable and problematic asset.

His HUD, which had been blank, flared to life. A frantic, screaming wall of blood-red, high-priority alerts.

[WARNING! FOREIGN SOUL-PLAGUE DETECTED!]

[HOSTILE, A-RANK, BIO-SPIRITUAL AGENT 'ETERNAL ROT' INTRODUCED TO HOST SYSTEM!]

[ANALYZING… THREAT IS CATASTROPHIC. HOST SOUL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED. ESTIMATED TIME TO TOTAL SOUL-DEATH: 60 SECONDS.]

The plague was not just killing him. It was erasing him.

But Edward was not just a host. He was a Soul Devourer. His very nature, his curse, his greatest, most monstrous power, was to consume. To assimilate. And in this final, desperate moment, his own system, his own curse, initiated a last-ditch, automated, and utterly desperate defensive protocol.

[EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED: INITIATING FORCED ASSIMILATION OF FOREIGN SOUL-PLAGUE.]

If the plague had been a fire, the forced assimilation was a backdraft. A second, even more violent violation. His own power, a ravenous, uncontrollable hunger, turned inward. Attacking the plague that was attacking his soul. A war, fought in the microscopic, spiritual battlefield of his own being. A war between two, all-consuming, monstrous forces.

He was the battlefield. And the battlefield was being torn apart.

He collapsed to the floor of the wagon. His body convulsed violently. A vessel for a war between two gods of consumption. Black, plague-like veins, visible manifestations of the spiritual battle, spread across his skin. A spiderweb of pure, necrotic corruption.

His HUD was a frantic, terrifying countdown of his own damnation. The forced assimilation was fighting the plague. But the plague was a part of him now. To fight it, his own system was being forced to corrupt itself at a terrifying, exponential rate.

[SOUL CORRUPTION RAPIDLY APPROACHING CRITICAL LEVELS!]

[45%...]

[46%...]

[47%...]

He could feel his own mind splintering. The last, tattered remnants of his humanity being shredded in the crossfire. The voices of the souls he carried were screaming. Not in rage. In terror.

[48%...]

[49%...]

He was on the verge of total, irreversible corruption. On the precipice of becoming a mindless, raging monster. A being of pure, instinctual hunger. A fate worse than any death.

And then, as the number ticked over to the final, critical threshold, a new, terrible, and utterly final notification burned itself onto his screen. A declaration of his own, final, and catastrophic failure.

[SOUL CORRUPTION AT CRITICAL LEVEL: 50%!]