“Balbhaggghh!!,” I said incomprehensibly as I dragged the heavy bags on the floor.

It was goddamn hard to move these when I was suffering from a concussion. But daylight was being lost, so I forced myself and quickly made something of a safe room in this Skelton of a building.

I dragged the final piece of cement bag, covering the entrance to the half-finished room. My new safe room for the night, it even had a big opening at the top, not being connected to the ceiling.

No, it wasn’t a room without a roof, it’s just one of the features so that I could escape if something tries to barge in through the wall of cement bags. I even had a barrel rolled inside so that I could use that to climb out of the wall.

The light was already dim enough to be accounted as a night when I had finished everything. I sat down on the grey dusty cement floor, tired after dragging a dozen of cement bags for the barricade.

Besides me were the few canned foods that I packed for an emergency situation such as this. I took the one that seemed the most appetizing or more accurately the one that had the best cover picture as I knew this might be the last thing I would ever eat.

I was not under any illusion that the night might pass with nothing happening. Most of the ecosystem has creatures that are only active during the night. And most of the time, they are much deadlier.

I opened the food as the slight scent wafted to my nose.

The menu for this celebratory night after my victory was a canned sardine. As usual, the salty food appeared to be tastier and appetizing than any food that I have ever eaten as it stimulated my cold tongue and my hungry stomach.

I drank half a liter of water after wolfing it down and eyed the next can in the bag as my stomach roared for more offerings.

I obliged and proceeded to wolf down another can as well.

It didn’t leave me quite full, but it left me satisfied. I still had a few more in the bag but It was always good to leave some space for things to go wrong, especially now that the natural outcome was to always go wrong.

I shivered from the cold of the night. The cold seemed to be going down a lot more than I expected as the night progressed, so I snuggled closer to my bag as I kept it above my lap.

As I hugged the bag closer from the chills, I remembered about the monkey infants that were still in the den.

Would it live through this cold without a parent?

Of course not. Even if they did, they would die tomorrow or the day after. My act of kindness being something that would only appease my conscience.

I sighed and saw my breath come out in a puff of smoke. The cold seemed to drop even lower pretty quickly and my lungs had to really exert themselves to breathe out the freezing air.

This.... wasn’t normal?

No matter how good or how difference a blanket and a roof over your head made, there was no way I wouldn’t notice till now that the nights usually got this cold.

I heard the sound of frost and turned my head over to see the half drank water bottle turn into ice right in front of my eyes.

This isn’t normal at all.

I rubbed my hands together as I buried my face in the bag from the cold. It seemed to drop even lower and lower. The cold now penetrating enough to chill my bones.

My teeth clattering as my body shivered uncontrollably. The night had only started. I couldn’t survive this for more than a few hours. I looked over at the bag of cement that covered the entrance.

I had to tear it open and cover myself with the sand. I couldn’t find any warmth in this cold building, nor could I survive in this cold with what I was wearing.

I got up to tear the bag open with my kitchen knife when I heard a sound of something being dragged.

It sounded as if a big tube or something was slowly being dragged on the sandy concrete floor.

The cold kept increasing as I perked my ears to hear what was on the other side. The sound now seemed to come from all around me, as if the tube was being dragged and being coiled around the room I was in.

For some reason, my mind went to the ape that beat me up. The last I saw it before our fight was when it was running away from that giant snake. And it surviving, meant that it managed to run away and reach its base here.

The sweat in my temples froze as I stayed still. Understanding that the sound on the other side was in fact the giant snake slithering on the concrete floor.

It must have been hunted the monkey after it managed to slip away from it. Don’t know how it managed to hunt it to here this late, but that didn’t matter.

What mattered was that I was dead if it found me.

I clenched my tattering teeth shut and stilled my shivering body, to not draw its attention. Then realized the meaninglessness of it.

Snakes could also hunt from seeing the slight body heat exerted by the living body.

My breath stopped as I realized that there was no way that this night would end without it seeing me.

Wait... If I’m sure infrared and thermal cameras couldn’t see through walls. They’ll just see the temperature of the wall rather than what was behind it. Unless something extremely hot was behind it to contrast the coverings, it could only see the wall and nothing else.

Meaning, the snake couldn’t see me through the wall. At least for now.

I crept closer to my bag. The only way it would find me now is by my scent. I had to find a way to mask it. I didn’t have any concrete ideas on how to, but I would brainstorm anything after eying the contents of my bag once more.

But... I paused my crawl as I saw the huff of fog released by my breath.

Right now, the entire place was basically sub-Zero temperature.

And the only thing emanating any heat... was the only living thing present...

Me!

Panic set it as I realized that I was visible as a beacon in these freezing temperatures. Even through the wall, I was already plain in sight to the snake.

It was using the cold to hunt me!

I heard a noise from the wall and looked up to see a giant snake’s head poking out, in mid-stance of its lunging.

I screamed, but before it even left my mouth, I was half covered inside the snake’s mouth.

My first thought amidst the panic was how warm it was. And my second thought was how I could feel the venom flowing through its fangs as it pumped it into my back.

I instantly froze my aura on my back, my thoughts returning to the moment where I suffocated when I stopped moving the aura in my body.

The snake clamped down on even stronger and my feet lifted off from the ground as it was raised me upside down. It released its maws as it let gravity do its work and closed its maws again, swallowing me completely while I was paralyzed by the pain.

I held my aura at my back in complete stasis but I doubt it even had an effect as my head vibrated back and forth while my vision blurred with colors. And that too while I was being swallowed into its stomach.

I tried to grip the walls of the inside to prevent myself from being further pushed inside when I noticed the kitchen knife I was holding in my hands. Hope rose within me from seeing it, but suddenly my body was crushed as the muscles of the snake contracted and my back bent forward into my ribs like a paper being folded while I was upside down inside it.

I was completely out of breath, or rather my lungs were crushed out of their breath and I couldn’t feel my legs or my lower body anymore.

I tried to cut the inside of the snake with my knife, only for my hands to flail and shake like the hands of a Parkinson’s patient. I activated vitality for my hands to regain the strength and stability needed, only to be crushed again by the muscle walls and going further inside the stomach.

I was half drowning from snake gut juice as I tried to breathe in some oxygen to my depleting brain.

My depleting mind and spirit were at the brink of giving up as I saw no way I could survive, but I got a second wind when it momentarily stopped squeezing, giving me a moment to breathe. Sensing the opportunity, I flexed my hands as I stabbed the wall with my knife, stopping my descent momentarily.

Sensing the only chance I would get, my eyes went ablaze as I burned vitality to the maximum, intending to tear through its stomach.

The knives sharpened and strengthened as they drank my vitality, and I forced my shaking hands to slash through the stomach with everything I’ve got.

It didn’t do anything!

I panicked as the augmented knife, enough to cut through walls, failed to cut the inches of thick flesh. The snake, feeling me still struggling inside it, crushed me further as it forced me down into its stomach.

The gut juice burned my skin, but I was more in danger of being suffocated to death rather than being digested.

I was completely spent after that final resistance. My body felt weak from being thrashed and crushed and the intestine walls covered tightly over my body, not allowing any movement.

My vision turned to black as my sense of touch and hearing also slowly dissipated as I laid down in my coffin.

With my eyes slowly losing their sight, I saw the only thing I could see, my soul.

Time slowed as I saw their brilliance as it shined like a million white jewels stones inside of me. I saw the indefinably small grains that meshed together as a single unit to make the river-like aura, flowing through my body.

Keeping me alive.

Seeing something so brilliant inside of me whilst I was in such a horrible state, I was filled with feelings of wanting to keep it alive. Wanting to preserve this spectacle.

To not let something as brilliant as this inside of me die.

My focus turned towards the aura occupying the knife. I saw the knife shaped aura in my hands; it was thin like a fog and motionless when comparing to the thick flow of aura flowing like a river in my body.

I focused on the aura in my arms that held the knife and drove it towards the knife. Either due to being in a life-or-death situation or due to some other reason, it responded immediately, flowing quickly towards the knife and occupying it.

I watched as the sparse aura fill up to be as thick as to not be bested by any amount in my body, but I didn’t stop there. I kept going, forcefully moving all the aura I had in my body, towards the knife I held.

Cramping everything I had inside of it.

My sentience momentarily blinked out and waned, but I kept going, driven by pure instinct and emotion. I watched it as it got thicker, bigger, and brighter until the knife seemed like a beaming light to my inward sense.

I couldn’t see anything with my physical eye nor could I feel much of anything, but I saw the packed beacon of aura that the knife held move upwards through the flesh that was supposed to be there.

A breath of fresh air brought my waning conscience back as my reanimated eyes saw the concrete ceiling through the hole that I cut open.

I held one opening of the torn flesh as the snake thrashed in pain. And with a fresh of breath air, literally, I flailed my even sharpened kitchen knife around. Gutting the insides of the creature that ate me.

After my 10th or so slice I was suddenly thrown outside, along with the snake’s guts and flesh. Landing roughly on the floor, though I couldn’t feel pain anymore.

I puked out everything that I’ve ingested for the past few minutes and collapsed onto the icy floor.

The snake thrashed behind me as its guts were further spilled, then lost its energy and died down slowly.

With a dim feeling of relief and disbelief that I actually survived, my body and mind relaxed as it slowly proceeded to shut down but in my dimming eyesight, I saw that the icy floor and the tiny icy breath that I made was increasing in size and frostiness, not decreasing.

It took me a moment because of the aftereffects of oxygen deprivation and because I couldn’t feel the cold anymore but my eyes widened as I realized that the snake, in its dying breath was trying to take me with it as well.

I tried getting up, but my lower body, along with my legs, remained unresponsive. A rising fear came in me that I was paralyzed, but I focused on the current predicament and activated vitality, and tried to drag myself towards the dying snake’s body.

Using vitality felt like trying to pump water from a dried-out well, but I kept burning it to its maximum as I dragged my frozen and paralyzed body with only my arms.

I dragged myself inside the snake’s open wound and squirmed myself inside its bleeding organs and flesh.

If it was possible, I would have sent it to the other side quicker, but just dragging myself here took all that I had, and I knew I didn’t have it in me to do anything else.

Even as everything around me started turning into icicles, the inside of the monster, the source of all this coldness, was paradoxically warm. Hot even.

I could still hear the pumping heart of the beast that I was inside of. Thick and strong, but also slowly losing its strength. My vision lost its light, then even my last remaining feeling of my body as everything turned to dark. But I could still hear the rhythmic pumping heart of the beast.

Slowly dying and going quiet.

Then finally completely quiet.

The familiar energy flowed through me from the monster. But the scale was completely different. It came in like a dam that was broken and the energy turned from pleasant and reinvigorating to painful very quickly.

The minute feeling of wrongness every time I killed something appeared this time in a much more magnified fashion.

The energy flowing through me now felt physically revolting as it wormed inside of me, invading my very sense of being. I felt like I was getting irreversibly damaged and disfigured as the flow painfully incorporated within me.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, it let up and I relaxed back into the guts of the snake. The final view I saw were the words that came through my lightless eye.

Exceeding level of corruption:

Soul Composition Permanently Altered