Glimpse

The man gave a smile filled with jagged and rotting teeth before lunging at me. He was faster than I would have expected given the numerous weeping sores across his flesh and just how thin he was; other than a potbelly likely full of rotting gas and parasites, he was so thin his bones almost jutted out of his filth encrusted skin.

I had seen many homeless people in my time, been one in fact; the only ones that would ever let themselves get this bad while living in a city full of stealable food are those too batshit insane to take care of themselves. Cynical as I most assuredly am, I have seen the power preying on the guilt of those so cursed as to care about others and simply begging for food has; unless this society is populated entirely by psychopaths (a possibility I couldn’t ignore), this man should have been able to acquire at least some food.

That’s not to say he couldn’t starve to death, just that this particular degree of malnutrition is rare to achieve in a functioning city (though, I couldn’t discount the possibility of there being some sort of famine or siege going on). Death usually comes from disease, violence, and exposure; starvation rarely gets a chance to ply its bloody trade.

Of course, his poor health was nothing but a benefit to me; If I could have my enemies nine tenths starved and batshit insane all the time, I’d happily ensure it.

His filth encrusted fingers slammed into the earth where I stood a moment before, slamming into the stone with an audible snap of breaking bones. Apparently his body quite literally couldn’t withstand the force it was capable of producing, as the fingers bent backwards on his hand displayed.

He didn’t seem to notice or care, his feverish eyes tracking me unerringly despite what must have been complete agony. Then again, considering how black his fingers were and how sluggishly blood oozed from where his bones had torn through them, it wasn’t impossible he simply couldn’t feel them any more.

I kept a grimace from my face as the apparently rotting man before me rose up on all fours like some rabid animal; this is far beyond the norm for even the most deranged and unhealthy desolate souls I had met or even heard of. Not only starved ‘till his skin stretched thin across his brittle bones but literally rotting alive?

My eyes narrowed as sickly yellow drool leaked between teeth so rotten even the healthiest parts were more black than brown or yellow. Curiosity and disgust stirring in equal measure, I Observed the wretch.

Name: Gregor

Main Title: The Starving One

Race: Withered Wretch

Level: 15

HP: 372/386

SP: 621/625

MP: 212/212

My narrowed eyes widened as I skipped back out of the reach of the rotting claws this… creature had in place of fingers. Looking closer, the incongruous nature of this beast began to stand out without the veil of human assumption over it; it’s eyes were devoid of humanity in a way even the most twisted psychotic rarely was, insects crawled from open sores to scuttle across its flesh without actually consuming any of it, it dripped with filth and disease yet seemed able to move and live despite this.

The darkest corners of my mind began to speculate at just what this abomination looked beneath the skin for a moment before I shoved aside such thoughts to focus on survival; it hardly matters what its insides look like when its outsides are trying to kill me.

The creature I had mistaken for a man gave a phlegmatic giggle as it crouched down, bringing its damaged hand to its face and setting about gnawing off its own fingers. The image was so grotesque and horrid it had even me reeling back in disgust; though, my mind was mostly focused on how fucking pointless it is to eat your own flesh. The energy you gain from the meat is less than what you lose from the wound! So inefficient! So wasteful!

Not to mention seeing a segmented, lamprey mouthed insect slither out between the abomination’s rotten teeth to envelop and consume mouldering fingers was just about the most fucking repulsive thing I’d ever seen in my life. I’d need to cleanse myself in fire once I finished purging this living sin from the earth.

Repulsed as I was, I wasn’t about to let an enemy have a moment's reprieve; while they were busy with their rousing round of autocannibalism, I focused on drawing the Blight to my mostly intact claws. Normally, the few seconds of focus it took to infuse anything with that inexorable greyness was more than I could even think of sparing in the middle of a fight, but seeing as my prey was more focused on happily taking chunks out of their arm with increasing gusto, I had time.

As the uncomfortably comfortable feeling of the colourless corruption suffused my right paw, I opened eyes I hadn’t realised I’d closed to see the stumps where that cretinous wretch’s fingers used to be had massive, squirming yellow maggots protruding from them and wriggling happily through the air. I suppressed my welling nausea with a spike of hatred for the loathsome creature, took a deep breath, and rushed forward.

My three legged stride closed the distance quickly, but not quickly enough to wholly avoid notice. Blue eyes watched me with a hungry sort of curiosity as the maggots that replaced his fingers drooled a vile yellow-green substance, each drop giving off a hissing smoke on contact with the earth. I got within four feet before the creature swiped its maggot fingered hand at me, sending a spray of this apparent acid my way.

I threw myself to the side, letting out a hiss of furious pain as I avoided being soaked in that unspeakable fluid but couldn’t quite avoid the few droplets that scattered out from the impact. My already scorched fur and flesh sizzeled and burned beneath the organic acid, even the tiny droplets causing an electric pain that would have brought me to my knees had I not so recently experienced being steamed alive.

HP -2

Pain Resistance +1

A pained snarl on my lips, I leapt forward. The man-shaped monstrosity smiled at me, lashing out with its intact hand.

It realised its mistake as I contorted around its cracked and feculent black claws, my Blighted paw carving a shallow gash in the creature’s putrescent hide as it passed below me. For the first time since I had seen the man-thing, an expression besides hunger and amusement stretched across its face; stark terror. The sheer fear in the creature’s eyes was punctuated by a howl of horror and pain as the many parasites beneath the creature’s skin began tearing their way out, abandoning their host and condemning themselves to die on the ground rather than allowing the spreading grey to touch them.

I landed on all fours in a crouch, watching the flailing creature with a wary eye. As the various parasites fleeing its body began succumbing to the open air, a flood of single experience points dinged in the corner of my mind; even so, I refused to take my gaze off my prey until it succumbed completely. Even when the single digit points managed to make me level up, my eyes remained locked on the writhing wretch.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

The creature desperately gnawed at its arm above the spreading grey, trying furiously to tear the limb free but only managing to spread the Blight to its mouth as the infection reached its rotted teeth. It began vomiting grey slime, the fluid spreading the corruption even further across its body and to the surrounding stone. As the creature spasmed and writhed, clawing desperately at itself with its fingerless hand and only further spreading the Blight, its terrified blue eyes locked with my own.

In that brief moment, the madness that had danced behind those orbs was gone, an entirely human terror shining out like spotlights of dread. Those eyes expressed a fear unlike any I had ever seen, a dread that went far beyond the animal terror induced by unstoppable death. Those eyes screamed with the existential dread of a man that saw in his last moments that there was no hope, no heaven, nothing.

In the last moment before the Blight swallowed his eyes, I witnessed a man’s soul die. Somehow, the knowledge that the thing before me was utterly and completely gone, not merely dead but subsumed and destroyed beyond all hope of recovery, filled my mind. As the man shaped animal before me gave one last twitch and went dreadfully still, I could almost hear his soul screaming as it dissolved into the vast greyness.

Withered Wretch Destroyed +847 Exp

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

You have leveled up! +10 stat points.

Title gained: Plague Bringer

You have reached the level cap for your race, evolve to continue leveling!

The knowledge that I was on the cusp of evolving once more with only two kills (and a bunch of bugs, I suppose) was almost enough to tear my gaze away from the rapidly cooling body of the humanoid; the sheer tempting delight of evolution so very close nearly dropping my guard...

And then the body twitched, a smile spreading across a dead face as empty eyes widened. I watched as the near melted corpse slowly began to rise, an expression of utterly peaceful contentment incongruously spreading across a face torn by an expression of unending horror. The monochrome man slowly rose to his feet, dusting itself off and sending a spray of grey fluid around it in the process. It glanced at me, sending me a cheerful nod, and turned away.

Humming a pleasant tune, the creature began walking to the mouth of the alley, every foot step sending creeping grey veins through the ground beneath it. It dragged its fingerless hand against the wall of the alley, leaving a spreading trail of Blight behind.

Just as it reached the exit out into the larger city and more direct (if still dim and diluted) sunlight, I scanned it with Observe.

Blighted: A small piece of the greater whole, this vessel shall spread blighted unity to all it can.

Well, that isn’t ominous at all…