The Horror stood before the boy. He had seen many before and they came in all sorts of grotesque shapes and forms, yet this one was unnerving. What was before him was a titan standing around twenty feet tall with four overly muscular arms that had bulging, wriggling violet veins. Its fingers were like tree branch tentacles that split and parted until they were small thin strands, which had been used to control the two humans that the boy had just fought.

Its legs were similarly muscular and veiny, and it’s so called toes were five claws with two opposable digits on the sides of its feet. While that in itself was gross, it was the face that was the unnerving part of the Horror. Its head was devoid of hair and was overly large to the point that the Horror was hunched over. It face looked as if a baby’s face had been enlarged with its eyes sunken in, leaving only shriveled black eye sockets. The same violet veins wormed and squiggled throughout, occasionally pulsing. It let out a wail that was both ear piercingly high pitched and bone rattling deep.

Yet the boy stood his ground against such a being as he had faced Horrors before. They were horrible monsters that killed undiscriminating, they fed on the essence of fear in people and made them suffer in order to strain more out of them.

The Horror raised its four arms as the tentacles started to elongate and stretch towards the boy. There were far too many for either his whip or dagger to be effective so he would have to strike at the creature while avoiding them.

He dashed while keeping his body and gravity lower to the ground towards the creatures left, intent on circling around to its back. The Horror from what he had seen wasn’t all that fast, the massive amount of muscle that it had slowed it down as was meant more so for defense than offense or speed. While the Horror itself was slow, the tentacle fingers were not. Several crashed into the ground behind him leaving large holes, and more crashed in front of him in order to cut him off. He whipped his right arm forward as the whip sped forward, covered with a violet sheen, cutting through the several tentacles as thick as his thighs easily.

A violet colored pus-like consistency shot out of the severed tentacles and stained the ground. The boy continued to run paying no mind to the liquid that he had encountered many times before and let loose a crack of his whip. The whip stroke true, but the muscles of the monster had done their job and all that resulted from the strike was a small gash on its leg, a minor wound to a being such as the one before the Boy.

The boy kept dodging and weaving between the tentacles, his low stance allowing him to perform quick emergency rolls in case he wasn’t able to outrun the horde of dozens of split tentacle-like fingers. He managed to circle behind the Horror without too much trouble as he stared at it’s hunched over figure. He quickly pondered over the best solution to kill it and figured that one of it’s only weak points was the eyes. He was about to dash over to the Horror in an attempt to climb it in order to reach it’s eyes when he felt his left arm start to move without him controlling it.

The boy’s eyes narrowed and his pale blue eyes flashed and seemed to turn into an overly sharp blue color. His left arm, holding his dagger, shot towards his own throat. His body shone with a slight violet light and shifted and twisted, reminiscent of a snake, as the blade passed by leaving only a small cut on the left side of his throat. Red blood with a violet twinge trailed down his neck as a sign of his carelessness. Horrors were dangerous creatures and even the weakest ones would be able to kill a highly trained person if they were to let their guard down.

The boy looked at his left arm that had just tried to stab himself and noticed that there was a tentacle that was so thin that the only thing that gave it away was the glinting of the moonlight. He quickly dropped the whip in his hand and grabbed the tentacle in his arm before ripping it out. Luckily it wasn’t too latched in there and came out without too much trouble. He quickly re-equipped his whip while examining the creature’s movements. He saw the veins in it’s right leg pulse and the muscles tense up, it’s clawed feet penetrated the ground as it curled up. The boy’s body flashed with a slight violet light as he moved his arms to cover his face in preparation for what was to come.

The Horror’s leg shot backwards with great force, unleashing a tidal wave of dirt. Luckily the soil was loose here and only small stones and roots pelted the boy’s body but it wasn’t too much of a deal with his strengthened body. The troublesome part was that the main purpose of the Horror, blinding him for a moment had been achieved. That meant that the Horror had at least a rudimentary intelligence, causing the boy to raise the danger level in his head.

Even though the Horror had intelligence, rudimentary was rudimentary. The boy rushed forward through the remaining cloud of dust and dirt as he heard several thumps behind him. The monster as if without any joints, had turned its arms 180 with it’s front still facing forwards and it’s one leg still raised.

The boy flicked out his whip once again, violet surged as the whip seemed to extend and with precision it curled around the ankle of the Horror. The red veins of the boy thrummed and started to bulge, his muscles surged and his heart hammered blood through his body. He mustered every ounce of strength that he had in his body and twisted, pulling just enough that the monster was off balance and falling before releasing the whip from it’s ankle.

He quickly reached toward the injured part of his neck with his right hand and dipped his index and middle finger in the violet tinted blood before running it down the length of the flat of his dagger. The Horror toppled backwards as the dagger shone with a baleful blue light.

It landed as the ground trembled underneath it’s massive weight. The boy was around 50 feet away from it at that point before he took off running towards it. Around halfway to the Horror he threw the dagger in his left hand up into the air as the whip in his right hand coiled around the hilt. He ran for another second, the whip with the dagger trailing high up in the air behind him, before he jumped.

He soared through the air, over the Horror’s head, and looked directly into the sunken black spaces that it’s eyes would have occupied should it have had any. The moment seemed to slow down in time as the boy twisted his body in a way that would give him the most force before striking downward with all his might. The whip sailed past him as he watched the glowing dagger-whip combo land inside it’s empty right eye socket.

A massive crack sounded out as the sound caught up to his ears and he watched as the right side of the Horror’s head exploded. Violet pus, brain matter, and black bone flew outwards as if someone had set off explosives inside it’s head.

The boy landed on the remaining part of the head of the Horror, letting out a breath of relief as the Horror let out one last wail of its death throes before falling silent. The Horror this time wasn’t all that tough besides the annoying defensive muscles that it had. Every fight with a Horror was something that was impossible to predict, with the vast majority of Horrors being unique to themselves besides very rare occasions of swarm type Horrors.

“Should be around here.” He said as he retrieved his dagger from the coiled whip. He plunged the dagger into the Horror’s forehead, and with a bit of digging around, retrieved what looked to be a small violet core that was hidden away. At least he managed to get something useful out of the fight, unfortunately the core of the Horror was useless for him at the current point in time, being only a tier 6, so he held it over his whip and watched as the core liquified and soaked into the whip.

He took a step before falling to a knee, weakness overtaking his body. He was already in a bad state before his decision to confront the Horror and use his power, and now the consequences were quickly coming. Standing would be an effort much less fighting, and if he used his powers while in this state then the consequences wouldn't be something as minor as what he would have to do in a bit. Luckily there was an easy, albit disgusting, way of recovering that he would be able to do in order to refresh his power.

He slowly slid down the head of the Horror and landed on the ground before the Horror dissolved into a pile of violet liquid that evaporated into a violet mist due to the removal of it’s core. The boy looked up and noticed that the middle aged man running the tavern was running over to him.

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The tavern keeper watched as the boy faced down the unknown in front of him. He had no idea what a Horror exactly was besides the fact that it was incredibly dangerous and was generally invisible to the naked eye.

The only time it was possible for a regular human being without any totemic blessings to witness a Horror was either in their final moments before a Horror ended their life, or when someone who was blessed was fighting a Horror. And even then, as the fight between the boy and the Horror began all he was able to identify was a translucent outline of what the Horror had been. It was like the boy was fighting a distortion of light, with the only thing that he was fully able to see was the explosion at the end. It was possible to fully witness a Horror if the fight went on long enough, but most everyone would have fled by that point as it meant there was a high chance of the Horror winning the fight.

The boy had only taken just over a minute to kill both Manun and Anma as well as the Horror, which was a testament to his strength. The tavern keeper wasn’t sure how strong this particular Horror had been, but he had heard of stories of Horror’s wiping out villages without a trace. Either way, he needed to thank the boy for potentially saving more lives that the Horror would have possibly claimed in the future.

“Ya all right?” The tavern keeper called as he jogged over to the boy in concern. The boy was in rough shape by the looks of it, a large cut on his neck and several small cuts all over, as well as the fact that he was covered in dirt and looked worse than a beggar. The boy slowly stood up and started stumbling closer to him. The answer to his question was obvious based on the current state of the boy, so he hurried his pace to help him.

“Thank ya. Who knows ‘ow many lives ya saved today.” He said as he reached the boy, patting his shoulder with his left hand. He smiled before remembering that there were two casualties before the boy had gotten here.

“Sorry.” He heard, feeling pain in his chest. He must be feeling regret for not being able to save the two the tavern keeper thought. He had often felt that many times in the past during his time as a guard.

“S’alright. You can’t save ever-” He stopped mid sentence as he looked down and saw a hand retreating from his chest. The pain flared as he watched as the boy pulled something out. Confusion overtook him as he couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. In the boy’s hand was a beating heart. His beating heart. He watched as the boy held up the heart close to his mouth and watched as an ethereal violet glow lit up the boy’s jaw. He watched as it seemingly unhinged, weakness and coldness spreading throughout his body.

His eyes darkened as he watched the heart be dropped down his throat. He followed the heart as it bulged in his mouth, down into his chest and into his stomach. They had traded one Horror for another. He looked at the boy in his dirt covered face one last time and noticed his extremely pale blue eyes start to sharpen into a piercing blue that seemed to look through him. The boy reached over and grasped him by the shoulders, steadying him.

“Why.” He managed to wheeze out a question with the last of his strength. He had to know, even as the very life of him faded out.

“Sacrifices must be made. I’m sorry. I need my strength to fight.” The boy said as he looked him right in the eyes. The dirt underneath his eyes was visibly darker than that of the dirt remaining on his face. One life for how many else he would save during his lifetime.

Even though the sacrifice was unwilling, after seeing the guilt and tears shed by the boy, it was one he was gladly willing to make any day of the year. He was after all, just a failure of a guard who had listlessly managed until his middle ages. Perhaps this was repentance for the Armani, the orders that he had given that day still haunted his every dream.

The light faded from his eyes as he felt the cold fully overtake him. His time had come, yet he was just glad that his ending at least would help people instead of just continuing on like he had been living the past decades. He just had one more thing he had to know. One more thing before his passing.

“Name…” His mouth and vocal cords were barely in his control. He could feel it fading away just like everything else. His vision was dark and blurred to the point he could no longer see, every sound was like an echo thrice returned. Yet even then, the boy’s voice resounded in his ears.

“Ilon. My name is Ilon.” The voice that graced him with death responded. The voice that allowed him to ease a portion of his regrets, knowing that many others would be helped hopefully at the cost of himself. That the unworthy him had been chosen as a sacrifice brought a small smile to his face as everything faded.