Chapter 115 – Devourer of Wounds
Rin awoke to a quiet, unsettling stillness, the kind that only follows a violent storm. His eyes opened to a dim world, the air thick with the smell of decay and the sting of the poison swamp still clinging to his skin. His body ached, his muscles and bones bruised from the violent surges of death essence he had absorbed. Yet, despite the agony, something was wrong—something... unnatural.
His wounds—deep gashes across his torso, cuts that had torn through his flesh like a hot knife through paper—were healing far too quickly. It was not the normal, expected restoration of his flesh; no, this was something else. The pain of his injuries was still there, lingering like an open wound in his soul, but it was receding, fading into something deeper.
He sat up slowly, his mind still fogged from the aftermath of his previous ordeal. The altar, the hundredfold deaths, the power he had absorbed—all of it seemed to be coiling within him, a dark, gnawing presence at the edges of his consciousness. But now, something else stirred beneath the surface. It was subtle at first, like the faintest whisper at the back of his mind, an itch in the deepest recesses of his being.
And then he realized—his wounds weren't just healing. They were being... devoured.
Rin's fingers moved instinctively to his abdomen, where the deepest wound had been, a gaping slash across his stomach from when he had first confronted the altar's energy. The wound was gone, the skin knitted together as if it had never been torn open. But the pain was still there, gnawing at him, as if something else was feeding on it.
The realization hit him like a bolt of lightning.
A parasitic spirit.
His breath caught in his throat. He had heard of such things—parasites that latched onto souls, creatures that fed on pain and suffering, growing stronger with each wound they consumed. These entities were born of the most wretched, tortured deaths, fed on the despair and agony of their hosts. And now, one had attached itself to him.
He could feel it now, creeping under his skin, slithering beneath his flesh. It was not content to merely heal him—it was feeding, siphoning off the very essence of his pain and trauma. The parasite was bound to his very soul, nestled deep within him, thriving on his suffering.