Anthesis of Sadness
Chapter 51: Regenerate. Suffer. Start Again

Chapter 51: Regenerate. Suffer. Start Again

I was inside the slug. Or what could be called inside.

An enclosed, moving, wet, living space.

As if I were being swallowed by an endless throat, a mouth that meant nothing but "die."

The walls pulsed around me, compressing me with rhythmic, fleshy spasms.

The heat was inhuman.

Not just hot. Suffocating. Devouring.

I was bathing in a thick, red-orange fluid, halfway between acid and lava, too dense to be liquid, too hot to be real.

My skin screamed.

My muscles peeled off my bones in places.

My flesh melted before my eyes, blistered, torn, boiling, even as my cells desperately tried to reform.

But they didn’t have time.

I was suffocating.

Each breath filled my mouth with a metallic, burning taste, and blood I couldn’t even distinguish from pus.

I had to drink.

Blood. Any blood.

I had to regenerate.

I crawled, or rather slid, through this living tunnel. My hands scraped against the internal, pulsing, warm, gelatinous walls.

I was nothing but a chunk of meat clinging to existence.

I unsheathed my claws.

And I went wild.

I clawed. I stabbed. I bit.

I screamed into the viscous mass.

My jaw clenched with every contact with this burning blood, this fetid, rich fluid, source of both pain and survival.

I drank.

And I burned.

I regenerated.

And I melted again.

An infernal cycle.

Agony. Repair. Pain. Restoration.

My body was entangled in a perpetual loop of suffering.

And yet, I continued.

I dug. I moved forward. I refused to die here.

— I’m going to kill her..., I growled, sinking my fangs into the beast’s inner wall, tearing off fragments of viscous flesh, vomiting fire and blood with each gulp.

But...

This world doesn’t like winners.

It never offers a free victory.

I had forgotten.

I had forgotten that this world wanted me dead.

In front of me, the flesh closed up.

Slow. Inexorable.

Like a wound knitting itself back together, a maw sealing shut.

Regeneration.

Her too.

She was regenerating too.

And she wasn’t healing her wounds to protect herself.

She was doing it to keep me. To absorb me.

She wanted to digest me alive. To feed on me slowly. To savor my flesh, to feel me struggle, and start again, and again.

A being without eyes, without voice, but whose hunger had become an entity in itself.

I could feel her pleasure.

The vile satisfaction of a beast that had found a prey able to resist, just long enough to be delicious.

I struck again.

I screamed.

I burned.

In this eternal suffering... I unleashed myself.

I tore away mental chains, brakes, illusions.

I let the thing out.

The one sleeping deep inside me.

The one Cassandra had made disappear.

I’m not going to die here.

— You want to play, slug? I’ve got all eternity to offer you.

My claws gutted the moving flesh.

My fangs tore through nerves, crushed veins.

I drank, I vomited, I regenerated, I melted.

I killed. And I died.

Again. Again. Again.

The creature writhed, convulsed, squeezed me, digested me.

And I laughed in her face.

But the pain... the pain never went away.

It seeped in. It gnawed at me.

And my consciousness...

My consciousness fragmented.

Thoughts mingled.

Memories oozed through the cracks.

And that’s when...

She came back.

The voice.

The woman’s voice.

Cold. Gentle. Deadly.

— You’re doing what you do best, huh? Running away.

— Once again... right at the critical moment...

— Shut up...

— You’re going to leave Lysara behind. Like Lucas. Like the others.

— You regenerate, but you’re already dead inside, Anthony.

I screamed. A bestial scream, drowned in the mass of flesh.

I clawed harder. I bit until I broke my own teeth.

My jaw shattered against an internal bone.

I spat out fragments of myself. I bled black.

— You never change.

— You want to live? For what? You want to protect? You’ve never protected anyone.

— SHUT UP!

— You want to survive? You let Lucas die. You’re going to leave Lysara alone too. That’s what you do. You leave.

I started laughing.

A torn, sick laugh that echoed in the organic cavern.

And I struck.

Again. Again. Again.

The walls screamed with me.

Blood spurted in geysers, hot, acidic, black.

But for every wound I inflicted...

It closed back up.

It regenerated too.

— It’s you she’s digesting, Anthony. Not your body. You.

I slammed my skull against the wall.

Again.

Again.

I wanted to silence the voice.

I wanted to blow my head apart.

— Cassandra wouldn’t even recognize you. You’ve even forgotten her scent, haven’t you?

— I HATE YOU!

— No. You hate yourself. And you cling on. Like a cockroach. Like a parasite.

I started crying blood.

Thick tears that ran down my burned chest.

The pain was everywhere.

My skin melted. My blood boiled. My bones popped in and out through my pores.

But I loved it.

Because as long as I suffered, I was alive.

And I wanted to live.

Live.

LIVE.

— Then show it, Anthony.

— Show me how far you can go. Break yourself. Let the beast out for good. That’s all that will be left anyway.

— I’LL SHOW YOU, YOU BASTARD!

I started tearing off chunks of my own flesh to spit them back into the beast.

I dug with my teeth.

I ripped out my own ribs to use them as hooks.

I was becoming my own tool of destruction.

And she could feel me.

She was beginning to tremble.

I had already died a hundred times, and yet I still crawled.

Nothing remained.

No more pain.

No more fear.

Only hatred.

Hatred.

Hatred.

HATRED.

And it was going to get me out of here.

And suddenly...

Ding!

A sound.

Clear. Light. Perfect.

Like a silver bell, a crystalline chime.

Completely out of place.

My skull reeled.

My muscles froze.

— What?

I slowly turned my head toward the sound.

My eyes, half-melted, struggled to adjust.

And there, I saw.

Your skill [Regenerative Blood (Expert)] has evolved to Master rank!

And that’s when hell truly began. Unable to die, yet unable to truly kill the slug either, I was trapped in a cycle of perpetual slaughter.

I no longer knew how many days had passed.

Or if the word "day" even had meaning here.

The flesh crushed me.

The lava swallowed me.

The acid dissolved me.

And yet...

I didn’t die.

I clawed, again.

I bit, again.

I dug. I bled. I screamed.

And she, the slug, closed up every time.

Calm. Proud. Voracious.

— You struggle well for a corpse.

— I’m not dead...

— No. Not yet. But you’re not alive anymore either, are you?

I spat blood.

I dug my fingers into the wall.

I felt a heart beating somewhere.

A slow, vile beat.

And I plunged my arm into it up to the elbow, blindly.

CRACK.

A spasm.

A scream.

A rain of acid fell on me.

I burned. I melted.

But I laughed.

— That’s it? That’s all you’ve got?

— You look like what you used to hate, you know?

— A dog. Biting what it doesn’t understand.

— I UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING!

— You understand nothing. You think you’re fighting to live? You’re fighting because you have nothing else. You’re fighting because otherwise... you’d have to think.

— You fight to forget that you let them all die. Lucas. And that woman...

— You fight to forget you are a monster — a monster who killed more people than he can remember.

Faces were forming in the wall.

Faces of melted flesh.

They cried.

They looked at me.

They accused me.

— I HAD NO CHOICE!

— And that’s why you broke them. You and your existence, you bring ruin. That’s what you do. You stay alive, and everything else dies around you.

I tore out a strip of flesh.

And I kept striking.

— I DON’T CARE!

— I’LL KILL HER! I’LL TEAR HER APART!

— Even if you succeed... then what? You’ll get out of here? Go where? Who would want what’s left of you?

— You don’t want to get out, Anthony. You want to die slowly, in pain, because that’s all you think you deserve.

I screamed. I cried.

My tears were black.

My bones jutted out.

My muscles hung like soaked ropes.

And I crawled.

Again.

Again.

The slug convulsed.

I was hurting her.

She digested me.

A couple. A loop. A dance.

And I felt she too was beginning to yield.

To recognize me.

To fear me.

But I was no longer sure I was a man.

I was becoming a poison.

An infection.

A furious idea refusing to die.

— Look at yourself, Anthony...

— You can’t even stand. You crawl through blood, you don’t even know what you want anymore. You’re just a scream refusing to go out.

— I want to live...

— No. You want to be punished. And that’s exactly what you’re doing.

I laughed.

A dry, broken, trembling laugh.

Then I spat out my teeth.

And with what remained of my jaw, I bit.

Again.

Again.

Again.

After a time...

Long? Short? An eternity?

I no longer knew.

My consciousness was just an empty shell, floating in pain.

I had no more thoughts. No more emotions.

Just reflex. Just hatred.

Just the instinct to hurt.

Maybe hours.

Maybe days.

Maybe weeks.

I crawled still.

My blood stuck to my skin, my skin to my bones, and my bones sometimes slipped loose onto the living ground of this beast.

I had no more shape.

No more name.

I was just a groan.

And then...

Ding!

Again.

The same sound.

Clear. Precise. Clean.

Abnormal. Perfectly... recognizable.

My mind tore apart with surprise.

I smiled.

I had heard it before.

But now... I heard it again.

And it was real.

I slowly turned my head, my neck creaking like burned leather.

My eyes, corroded by acid, riddled with clotted blood, struggled to open.

But I saw.

Your skill [Blood Manipulation (Expert)] has evolved to Master rank!

And I felt it.

Not as a thought.

Not as an illumination.

As a certainty. Visceral. Total.

It was an evolution.

Not just a level. A fracture in logic. A leap I shouldn’t have crossed... but that I had surpassed.

The greatest.

The deepest.

The most violent I had ever experienced.

I could feel my blood.

Every drop.

Every filament.

Every microscopic shard.

I felt everything.

It flowed, slowly, everywhere inside my body, and outside.

In wounds, in acid, in folds of foreign flesh.

But I could control it.

I could choose.

Its speed. Its direction.

I could make it swirl in my right arm while solidifying it in my left leg.

I could make it exit.

Project it.

Twist it.

Make it dance into blades, into spikes, into tendrils.

I could recall it.

Absorb it.

Even if it had coagulated. Even if it had touched enemy flesh.

It was mine.

— Finally... I thought in a breath, unable to believe the clarity invading me.

The slug was still breathing around me.

But me...

I was breathing differently.

I no longer needed brute force.

I no longer needed a weapon.

My blood had become my power.

My flesh, my armor.

My pain, a forge.

And in this world that wanted my death...

I was finally becoming what I should always have been.

The predator.

The slug still breathed around me.

But I...

I breathed differently.

I no longer needed brute force.

I no longer needed a weapon.

My blood had become my power.

My flesh, my armor.

My pain, a forge.

And in this world that wanted my death...

I was finally becoming what I should always have been.

The predator.

My regeneration accelerated.

No...

It exploded.

My blood manipulation was no longer a skill.

It was raw will, an extension of myself, a rage made flesh.

I knew I could do it now.

I had to do it.

So I let everything go.

All my blood.

What hadn’t been absorbed yet, what lingered in the tissues, in my ruined limbs...

I made it come out.

It tore itself from me like a scream, like a vengeful groan.

And in a deafening silence...

I turned it into a storm.

Thousands of needles, fine, dense, sharpened by my hatred, spun in every direction.

They struck the beast’s inner flesh, lacerating it, digging into it.

Meanwhile, I fed.

I tore the slug’s blood.

I drank straight from the open veins, sucking her life as she had sucked mine.

And with each gulp, I produced more blood.

And with each heartbeat, I forged new blades.

I reproduced the pattern.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Draining the beast.

Filling the space.

My blood became an ocean.

My will, a hurricane.

She still fed on me.

On my bones.

On my flesh.

On my suffering.

But my strength was rising.

Again.

And again.

I began to surpass her.

To dominate her.

Her regeneration... I drowned it under the weight.

Every wound I inflicted on her came faster than her flesh could seal.

And then... I gathered everything.

All the needles.

All the drops.

All the fragments.

I made them spin.

A sphere.

An artificial heart.

A bloody sun.

A star born in a world no longer worthy of light.

And I made it explode.

A devastating, visceral, shattering detonation.

Hundreds of liters of blood.

Thousands of projectiles.

Every angle. Every fiber. Every corner.

Searched. Destroyed. Impaled.

I massacred everything.

Without distinction.

Without mercy.

It was divine punishment.

Then... an idea.

A flash of lucidity in the madness.

— I can cover myself...

Cover my body with blood.

Like a layer.

Like armor.

A red, living, resistant coat.

It insulated my flesh from the corrosive fluid.

It made me invulnerable.

And at that moment, she no longer regenerated.

She trembled.

She convulsed.

She died.

Torn apart from the inside by a storm of needles, carried away by a red wind, fast, unstoppable.

And I...

I stood in the heart of the carnage, like a god born from blood.