…
Sometime earlier
“Stop!” Mariah heard a roar, “I said stop!” She stopped breathing at the desperation in his voice.
‘Peter! Please be safe.’ Her legs sped up to reach the stairs. Her eyes begged to look upon her child, to ensure he was okay. Before she could cross half the distance, something vast and invisible slammed upon her shoulders. She stumbled, barely able to stay upright. A grimace twisted her face as her tendons protested.
With her steps uneven, she leaned against the wall and slid down. Looking straight ahead, she witnessed more than a dozen kobolds trembling on the stairs, lying on their bellies. A grunt escaped her lips, her frantic eyes unable to locate her son. Breathing required considerable effort.
‘What is this? What is doing this?’ Blood rose upwards, making her vision spin, reddening her cheeks. Her lips parted again, tongue moved, yet her throat failed to produce any sound. Mariah felt her heart quicken, trying to escape her chest.
Her head hurt, her soul creaked, and the world blurred around her. It was oppressive, suffocating, but still bearable despite the ache she felt deep within her being. The kobolds were writhing, crushed under the weight. She was just an unwilling casualty, faring much better.
Even as kobolds crawled away, Mariah stood frozen. The air stayed thick, but her lungs no longer fought it. Unlike before, the invisible vastness acted with purpose. Mariah groaned, standing up. As she reached the stairs, Mariah leaned sideways to look below, witnessing the cause of her recent misery. It was her son.
Peter stared ahead. A palpable aura surrounded his body, his face twisted in hatred as he looked at the kobolds outside Mariah’s sight. Mariah grasped, beholding her son’s shadow expand ahead. From it, a being – an abomination rose, standing before him. Mariah felt her spine tingle, goosebumps under her skin. A terror like never before assaulted her mind.
‘Peter! No- Don’t just stand there. Run- please run away,’ Mariah begged, falling to her knees again as tears streamed down her cheeks. Mariah scratched her limbs, feeling bugs crawl under her skin. This being, its very presence felt unnatural to her, like it shouldn’t exist. Mariah felt tormented, her eyes feasting on the corrupted being that went against the very fabric of the world.
Mariah wanted to crawl away, but her son was locked into a staring contest with the eldritch horror. Peter wobbled when the abomination tried to control him. Mariah’s breath hitched as it spread its evil aura toward Peter.
Both clashed, the discernible aura around Peter spreading outward to grind against the abomination’s foulness. Mariah was caught in the middle. The tangible aura around Peter didn’t falter. It advanced swiftly, resisting corruption with overwhelming strength, but Mariah’s mind did not. Her soul was barely a candle compared to the abomination’s campfire and Peter’s inferno soul.
As the palpable aura spread to fight against the eldritch spirit’s pollution, it covered Mariah’s already fragile soul from irreparable harm. Her soul might have been protected from the worst, but her mind was unprotected. She lacked mental defences, unlike Peter. Her eyes rolled back as her mind fractured. With a thud, her head hit the wall.
…
Peter’s gaze stopped on each skill, noting the increase in levels before it found a new section just under the skills. One reserved for contracted summons.
‘Not now. Not here,’ he decided, vowing to check it later before rushing to check up on his mother. As he walked toward the house, he noticed the unusual quiet that had replaced all the noise from the night. A glance upwards revealed a reddish hue dominating the eastern sky, a phenomenon that occurred just before sunrise. Crossing the threshold of the house, he made his way toward the stairs. “Mom! We’re fine now. You can come out,” Peter called out softly, his tone gentle and caring as he climbed the steps.
Very soon, he saw Mariah slumped on the floor, her head tilted sideways against the wall. With her eyes closed, saliva dripping from the corner of her lips, she remained unresponsive. Concerned – no, alarmed about her condition, Peter hurried up the stairs, skipping steps in his rush.
Reaching her side, he sat down. A deep frown settled on his face as he shook her lightly. “Mom…” he whispered, carefully pulling her head onto his lap. Mariah stirred at his touch. Slowly, her eyes opened and settled on him, and in their hollow, empty look, there was still a faint trace of recognition.
Her face twisted in anguish as recognition turned into fear. Clutching his clothes, she started to shiver. Peter slowly stroked her back, whispering assurances to calm her down. At first, Peter thought she was just frightened, likely shaken from the night’s events. But she kept clinging to him, crying harder. Listening to her hysterical whispers continuously between sobs, Peter felt a cold pit of worry settle in his stomach.
Peter’s breath hitched, a knot tightening painfully in the middle of his chest, ‘What happened to her? She was fine just a moment ago. Why?’ Tears threatened to blur his vision.
“Mom…?” he muttered, his voice barely above a whisper, searching her face for any sign of clarity. His presence had some effect on her. She calmed down enough to stop bawling her eyes out, but she still wouldn’t respond to him properly. Her hollow eyes stared past him. Unfocused. Lost. A sense of helplessness crept up his spine, tightening that knot in his chest even further.Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Without wasting another second, Peter activated Inspect, desperate to understand what was wrong with her.



Inspect {Human}...


Name:
Mariah
Race:
Human


Class:
Hearth Keeper lv. 72, Commoner lv. 1
Level:
73


Title:
None
Age:
41


Health:
410/830
Mana:
105/410


Stats...


Constitution:
83
Spirit:
41


Strength:
32
Agility:
30


Intelligence:
20




Skills:
Cooking Lv. 38, DustAway Lv. 22, Warmth of home Lv. 68, Gentle Glow Lv. 26
Status:
Soul Injury lv. 1, Mental trauma lv. 3, Mental corruption lv.5



 
Peter’s heartbeat stilled in horror as he looked at her status. He couldn’t believe what he was looking at. His eyes wide with disbelief, face wet with newly shed tears, he took another look.
‘This can’t be… what did she do? How did this happen? How!?’ he wept in anguish, shouting at the ceiling. ‘What is this injustice? ’ Clutching Mariah’s head to his chest, Peter wailed. In response to his decreasing mental stability, his defensive skills surged, creating a mental ward to keep negative emotions away.
Eternal Ward safeguarded his mental faculties, and Spirit of Fortitude resisted mental breakdown. While Undying Vitality nourished his sanity. Once he was capable of thinking again, it didn’t take Peter long to realise who had harmed her. It was him. He was responsible for her current state. Knowingly or unknowingly. This was the result of his actions.
A single glance at her face felt like a knife plunging deep into his heart, twisting slowly, tearing him apart from within. Shame. Hurt. Regret. They crashed down on him all at once. Grief spilt from his eyes, despite the constant reinforcement from his defensive skills. Mariah stayed rooted with a blank expression adorning her beautiful face, her body fully relaxed in his embrace.
….
Narrator P.O.V.
DeathKnell glided across the forest floor, melting into the shadows, after the running kobolds.
‘Kill! Kill! Kill!’ Deathknell thought. That’s all it ever thought. It only knew slaughter. Foolish mutts kept running, not realising that they were leading it straight to their nest.
The Walking Calamity had been clear when he gave the order — kill them all. And from the emotions shared through their contract bond, DeathKnell knew he didn’t just want them dead. He wanted them to suffer.
DeathKnell could have killed them long ago. There was no need to trail them like this, but then it would have had to hunt down the others by itself. So it waited, hidden among his domain, trailing after kobolds without their knowledge.
Now and then, one of the kobolds would collapse, too exhausted to run any further. Kobolds were too terrified to care about the exhausted brethren. They were never too loyal to each other to begin with. The tribe could give birth to more, even if some died while escaping.
Once the kobold left their brethren too far behind, DeathKnell pulled abandoned ones with a flicker of shadow manipulation into oblivion. Nothing extravagant, just tendrils made up of shadows, that grew spikes to inflicted as much pain as possible before sweet death arrived for the kobold.
At last, they arrived at the camp, soon to be their grave, along with their executioner. It was a growing community, right in the middle of the forest. Plenty of kobolds were scattered about, coming out of crude tents made of animal hides and bones or tree branches. A rough, newly erected wall of logs served as security for the camp.
When a dozen kobolds staggered into the camp, terror pheromones leaking from them in waves, it grabbed everyone’s attention. Everyone stopped their tasks and grew vigilant. The whole camp grew still, silent as they surveyed their surroundings for the incoming threat.
They looked past the exhausted survivors, eyes scanning the forest, trying to see what had driven them here in such a state. They saw nothing. They were helpless. Finding an eldritch creature that moved within the shadows, with a lack of scent on it, was close to impossible for them. It didn’t make sense to the kobolds. These fellow kobolds were coming from the direction of the village the scouts had found. From the same village, where their chief had sent two-thirds of her tribe to conquer.
‘Where are the others?’ They wondered. Before they could spend enough time thinking about it, Deathknell decided to act. In that moment, shadows moved as one, long spikes erupting to impale hundreds of kobolds in batches. Any that were impaled either died outright or were consumed alive as the spikes grew teeth that bit them into pieces. It was gruesome, grotesque, and remorseless. The tribe attempted to scatter, but walls made up of shadows arose all along the perimeter of the camp, keeping them imprisoned.
Deathknell massacred them all — even the young pups, barely a few days old. Wherever the tide of shadows went, it left a pool of blood in its wake. This was Deathknell’s purpose. Killing was the only thing it knew.
Deathknell kept killing until it had consumed the corpses of every last kobold. Once it was done, it moved toward the cave. It could feel a rich mana presence emanating from within the entrance, and it remembered what Walking Calamity had told it.
‘Leave none alive. What if some were inside the cave?’ It thought. Without hesitation, Deathknell moved along the long path, killing any kobolds it encountered along the way.
In the end, the path opened into a chamber. With a ceiling rising five meters high and ten meters between each wall, it was spacious. Inside stood a total of eight kobolds, carrying crude weapons, clad in rusted iron armour. Based on the aura of their mana stones, each of them stood at the peak of Tier One in strength. It didn’t matter to Deathknell. Its only instinct was to kill.
These kobolds died just like the rest of their weaker kin, slaughtered without resistance. Helpless against the mass of shadows controlled by the Eldritch Spirit, more than twice as powerful as the kobolds. Once the killing finished, Deathknell started to survey its vicinity.
Drawn toward the rich mana presence radiating from the far side of the chamber, Deathknell extended a tentacle, smashed through the wall, and moved inside to investigate. There it was. The dungeon core. Defenceless, it could do nothing as Deathknell moved to consume it.