Chapter 113: Chapter 109

Wait, how come ‘eldritch’ is listed in the immunities but not in resistance? 

How come I don’t have that on me? 

Argh, nevermind. Priorities.

I tried to slap on the damage immunity lines onto myself, and thankfully it worked, at least I hoped so. Gambling on the console that has so far not failed me (only frustrated the shit out of me), I walked into the mass of writhing tendrils and kept still as a wall of pure black slammed into me…

And I remained still.

Sure, there was a surge of foreign lines upon impact, but I didn’t even budge an inch. Deleting the lines, I backed away with some satisfaction. Now that I could not be killed by the thing, the problem was how to kill this abomination to existence.

It had no immunity to eldritch damage, but a quick test found I couldn’t slap it onto any weapons I spawned. As a last resort, I tried putting it on myself, but no luck there either. So then the question must be asked:

How did one usually go about killing eldritch monstrosities?

Banishing works, but I had no knowledge on such things right now.

Arcane weapons then? How the hell do you create those? Do I need the…right…materials…

I blinked, then stared back at the source of the Faceless tendrils. Huh, I could just make out the broken altar among the swirling, writhing mass. 

Time for another gamble then.

Rushing back in, I played a long series of Quick Time Events on the console as I ducked and weaved and dodged the lunging tendrils. They could not harm me directly, but these fuckers could still smother me to immobility, which would utterly suck for many reasons.

There were several close calls, but I managed to make my way to ground zero and reach the edge of the goo-like blob of oblivion. The chunks of marble had been pushed aside as the eldritch thing grew, breaking further apart from the tumbling and crushing. It took a full two dilated hours to get to this objective, here’s to hoping it’s worth it. I snagged the largest piece I could find and darted back, batting the tendrils away with the rock I now had in hand. 

Compared to the solid, steel-like resistance from before, this time I felt the soft, fleshy and the stone actually sank a bit into a tendril. That the writhing mass suddenly jolted a bit was another good sign, though it also resulted in an increased intensity of their pursuit.

Leaving their range (which I noticed had grown noticeably since I dashed in), I took a good, long look at the chunk of marble in my hand. It had that eldritch damage line on it, which was what I was hoping for, even if the damage was in a crappy single digit.

Now, could I edit this piece of stone?

With an eye on the still-growing forest of tendrils, I watched with a growing grin as I managed to drag the eldritch damage value up to a more reassuring figure. 

Why yes, fucking yes I could edit this piece of stone.

For the sake of ergonomics and aesthetics, I shaped the stone piece into resembling a large, crude blade, about the size of the stereotypical greatsword, and reinforced it with damage immunity and increased durability. Then I looked at the so-called Faceless Choir, and I charged back in.

My new weapon bit into a diving tendril, severing a few feet of its Faceless tip completely. There was a shriek in the back of my head as the detached piece fell onto the ground and thrashed wildly. The stump didn’t falter at all as it joined its fellows in trying to bludgeon me to death with a vengeance, and already it was slowly regrowing the lost tip.

No kill then? Shit.

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Which meant I had to make my way back to ground zero. I think. I swear, if this thing’s only weakness was a banishment ritual, I’d be pissed as fuck. This time, I cleaved my way through the mass, deleting the Faceless stats as they appeared on me at the same time. The increased willpower helped a lot, ensuring that the big spikes of mental damage didn’t outright doom me.

When I finally returned to the source of the forest of tendrils, I took a few seconds of fending away the attacks to have a closer look at the stats. No particular locations were highlighted, unlike the zones on a human through a Pip-Boy, so I resorted to Plan B. I extended the blade, making myself look like a shitty Sephiroth cosplayer, and then swung the weapon straight at the ‘trunk’ of the whole thing when I found the right opening a few seconds of dodging later.

The noiseless shrieks in my head rose to an almost blinding pitch, and I actually stumbled as I tried pushing the sword deeper. 

It was the cry of countless enraged non-mouths, a million, billion rusted knives driving into the brain and then brutally twisting as they were yanked out. 

It was a throbbing pain that made the eyes feel like they’d burst out, and teeth feel like they’d be squeezed out by the gums. 

It was the sympathetic pain of watching a penis flayed millimeter by millimeter from tip to base, then spread open like a grotesque flower.

It tripped me over and stunned me for a few precious seconds, which gave the tendrils enough time to slam into me and smother me completely in the void. The pressure all around me was so great that I couldn’t move, not even twitch a muscle. Not until I spawned a pair of marble shortswords in my hands and started hacking away.

With the dull, lingering aftereffects thumping at the back of my head, I fought my way free, and then extended both blades into oversized greatswords and swung them into the trunk once more. This time, I only winced at the shriek and remained conscious enough to dodge the flurry of furious attacks from the tendrils. With three blades buried in the base, I began sawing away, expanding the blades to fill in the gaps to prevent the thing from healing over the wound I made.

It took two hours of furious cutting before I felt the tip of one blade bite into something with more resistance somewhere near the middle of the thing’s width. The mental shriek dropped me to my knees, though this time the tendrils around me spasmed erratically instead of smothering me. If the cliches were right, I must’ve hit the jackpot.

Another pair of shortswords were spawned, and this time I carved out chunks of the void-black flesh to tunnel my way in. Nevermind that the mass was slowly regrowing behind me for now, I could tunnel right through the other side if I needed to. For now, I had to work fast. The console said I took half an hour to finally reach the heart of the Faceless Choir, though it wasn’t really a heart, though.

Tearing away the last chunk of eldritch flesh, I exposed a thing made of pulsing eyeballs, lips, and orifices that I think were nostrils and ear canals. The eyeballs all swiveled towards me, the myriad of iris colors shrinking into thin rings as their pupils dilated. With the void flesh surrounding most of it, I couldn’t tell how large this assembly of eyeballs and orifices was, but then again it wasn’t the most important thing right now, right?

I stabbed the blades into it, bursting orbs and splitting apart lips and fleshy canals. Lips opened into screaming ‘O’s, and the whites of the intact eyes before me turned bloody red as I kept hacking it apart. None of them regenerated like the tendrils or trunk outside, so I changed the shortswords into five-pronged forks and carved out a cavern about two yards across, sloshing ankle-deep in eye fluid and stomping on bisected lips and nostrils. The amalgamation of facial features pulsed with increasing desperation as I destroyed more and more of it, and the void around me was shrieking so much that I was getting used to the pain.

Finally though, I hit something solid; a smooth mask, pitch black at the back end and flesh-colored at the front. The console streamed a good number of new stats when I pulled it free, most importantly showing a health value. I swung a fork down at it, shattering the surprisingly brittle thing, and its health dove straight down to zero.

It was done. The mental shriek finally ended, and I finally remembered that I was in the heart of a massive eldritch monstrosity. The void-black walls around me trembled, and as I reached to dig my way out, the fleshy cavern collapsed, burying me once more.

By the time I dug my way out, the sun had risen and the tendrils had fallen like wilted wildflowers throughout Fallen River. They were deflating and shrinking at a slow but visible pace, evaporating into nothingness. No surprise that any attempts to secure samples failed, though at least chunks of the marble altar still remained scattered around. And the pieces of the broken mask didn’t disappear either, but already the console stats showed all the weird Faceless lines being deleted entirely, and the fragments turned into white marble like a bad CGI transition.

After waiting for every eldritch thing to fully evaporate and giving the region a thorough check to ensure that nothing remained, not even the creepy but ultimately useless fog,  I let out a heavy, exhausted sigh.

“Eva, get me a Quetzal, then postpone any tasks until after I finish a good rest. Unless the Nexus is in danger, it can fucking wait.”

“Understood Sev.” The AI gave a short, thoughtful pause. “Though it might be prudent to inform you that those afflicted with the anomalous features have all passed away, approximately the same time as when the anomalous readings here began to sharply recede.”

I closed my eyes and rubbed the bridge of my nose, biting back a curse. “After my rest. I’ll deal with it after my rest. Get the condolences ready, Cabal, and prepare a formal media conference for…whenever I finish my rest.”

Have a good, nice break first. Clear the tension in my head, and then I’ll deal with the normal world again. And after that, I can worry about the un-normal world where a face-eating thing exists, and where the updated console has confirmed that outer gods and great old ones are lurking about.

Seriously, fuck whoever included eldritch things in this world. Fuck them with a rusty serrated spike dripping in lemon juice and glass shards.

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