Drip~
Clack!
Ron entered the room, lit the oil lamp, and locked the door. Leaning his back against the wood, he gently touched his neck.
RIP!!!
A sound like tearing cloth echoed from Ron's position. He had ripped away a portion of his own face, peeling it off like a paper mask.
Disgusting—that was the only word to describe what Quân would have seen had he witnessed Ron's face right now.
Staggering, Ron carried the patch of his own flesh and skin toward the desk.
This was an office, yet it contained nothing but books, notebooks, an oil lamp, a desk, and a chair. Nothing hung upon the walls, as if reflecting the utterly bland nature of its master.
Ron sat down on the worn wooden chair, rummaging through the desk drawer to pull out a silver mirror.
The very moment his hand brushed against the silver mirror, his flesh suddenly turned mushy, dissolving into a sickening, charred mess of rotten meat.
Yet Ron didn't care. Even if the sky were to collapse, his expression wouldn't have flickered—assuming a facial expression could even help him look more human.
Ron stared into the mirror, looking at his utterly repulsive face.
It could be said that this face was downright grotesque, resembling the creation of some cosmic horror.
His face was drowned in an inky blackness, looking like melted cream dripping down from the crown of his head. His sparse, falling hair was matted with a black, tar-like sludge.
The pale skin had been blackened by a thick, dark blood that was gradually drying up. His nose had almost completely rotted away, making it impossible to identify any spot untouched by the blackness.
However, the most horrifying part was the worms.
Worms wriggled out from the punctures across his face, gnawing on the thick black fluid as if it were food.
They were everywhere the fluid touched, a literal nest of maggots. On Ron's hand, where the flesh was still burning away, the blood-red bone lay completely exposed.
That very hand placed the mirror on the desk, then slowly reached up toward an eye socket that had been eaten clean; even his signature golden iris had been gnawed to near ruin.
Yet in Ron's eyes, what he saw wasn't disgust, but hundreds of deep crimson ribbons of color drifting about the room.
This was a hallucination—a specific illusion that only Ron could see within his bleak, gray room.
Up until now, everything to him had been a strange monochrome.
Ron stared at those ribbons of color, which looked like fractures in his field of vision. He brought his hand to his mouth, using his remaining intact hand to prop up his body, covering his lips to prevent the worms from spilling out of his throat.
Aside from the sounds of his physical movements, not a single noise could escape his throat, for his vocal cords had been eaten completely clean.
Ron brought his hand to the mirror, trying to look deep into it.
But the longer he held it, the faster his hand was burned away by an invisible force, the collapse visibly accelerating.
By this point, Ron's eye had rolled down his face—the nerves clearly bitten through—falling right into his mouth, which was punctured by hundreds of holes. From both of his ears, tiny perforations bubbed up alongside writhing worms.
It was utterly hideous. Within mere minutes, Ron had lost nearly all five bodily senses, and even his hair had almost entirely fallen out. He could only desperately halt his body from falling apart by controlling black monofilament threads, binding his flesh together like a retaining wall, but even that was not enough.
Ron remained slumped over the mirror. He wasn't even sure if he was holding it correctly because he could no longer feel a thing. It could be said that Ron using mana to control those black threads was the only thing separating him from a vegetative state.
Ron collapsed onto the desk, plunging into an everlasting darkness, yet he still feebly attempted to guide a thread toward the mirror.
Just a little more, just one moment...
And then, the thread made contact. Ron's entire body jolted as if struck by electricity, though he wasn't even aware of it.
The demon-reflecting mirror had fulfilled its purpose...
Ron slipped into a deep coma, like a vegetable with no telling when he would ever return.