Chapter 142: The Last Jade Prince
The darkness within a dark cave in Antarctica suddenly grew more oppressive, as one of the Jade Princes, the last spawns of the Jade Queen, were on the cusp of evolution.
The Jade Queen had been beloved by the Daemon of Truth, and her children, thousands of years later still inherited blessings from their benefactor.
One such evolution was the swiftness of their evolution into the tyrant class, a trait that remained within the bloodline of the jade queen even thousands of years after her corruption.
This Jade Prince, for example, was only a couple of years old and yet, he was already in the process of becoming a Jade King, a tyrant.
Of course, a Jade king would usually offer themselves as sacrifice to be devoured by the Jade Queen, however, the queen was long dead so it was up to this Devil to bring back the dynasty of Jade.
The Jade Prince, unlike his mother and siblings, did not look like a terrifying beetle.
Instead, it had a much more human appearance for some reason, with a beautiful azure carapace covering its entire body and two mighty wings granting it the blessing of flight.
The abomination was in a cocoon right now, a torrent of soul essence, tainted by corruption, was spinning wildly within its mighty soul... Ready to accumulate and transform into a fifth core.
Making the prince a Corrupted Tyrant.
But suddenly, something changed within the darkness of the cavern as an oppressive alien authority invaded the lair of the Jade Prince.
It was not that of the pesky humans, no... It could not be.
Yet it was not a creature touched by the great void as well.
It was a creature walking the path of ascension, much like his mother was, once upon a time.
It held greater authority than him, being of the Terror class. Yet its power was inferior to the rank of the devil. .
Though something was strange. The Jade Prince also sensed four embers of light glowing within the darkness, with the six cores of the Terror wrapped around them like a terrifying web, augmenting them and enhancing them.
The Jade Prince, being a hungry beast, did not stop its evolution and instead continued Normally, not realizing the danger it was in.
SWOOSH!
A deafening sound spread through the cavern as a tendril made of darkness, coated in ghastly grey mist, lashed forward towards the Corrupted Devil at an incredible speed.
The Devil, who was in the cocoon, suddenly felt an unimaginable pain spread through its body as the tendril of mist and darkness pierced its carapace and drove into its abdomen.
Without even waiting for the abomination to react, the tendrils wrapped tightly around the Prince and pulled, dragging it forcefully out of the cocoon and stopping its evolution violently.
Hugo looked at the Corrupted Devil with contempt through Zed's eyes.
He was still in his symbiote form, bonded with Zed. And today, after weeks of searching, they had finally managed to track down the last of the Jade Princes.
He had wanted to go for the kill directly, through coating [Nothing] around his tendrils and using it to pierce the abomination's head, but unfortunately that failed as he missed his shot entirely.
'I should have Kai train me later...'
But no matter, he could always shoot another tendril, for now he just needed to retract the previous one.
Just as he tried to pull once more, the Jade Prince suddenly planted its feet into the ground, anchoring itself against the tug. It seized the tendrils of mist and darkness and, tore them from its own body before Hugo could react.
In the span of a heartbeat, the wounded Devil shot upward through the cavern, its wings carrying it with terrifying speed. It crashed into Zed with brutal force, driving her through the cavern wall and sending them both tumbling outside.
Zed, however, was no pushover.
Her claws, elevated to Transcendent rank through the [Polymorphic Crystal] and her bond with Hugo, found the Devil's left eye not merely cutting it, but driving deep into the socket and obliterating it completely.
Screaming in agony as its eye was gouged out, the Jade Prince mustered the last of its strength and shoved the attacker away.
Hugo used his symbiotic mass to create two wings for zed, slowly down her decent.
Zed landed on the ground with a growl, her mouth dripping with the Prince's blood.
She barked at the abomination, and received a petrifying shriek in response. Zed backed away, ducking under the shockwave that followed. At the same time, her Nemetrix blazed with terrifying crimson light as her body swelled, morphing into a monstrous black-and-red predator—a creature resembling the extinct tigers of ancient earth.
The Prince saw this and used its damaged wings to fly off the ground. Hugo, however, wasn't ready to allow such a thing.
Tendrils shot forward towards it, managing to rip its damaged skin and grasp it like a pair of hooks, before pulling it down with all of his ascended strength. More then that, zed Transcendant frame allowed him to completely pull it down.
Before it could shriek in pain once again, Zed scaled its massive frame and used her sharp fangs to clasp around the jugular, at the same time, she utilized her massive frame to bring the devil to the ground.
The Jade Prince twitched in response and let out a choked scream, its wings gave way as it descended to the ground.
Zed didn't hop off, however. Instead, she let go of its jugular and moved to its belly, and before the Devil could react, it slammed into the ground with a deafening boom.
Blood spurted from its bleeding jugular. Zed took this opportunity and began to claw at the belly of the Devil, ferociously ripping apart its body.
Hugo supported her and turned the tendrils that wounded it into balls of spikes and pushed the spikes through the body, anchoring it to the ground.
'Just a little more...'
The tenacity of those jade abominations was truly otherworldly...
In that moment of pain, a blind fury overtook the Devil as it moved two of its upper limbs to bash Zed's skull in.
It would have proven sufficient if zed was alone, however she wasn't. As the spikes that were digging into it turned into pincers that held its muscles in place defiantly.
Free to maul the dreadful Devil, Zed had a field day as she dug the wound she made further and further.
She then stumbled on a large organ and clamped onto it with her mighty jaws, before quickly tugging and ripping it out savagely.
'... Am I this savage when I'm transformed?'
Surely not...
A wet, disgusting breath escaped the Jade Prince's ruined throat. Its carapace, once a beautiful azure, was now tainted Onyx. Black ichor, thick and nauseating, poured from the wounds. Its wings, tattered and useless, lay crumpled against the cavern floor like the broken sails of a drowned ship.
Zed's claws, empowered by the mass of the [Klyntar], had done their work well.
The alien wolf stood over the trembling Devil, her chest heaving and her maw dripping with the creature's corrupted blood. But even as the Prince's body convulsed in its death throes, a final, desperate spark of malice somehow ignited within its remaining eye. With a surge of strength born from pure hatred and madness, it lashed out before Zed could deliver it a final blow.
A hand made of carapace and bone erupted from its shattered carapace and drove itself deep into Zed's flank, piercing it with little resistance despite the layers of protection on zed's body.
A pained yelp escaped the wolf's throat. She stumbled back in pain, or at least as much pain as an Echo could feel... Hugo, being bonded with her, felt her pain as well.
But there was something else in there... The source of her true pain, and the reason his vicious companion was so started by this attack...
It was a wrong sensation that was both physical and spiritual, one that he knew all too well.
'Corruption...'
The corruption was already trying to take root within the artificial soul of Zed... Which Hugo found strange.
Echoes were not alive, nor did they have souls... So how come a seed of corruption managed to take root within Zed?
'Perhaps the Nemetrix?...'
Whatever the reason was, Hugo was not going to sit around and contemplate it while his wolfish companion suffered the pain of corruption.
In an instant, he mentally dismissed her back into his soul sea.
Zed's form flickered, dissolving into a shower of brilliant white sparks that scattered like startled fireflies before being pulled into Hugo, entering his soul. The physical wounds, the corruption, and the pain, all of it was sealed away to be mended in the quiet maze of his soul.
A profound silence fell over the scene, disturbed only by the dying breaths of the Corrupted Devil.
Hugo, now a formless mass of black, symbiotic tendrils, was left without a host on the floor.
The best course of action would have been to change forms and kill the Devil... However, that was not enough.
There were few Nightmare Creatures that Hugo truly hated, and now this bastard has made it to the top of the list when it tried to kill his wolf.
He flowed across the cold ground of Antarctica and began crawling up the massive form of the Devil.
He had been parasitized a few times in his life. Now, it was his turn to become the parasite.
His tendrils, slick with his own essence, found the wound in the Prince's neck and without warning, they entered it.
The Jade Prince shuddered violently as its body felt something alien and terrifying enter it. Its one remaining eye, wide and filled with a terror that momentarily overcame its madness, watched as the black ooze of the symbiote disappeared into its own flesh.
Inside, the world was... Wrong, profane, and utterly disgusting.
He had only bonded with Zed before, whose body was much more artificial, making the bond simple yet beneficial. Now, he was bonded with a living being, one that had been twisted by corruption.
It felt weird, alien even.
Hugo's consciousness poured into the Prince's ruined body, taking control over it. Usually he would prefer a symbiotic bond when he chose his hosts—when in this form—but this time, he was not about to cooperate with a Nightmare Creature.
After all, the very reason he had entered its body was so that he could torture it...
Deep within the soul of the Prince, Hugo saw four soul cores, and a fifth nascent one that was still not fully formed.
The four soul cores within the creature were cracked and decaying; the cancer that was corruption was slowly dying... Allowing them to shine in all their Transcendant glory.
Truly, death was the cure to all corruption.
He did not have much time, so he needed to act fast.
His tendrils, now woven deep into the Devil's flesh, began to move. He found the shattered remnants of its spine and applied pressure onto it, twisting the spine violently. The Prince's body convulsed, its limbs twitching as it suddenly roared with pain.
He kept torturing the abomination in various ways, breaking apart its limbs, bones, and flesh. However, its mind was the one most affected by the pain as he heightened its sense of pain and made it feel things that were impossible for a nightmare creature to feel...
Even its soul wasn't spared from the pain, with Hugo playing with its cracked cores.
The Prince's consciousness, still trapped in its own broken body, watched helplessly as its soul was gruesomely dismantled.
'Bastards, how many souls have you consumed to reach this level of power?'
He wrapped a tendril around the Prince's heart and squeezed it tightly.
That was the final straw.
The Prince's soul began to crumble even faster than before. The cracks in its cores widened, spewing forth darkness and light. It was a beautiful, terrible thing to witness, something that no one else would see in their lifetime... The slow, inevitable dissolution of a powerful abomination.
He saw its soul being freed of corruption, and for a brief moment, the Nightmare Creature experienced what it was like to be pure...
[You have slain a Corrupted Devil: The Last Jade Prince.]
The Spell's voice rang in his mind, causing him to suddenly widen his eyes.
'What the hell am I doing...'
Hugo looked at the corpse, and immediately flowed out of it in panic, hitting the Omnitrix and detransforming into a human.
He looked at the corpse once again, and then at his hands, which were shaking uncontrollably.
He was not feeling guilty for killing it... But was torturing it really necessary?
More importantly, Zed had been hurt... Yet he barely felt sadness for his trusty friend. Instead, he felt an eerie desire to slither into the body of that abomination and torture it as revenge...
The revenge in question was not meant to avenge his friend—instead, it felt like an excuse to justify his twisted desires.
Of course, the reason was obvious.
'My Flaw... Damn it.'
He had once again failed to keep it under control, and luckily it had been this abomination that was near him for parasitizing and not a human or a non-corrupted...
But still... This Jade Prince, it was a creature who was influenced by corruption and driven mad by it... Even if it was hateful and loathsome, in the end it was nothing more than a frenzied animal, fighting against its will.
Such creatures were meant to be put down, not tortured like this...
In the end, that was the ultimate cruelty of corruption, to lose yourself to madness and frenzy.
Looking at the dead body, he exhaled deeply and did something no one else has done before, perhaps in the entire history of humanity.
He dug a grave, and buried the fallen nightmare creature.
It was only fitting, considering this creature was the last of a long dynasty that belonged to the Jade Queen. Hugo did not know much about them, or about their civilization, however he did not need to know. Simply doing it as a final gesture of respect was all he needed to feel satisfied.
'I've truly gone mad, haven't I? Burying a Nightmare Creature? Who does that...'
Before he could scold himself any further, his Omnitrix made a peeping sound, reminding him that he was in Antarctica.
Opening the Network tab, he found that he had gotten a message.
It was a distress signal.
***
Author's note: shout-out to Andrej for helping me write this chapter. Half of it was his idea (: