Chapter 46: The One Who Swallows
Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations
Editor: PlumSauce
A gray face slowly pressed itself through the window. The silver-core bullets had left dense pits across its surface. The thing decelerated but didn’t retreat, and the pits were already healing.
Taking advantage of it slowing down, Carolyn dropped her gun and pulled a marker-like rod-shaped object from her boot. Liz had pulled out one too. From the backpack at his feet, Coraci took out two more. He was about to hand one to John when he noticed John’s bare hands.
“Put on insulated gloves!” he barked.
John quickly dug the gloves out of his jacket, pulled them on, and took the “marker”. It really did look like an oversized marker… until Liz muttered a short incantation and the tips of all four “markers” erupted with silver beams — brighter than any lamp.
Cold sweat broke across John’s back. The silver light had come dangerously close to his face; when he’d grabbed the “marker”, he’d almost pointed the tip toward himself. The weapon gave the unsettling impression of holding a lightsaber — except that, unlike the straight blade in movies, the weapon in his hand was shaped more like a long sabre.
“It’s a half-corporeal evil spirit. Any damage from piercing or bullets — it’ll just seal up and heal. The only way to stop it is to hack it to pieces,” Coraci explained hurriedly.
Before he finished speaking, Carolyn had already launched herself forward, boots thumping off the bedframe as she leapt. The silver sabre sliced into the creature’s long, black neck.
“Don’t let it bite you! It’ll drain your life force!” Liz warned, a split second behind.
Fighting this thing didn’t seem to require much skill — speed and thoroughness mattered most. John had only just been reading about half-corporeal evil spirits.
Carolyn’s attacks looked like something out of a touchscreen slicing game, the silver blade leaving bright afterimages in the air. Even with Coraci and Liz hacking away, neither of them matched her speed. Within seconds, she had sliced away nearly half the face, scattering gray fragments into the air like burnt paper.
John moved toward the window to cut its neck — only to realize that it was long. Very long. It stretched all the way to the ground outside and into the room. The black portion wasn’t a “neck” at all but the immense body of a worm, wiggling steadily into the room from the window.
Why wasn’t it coming in from somewhere inside the house? John barely had time to think about this before the wooden floorboards in the hallway began to creak.
“Another one?” Liz turned in surprise, having just cleaved a cheekbone.
The new one was heavy and massive; from the sound of it, it filled the entire hallway. It looked much like what John had seen outside the window — and like all specters, it could pass through walls. From inside the house, its black hide could be seen flickering in and out of sight.
Finally, the worm in the hallway made its way into the room, revealing a huge lamprey-like mouth the size of a doorway.
John didn’t hesitate. He slashed at its mouth. The creature was slow, almost incapable of dodging, but it kept advancing. Meanwhile, the skull-faced worm at the window kept inching in.
Coraci wasn’t quick; he’d never been good with weapons. He paused, and gasping for breath, he said, “They’re the same thing…two ends of the same worm.”
From deeper inside the house came a rumble, the clatter of small objects falling, and the groan of floorboards under something heavy. That puzzled Coraci. Half-corporeal spirit entities could handle physical objects, touch surfaces, and exert pressure — but if they chose, they could still pass straight through walls. If this thing wanted to kill them, it could have approached by cutting a direct line through the house. Why was it crawling along hallways and rooms instead?
The real headache was that, slow and unflinching as it was, no matter how much they hacked at it, it kept moving forward — its body seemingly without end.
“Don’t you two spellcasters have anything?” Carolyn was breathing hard now. “I feel like a meat-slicing machine on an assembly line!”
“Nothing better,” Coraci admitted, equally frustrated. “The only method is to kill it — and besides hacking, there’s no better way.”
Overhead came more noise — something in the attic, or perhaps inside the walls. Another segment of the black worm squeezed into the room. This time through a ventilation duct.
This portion was neither head nor tail; it seemed intent on filling the entire house, leaving no room or passage untouched.
When it came to melee combat, Liz was far behind Carolyn. She could make and handle many exorcism weapons, but she couldn’t even use a heavy-recoil gun. The repeated chopping was numbing her arms, slowing her reflexes.
The worm from the ventilation duct coiled around her sword arm. The silver sabre clattered onto the bed — it was the only place she could stand with the creature closing in.
Her first instinct wasn’t to struggle but to snatch the weapon back. But she knew what happened once these things seized you — they would start draining your strength instantly.
She couldn’t even cry out, but the others were close enough to notice immediately. Coraci was nearest, but his swordsmanship was poor; after hacking for a long time, he had yet to sever the worm.
Carolyn glanced over, and before she could move, Coraci shouted, “Don’t come over! The one next to you is worse!”
However, Carolyn moved faster than his warning. He hadn’t even finished the sentence before she had turned and struck at the worm holding Liz.
Bad idea.
That was the last coherent thought left in Coraci’s mind.
When there was plenty of space, the worm moved very slowly. But now that it had driven them into the corner of the room, the limited area gave it a deadly advantage.
Carolyn managed to sever the worm. Liz collapsed onto the bed, eyes open but unmoving, her expression frightening. She looked frozen.
Behind Carolyn, the segment of the worm that was as thick as the window frame now had nothing blocking it. It crushed the floorboards and surged forward, its mangled stump looming closer. It split its stump wide open into another lamprey-like mouth, toothless but massive.
John had to leap to the other side of the bed to intercept the part of the worm next to the window — just as the one from the doorway opened its mouth.
The gaping maw opened behind him, hurling forward like a gate to the underworld. Coraci and Carolyn both moved to help John, but Carolyn was quicker — and still too late.
The black mass engulfed John, swallowing him whole in the instant he turned.
Coraci’s mind blanked, momentarily forgetting to think at all.
Carolyn snatched Liz’s sabre, now holding one in each hand. “The small one’s yours!” she shouted to Coraci, her voice hoarse. “Take care of Liz!”
They had seen half-corporeal evil spirits before; Carolyn herself had cut through similar ones. They could be large and exhausting to fight, but none should have been this massive.
Coraci fought to keep the worm from the vent at bay, but his thoughts were drifting. This thing wasn’t exactly powerful — it was just too huge.
If this was what had attacked the previous hunters, no wonder they’d died. With dozens of hunters hacking away nonstop, they might have killed it. But with only three or four…it was far too few.
He pushed the immobile Liz back against the last clean stretch of wall, shielding her. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Carolyn’s right arm drop straight down, her sabre clattering to the floor.
She was exhausted — she was a human, with human limits. Prolonged fighting with every muscle tensed will eventually lead to a loss of control over the body
She’d been “bitten” by the worm’s stump — only for a split second, not even half a second. She had severed that section of the worm in time, avoiding Liz’s fate, but her right arm hung uselessly, completely drained.
“It’s less than a hundred feet, a short distance,” Coraci’s voice came from behind her.
She didn’t understand — until something thudded to the floor at her feet. Liz.
A coin had been stuffed between Liz’s lips. Carolyn didn’t know what it was and didn’t have time to look closely — but the small piece of metal protruding from her mouth looked oddly familiar.
“Run! Don’t look back — go find more hunters!” Coraci said quickly. He made a sharp gesture, and a black arrow floated before his palm.
Carolyn suddenly understood what he was about to do. “Wait! You’re not—”
She never finished the sentence.
The arrow shot through her lower leg, burst out the other side, and struck Liz’s arrowhead. In an instant, the two of them vanished from where they stood.
“I have to stay…to find John.” Coraci exhaled slowly.
Like Sidov’s ‘anchor point’ spell, he was using a human-modified version of it. It couldn’t send someone freely between distant locations the way Abyss magic could, nor could it mark multiple places. It could only work if there was an emblem engraved with special runes to anchor to — and even then, it could only send the target no farther than a hundred feet away. As for the exact direction, the caster had no control at all. That was one of the main reasons demons generally thought human magic was unreliable. The advantage, though, was that it was easier to activate — no demon blood required.
“This was supposed to be my last-resort escape. Took me months to prepare it… Could’ve written a few short stories in that time,” Coraci muttered to himself while holding his sabre, as if speaking out loud could keep the fear at bay.
He could have stood close enough to the two girls and sent the black arrow through all three of them. A hundred feet might not have been far enough to escape completely, but it would at least have gotten them out of the house and beyond the black worm’s line of sight.
The worm wasn’t particularly fast — it couldn’t outrun a car — and Coraci was almost certain it wouldn’t give chase. After all, there had never been any reports of casualties in the nearby town, which meant it had likely never ventured that far.
But Coraci wanted to stay. He made his choice in seconds, even though he had no idea if it was the right one.
Just moments ago, in the instant before being swallowed, John had simply disappeared. No struggling, no horrific chewing — he was just…gone.
Through the Eyes of Truth, the worm-shaped evil spirit appeared faintly transparent. Coraci didn’t know how it appeared to others, but to him, its body was paler and thinner toward the outside, darker and more opaque toward the depths, impenetrable to the eye.
With only a silver sabre, Coraci had no hope of stopping the worm from closing in. He lowered the blade, clenched his teeth, and prayed that Carolyn would listen to his advice: don’t come back — instead, go to the Association, explain exactly what had happened here, and bring more people back.
The massive black body crushed through the entire room, pressing tightly into every corner. At last, Coraci’s figure vanished into it.
Carolyn felt a wave of dizziness. When she opened her eyes again, she was lying on a stone floor, still clutching the silver sabre in her left hand.
She sat up. Her right arm wouldn’t move, and there was no sensation when she touched it. For a closer check, she used the sabre to slice into her right forearm. The silver glow sank slightly into her flesh — no pain, and there was neither a wound nor a tear in her clothing.
“So it doesn’t work on humans…” She slid the sabre into the pocket sewn into the pleats of her skirt, the silver blade poking through the fabric.
Next, she used the dagger she carried to cut into her right forearm. This time, a thin bead of blood welled up, but still no pain.
A little unnerved, she pricked the pad of her right ring finger with the dagger’s tip. This time she felt a faint, tingling ache with a touch of numbness. Relieved, she thought her arm’s lost sensation might return after all.
She glanced down at Liz, lying limp in her arms, and murmured, “Can I poke you with this?” Liz still had breath and a heartbeat, but showed no sign of response.
“Forget it. I could find out whether you can feel anything, but…what if you don’t agree to it?”
Muttering, Carolyn got to her feet and hefted Liz onto her left shoulder. Her right arm still wouldn’t cooperate — she couldn’t cradle or carry the girl properly. Even slung over her shoulder, it was a struggle. Liz was thin and light, but Carolyn’s shoulders weren’t broad enough, and she wasn’t tall; it was hard to keep her balance.
She staggered a few steps and glanced back at the house. They were on the curved road outside the Atwood place. With just a few steps, she could return.
But she knew she couldn’t. Dawn was nearly breaking. She found the car hidden in the distant woods, wrestled Liz into the back seat, and started the engine with her left hand.
Author’s Note:
As long as Carolyn is here, everything’s fine. (Not really.)
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