Wonderful Insane World-Chapter 114: Insupportable Pain

It was a sickening sight. The flesh regrew almost cancerous, too fast, too voracious. Bloody filaments stretched out like greedy roots, seeking to close the horrible maw opened in Dylan’s chest. Bones clicked as they fused back together with a sound like dry wicker, muscles wove themselves in a grotesque, accelerated dance.

The black blood no longer flowed – it crawled towards the wound, sucked in by this unnatural regeneration. New skin, a sickly, glistening pink, spread like living mold, covering the horror before their eyes. A sickly-sweet, metallic odor – that of fresh flesh and corrupted blood – mingled with the abomination’s stench.

The abomination staggered back a step, its ember eyes wide with an expression that could have been horror, or demented fascination. It emitted a low, choked gurgle, as if suffocating from what it saw. It wasn’t the healing it craved. It was the wound itself, that essence of pain and void it had tasted. And Dylan was stealing it away, sealing it up too fast.

"DYLAN!" Maggie’s hoarse voice split the air. She had gotten up, hunched forward, one hand pressed against her probably cracked ribs, the other brandishing her axe. Her face, bruised and mud-smeared, was twisted by pure rage. She wasn’t looking at the abomination. She was looking at Dylan, his torso sealing itself shut in a spectacle of horror. But in her eyes, there was no disgust. Only icy determination. She had seen. She understood. And she was going to take advantage.

The abomination, distracted by the monstrous miracle of Dylan, turned its head too late. Maggie was already in motion. Avoiding a frontal charge this time. She rushed in an oblique, brutal surge, using a standing stone as a springboard. She leaped, her entire mass propelled by primal fury, her axe raised high above her head with a muffled snarl.

The metal came down with the weight of a boulder falling from a cliff. It cleaved through the shadow-body and slammed into the pulsing, red, glistening heart the creature had exposed in its unhealthy excitement.

The impact was dull, deep, like an axe sinking into rotten wood. The heart of sinew and twisted essence exploded in a geyser of viscous black fluid and reddish sparks.

The abomination stiffened, arched in silent agony. Its ember eyes snuffed out like coals plunged into water, shifting from fiery red to dead ashen grey in a fraction of a second.

It collapsed in on itself, not like a solid body, but like a pile of wet ashes and dissolving shadows. One last putrid breath escaped the form that was already ceasing to be, then there was only a black puddle and a smoking crystal on the stony ground, and the silence, suddenly deafening.

Maggie landed heavily on her feet, staggering, her axe buried to the haft in the black puddle where remnants of the heart still quivered. She panted, shoulders shaking, gaze fixed on the enemy’s remains.

Elisa pushed herself up further away, one hand against a standing stone for support, the other clutching a dagger. Her face was deathly pale, her usually warm golden eyes wide with horror and incomprehension.

She was looking at Dylan. Despite his wound being completely regenerated, he was still kneeling on the ground, as if lamenting unbearable pain.

Dylan was doubled over, fists driven into the damp earth. His chest was smooth, covered in new skin, pink and glistening, marked only by that large, faintly pulsing purple scar. But the pain... The pain was still there. Worse, even. It was no longer the sharp tear of claws, but a deep, visceral burning that radiated from his sternum and spread like acid through his veins. Every heartbeat was a hammer blow on an anvil of embers. He clenched his teeth so hard a trickle of blood ran down his chin, mingling with sweat.

"Dylan!" Elisa rushed towards him, forgetting her own bruised ribs. She placed a hesitant hand on his shoulder, recoiling instantly as if burned. His skin was scorching. "What is it? The wound is... healed."

"Healed?" Dylan managed to growl, his voice rough, strangled by effort. He raised a face contorted by suffering. His bloodshot eyes stared into nothingness. "It’s inside. The claw... it left something. And when my flesh closed... it trapped it." A fresh wave of pain bent him double, a moan escaping his lips. "It’s like fire... and ice... gnawing. I won’t die from it... not yet... But this..." He couldn’t finish, shaken by uncontrollable tremors.

Maggie had approached, dragging her fouled axe. Her gaze swept the black puddle where the abomination was dissolving. Something glinted faintly in the muck: a crystal, smaller than the ones they usually collected, deep black striated with pulsing red veins, like the beast’s heart. She snatched it up with a brusque movement, showing no apparent disgust. The crystal was cold and vibrated imperceptibly in her palm. She stuffed it into her pocket, her attention back on Dylan.

"Poisoned by his own healing," she grumbled, her face hard. Showing no more pity. Just raw observation. "Changes nothing. We’re not staying here." Her thick finger pointed east. The pale disk of the sun finally pierced the high mist, pouring harsh, heatless light onto the moor of standing stones. The shadows were visibly shrinking. "The light’s here. And what it wakes will be worse than that filth."

Dylan tried to stand. His legs buckled. The internal pain drilled into his guts, making every movement agony.

"Move, Dylan!" Maggie barked, already surging towards the downward slope to the east, where the mist still clung to the lower trees. "Or I’ll drag you!"

Elisa slid an arm under Dylan’s shoulder, bracing him. "Hold on," she murmured, her voice strangely firm despite the pallor of her face. Her golden gaze met his, filled with immediate understanding of his torment. "One step after another. We should resume the Hunt."

Dylan stiffened, biting the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. The pain screamed, the poison circulated with his regenerated blood, and that damned scar on his chest pulsed harder, as if awakened by the proximity of the cursed anima gem. But he moved. Limping, gasping, supported by Elisa, he followed Maggie who led the way, her massive silhouette cleaving the residual mist.

The daylight, cold and pitiless, enveloped them now, revealing every sordid detail of their wounds and the darkness they fled. Their race was no longer just against time before the sun plunged behind the mountains.

It was also a race against the poison gnawing Dylan from within, and against the silent abomination growing beneath his own skin, fed by stolen pain and devoured essence. The Hunt continued, but the greatest monster now ran among them.

---

They moved. Not fast, but fast enough to escape the idea of stopping.

The mist, however, seemed to follow them. Like a beaten but starving dog, clinging to their boots, crawling, avid. Maggie led, her muscles still trembling, but her gaze fixed east. She didn’t speak anymore. She had never much liked talking. But this was something else. She was listening to the silence... or rather, to what it hid.

Elisa supported Dylan, still staggering, still burning. He sweated like a beast dipped in boiling oil. His breath came in broken gasps, not from fatigue—from struggle. An inner struggle, physical, brutal. The poison, or whatever it was, coursed under his skin like an animal beneath a sheet. It moved. Sometimes, his torso would contract involuntarily, a pulse, almost fetal. Elisa felt it, with every step, against her. Something was growing, slowly.

Their path descended. Wetter. The standing stones grew sparse, became rare, twisted. The ground, spongy. A kind of black lichen covered the rocks. Maggie glanced at it and stopped dead.

"We’re nearing the Down-Marsh." She spat on the ground. "Shit."

Dylan barely raised his head. His eyes burned. The daylight seemed to hurt him more than the darkness.

"That’s... where they hid, right?" His voice was cracked. Almost a whisper.

Maggie didn’t answer. She resumed walking.

The trees rose, sparser but older. Hollow trunks, split from within, as if something had tried to get out rather than get in. The smell was worse than the graveyard. A sweet rot. Stagnant water, blood, and... something else. An acrid reek, almost cloying.

Then they heard it.

It wasn’t a cry, nor an animal howl.

But more of a beat.

Dull, slow, and steady.

Like a heart. But enormous. Smothered under layers of earth, stagnant water, and centuries. A sound that didn’t come through the ears, but through the bones.

Dylan stopped dead. His knees almost buckled. He put a hand on a blackened trunk to steady himself, the skin of his palm shivering at the touch of the bark. He had felt the echo, perfectly timed against his own chest. It wasn’t a coincidence. It was more like a response.

Elisa froze too, her face tense, eyes fixed eastward, where the trees seemed to lean over an invisible fissure, a natural depression in the land. Light struggled to penetrate there. A pale vapor rose from the ground, slowly, like the breath of a sleeping animal.

Then something changed.