Chapter 80: Bifurcated Ghoul
[You have contributed in slaying an anomaly.]
[Soma-class Imago slain: Bifurcated Ghoul.]
[Based on your contributions as well as landing the final blow, you have been awarded 40 points.]
Miles felt no relief at the notification as it popped up before him. The ghoul was dead, but it hadn’t shifted its weight off him.
Foul, thick black blood dripped out from the wound on its nape, staining his hair and face with its wet frigidness.
He gasped, then pulled the knife out, letting even more of the viscous blood out. A wave of weakness hit him, making him drop the weapon. It landed softly on the damaged corpse near him.
The dots in his vision kept increasing, and he could feel the very edges of his perception darkening. Every breath dragged into a long, hard struggle with his pressed lungs.
’I’ll suffocate if this goes on.’
The thought rang clear in his mind, so he forced himself to push against the ghoul crushing him. The carcass barely budged. His hands had already lost far too much strength to make a difference.
He felt around the gore surrounding him for something, anything that could help. Yet he got nothing but cold blood for his efforts.
The darkness spread from his edges and covered most of his vision. In that mix of pressure, darkness, and blood, the corpses around him suddenly melted away from his grasp.
They fused into a lake of frigid blood, one that covered the entirety of the kitchen’s floor. Its level rose quickly, soon engulfing him and swallowing the room in its bloody depths.
The corpse above him melted too, merging with the sea. But the pressure it caused didn’t. If anything, it increased, making him feel like he was truly at the bottom of a red sea.
He tried reaching for anything, but the pressure was on his hands too now. He couldn’t move them anymore.
’I’m going to drown. I’m going to drown. I’m going to...’
The string of thoughts kept playing over and over in his head. Unlike before, it didn’t spur any action. Instead, an odd sense of peace washed over him.
Everything around him now was just the blood-red sea. Staring at it with his dying vision, he couldn’t help but think.
’Would’ve been better if it was blue.’
Right before darkness took him completely, the pressure on his chest suddenly lifted. His vision snapped back to reality.
He was in the kitchen again.
Miles shot up, gulping down hungry breaths of the foul air without a care in the world. In his rapidly clearing vision, two figures were near him, both kneeling. Behind them, a few others waited.
Ryan and Chloe.
"You actually killed the thing? Are you crazy!"
"What were you thinking?"
Both were checking over his stained body, equal looks of shock and distress on their faces. Behind them, Brandon stood with one hand clenching his injured shoulder.
Grunting, he glanced at Mia.
"Shit, he might be even crazier than Grimm over here."
The girl rolled her eyes for a moment before focusing back on Miles.
"And why are you talking to me, again?"
Grimm just glared at Brandon, then promptly chose to ignore the interaction. It seemed to be fixing itself anyway.
Miles ignored all of them, even as air filled his lungs once again. The sea and its pressure had vanished, but they’d vanished along with all the other effects of [Delusion].
An unnatural wave of cold assaulted him that very instance; it had spread to his fingers, feet, and head now. Every desperate breath he took scraped his lungs like a thousand little knives, but it was nothing compared to what he felt on his back.
Every other place felt numb, cold, and prickly. Yet pain pierced through that spot. The spot the cold had first originated from. Like he was being impaled.
He pushed Ryan and Chloe out of his way, stumbling forward a bit before he began pulling on his sweater.
"Wha-"
It was a struggle trying to exert any force with his numb fingers, but he forced himself through it. He dragged it off, exposing the vest beneath, then frantically pulled that off too.
"Miles, what’s wrong?"
He couldn’t be bothered to figure out which one of them had spoken. His bare torso was now exposed to the bitter elements.
He felt the skin across his back, slowly reaching for where the pain was coming from. The others watched with increasingly puzzled looks as they stared at his front.
Then his dull fingers brushed against something, something soft, something that wasn’t a part of his body.
Miles froze for a moment before burying any rising thoughts of panic. Even more carefully now, he moved his fingers around the thing, trying to size it up.
The thing was attached to his skin. It was warm, about the size of his palm, and moved rhythmically back and forth in a manner that reminded him of a heartbeat.
The point it connected to his body was where he felt the pain originate from.
"I need you to check what’s on my back."
Chloe raised a brow, while Ryan just looked even more confused. Still, seeing how serious he was, they moved towards his back; Brandon and Chloe followed close behind.
"W-what even is that?"
There was horror in Ryan’s voice at the sight of his back. Chloe choked on her vomit behind him, trying to stop herself from puking on the nearby corpses.
"What is it?"
"It looks like a leech, a white decaying leech."
Mia answered, audibly unnerved. Brandon added,
"How did it even get on you?"
’A leech?’
He hadn’t expected that at all. Leeches were found in swamps or bogs or even stagnant water, but he’d been as far as possible from any of those things.
Plus, leeches were meant to numb the body as they fed, so why did this one hurt so much?
’Is it sucking my heat? Or the heat in my blood?’
He shook those thoughts away. How it reached there, or what it was doing, was completely irrelevant. He had to get rid of it before it killed him.
The boy wrapped his fingers around it, seeking to pull it off.
"Don’t do it."
Chloe’s voice stopped him.