Anomaly

Chapter 396 – Worship of the true gods [42]

I was still staring at the priest, unable to look away, disbelief clinging stubbornly to my thoughts. Up close, there was nothing human about him anymore. The silhouette that once felt familiar had twisted into something wrong, deeply, fundamentally wrong. His limbs looked too long, as if they’d been stretched beyond their limits, and his face... his face sagged in a grotesque way, like wax slowly melting under heat.

What had once been just a deranged priest, lost in some delusion about ascending and becoming an anomaly, had now gone far beyond anything remotely understandable. He wasn’t a man anymore. He was something else entirely, like a haunting presence, unnatural and wrong, dragging itself through the city with a single purpose: to find me, to reach me... to consume me.

My eyes flickered as he took another uneven step toward me, the sound of his feet hitting the ground hollow and off-beat: “K-Kill... I n-need to kill... k-kill... to become... l-like... the g-gods...”

His erratic murmurs kept slipping past his trembling, broken lips, as if every word had to be torn out of his throat. His eyes, which had been alive just hours ago, were now completely unfocused, two dull spheres drifting aimlessly, unable to fix on anything clearly. For a moment, I seriously doubted he could even see me anymore.

And yet... he kept moving forward. There was intent in his movements, but no reason. It was like watching a body driven by pure, primitive instinct, a raw impulse that had replaced any trace of consciousness. He was still trying to kill me, there was no doubt about that, but it no longer felt like a choice. It was a compulsion.

Actually, out of this entire chaotic situation, I think the only thing I can really be proud of so far is not crushing any civilians while getting tossed around the city like an out-of-control football. And honestly, that’s already a pretty impressive achievement.

You’d be surprised by the ridiculous number of buildings I crashed into along the way. Some of the residents are probably still trying to figure out what the hell hit them. Not to mention the houses I unintentionally broke into, smashing through walls, rooftops, and, in one specific case, a freshly cleaned window that definitely won’t stay that way for long.

Now that I think about it... does that still count as trespassing? I mean, technically, I wasn’t in control of anything. I was basically a conscious projectile more than anything else, and I definitely have no interest in spying on other people’s lives.

Even as an anomaly, I still have some shred of common sense... or at least I like to think I do. Not that it really matters right now. With all the noise I made, glass shattering, structures groaning, impacts echoing through the streets, I seriously doubt there’s a single person in the neighborhood who slept through it.

Anyway, I shook my head hard, forcing those thoughts away. This wasn’t the time for that, I could reflect later. Right now, all that mattered was the insane priest who, at this very moment, was trying to kill me. I focused on him again. And honestly... there was nothing about his appearance anyone could call “good”.

Even ignoring his clearly abnormal form, there was something far more disturbing: his body seemed to be rejecting itself. It was like it was collapsing from the inside out. He coughed nonstop, a wet, ragged sound tearing through the air. With every spasm, blood spilled, no, poured, from his lips, staining what remained of his clothes.

And his eyes... those were another problem. They were so red, so swollen, they looked like they might burst at any second. Tiny veins bulged across their surface, pulsing irregularly, like something inside was trying to break free. It was a deeply unsettling sight, trust me.

Watching things explode might seem interesting from a distance, almost entertaining, depending on the context... but when the “spectacle” is a human being right in front of you, breathing, suffering, falling apart in real time, the appeal disappears fast.

“I-I need to... need to p-prove... t-to the g-gods...” Unaware of my thoughts, the priest’s murmurs kept slipping through his trembling lips, each sentence more fragmented than the last, as if his mind was shattering word by word.

His voice faltered, choking on incomplete syllables, and there was something deeply unsettling in the way he kept repeating those same ideas, not like someone trying to convince himself, but like the last remaining trace, a mechanical echo of a desire. At this point, I seriously doubted he was even aware of what he was doing anymore.

He seemed more like a body dragged along by old impulses than someone actually making decisions. Maybe, at some point, this had been a genuine conviction... but now? Now it was just a remnant, a desperate automatism trying to stay alive amid the collapse of his own reason. That’s when my thoughts were abruptly cut off.

The ground beneath my feet shook. Not a light tremor, a violent jolt, as if something colossal had just shifted deep underground. The vibration shot up through my legs, rattling my body hard enough to throw me off balance for a moment. Which, by itself, was strange. Very strange. After all, I had perfect balance... or at least, that’s what I’d believed until now.

The culprit, of course, was the priest. He was no longer floating. His body had given in to the very distortion that sustained it, his unnaturally elongated arms now touched the ground like twisted roots, supporting a weight that no longer seemed human.

Around him, and at the same time, within him, the concepts writhed erratically, like beasts trapped in a space too small to contain them. And still... he tried to control them. But the concepts rejected him.

The rejection wasn’t subtle. It was violent, unmistakable, an existential refusal that ate away at the priest from the inside out. His body trembled in uneven spasms, as if every fiber of his being were being pulled in opposite directions.

His eyes, once merely bloodshot, now overflowed with blood, slowly trailing down his tear ducts and leaving dark streaks across his distorted face. It was a grotesque sight. Something that had once been human... now stretched, warped, unrecognizable, as if it had been pulled far beyond its limits.

I had no doubts: the priest would die soon. Or worse, he would survive just long enough to become weak. Weak enough... for me to intervene. If I could guide those concepts out of his body at the right moment, I might be able to prevent an immediate death. Not out of mercy, but because a full overload, a true conceptual “overdose” could make everything far more unpredictable.

(Haaah...) I took a deep breath, the cold air filling my lungs as I tried to organize my thoughts: (This is definitely going to be a pain) Even so, I would act.

It wasn’t like I had any genuine desire to save the priest. There was no heroism in it, no compassion strong enough to justify what I was about to do. The truth was far less noble... more personal. The reason I wanted to extract the concepts peacefully had nothing to do with him.

It was about me. I simply couldn’t bring myself to do something as brutal as tearing those concepts out by force, ripping them from within him like flesh. Just imagining it made my fingers hesitate ever so slightly. I couldn’t hurt them that way. And the worst part? I didn’t even know why.

Logically, there was nothing stopping me. I knew that, if necessary, I wouldn’t feel guilt. There was no attachment, no anticipation of remorse. But... the feeling that surfaced when I considered it was different. Heavy. Wrong.

Like an invisible knot tightening around my chest, preventing me from making that choice. It was irrational. Inexplicable. And yet, absolute. Because of that, I had no choice. I’d go with plan B... remove the concepts from the priest as gently as possible, or at least, with the least amount of suffering I could manage.

In the end, all that was left was to wait. Wait until he was weak enough, not just physically, but conceptually, for me to plant that idea into the very core of his being. I didn’t need to force that moment. It would come naturally, like a crack spreading under constant pressure. And it did.

Just as I had predicted, the tremors caused by the priest didn’t stop, they evolved. The ground began to shake again, but this time it wasn’t just scattered vibrations; they were dense waves, filled with intent, advancing straight toward me like an invisible tide about to crush me.

I didn’t move. Not a step. Not even a reflex. Instead... my shadow reacted for me. It stretched silently across the ground, distorting as if it had a will of its own. Then, without warning, without the slightest hesitation, something emerged from it. My Alter Ego.

Its form rose as if pulled from a bottomless abyss, and its eyes... its eyes glowed with a vivid intensity. There were no exchanged words. There didn’t need to be.

The moment its feet touched the ground, it slammed them down with force. Instantly, shadows expanded outward in waves, mirroring the incoming attack, but denser, deeper, as if they carried the weight of emptiness itself. They surged forward and completely swallowed the priest’s assault, dissolving it into absolute silence.

The impact didn’t echo. It vanished. Still, he didn’t retreat. And neither did we. My Alter Ego remained firm, unshaken, like an inevitable extension of my own will. We didn’t need to communicate, we never did. It didn’t obey me... it simply was me. And so, my plan... was, inevitably, its plan as well.

Fortunately, the confrontation didn’t last long. To be honest, it wasn’t nearly as exhausting as the Tenebrya rescue mission. From the start, something had been off, the priest was using a power that clearly didn’t belong to him, and worse, it was rejecting him every second. It was like trying to hold back a river with your bare hands: unstable, dangerous... and inevitably self-destructive.

He couldn’t even draw enough strength from those concepts to truly become a threat. Still, I have to admit... getting thrown across the city is always an irritating experience. At last, when everything finally settled, my gaze fell back on the priest. His body was... unrecognizable.

Stretched in an unnatural way, as if something inside him had tried to escape by force, tearing through its own limits. There wasn’t a single intact point, blood covered everything, streaming down in thick trails that stained the ground beneath his feet.

His eyes, once filled with fanatical conviction, were now empty, lost, fixed on a nothingness only he might have been able to see. His breathing came heavy and uneven, each inhale sounding like a desperate attempt to stay alive.

His movements were erratic, spasmodic... like a puppet whose strings had been cut, yet whose body still insisted on moving. In the end, there was a cruel irony to it all. The priest... had been consumed by the very power he had spent so long yearning for.