74 Volume 4. Chapter 13. From the fire into the steam

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Lightning flashed in the distance as the sound of crows could be heard in the distance.

In the pouring rain, several tombstones were visible in the space.

One of the crows lands on one of the tombstones and quickly flies away as a hand bursts out from the ground.

With a hissing noise, a man crawls out from the ground, covered in mud and dirt.

He wore black pants and a white shirt with a gas mask covering his face, from the visors a green light poured out from it. Tightly in his hands was a beaten-up laptop, with some cables hanging from it.

The man looked up to the sky and screamed.

"I AM ALIVE!"

The man shambles away into the distance, as another flash of lightning illuminates the environment, showing the writing on the tombstone.

HERE LIES BIOHAZZARD2021, MAY HE REST IN PEACE.

*****

I could taste the fear in the air. The terror of the samurai and now… Father Time.

A god, or even something even greater, was terrified of me. I could smell it.

Madness.

It was faint, but I could smell it.

Emanating from the old man, there was the madness caused by fear.

It was… salivating. The sweet smell of a mind going highwire from terror, nothing better to start an appetite.

"I have an offer for you, Father Time. Give me what I want and I promise, I and the girls won't put you in the ground."

The old man looked at me with a crossed brow.

"What do you want?"

"I am happy that you asked."

Using my powers, I created a black throne on which I sat down, while I also created two sets for the girls.

"I want you to change the timeline. I want you to put my mind and power into my old body."

"Hehehe, nice, nice, nice. Ask for more."

The barbarian woman, Lyssa, smiled as Maniae chuckled behind her veil.

"Put your mind and power into your old body. Are you seriously thinking that I can offer you something like that? You are insane!"

"Yes, that I know, but that isn't the point. The point is that I want a stable body, one that doesn't turn into a poodle of sludge when I am not concentrating."

"Even if I could do that, why would I help you? You are a criminal. an anomaly of reality."

"Why? Isn't it obvious, you are outnumbered? And I have the feeling that these two are itching for a fight, aren't you?"

"You know it!"

"I would love to be able to try these physical forms you gave us."

The two women looked at Time with eyes filled with a hunger for violence.

"Dealmaker…Do you even realize what you have done? You gave physical bodies to entities made from thoughts and nightmares. Bringing them into the physical plane will further destroy the balance of reality."

"You mean the reality that has turned me into the thing sitting before you? Yeah, I won't be crying about it."

"It was you! Your fool and ignorance turned you into the monster that you are today. You have no right to blame anyone other than yourself."

I looked at the old man, and my anger shifted the shape of my chair, growing several spikes where my head was.

With a boom of wisdom, the sisters got off the tier chairs.

"You are wrong about one thing. One tiny thing"

I slowly stood up, reabsorbing the chair into my being, only leaving a small amount behind, which turned into a black sword.

"The goddess. She is the reason I am here. She made me."

slowly I walked before Father Time, looking down on the old man.

"And I will stop at nothing, nothing to get to my goal."

"And what is your goal?"

The old man was seriously shaking before me, the stench of fear and madness emanating from his body.

"I want power. Enough power for me to create a never-ending empire and let me feast upon the bodies of gods driven to insanity."

Stab!

"UGH!"

I stabbed the old man in the chest, seeing golden blood flowing out from the wound.

"And you shall be a little piece that shall give it to me."

I slowly opened my mouth as wide as I could and several tentacles shot out from it, going into his body, through his throat and eyes.

I have to admit, I became a fan of eating like this. No clothes or objects to spit out afterward and I only leave behind the skin and hair, which were the worst parts of a body/

Once inside of its body, I started to spread out and digest his insides, slowly slurping it up as he struggled in vain.

Once I reattracted the appendages and I closed my mouth, he was nothing more than a piece of clothes and his skin that fell on the ground.

"Thank you for the food."

After wiping away some of my own black goo I turn to the Samurai,

"Now…For dessert."

I approach him and put my hands on his shoulders.

"As I kill you, I want you to remember that I gave you a chance to live. See you in your next life, samurai whose name I shall learn again."

I opened my mouth again as I was about to eat him, but then something grabbed my back and pushed me aside.

"Who dare-"

WHAM!

From out of nowhere, something hit me in the face, breaking a portion of my mask and making me take a few steps back.

"So, this is what dying by your hands feels."

As I look up, my mask slowly fixing itself, I see the same old man, looking down at his own deceased body, his eyes filled with sadness.

"After experiencing so many deaths, I can say for certain, dying by you is one of the worst ones I ever felt. You are a sick creature."

"You! I ate you! How?!"

The girls stepped next to me, different weapons appearing in their hands.

Lyssa's nails turned into blood-red claws, while Maniae created a black sword, which seemed to absorb the light around it.

The old man shocks his head.

"You can not kill me. Us, great spirits are different from gods. Till another spirit takes over our duties, we always come back."

After hearing these words, I froze up, but then I started laughing, my head looking up at the ceiling, and my mouth opened wide.

"…What are you finding so funny?"

I slowly look at him, seemingly shocked.

"Funny? It's not funny! I am delighted!"

I snap my mouth shut as I create a black sword in my hand.

"I just heard the greatest news of my life! An infinite amount of food! If I cannot kill you permanently, I shall feast upon you over and over, driving you into insanity and despair, so that you become more delectable!"

As I shout, I create a tentacle to shoot toward him, which opens up halfway, revealing a set of teeth.

"…I see."

From an invisible force, the tentacle got blasted into pieces, leaving the oldman unharmed.

"You are nothing more than an animal. Not even able to understand my words."

"Keep talking old man! I am going to eat you as if you were a piece of meat! Girls!"

To my command the two of them jumped towards him, blasting into a blinding light as a strong suction started to pull me towards the blast.

When the light finally extinguished, I was… somewhere else.

The closest thing I could describe it was that I was in space.

A pitch-black darkness with stars and constellations shining around me, who was standing on a piece of rock that had several ruins on it.

There I saw Father Time, looking down upon the girls, who slowly melted into black goo.

"You two are strong but inexperienced. The physical bodies that you wished for have limited you greatly."

He snapped his fingers, pushing the poodles, which were once the girls, into my body.

"You can keep them. They aren't needed for the continuation of time. As for you…"

He snapped his fingers again, creating what I could only describe as a black hole.

"Since even nothingness couldn't hold you, I shall put you somewhere, you can not cause trouble. I shall retrieve you when I have cleaned up the mess you caused to the timeline and when you are needed."

"What are-"

As I tried to talk, my body became stiff and cold, making me unable to move.

"Not now."

The old man turned to the kneeling samurai, who didn't say a word during the entire thing.

"As for you child, I am disappointed, you were meant to protect this realm from this abomination, and you weren't able to do that. This time, I hope that you will do a better job."

The old man snapped his fingers, a golden chain wrapping on my and the kid's wrist.

"This is the chain of time. You two shall meet each other again and again, till that thing dies. „He points at me. "This time however, you shall be drawn to each other. You shall forever be connected to each other."

With a kick to his chest, he sent the samurai flying into that hole, his body getting ripped apart as he was screaming.

"Now as for you."

He slowly walked to me.

"The next time we meet, I hope you will calm down and fulfill your destiny."

As he kicked me, I quickly created a giant mouth on my chest and bit into his foot.

As he screamed in pain, I regained my body's movement and with a quick movement, I ripped his foot off.

"I SHALL NOT BE SENT AWAY AGAIN! I AM THE DEALMAKER, THE TRUE GOD OF THIS REALITY! I SHALL NOT BE SENT AW-"

Before I could finish talking, something hit me by my side, making me fall into the hole.

The pain was indescribable, as I felt each part of my body being ripped apart before being rearranged.

As when I was about to go mad with the pain, I felt hitting solid ground, splattering all over.

After I registered what just happened, I quickly gathered myself, taking on the form of a humanoid wearing a blue suit, a red tie, and my dear deer mask.

Once I was whole I looked around.

I could tell that I was in a narrow alleyway, the buildings and the ground made from some sort of bricks, with pipes running through the walls.

"The hell am I?"

I looked around when I noticed that there was light coming from one of the directions of the alley.

Prepared for anything, I went and looked.

"This is new."

The streets were filled with machinery made of bronze as people in victorian styled clothes walked around. Several bronze constructs were walking around, carrying heavy-looking crates and objects, as steam escaped from their bodies.

"Interesting. A steam-powered society. These words always have an asylum or two. Gonna need to feast, to recharge my batteries. I wonder, will their madness taste steamed too."

As I looked around, I saw a piece of newspaper on the ground.

I picked it up and read the front page, which was surprisingly written in English.

THE MOLD PLAGUE IS SPREADING! THE EPIDEMIC HAS CLAIMED THOUSANDS OF LIVES, WHILE THE BLIGHTED HAVE TAKEN MORE!

"Mold Plague? What the hell is that?"

I walk back into the alley and concentrate, trying to reach the girls.

Through my efforts, I could tell they were in my mind, but they seemed to be stuck or something. Whatever Father Time did to time will take time to undo.

As I look around, I notice several dark figures scurry in the corner.

Intrigued, I followed the thing that led me to a pile of garbage bins covered with a plastic sheet.

I kicked the bins away, revealing the thing hidden behind them

It was… well probably was a man.

It had clothes and the vague shape of one, but aside from that, it was unrecognizable.

It was rotten and bloated with holes covering its stomach from which I could see things moving.

On the ground around, a green carpet of moss or fungus lines was covering the ground.

"What… happened to you?"

I approach the body, only for it to turn its head towards me, from its mouth a greenish tentacle shooting out, missing me by a little.

"Fascinating."

From one of my fingers, I shot out one of my own tendrils hitting the thing on the head, and going into the thing's head.

"Tell me, what are you?"

As I dug into the thing's mind, I found myself amazed.

Its mind was rotten, nothing concrete left from its previous life, but from those destructions, something grew out.

Treads of commands and memories, moving around, seemingly connected to various other minds, some gathered in clusters like giant islands, while others, like the one I was using, were nothing more than a grain of sand.

Every one of these lines was seemingly pumping something towards a single point.

Following the thread coming from this thing's mind, I found myself feeling something I never felt before.

The pulsations from the threads that at first seemed random, now became rhythmic, giving me the impression that they were singing something.

As I approached the core of these things, a blinding green light pushed me out of the mind of the creature, making me stage a little.

As I held my head, I still felt the rhythm and for a split second, I understood a part of the song.

" Dear brother and sister, let us join fingers and stomp our feet,

this will be the day our father will break our deathly chains,

Plague Father, destroyer, creator of man,

We offer our hearts and voices to praise your name."

*****

That's right guys, Summoning Went Wrong is colliding with Fungal Dream! Quickly jump on it to catch up with that side of the story!