The girl's organs seemed to dance gracefully and solemnly with the creature's fleshy tentacles, intertwining and merging with one another, binding tightly together, emitting sharp, shrill sounds accompanied by wet, gelatinous undertones as they fused strand by strand.
The flesh began to spasm. They didn't seem random. It was as if the Ijo was trying to connect with the girl. It wasn't absorbing her. On the contrary, it seemed like the opposite. It was Mishap that wanted to be absorbed by her. Those pulsations, generated between the living filaments connecting the two monsters, covered in veins and red glows, gradually became more frequent. They forced themselves into "Raiko's" body, violating and piercing every opening of the torn and exposed flesh—between bone gaps, into veins, into organs.
Those viscera, with their irritating heat, their wrinkled, wet skin slick with bodily fluids, slid wherever they found space, forcing their way even into the passages leading to the arms and legs, breaking bones and tearing flesh to carve more room along their path. There, swelling and contracting like balloons covered in faintly visible veins, they destroyed the dented, blood-stained metal from within and reshaped the skeletal structure of the girl's joints, reducing them to debris, grinding everything down and spilling it onto the floor.
The armor was emptied of its nearly liquid remains—thick substances containing fragments and shreds of flesh floating in blood and other foul fluids, resembling a mixture of spoiled blood and burning diesel, almost boiling as it poured onto the ground. It leaked from the armor's pores, from the elbows, the knees, the joints of the fingers, and from what had once been the chest, where that protruding mass continued to scrape away the liquefied muscle tissue. Tiny air bubbles formed within it as it flowed like a cascade, crashing down with a violent splash, amplified by the solid chunks of flesh and bone that added both soft and hard impacts, slightly muffled by the wetness of the fluid, which sprayed everywhere upon impact, scattering droplets that stained the floor and filled the air with a hellish stench.
In a short time, the girl's body had been almost completely emptied of its insides. What remained were only fragments and crushed granules—pulp that looked as if it had been chewed over and over before being spat onto the ground, still soaked in warm saliva. Some organs still hung loosely, barely attached to the rest of the body, letting the last drops of blood run down them—almost all of it already spilled onto the floor.
Mishap continued to invade the girl's body. Every single part of her carcass was overtaken by the Ijo, which was now almost entirely inside her, forcing its way in while growling with something close to pleasure.
Soon after, the girl's skull split open as well. The viscous, tentacular masses entered from below, pushing into the neck, climbing up through the throat and trachea, crushing their internal structure until they reached the head, where they began to emerge through every orifice—nostrils, ears, mouth—forcing them wider, tearing them apart in the process and spilling yet another flood of blood.
The metal helmet of the armor exploded under the pressure and force of the mass. There was no head left. In its place remained yet another shapeless lump of flesh and cartilage, fragments of skull barely visible, and a single eye dangling grotesquely outside.
Only the brain remained intact, immediately surrounded by the tentacles. In turn, they were drawn closer—almost invited—by the brain's own filaments, which seemed like an organism of its own, its movements perhaps even more viscous and disturbing than Mishap itself.
At first, even Mishap seemed intimidated by it. It lowered its "head," almost as if bowing before it, completely submissive and devoted. The Ijo was ecstatic, producing a deeply unnatural, exaggerated laugh, soon replaced by disgusting moans as the two entities connected.
The brain began to absorb the monster's body more and more rapidly, while Mishap, overwhelmed with euphoria, roared violently in a state of pure, grotesque pleasure. With each passing second, entire masses of flesh were consumed into the girl's mind and body, which began to show signs of life again—her fingers twitching, then her arms, then the rest of her body—releasing from within a deeper, more primal scream, comparable to a wild creature trapped in a dark cell buried deep underground, finally about to break free… ready to tear apart and kill in the most brutal ways anything that stood before it.
The absorption was almost complete.
Then, just a step away from the end, everything stopped.
A light began to emanate from the brain. Its intense white aura almost resonated in the darkness like a distorted angelic chant. Its heat was painful yet pure—divine, sacred, consecrated—like a blazing sword that both cut and struck the creature, externally, burning it with its overwhelming radiance, and internally, as if compressing the brain itself, nearly suffocating and incinerating it.
Both monsters began to scream in agony.
Mishap's body started to melt. Its flesh immediately began to boil like wax, the skin blistering and bursting into bubbles, crackling as it released greasy, oily fluids across its surface. These too were boiling, dangerously so, intensified by the light to the point that they seemed to fry the flesh beneath, slowly sliding down onto the writhing creature as it thrashed in unbearable pain, struggling to move as much as it could—even as its strength seemed to abandon it once more.
The tentacles ignited and, one by one, were severed—never reaching the ground, instead reduced to ash almost instantly.
The light grew stronger and stronger.
A static noise, similar to a "Rueh," deep, thunderous, and mechanical, intensified more and more, as the ground—and even the air itself—not only began to tremble, but seemed to grow heavier, crushing the Ijo's body under immense pressure. It slowly collapsed and split open, organs and bones tearing apart and compressing in the most violent and brutal ways, imploding into themselves, squeezed by a force that felt almost purifying.
Blood burst outward—but the moment it emerged, it turned into smoke, disintegrated at an atomic level. It released wails and cries that, as agonizing and desperate as they were, became drowned out by the angelic sound—a resonance so high-pitched it felt impossible, until it reduced itself to a single, overwhelming vibration.
That vibration crushed and collapsed Mishap entirely, as it let out one final, faint whisper of a cry.
In an instant, it ceased to exist.
Whatever had happened to that brain, however, the beam managed to contain it. Just before, it had seemed like a true battle—two invisible warriors clashing in an epic, bloody, brutal, and ferocious struggle, where the goal was not merely to win, but to completely dominate the other, to crush them beneath one's will.
Yet from the outside, it was nothing more than a flickering glow of light, pulsing irregularly, accompanied by sounds like "Rueh" or "Uom" overlapping each other, while the rest of the warehouse stood on the verge of total collapse.
As abruptly as it had begun, it ended just as suddenly.
***
A few minutes after falling asleep beside Victor, who was still unconscious, Toria had been resting with her lips slightly parted in a soft, heart-like shape, breathing faintly. Her face looked tired, a little pale, and marked by a lingering worry despite her sleep, her eyes still slightly reddened.
She was suddenly awakened by an abrupt sound—a powerful, intense vibration that echoed through her body, shaking her and making her jolt upright immediately. Her head had been resting sideways on her left hand, while her right hand was tightly holding Victor's, leaving a vivid red mark across her cheek, stretching from her left eye down to her jaw and even below it, as if her skin had been burned.
Her eyes snapped open in shock, then slowly fell half-shut again, wet with tears that rolled down in small drops, spreading across her face as she rubbed them away, lightly dampening her skin.
"What was that…?" Her voice was hoarse and weak.
Squinting against the room's light, which irritated her still blurred and weakened vision, she looked around, overcome by a deep confusion and a sense of disorientation.