Chapter 1025: The Shiik

The beast had grown, and its taste was no longer limited to waiting for the dead to decay, with Rowan's unceasing draining of the vitality it exuded, the appetite of the creature exploded. No longer a carrion it became a hunter. To sustain its size which was increasing daily, it needed nourishment.

With its great size which was currently three times bigger than the rest, the beast claimed all the corpses in the area for itself, and for a while, it reigned over this area, but its appetite never diminished but continued growing, and soon its existence could no longer be tolerated by the others.

One by one the others began to attack the ravenous beast, but its size had granted it great strength and it easily overcame the opposition and devoured them, not even waiting for them to decay, because it knew it was now somehow capable of eating all the death energy without being poisoned by life.

It was even beginning to develop an appetite for hunting and killing instead of waiting and now it attacked any other beast closer to itself.

However, everything has a breaking point. Inside this place, resources were getting limited, and the beast not only took over all the available corpses but was also killing the others, this situation could not go on for much longer.

On this day they all began to attack, and coincidentally, this was the moment when Rowan's enhanced consciousness was completed and released.

The world slowed down in his perception and he finally observed the place he had been resurrected.

Similar to the New Hope Continent after he descended into this world, this place was a massive crater that extended for miles into the earth, and the light of the sun could not reach it, leaving it in a perpetual state of darkness.

From above, there were corpses falling from the sky constantly, mostly humanoid and all spotting various gruesome injuries, making it clear that this place was a garbage dump made for the disposal of bodies.

He finally had a clear look at these creatures at the bottom of this crater, and they resembled large spiders that had been crossbred with a crab and a crocodile, black chitinous armor-like scales covered the top half of their body while below were filled with a brown saggy skin that scrapped the ground as they skittered through the blighted landscape with more than thirty thin limbs that ended at a razor-sharp point.

The head and thorax of these creatures were nightmare fuel, for they had faces of people, but these faces were now diseased and rotting, with bones thick with diseases and rot showing through. From. their gaping mouths that stretched open to their ears they released mournful howls as if they were in constant pain.

Each of them was as large as an elephant, and they carried their bulk very easily, gliding across the landscape like ghosts.

Because he had been inside the stomach of one, he knew that these creatures were mostly made of nothing else but this large organ that processed all the death energy they needed to survive.

There were thousands of them inside this crater, and although the beast he now inhabited had killed nearly a hundred of them over the last year, it had never been more than three at a time, it might be impossible for it to survive the onslaught that was coming.

The beast he inhabited had now become a monster, nearly four times larger than its counterparts, and its armor was thicker and now had streaks of red running through it. The armor that covered only the top of the body of this creature was slowly growing to cover the entirety of its body, giving it the appearance of a tank.

However what was amazing was its head and face, unlike the others, it was no longer decaying but it was whole and appeared lifelike. Currently, the face was that of a sleeping woman, with growing red hair. It stood over a pile of corpses and raised several of its front limbs upward, these ones were not only pointed but were thickened, made for slashing as well as thrusting attacks.

Seemingly not caring about the horde bearing down upon it, the monster only widened its stance and silently waited. Unlike the entirety of the army nearing down upon it, this monster no longer made a sound. It appeared to be asleep.

The first carrion beast to reach it howling like a bat out of hell was sliced completely in two, same with the three others behind it, the motion of the beast was so fast it was almost a blur. Its size does nothing to slow its speed.

Greenish-black blood spewed out from the bisected bodies and the beast used its other limbs to push them aside and receive the attacks of those behind, its limbs rising and falling like multiple reaper scythes.

In a short while the beast was covered with shrieking bodies, but it silently continued its slaughter.

With his consciousness now free to wander to an extent, another of its functions activated and he instantly understood the name of these creatures. They were called Shiik. When Rowan killed anything with a soul, except for Immortals with dense soul power that could form Soul mountain in his primordial seas and he could not read their memories instantly, mortals were a separate case, their souls were completely digested by him in an instant, granting him access to all their memories and knowledge that had acquired in their lives.

With the pathetic state of his consciousness, Rowan could not access all his memories, and only with the growth of his body was he able to finally access parts of the knowledge he must have gained after killing all the mortal beings on New Hope and beyond.

Although his consciousness was still weak, he was able to access part of the collective pool of knowledge instinctively, and while he had been referring to these creatures as beasts all this time, he was wrong, they were worse than beasts, they were Calamities.

From the limited knowledge he could gain from mortals, he knew that the great enemies in this world were referred to as Calamities, these creatures had been around from time immemorial and they had plagued this reality for that long, destroying countless lives till this moment it was generally accepted that the Calamities were winning this endless war.

From the memories of mortals he knew there were many levels of power in this world, but he only knew of three presently, the Mortal level, the Enlightened Level, and finally the Heroic level.

The mortals had their champions, titled Explorers, these were the lucky few who were able to access the power of this world which was surprisingly Aura and with it, they could walk upon the ladder of power.

The Shiik were Calamities that barely reached the Enlightened level, and they were considered fodder in higher-ranked continents, but useful fodder nonetheless, due to their unique ability, which was not the consumption of death, basically, All calamities were capable of this feat, no it was the fact that they could generate vitality out of death.

This crater was not a stronghold of the Calamities, instead, it was the opposite and was a resource site preserved by the Explorers, in this place they harvested the vitality-infused corpses that the Shiik discarded.