[Current Punishment: Fragment of the Universe]
Asher groaned as he found himself lying on a hard, flat surface.
"So it seems I died again. Wonder if Yan's alright." Hopefully she ran away when he fainted, but he highly doubted that. Her snarl as he blacked out showed him that she would only accept success or death. And considering the fact that he was dead...
She must've died too.
'...'
He stood up to his feet, observing his surroundings in silence.
Asher stood on an inky black surface; it was too dark to see anything. The ground was completely flat, and a numbing cold pierced through the soles of his shoes.
He looked up toward the sky.
A black void filled his vision, devoid of any illumination. It was so dark he couldn't even tell which way was up or down.
This was simply a place of nothingness.
A low-pitched whistle echoed from afar, breaking his thoughts. The grating noise perforated his mind, causing him to wince.
"Ugh-!" Asher gripped his skull in pain as his thoughts swirled, disorienting his calm. He tripped to the ground, unable to coordinate his balance in the darkness.
'System, this is the Fragment of the Universe? What's the objective?'
[Calibrating... Error found. Determining objective...]
"Huh? C'mon, at least tell me what there is here! I just gotta sit in the void or something? And what was that whistle?"
The System didn't respond. Asher plopped down onto the ground, yet he couldn't even do that since the ground was freezing cold.
A lyricless song, much closer than last time, pierced through his entire being. The sharp ache in his mind grew worse. His eyes widened as a faint glow of light materialized ahead.
Finally, he could see!
But his excitement didn't last long.
"What the..." He squinted his eyes, not sure what he was looking at.
The light seemed to be attached to a creature over fifteen feet tall.
Its pitch black, oval-shaped body rested above the floor. Several tentacles sprouted from the upper half of the creature's body, curving downward into the ground to support its weight. A headlike appendage was connected to its body by another branched tentacle.
The head looked like a cartoonish heart. Or maybe a closed flower, he couldn't tell.
Embedded into its body were a few pastel drawn hearts which pulsated with neon light, creating a faint glow in the darkness.
"Just looking at it makes my brain- Argh!" He ripped his gaze away, unable to bear it any longer.
The pain reminded him of a certain sword owned by the Red Mist, Mimicry.
However, he had to look at it again; he didn't know whether this thing was hostile or friendly.
He pushed past the pain, staring at the creature, who also seemed to be observing him.
The two of them observed each other for a moment before it raised its head high.
Its head split open in full bloom, revealing a swirling vortex filled with broken bones and flesh before it emitted a hair-raising melody from its insides.
The noise faded from his ears, replaced with strange visions.
"N-NO! STOP!!"
Asher clawed at his flesh furiously as he felt millions of fairies crawl across his skin, eating him alive.
He screamed in agony as the Carnival slowly skinned him alive, as Yan watched in horror.
He saw a man with mutated claws ripping apart a blonde woman, showering him with blood.
He did not know where the last one came from, but it was the most painful hallucination out of all three.
Then the song stopped. Asher panted on the floor, unsure of what just happened, the hours of torment he experienced in his mind.
'Were those... hallucinations or something?' He flicked the bloody chunks of flesh out of his fingernails.
The creature's head closed, and it tilted its head toward him curiously.
"Song. Hurt? Sorry." He flinched as he felt an incomprehensible mumbling noise in his ear, translated into a language he could understand.
"W-What are you? You can speak?"
A distorted sketch of a smile surfaced on its body.
"Fragment. Universe. Welcome." It wiggled one of its tentacles energetically. Incoherent whispers echoed about as it approached him.
"Um, yeah... You live in this place? It's... dark around here." Asher tried to ignore the blood dripping down his arms as he tried to act friendly. It didn't seem hostile, but who knew when it would burst out into song again.
"Want. Light?"
Asher plugged his ears as its head opened again, but the pain he expected didn't come. He timidly opened his eyes.
"Woah..." Hundreds of enormous eyes blinked in the distance, each several times larger than the sun. Childlike renderings of hearts and stars twinkled across the sky, illuminating everything around him.
They were on a pure black plane, which stretched as far as the eye could see, until the orange line of the horizon, contrasting beautifully with the black expanse.
It was a pretty whimsical place; he couldn't help but admire its fantastical beauty.
"Why did your song hurt so much?"
"Human."
"It's because I'm human?"
"Fragile. Mind." The eyes in the sky stared down at him with uncomfortable intensity.
The System chose this time to report back to him.
[Calculation complete.]
[Objective: Subdue the Fragment of the Universe.]
Asher blanched as he read the objective the System gave him. The monster beside him, subdue it? How was that possible?
But he had to try.
"Um, Fragment of the Universe... Sorry about this."
It made a noise, mimicking human laughter.
"Understand. Timetrack. Correct?"
"-! Yes, how do you know about that? You know the System?"
Asher was amazed. Aside from the message Yan gave him the first time he met her, right before he died to Sayako, this was the only other time anything acknowledged the ability he had.
"Universe. Knows. Mission. Subdue?"
"Yeah... it told me to do that. I'm really sorry, but-" He transformed into Sophie, pulling the knife Yun gave him out of his pocket.
He remembered the fact that his E.G.O magnified mental damage. Considering the foe he was up against, wearing his E.G.O would only be a death wish.
"Unnecessary. Come." The Fragment seemed to understand his decision. Sparing no extra words, a tentacle shot from its body toward his brain.
Asher could easily track its movements, which was strange. He sidestepped and tried to slice it off, but his blade merely phased through.
"I'm not complaining, but why don't you just sing again? I would've died by now if you kept doing that." He didn't get why the Fragment chose to attack physically, the aspect where it was clearly weakest.
It clearly saw him writhing on the floor from its eldritch song, but it refused to use it.
"Fairness. Chance. Complete. Mission."
"...Thank you."
He nodded his head gratefully. He prepared himself again, readying his knife.
'I have to dodge those tentacles. My knife can't cut them.'
He rolled to the side as a tentacle narrowly missed his ear.
Slowly and steadily, he neared the creature, slipping past the attacks it sent him. Soon he was only a few feet away from its main body.
"Ha!" Asher slashed upward with all his might, but the Fragment's body was made of some sort of black ooze.
His knife lodged into its body. As he tried to pull it out, an incorporeal tentacle snuck behind him, piercing his brain.
He began to hallucinate as the shadowy limb scrambled his thoughts.
"MEI!"
He saw Mei being stabbed by an illusionary figure. Rushing closer, the fog obscuring the shadowy figure faded.
It was Yan.
"The Prescripts must be carried out," she said expressionlessly as she raked her blade along Mei's back.
Mei screamed as the knife cut into her bones.
"Yan, stop!" Asher panted as he awoke from his reverie.
He found himself trapped in a cage of tentacles, unable to move without passing through one of them.
The Fragment of the Universe tilted its head apologetically.
"Sad. Sorry." It tried to mimic a smile on its body to make him feel better.
Asher wanted to say 'it's fine' as common courtesy, but he couldn't bring himself to say it. It wasn't fine. Nothing was fine. An empty feeling gnawed at his heart. Would Yan actually do that if she was told to?
"...What will you do to me now?"
"Absorb." The cage restricted. Asher shrugged, but his trembling arms betrayed his fear.
"Alright, let's get it on with. Make it fast." He closed his eyes, accepting his fate. What would happen if he failed a mission? Permanent death? Probably nothing good.
"Mistaken. Host. Absorb."
Without another word, it began to shrink until it was the size of a small dog.
"W-Woah, I'm going to do what now??" Asher backed away to as far as the cage could let him, but the Fragment kept approaching, intent on being absorbed.
Soon, his back reached the edge of the cage. He could walk through the illusionary bars at any moment, but he decided to just close his eyes in resignation. The creature was too powerful for him to defeat, not to mention physical attacks didn't work on it at all.
Besides, he did not want to experience another hallucination again. The one he just had... Never again. It felt all too real for him.
He shivered as what felt like a humid cloud smothered his body before slowly sinking in.
The warmth suddenly turned into extreme cold as black spots appeared in his vision. He sat down heavily, gasping for breath as he clutched his heart.
A voice echoed in his mind.
"Sleep. Tired."
With that, Asher didn't hear anything else from the newly parasitized abnormality.
Asher felt his four limbs. Everything seemed more or less normal. The eyes in the sky closed, fading away. The hearts and stars disappeared, and the void returned to its lightless state.
"System? What was that, do I have an abnormality living inside me now?"
[...]
[Analyzing completion...]
[Error]
[Completion: Error]
"What the..."
And so he dissolved into shards of light, completing his fourth punishment mission.