「Metam」
「Skill list updated」
「Benedictio est nunquam mori」
「It is a blessing to never die; Lvl 00.」
「As a gift, your first 3 'redires' will return you to the closest living human around you.」
「And as a bonus, u get instant Mutatio」
「Exhale.exe docked」
「EXHALE-」
"Fuck. As pale as this kid was, God damn he's got some blood." Seth said as Adams body went limp and fell to the grass as he landed the severing strike.
Abel stood there blank eyed as he held Adams head up and Seth ducked down and tried pulling Abels knife out of Adams back and rip off the Devil arm and the sword from the body.
"Abel, look at this item, holy shit, this is great." Seth said, to no response.
"Abel..." Seth said as he looked up to see his friend with completely blank eyes, as drool fell out his mouth that he left ajar. His face slowly turning purple like he was suffocating, Adams head still tight in his grip.
"Abel, What the fuck, ABEL!?" Seth yelled out trying to grab his brother but for some reason he couldn't, something about it all felt seriously wrong.
He leapt behind some trees, expecting this to be a demon possession being fought back by his brother, although he didn't know those could happen this early on in the game.
Then, Abel's breathing returned, only it was not Abel.
As soon as Abel Breathed out, Abel felt like he was fading fast. The last thing he spoke moving from his lips.
"Receperint Templum Meum... Seth, h-help..."
"Haah" Abel exhaled, slight black dust emanating from his sigh as Abels eyes stopped being blank and he looked in his hands.
"I-Its me. That's my body..." Abel said silently, the voice coming from Abels body.
Abel; or rather, Adam looked at his newly claimed body, staring at his now long arms and legs, he was covered in blood, his blood and his hand still held on tightly to the head that was once his.
Adam couldn't believe what was happening. He tried to scream but now he felt like all the muscles in this new body began constricting. Like they were being compressed and it hurt like hell. and his lungs felt like they were caked in soot and ashes.
He howled in pain as he fell to the ground writhing. as Seth watched in horror from beyond the bushes
cover.
Abels hair fell off and was replaced by quickly growing dark blue hair, his limbs shrank, his torso followed and his head shaped changed all in an instant. and his facial features seemed to rearrange themselves to resemble his original self. Albeit the entire experience was like being forced through a meat grinder, put back together and grinded up once again.
Adam was on the floor, clutching his chest trying to breathe as all the atoms in his body yelled true that the pain was unbearable. And then finally a loud crack rang out of his new body and everything stopped all at once.
Adam sat up, wondering wtf had just happened and he saw his own decapitated head shedding tears before it finally also stopped.
Adam was horrified but before he could do much, Seth stepped out of the bushes, his eyes wide with anger and confusion.
"W-What did you do." Seth asked, his knife in hand as he towered above Adam who was beside his own corpse.
"I'm sorry. Please." Adam tried to say as he pushed himself back and tried to crawl away but Seth wouldn't let him.
Seth grabbed Adam by his hair again and stabbed him right in the chest, then pulled it out swiftly and kept on stabbing him repeatedly until his chest was nothing but caved in mush.
"Give me my brother back, you runt!" He yelled out with tears in his eyes between every stab until Adam was Dead again.
「Benedictio est nunquam mori」
「It is a blessing to never die; Lvl 01.」
「Redire」
「Instant Mutatio」
「Inhale.exe docked」
And in an instant Adam was back.
As Seth tried to stab Adams already caved in chest, his body stopped dead in its tracks and his eyes ent blank. He started to scream before his voice box was violently shut and then the last thing he said was...
"Receperint Templum Meum." and so as it was with Abel, it was with Seth. And he was Gone. Adam now in the body.
The stab motion completed and As Adam was changing painfully back into his original shape, he stabbed his own crying head straight down the middle and he felt like his own brain was being cplit down the middle and he passed out in a double pool of his own blood, with tears in his eyes.
"I cant do this anymore." Adam cried, as his eyes slowly shut...
--
A day had passed. Adam lay motionless in a filthy mire of blood-soaked mud, the metallic tang of decay clinging to the air. When he finally woke up, his body ached as if still tethered to the agony of dying. Stumbling upright, his mind swam in a foggy haze, flashes of violence and pain cutting through like shards of glass. He turned instinctively toward the distant spire of the church and began to run.
But his legs refused. No matter how hard he willed them forward, an invisible force seized his limbs. Panic bubbled up, and then, the system appeared before his eyes, its cold text piercing his thoughts.
「Don't leave your corpses.」
The words hit like a hammer. His chest heaved, his vision blurred. Adam stood frozen, tears streaming down his face as the system vanished, leaving only the sight of his own lifeless bodies sprawled grotesquely before him, their bodies twisted disturbingly. Their faces—his faces—twisted in agony, accusing him in their silence.
Numbly, he approached, his trembling hand gripping the arm of Resheph, torn from one of his corpses. He began to dig, clawing at the earth with brutal, unrelenting strokes. The soil resisted, clumping with blood and sweat, but he didn't stop. He couldn't. Between every few shovels, his stomach lurched, and he vomited into the dirt, his cries echoing in the stillness. At one point, he slammed his head against a tree repeatedly, the pain a desperate attempt to wake himself from this nightmare.
When the holes were deep enough, he dragged the bodies in, their weight an unbearable reminder of his own. He buried them, his breath ragged, his hands raw, bloody and filthy. The ground swallowed the evidence, but not the horror. As the last mound of earth was patted down, a strange calm crept over him, artificial and wrong, like a candle snuffed out mid-flame.
He stood there, staring at the graves. His mind screamed at him to process it, to make sense of the impossible, but he forced himself to move. He gathered his weapons and those of the dead and turned to leave, his steps hollow and automatic.
Then it hit him: those two men—Abel and Seth—were servants of Valeria. If he returned to the church alive, unscathed, and empty-handed after a day, suspicion would fall on him. But how could he explain it? How could anyone believe that he died, twice, and somehow crawled back into life by stealing their bodies?
Adam didn't believe that himself.
He stumbled deeper into the forest, his legs moving aimlessly. His thoughts spiraled as he muttered to himself.
"What the fuck did I just do? What the fuck just happened?" Adam's voice cracked, raw from screaming.
"Why does dying feel like this? Twice? What happened to Abel and Seth? I didn't... I didn't kill them. Did I?" He said to himself.
The forest blurred around him, his eyes heavy with exhaustion. When he found a puddle, he knelt to drink, desperate for relief. But when he leaned closer, he froze. Staring back at him wasn't his reflection. Instead, two men—Abel and Seth—were fused grotesquely at the torso, sharing a single pair of legs. Their warped forms leered up at him with unseeing eyes.
Adam recoiled, falling back into the dirt. His chest tightened as bile rose in his throat. He scrambled away, clawing at the earth, until a piercing scream shattered the air.
"Receperint Templum Meum!" in the voices of Two people at once.
The voice was alien yet familiar, reverberating in his skull like a curse. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think. A distant bell tolled, its mournful sound muffled but relentless. He dropped everything and ran, his steps uneven and frantic as he fled toward the church. His mind, though, was already retreating, sealing itself behind walls of willful ignorance.
He wouldn't think about it. He couldn't.
"It just didn't happen" Adam reassured himself as he walked back.
--
"Oh you're back." Vari said, as he polished a golden goblet, with a napkin, there was about 15 other people sitting around the main floor of the church.
"You smell different." Kaiser said as he seemingly walked out of the shadow of the massive door that Adam had left open when he swung open the door.
The other people in the church turned around and intensely started down Adam.
"Did Abel and Seth really get attacked by a demon?" One of the residents in a white robe asked.
"Y-Yes." Adam responded, his voice still trembling.
"Vaal was right. Kaiser spoke out softly as he walked away.
"Gotta hand it to him, that crowd control ability is nice." Vari compliemented Valerias ability to tell when one of his disciples died from that far away simply because of the mental link he had created.
"Kaiser. We need to leave now." Adam said, under his breath. His mind still in shock.
"2 more weeks." Kaiser responded.
"In two days it'll start raining non stop acid, the rats will get more aggressive and they'll be more plague disciples. This will be the safest place." Vari added
"What the fuck is wrong with you!? What about Mo-" Adam yelled, out, getting frustrated because he realized he couldn't argue with what vari brought up but he was interrupted.
"Do not speak his name in here. Might be one of those death penalty rules." Vari said trying to shush Adam.
The mere mention of the word death had Adam so petrified that he simply stood on the spot for hours on end without moving an inch.
"2 more weeks of waiting" Adam said under his breath reluctantly
Another day had passed.
It had been 3 days since they arrived at the Church, his ears still ringing from the sounds of the bells that almost exploded his eardrums a while back.