"..." - Normal speech
'...' - Mental Speech
[...] - System
"Ugh…"
His eyes opened and saw a dimly lit room.
"I…" A surge of memory enters his head and he immediately jolts awake and touches his neck..
"I'm alive? I'm alive!" He started confused but immediately cheered only to notice later that his hands were wet and the air was choked with coppery stench of blood he is very familiar with.
"Blood? What the hell!" Leo immediately jumped to his feet and saw bodies littered the ground with red pentagram and sigils drawn with blood and him standing in the center of it.
"Hum… it failed, huh."
"Who is that!" Leo instantly jumped to the direction of the voice and saw a man with similar robes worn by the dead cultists on the ground.
"Me? I am afraid that my identity is not relevant. However, I wonder how did it fail?" The cultist said while rubbing his chin and staring at the sigils on the floor. "The ritual is supposed to summon an outer god. Yet it summoned a human. Her Excellency, will be disappointed… Haah…" The cultist sighed before walking towards the exit before he suddenly stopped.
"Right. I cannot leave any evidence behind." The cultist turns back to Leo and in his hand is an ancient tome with its cover made with human skin with an anguished face of a human on it.
ልፓፓሸክነክልኡፓሸ፪
Hearing speech that should be impossible for a human tongue to speak, words that a human brain never meant to understand. The word itself should have made him disgusted by it and yet somehow it didn't. In fact he understands it very well.
The cultist said, 'Heed my prayer and to our contract. Lend me your kin to slay this human.' while the tome magically flip the pages without being touched or blown by winds.
Then an abomination of a monster appeared. A slug covered in purplish mucus with eight short legs, two arms like a praying mantis, a mouth with rows after rows of razor sharp teeths that spread wide open without a jaw.
"Kill him."
The cultist ordered as the abomination shrieked and obeyed until it reached close to Leo before it halted. It made a gesture similar to sniffing. Leo sure this thing didn't even have a nose to sniff.
"Hriek?" The monster became confused before retreating as if realized it did something wrong and shuddered while cowering.
"What the fuck?" Leo is confused. So does the cultist that can sense fear from the monster is summoned.
"What are you doing? Kill him!" The cultist ordered in a fit of anger for the monster's disobedience.
What happened next was outside of the cultist and Leo's expectation. The abomination turned to its summoner and raised its sickle-like arms.
"Wait! What are you doing? W- AHHH!" The cultist screamed before he was ripped apart and devoured by the abomination.
Meanwhile Leo is too stunned to speak any words. He was in denial of his situation.
"This must be a nightmare… It has to be. Ha.haha..hahaha…" He holds his face while laughing. "Yeah. It has to be. No way I just died and revived like nothing happened… Then a sata- No, a fucking Cthulhu eldritch horror ritual site."
He can't take it anymore and falls to his knees before curling up into a fetal pose, crying out his frustration.
"If this is a dream. Then why can't I wake up? What had I ever done to deserve this?" He mumbles before he feels something nudge him.
Leo lifted up his head and saw the abomination that just literally ripped apart a cultist and ate it like nothing, were trying to console him with nudges, acting more like a dog than an eldritch monstrosity.
"Are you consoling me?" Leo cringed at the notion but asked regardless. He already thought he went insane and he honestly didn't care anymore if the world suddenly exploded the next moment.
"Hriek!" The monster attempts to make a cute voice while nodding but all it can do is guttural shrieks.
"Thanks I guess… For not killing me." Leo expresses his gratitude and is about to pet the monster but stops when seeing its body is covered in weird purplish mucus that looks disgusting.
"Hriek?"
The monster tilts its head after seeing Leo pulling back its head and quickly standing up while mumbling something.
"Right. I must leave this place. There must be more of these cultists. I must escape before someone notices." Leo figures since this is a cult of some sort doing weird rituals. This means there might be more members outside of this room.
"Will you help me escape from here?" He asked the monster.
"Hriek!" The monster nods vigorously while it's rear wagging like how an excited puppy would.
Then with the help of this monster, Leo made his escape from this cultist lair. Indeed as he thought, there are cultists all over the place but his first companion since waking, had been a great help. It's speed, strength and efficiency is unmatched. Like a machine made solely for killing. All its limbs are sharp and capable of tearing apart a human and it's slimy body covered by mucus made it difficult to be injured, not even by magic that the cultist used.
When the duo almost reached the exit, a cultist was standing before them and Leo sensed this cultist was different from others. He wore ornaments which others don't and the way he speaks is rather dignified like a leader.
"This is as far as you can go. I don't care if the Church or Grigori sent you here but you have seen too much to be let alive. Even if I die, I'm taking you with me!" The presumably cultist leader declared before he pulled out a gory and grotesque tool, a staff made with the spine of a human, a baby even from the size and the top is a blob of unknown meat with numerous sewed eyelids.
Leo can't use magic and in his hand is only a steel pipe he steals from the piping system. He charged forward without fear as his new companion got him covered.
"Heh, using pipes of all things. Did you lose your weapon or something?" The leader mocked before using his wand and conjured a spell.
"Huh?" The cultist leader looked confused and surprised. "How are you not affected!" He shouted in rage and disbelief. "Impossible! Impossible! Only an Ultimate Class can shrug off my most powerful spell! How can a mere h-"
The monster decapitated the cultist leader's head while he wasn't paying attention.
"Nice team work, Max." Leo relaxed and turned to the monster that now looked less terrifying and more adorable despite how it looked.
Leo gave a fist bump with Max responded by hitting it with the blunt side of his sickle limb. He then rummaged the corpse for anything useful but other that strange occult stuff, he found nothing and left empty-handed.
*Inhale* *Exhale*
"Haaah! It's great to finally leave that hellhole. Fresh air and nice wind." Leo stretched his body after exiting through a cave. "Isn't it, Max?"
"Max?" Leo noticed the lack of any sound from his new companion which prompted him to lower his head and look down below to find his companion.
"!"
"Who are you!" Leo suddenly saw a girl with long raven black hair in a weird exhibitionist outfit that revealed a naked chest that only had four black plasters on her nipples.
"You… look weak like a human… but have a strong aura." The exhibitionist girl tilted her head cutely and looked confused.
"No, wait. Hold on a second." Leo quickly ordered her to stop. His sanity isn't enough to handle this shit.
He turned around looking for Max but he quickly noticed and saw a scaly thing behind him that he somehow failed to notice. He has to lift his head to finally see a head. It's a snake, a very large one with a bloated neck as if it just swallowed something and Leo saw the sickle-like limb belonging to Max poking out halfway in the snake's mouth.
It took him half a second to register what happened and his companion that accompanied him through this journey was eaten by this snake.
"Spit it out!" Leo grip the steel pipe tightly before hitting the snake. "Give Max back to me! Spit it out you damn snake!"
Despite Leo's effort to force the snake to spit out Max, it only looks at him silently and the metal pipe can't even be considered an itch when hitting its body. In the first place, the snake isn't even a living being with a will and instinct. It's just a magical construct that resembles a snake and acts like one. Thus, Leo's effort to communicate was futile from the beginning and his rage was for nothing because the snake did not have the capacity to even react.
After a few minutes of futilely bashing and hitting the snake with the pipe which was already bent and breaking, Leo finally ran out of energy and fell to the ground on his back. He stared at the snake with burning hate yet the snake's expression was unchanging from the very start like a doll.
The exhibitionist girl then approaches him before squatting down to bring her head closer to Leo and take a look at him curiously while touching his face.
"Odd… You are human." She points at Leo's body. "But you also not human." She then put her finger on Leo's forehead.
"What nonsense are you talking about?" Leo swats away her small little hand but finds himself unable to move her even by a little. As if she was an immovable boulder.
"I am a bonafide human born from a human father and a human mother. How am I not a human?" Leo snorted before getting himself off the ground.
The girl then thinks again for a few moments before reaching a conclusion as her expressionless face shows a slight shift.
"Your body is human but your soul not human." She reached a conclusion but her face suddenly frowned and turned outright hostile. "I remember. The ugly octopus sleeping in the sea. You feel the same."
Leo is familiar with killing intent, in his line of work as a gang member, there are countless times where he has to face vicious people aiming for his life. But the one this girl released is too overbearing. It's like comparing a small spark from a flint to the sun in the sky.
"W-Wait! I'm a human! P-Please believe me! I'll do whatever you want! Please spare me!" Leo shamelessly begged. He is too young and hasn't enjoyed life enough to die at such a young age.
The girl thankfully retracted her killing intent as Leo could release the breath he unknowingly held. He felt glad he was spared.
"You will help me?" The girl walks closer and approaches Leo until their faces are inches apart as she scrutinizes his expression to detect any lies and falsehood.
"Yes! Yes! I will help you." Leo agrees easily.
Since she looks and acts like a girl despite being this powerful, surely the problem will not be that hard right?
"You are like the ugly octopus. You must be strong."
"Yes. I am quite strong." Leo played along as long as he could live to see another day.
"Hn… You are like the ugly octopus. I cannot kill you with my power… I cannot trust your words." The girl said, remembering something important.
The existence from the outer universe has one common trait which is their true body, or perhaps more accurately, their soul is in a higher dimension beyond the physical realm which she cannot reach. Thus she cannot kill. At most she can banish them away but they are all slippery bastards like the 'ugly octopus' which she killed numerous times but gave up because it simply kept resurrecting without end. Because of that, she cannot trust Leo to honor his words when she cannot truly threaten him.
Meanwhile, Leo is utterly distracted by a voice that suddenly appeared in his head.
[Activation requirement met. Initializing started. Initializing complete. Booting up 'Lolimancer Ultimate System'.]
[Nice to meet you. I am an AI that acts as administrator of the system and assistant to aid Host to use the System.]
—————
If you readers feel generous or want to appreciate my work and effort, feel free to tip me here.
https://ko-fi.com/lazy_kat_aoi