"Why do you choose to suppress yourself?"
Winsor felt adrift in a heavy, suffocating haze when he heard the question. The voice was familiar, a soft sigh that echoed intimately against his ear.
"Yeah, why?"
Winsor wanted to answer, but his eyelids felt like lead. Or perhaps, deep down, he didn't truly want to open them. To remain conscious in the endless, grinding river of time was a cruel sentence. Most of the time, he chose the mercy of sleep. If his life passed in a meaningless, dreamless slumber, it seemed a far better fate.
If you own nothing, you can lose nothing. No joy, no sadness.
"Yes, it is truly tragic to stay awake," the voice continued, its tone sweet and bewitching. "Since that's the case, just keep sleeping. Leave it all behind. Everything happening outside has nothing to do with you."
It sounded like a perfect escape. Winsor's stagnant thoughts began to drift, unraveling like smoke in the wind. But just as he was about to dissolve into the void, a sharp, piercing scream exploded in his mind.
"YI——!"
The sound sent a violent "buzz" through Winsor's head. He instinctively retracted his mental tentacles, swaying in the vast vacuum of his consciousness, dazed and puzzled.
"No, you should be asleep!" The voice that had been whispering in his ear turned frustrated, losing its soothing edge. It quickly lowered its tone again, desperate to maintain the illusion. "When you sleep, you don't have to worry. Isn't that better?"
"Ai——ai————!"
This time, the cry was louder, more persistent. It was a sound that didn't belong in this void—a sound of life. Intermittently, it was mixed with a clear, straining human voice:
"Win... Winsor..."
His sea of consciousness began to churn. But just as Winsor felt he might finally force his eyes open, the voice calling his name stopped abruptly.
"Someone... is calling me."
Winsor pondered this slowly. His brain felt wrapped in a thick, white mist. He reached out a hand, trying to tear the veil away, but he found himself lost in the fog, grasping at nothing.
"You're mistaken," the deceptive voice whispered, pressing close again. "It's all an illusion, Winsor. Do you really believe anyone in that world truly cares for you? Do you think any of them are worthy of you?"
It let out a low, mocking chuckle.
"We are creatures beyond their wildest imagination. They cannot even look at us without breaking, let alone touch our true essence."
"YI——KA——!"
Despite the voice's lies, the sharp screams continued to pierce the veil. From a remote, impossible distance, a singing sound began to drift in.
"Win... Winsor..."
---
Lansi had jumped.
Just as he expected, the shifting fluid caught him instantly, swallowing him up to his waist.
Lansi: "..."
His upper body remained free, while everything below his navel was submerged in the thick, black mass. It felt as though he had plunged into a gargantuan vat of slime. The sensation was bizarre—it was like water, as he could feel the fluid pulsing and flowing against him, yet it was also like a swamp. A cloying, sticky tension fought against every movement, though he found he could just barely "step" on the density without sinking entirely.
Perhaps because Lansi carried Winsor's cells, the unconscious fluid initially perceived him as part of itself and didn't immediately begin the digestion process.
Lansi knew he didn't have much time before the entity realized he was an intruder. He strained against the resistance, moving toward the inner core with a frantic, awkward "dog-paddle" stroke through the slime. He screamed Winsor's name over and over, hoping to spark a flicker of consciousness in that dark abyss.
However, calling out a name in this shared mass meant it wasn't just Winsor who heard him.
The fluid suddenly convulsed. It stopped its aimless spreading and went still, as if lost in thought.
Lansi froze. He knew that silence wasn't a good sign.
Sure enough, a second later, a searing pain flared around his waist. He looked down and saw his clothes corroding at a visible rate. It seemed Will had woken up first, asserting control over the fluid to begin digesting Lansi. Fortunately, Lansi's pants and boots were thick enough that the digestive enzymes hadn't reached his skin yet, but his shirt was already tattered.
"Oh?"
Lansi glanced at his waist, gritted his teeth, and continued to swim forward through the black sludge.
Will wasn't about to let him go so easily. Sensing Lansi's continued movement, the fluid surged, sprouting several thick tentacles from the main body that whipped through the air to drag Lansi down into the depths.
"YI——!"
Seeing the black strands about to coil around him, Lansi recalled a similar encounter back at the Alliance restaurant. He knew exactly what Will was trying to do. Just as the tentacles were about to snap shut, Lansi opened his mouth and unleashed a sharp, resonant chirp of pure infrasound.
The high-frequency scream tore through the density instantly. Under the sheer impact of the sound waves, the black tentacles trying to coil around him shattered into segments, dissolving back into the mass. Even the fluid anchoring Lansi's lower body convulsed uncomfortably, loosening its suffocating grip.
Taking advantage of the split second the entity was stunned, Lansi didn't waste a breath. He lunged forward, continuing his clumsy, desperate dog-paddle straight toward the inner core.
The first wave of tentacles had been completely neutralized.
But the fluid only paused for a moment. As it recovered, it tried the exact same trick again, whipping an even greater cluster of black tendrils out of the sludge to drag Lansi under. Lansi was far from stupid; he immediately opened his mouth, unleashing a relentless, continuous barrage of infrasonic shrieks:
"Ai——ai————"
"Yi——ka——"
If these sonic vibrations had been directed at a normal, biological creature, its internal organs would have been liquified instantly, sending its soul straight to the afterlife. For this massive entity, however, the waves were only enough to temporarily blind its movements.
Eventually, the relentless sound waves began to take their toll on Lansi's throat. Realizing its prey couldn't scream forever, the fluid suddenly reared a massive section of its body into the air and slammed it down directly over Lansi's head.
It was exactly like a swimmer fighting a brutal undertow, only for a monolithic wave to crash down from the sky, burying them deep beneath the surface.
Lansi was violently forced under.
In an instant, the viscous, toxic liquid flooded his vision and blocked his facial features. Struggling against the pressure, Lansi forced his body to adapt to the suffocating internal environment. He opened his eyes, ignoring the burning sting of the digestive enzymes, locked his gaze onto the shadow of the inner core, and kept swimming.
It hurt. His eyes burned with an unbearable, blinding agony.
Deep within the fluid, Lansi could only track the core by the faint sunlight filtering through the black mass. He swam forward, tears welling from the pain and instantly dissolving into the sludge, his mind entirely fixed on his target.
"Why... why... don't you just give up..."
An intermittent male voice suddenly echoed directly inside his head—misty, confused, and grating.
"None of your business!"
Lansi was startled at first, realizing the voice was bypassing his ears entirely. But he had absolutely no intention of responding. He was here to save "his" Winsor; he wasn't going to waste a single ounce of energy on an irrelevant, hostile entity.
"You... it hurts... give up... don't save him..." the voice droned on, trying to worm its way into his resolve.
But the psychological warfare failed to slow Lansi down.
By now, more than half of his clothes had melted away, and his physical condition was deteriorating fast. Even though a mermaid's self-healing capabilities were absolute top-tier, his body couldn't regenerate fast enough to counteract being fully submerged in a massive vat of biological acid. His skin was corroded to a raw, angry red. The sheer agony of the environment forced his transformation; his legs fused into a pale fish tail, but the corrosive fluid immediately began eating away at his scales, causing them to slough off and expose the bleeding tissue beneath.
Yet, he kept clawing his way toward the inner core, acting as though he couldn't feel the agonizing destruction of his own flesh.
Back when he first arrived in this world, Lansi would shed actual pearl-tears just from breaking a fingernail. But now, faced with literal dissolution, he didn't cry once. He didn't have the time to cry.
The fractured voice in his mind grew desperate, shattering into frantic pieces as it tried to shatter his confidence and force him to abandon this ridiculous "rescue." Annoyed by the relentless, mocking chatter, Lansi simply began to sing inside his mind.
He sang the exact same melody he had used back when he was a dazed, clumsy merman attempting to court Winsor.
Miraculously, the moment the notes resonated through his thoughts, the murmuring voice in his head vanished into absolute silence.
With his mind finally clear, Lansi let out a mental sigh of relief and pushed through the final stretch. After five grueling minutes of swimming through the dark abyss, he finally reached the inner core.
By this point, the digestive fluids had severely compromised his respiratory system, making it incredibly difficult to breathe, but Lansi brushed the suffocating pressure aside. He pressed close to the boundary, staring at the core with an anxious, desperate intensity.
There was indeed a distinct, jagged fissure running down the center, dividing the core into two separate spheres. Lansi knew that this was his moment—he had to rip them apart.
But... which one was Winsor, and which one was Will?
Lansi held his breath, wrapping his raw, white tail around the fused mass to study it carefully.
They were indistinguishable.
How was he supposed to tell them apart? They were just two identical spheres of dense, shifting black matter, like a pair of high-stakes blind boxes.
Frustrated and overwhelmed, Lansi aggressively slapped one of the spheres with his tail. Then, taking a deep breath of the toxic sludge, he forced his mouth open and began to physically sing directly into the digestive fluid.
His body was in terrible shape, and his voice was no longer the melodious, enchanting siren song of the past—it was strained, broken, and weak. 'If this were an actual courtship ritual,' Lansi thought bitterly, 'it would easily be the most pathetic, failed attempt in mermaid history.'
Yet, as the second verse left his lips, one of the two black spheres wrapped within his tail suddenly flinched.
Lansi froze, a wave of pure ecstasy washing over him.
He immediately lunged closer to the reacting sphere. Keeping the melody going through his raw throat, he pressed his hands against the surface. The texture felt like the soft, flexible carapace of an aquatic creature. In perfect sync with the rhythm of his song, something deep inside that specific core began to pulse violently, jumping and thumping against his palms as if desperate to break free.
"Winsor?"
Lansi rubbed his hands frantically against the surface. Summoning every single ounce of strength left in his battered body, he coiled his tail tightly around the reacting sphere, dug his fingers into the seam, and pulled with all his might to rip it away from the main mass—
"SNAP"
With a clean, distinct sound, the core was torn free, cradled securely in Lansi's arms.
The moment the spheres were separated, the entire gargantuan entity underwent a violent cellular division. The translucent fluid surrounding them split down the middle in an instant, mimicking the separation of the cores. Half of the mass rapidly shrank, condensing tightly around the core nestled in Lansi's chest, while the remaining half collapsed into a pool of stagnant, dormant sludge around Will's isolated core.
The sphere in Lansi's arms was massive, roughly the size of his own upper body. Because he had exerted such immense, explosive force to break it free, the sudden momentum sent him careening backward into a freefall.
But as the connection severed, the toxic, aggressive fluid that had been actively digesting Lansi changed completely. The predatory, acidic wolf transformed into a docile, protective lamb. The fluid gently released its grip, safely "vomiting" Lansi out into the open air.
And as Lansi fell freely through the sky, the condensed, silver-pulsing fluid swarmed upward, gathering beneath him to form a soft, cushioning net to catch him.
With a wet, bouncy "thud", Lansi landed squarely into the soft, rubbery cushion of the silver-pulsing fluid.
Clutching the massive black sphere tightly to his chest, Lansi blinked through his pain.
On the other side of the courtyard, the remaining core—Will—retained its previous shape, but it was obvious that Lansi's explosive, violent extraction had inflicted catastrophic damage upon it. The dark fluid surrounding Will's isolated sphere began to shrink rapidly, turning completely lifeless as its coloration faded into a dull, muddy black.
"Lansi?"
The sphere nestled in Lansi's arms began to warp and shift, frantically absorbing the surrounding silver fluid like a sponge. Within seconds, the dense matter reorganized itself, transforming into the familiar shape of a naked man cradled in the merman's arms.
Winsor opened his eyes in a confused, groggy daze. The moment his vision cleared and he saw Lansi, an expression of profound distress washed over his face. He reached out with a trembling hand, gently stroking the raw, angry acid burns marring Lansi's cheek.
"Win... Winsor..." Lansi spoke, his voice raspy and broken from the inhaled digestive enzymes.
Seeing Lansi in such a battered state, Winsor's brow furrowed tightly, his mood plummeting into guilt. "I am sorry."
'What is there to be sorry about?' Lansi thought. Right now, he was absolutely thrilled.
Lansi wagged his pale fish tail happily against the soft fluid cushion, completely failing to understand why Winsor looked so deeply depressed. With a loud "smack", he leaned up and planted a fierce kiss right on Winsor's cheek. Then, wrapping his arms tightly around his boyfriend's neck, he rubbed his face against Winsor's with pure, unadulterated satisfaction:
"Mine..."
His boyfriend had been successfully rescued by him. He was, quite frankly, an absolute hero.
Winsor blinked, not entirely grasping the chaotic logic filtering through Lansi's mind, but he strangely caught the distinct wave of smug pride radiating from the merman. If he had to translate Lansi's current brainwaves, it would be something along the lines of:
"Look at me! I, Lansi, finally had a turn to be the hero saving the 'beauty."
Catching that ridiculous, endearing thought, Winsor couldn't help but let out a soft laugh. The suffocating emotional haze that had weighed on his heart for eons was instantly swept away by the sea breeze.
'Well,' Winsor thought, a gentle warmth spreading through his chest, 'looking at it this way, maybe this planet does have a purpose after all.' He turned the question over happily in his mind and reached a definitive conclusion: 'Alright, let's not destroy it.'
"Why... how..."
A fractured, questioning whisper hissed from the dying core on the other side of the courtyard.
Having lost his only tether to Winsor's negative emotions, Will could no longer maintain a coherent physical form. He was entirely consumed by confusion—how on earth had Winsor managed to completely eliminate his dark thoughts in a single moment?
From Will's perspective, Winsor should have looked at the bloody mess of the courtyard and the horrific injuries Lansi had sustained, and plunged even deeper into absolute despair. Despair and terror were supposed to be the ultimate catalysts.
When Will and Winsor had originally locked together and plunged into the ocean, Will had successfully fused into Winsor's consciousness by feeding on and magnifying the latent, self-destructive darkness in Winsor's heart. He had planned to completely assimilate Winsor from the inside out.
It should have been a flawless, easy victory. Winsor inherently possessed a strong urge toward self-obliteration. All Will had to do was amplify that despair, coaxing Winsor to surrender his perception and dissolve into the void. Yet, against all odds, Winsor had been shaken awake.
The existential relationship between Will and Winsor was deeply complex; they were designed to either coexist or violently prey upon each other. To use a human metaphor, the fused entity was like a pair of conjoined twins where, under normal circumstances, only one twin could ultimately survive the separation.
Because Will was inherently the weaker fragment, the moment Winsor snapped awake and actively forced the separation, the vast majority of the biological mass and fluid naturally gravitated back to Winsor. Now, Will was left with so little material that he could barely sustain a physical anchor.
This sudden, agonizing sensation of impending doom made Will profoundly uncomfortable. For the very first time in his existence, he experienced the cold grip of terror.
He didn't dare attempt to re-absorb Winsor; his only hope of survival was to scan the immediate vicinity for a suitable human vessel to "receive" him. Will cast his consciousness across the island in a wide, frantic sweep.
Strangely... there were almost no people left in the facility.
'No, that's wrong' Will thought, utilizing the absolute last reserves of his cognitive energy to process the discrepancy. 'I clearly implanted my parasitic granule into dozens of subjects here. Why can't I feel a single viable node to hijack?'
After a second, desperate sweep of the perimeter, Will's fading senses locked onto the apex of the structure.
There was a man inside the lighthouse tower.
Having found a definitive target, Will violently tore his remaining mass away from the stagnant, drying sludge on the ground. While Winsor and Lansi were occupied with each other's recovery, Will launched his tiny mass toward the upper window of the tower, landing on the floor with a wet "splat".
Inside the central control room, Dr. Murin stood rigid. He watched a palm-sized blob of silver-black viscous liquid drag itself through the window frame. Stepping back, his eyes narrowed with intense vigilance. After a few tense seconds of silence, Dr. Murin asked hesitantly:
"Will?"
The tiny puddle of sludge on the floor froze for a fraction of a second at the sound of its name. Then, without warning, it launched itself aggressively straight at Dr. Murin's chest.
For Will, utilizing Dr. Murin's body was a desperate, highly reluctant backup plan—but no matter how much he despised using the scientist as a vessel, it was infinitely better than facing absolute extinction.