"How did this happen? Did she eat something dangerous?" Doctor Thorin asked, his voice tight with alarm as he stared down at Visra. She was writhing on the patient bed, her body convulsing instinctively. Her arms and legs flailed wildly as a male and a female nurse struggled to hold her down.
"I-I don't think so," Tenha stammered, her hands trembling uncontrollably. "She was completely fine just a moment ago. We were just talking..."
"Doctor Thorin, look at her abdomen! It's turning dark!" the female nurse cried out, her voice high with panic.
"Tch!" Thorin gritted his teeth, his eyes darting back and forth between the thrashing girl and the terrified tenha. "Get out! Let us do our work!" he ordered, his voice leaving no room for argument as he practically shoved Tenha out of the room.
The moment the door slammed shut and locked, he rushed back to them.
He leaned in close, his eyes widening in horror. A patch of skin on Visra's abdomen was turning a sickening dark purple and black. It was the exact spot where her new kidney had been transplanted just the day before.
"It seems like some kind of organ failure. Scan her abdomen, now! I need to see what's happening!" Thorin barked.
The male nurse nodded, his face pale. He scrambled to a machine at the back of the room and wheeled it over. A green scanning light swept over Visra's body, and a second later, an x-ray image appeared on the nearby monitor.
Thorin stared at it, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing. The new kidney wasn't just failing; it was vibrating inside Visra's body. And from its surface, thin, vein-like tendrils, almost like thin tentacles, were slowly growing, as if the organ had turned into some kind of sentient being.
Before any of them could even think, Visra's pain-filled voice ripped through the air, a thin, desperate whisper.
"Someone... please save me..." A single tear rolled from her left eye, tracing a path through the sweat on her cheek as if it were her very last breath.
And then, in the next second—SPLASH!
Visra's abdomen tore open with a wet, explosive sound. A fountain of blood sprayed across the room, drenching everything in an instant. The warm, crimson liquid splattered across the clothes of the male nurse and Doctor Thorin. But the female nurse, who was standing closest, took the full force of it. Her face was completely covered in blood.
"Ahhhhhhh!" she let out a bloodcurdling scream, her eyes rolling back in her head before she collapsed to the floor in a dead faint.
Meanwhile, Visra's eyes were wide open, but they were glassy and empty, completely devoid of life. She was gone.
From the bloody mess of her organs, thin, writhing veins emerged like a swarm of pale worms, all attaching themselves to a single organ. In just a few seconds, one of the veins began to swell, forming a round tumour.
It grew with terrifying speed, reaching the size of a golf ball in mere moments. Curves and indentations appeared on its surface, until it unmistakably resembled a small, grotesque face.
"Bleurh!" The male nurse immediately bent over and vomited onto the floor, his body convulsing with the force of it.
He fainted the next second, collapsing beside his coworker. It wasn't his fault; the sight was too gruesome, too monstrous for any person to witness and stay sane.
But Thorin... he stood completely still. His eyes were wide, not with terror, but with a strange, intense fascination. He looked at the grotesque scene as if it were the most marvelous thing he had ever witnessed, like a child watching an operation for the very first time.
"What kind of being is this?" a hundred questions raced through his mind. "Is this because the kidney was from a black-haired girl? Was she actually a witch? Is this what the ancient people meant when they said witches are more gruesome than demons?"
There were no answers. Even he was confused as to why he felt no fear, only a deep, unsettling curiosity. It was as if he had just discovered a new fetish he never knew he had.
Thorin took a slow, deliberate step forward, his movements stiff and robotic. He walked towards Visra's body, his eyes fixed on the gruesome sight.
He extended a trembling hand, reaching into the bloody cavity and lifting out the kidney. It was slick with blood, pulsing with a faint, dark energy.
His gaze swept around the room until it landed on a large glass pond in the corner. A few golden fish swam lazily inside. It was as if his body was moving on its own, guided by a morbid curiosity he couldn't control. He walked to the pond and, without a moment's hesitation, dropped the blood-drenched organ into the water.
The moment it hit the bottom, the frantic trembling stopped. The writhing veins, or whatever they were, went still. The blood began to wash away, clouding the clear water with a light red haze.
"It can survive in water, right?" Thorin thought, a chill running down his spine. He wasn't sure, he was just guessing.
But then, in the next second, every single goldfish in the pond went limp. Their little bodies floated for a moment before sinking to the bottom, lifeless. Right in front of Thorin's wide, unblinking eyes, the tumour on the kidney began to swell.
It grew bigger and bigger until it was the size of a newborn child's head. Hundreds of new veins erupted from its surface, slowly twisting and thickening into muscle fibers. The tumour started to take the shape of a human head, and small, stubby limbs began to grow from its sides.
"What kind of regeneration is this?" Thorin thought, his heart pounding in his chest like a drum.
For the next few minutes, the creature grew at an impossible rate. Its limbs stretched and lengthened, fine dark hair began to sprout from its scalp, and a distinct jawline formed, clearly resembling a female.
It hit puberty in the span of a breath, its body rapidly filling the pond. Soon, its curled-up form took up nearly all the space, its eyes still closed.
It was, without a doubt, Esdeath, from head to toe. She was curled up just like a newborn baby, floating silently in the water.
Then, her eyes snapped open.
They were a piercing, blood-red, with multiple ring patterns swirling in her pupils. They stared directly at Thorin, and an icy wave of fear washed over him. His expression immediately paled, and he stumbled back a step.
Esdeath calmly raised a fist and banged it against the glass wall of the pond. The entire tank shattered in one go, exploding outwards. Water and glass flooded the room, and the newly formed Esdeath fell to the floor with a wet thud.
"Painful. Just... too painful!" she gritted her teeth, a low groan escaping her lips as she struggled to get up. The process of this resurrection was agonizing. She could feel every vein, every muscle fiber knitting itself together, a slow, excruciating process that burned through her entire body.
She tried to stand, her legs trembling violently, like a toddler learning to walk for the first time. Her body was slick and wet, as if she had just been born from her mother's womb.
Meanwhile, Thorin just stood there, his gaze locked on Esdeath's naked form.
"So beautiful," he whispered, the words escaping his lips without him realizing.
He wasn't feeling any sexual attraction; it was something else entirely. The way she had come to life, the sheer impossible miracle of it, was like a divine process to him. He was praising the mind-blowing, terrifying scene he had just witnessed. "So beautiful."
Esdeath completely ignored his praise. She took a shaky step towards him, water dripping from her body, and grabbed his throat in a shockingly strong grip. "Where is my body?" she demanded, her voice a low, dangerous rasp.
Thorin knew exactly what she was talking about. He slowly raised both of his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I'll take you there," he choked out. "Just... wear something first!"
Esdeath slipped into a simple patient's gown. The plain, shapeless cloth shouldn't have looked like anything special, but on her, it seemed to fit perfectly, accentuating her form in a way that felt both elegant and dangerous.
Thorin didn't dare try to escape or even make a sound. Even Esdeath was surprised by how willingly he was cooperating, his eyes still filled with that unnerving mix of fear and awe.
Thorin took the lead, moving to the door and peeking out. A short distance down the hall, several metal chairs were lined up for waiting. Tenha was sitting on one of them, her face a mask of worry. She immediately noticed Thorin's head peeking out and stood up, rushing over to him.
"Is everything alright? Is Visra okay?" Tenha asked, her voice trembling with concern as she reached him.
Thorin was exposed. There was no way to hide this now. He scratched the back of his head, a strange, calm smile on his face. "Well, see for yourself!" he said, swinging the door open wide.
In the next second, Tenha saw Esdeath standing right in front of her. Before her mind could even process the impossible sight, Esdeath raised her hand.
Pan!
In the next instant, Tenha's head was separated cleanly from her neck, as if sliced by an invisible, impossibly sharp blade. Before it could fall to the floor, Esdeath snatched it out of the air, tossed it back into the room, and then shoved Tenha's headless body in after it. She slammed the door shut.
"Let's go," she said, her voice solemn and cold.
Thorin led her down a series of sterile hallways to a particular room. Inside, the air was cold and still, There were several death bodies , He led Esdeath to corner where a single dead body lay on a metal table, covered by a white sheet.
He calmly guided her to the corner of the room, towards a specific body, and pulled the white cloth away.
Esdeath looked down at her old body. It had the two fluffy ears of a wolf woman and a long, black tail. Other than those features, the face was identical to her new one. They looked like the same person.
"Stand behind," she ordered.
Thorin immediately scrambled back a few steps.
Esdeath placed her hand on her dead body's forehead, her eyes closing in concentration. To an observer, it looked like she was analyzing it, but she was actually doing something much more incredible. She was stealing her essence stones.
This was a completely new body, regenerated fully from a kidney. It had no essence stones inside it, other than the one she always had in her soul, the Soul Piercer.
Her ESR talent was the same, and she still had her natural affinity for all the elements she possessed in her previous body, especially the Space element.
But that was it.
Physically, this body was barely stronger than a Rank E awakened. Of course, with her vast knowledge of magic, her newly gained skills, the sheer amount of mana she had, and her special affinity to the Space element, she could still fight toe-to-toe with a Rank C awakened.
But her body was clearly, tragically, far weaker than before. This was the terrible drawback of being resurrected into a new body.
The only advantage was that her soul was far, far stronger than it had been. In the heaven, she had devoured hundreds, even thousands of pure souls to enhance her own, making it incredibly powerful.
Right now, she was using her Space affinity to reach directly into her old body and pull the essence stones out, one by one, transferring them into her new form.
There was no need to worry about the complex process of refining them, either. With her system, she could refine essence stones up to Rank B instantly.
But even in this, there were drawbacks. She couldn't pull out the essence stones that had been used to enhance her body's physical structure, like Iron Bones, Black Iron bones, Silver Muscles, or her Silver Jade Skin Essence Stones Etc. Those had become one with her old body, a permanent part of its flesh and bone.
Another drawback was the very method of essence stone absorption that Maruti had taught her, an idea she had learned from someone named Xing Liang.
While it was a great advantage to fully absorb an essence stone to get the maximum power and use it at its full potential, it also meant the essence stone became completely fused with the body. It couldn't be removed by any method.
Because of this, Esdeath failed to retrieve up to 70% of her essence stones.
A sharp, painful sense of loss washed over her as she felt them slip away, but she pushed the feeling down and coped with it.
Thankfully, the Rank B Time-Cutting Edge essence stone was one she had only recently obtained and had barely used. Because of that, she was able to successfully retrieve it.