Chapter 638: The Parasitized Kaito Shirogane
The cold, viscous vitality of the symbiote was fundamentally distinct from the scorching, incandescent life force inherent to the [Flesh Furnace] of the D45 world.
They were like the absolute polar opposites of ice and fire. One was a fresh, roaring, and brilliant manifestation of life; the other was a dense convergence of negative, primordial creations born within the dead silence of the abyss—a freezing, slimy "vitality" whose sole metaphysical intent was to assimilate, dissolve, and erode all existing reality.
Kaito Shirogane's physical framework had long since evolved to rival a humanoid dragon or a titan. It was a terrifying, optimized physical vessel achieved under a human form that completely eclipsed the biological metrics of countless high-tier races—a unique, hyper-dense morphology that had structurally shattered its foundational [Vessel] threshold once before.
The sheer, ancient resentment accumulated across millions of years by the Symbiote Dragon Grendel seemed to find an intoxicating source of relief upon flooding into this vibrant, burning flesh.
The so-called [Living Abyss] was a primordial, dark energy entity that had existed long before the universe itself was woven into shape, structurally representing the fundamental concepts of anti-life and absolute chaos across the multiverse.
And this symbiote dragon, Grendel, while far inferior to the legendary [All-Black the Necrosword] forged directly out of the Living Abyss by Knull—a weapon capable of cleanly slaughtering members of the cosmic [Celestials]—was nonetheless a living chunk torn directly from that very same abyss. In other words, it inherently retained the absolute, unyielding properties of the Living Abyss itself.
This specific conceptual attribute was precisely why Kaito Shirogane held this beast in such high tactical regard.
Kaito clenched his fists tightly, calmly observing the absolute wave of sub-zero, abyssal frost flooding into his systemic framework. His biological cells were routed at every line of contact, and his core vitality rapidly cratered as if his entire cellular engine were being systematically dissolved into nothingness.
This catastrophic erosion of his life force far exceeded the baseline operational thresholds of his instantaneous self-healing attributes; it was actively tearing into the genetic and spiritual foundation of his flesh.
Yet, Kaito displayed absolutely zero resistance. A violent, bloodthirsty consciousness began to aggressively crash against his mind, flashing a barrage of faint, shifting primordial images across his consciousness.
Every thick vein across Kaito's frame began to bulge violently against his skin. A complex web of bright crimson fractures erupted across his flesh as capillaries burst under the sheer internal pressure, but these crimson tracks were rapidly overrun and consumed by a thick, writhing coat of pitch-black symbiote biomass.
"Ha..."
Kaito exhaled a thick plume of stale, compressed air. The sheer kinetic force of his internal energy instantly formed a high-pressure barrier that cleanly halted the sub-zero seawater attempting to flood down his throat.
He possessed an exceptionally rich, extensive history of dealing with external contamination, viral infection, and outright psychological hijacking. He was structurally immune to the instinctual panic that would paralyze an ordinary individual under these precise conditions.
Consequently, even though his physical body was currently presenting visible metrics of structural failure, rapidly approaching its absolute breaking point, his inner mind remained flawlessly, crystal-cleanly detached.
His absolute will did not display a single flicker of decay.
He was simply biding his time. He was waiting for the entire, unmitigated mass of the Symbiote Dragon to completely commit itself to his body!
He intended to weaponize this primordial construct—the absolute cosmic antithesis of life—to forcefully bridge the remaining gaps within his fractured Stairway of Life, systematically forcing the fundamental essence of his flesh to execute a monumental threshold liberation!
In truth, this precise calculation was the absolute primary driver behind his decision to entirely abandon the escalating chaos of the New York grid to cross the globe.
Throughout his previous operational cycles, Kaito had rarely shown any interest in shifting his trajectory away from the primary system directives to hunt down hidden world rewards or background variables. Even back in the Jujutsu Kaisen world, his mapping of the Taishan Fujun Rite had merely been an accidental byproduct of his investigation into the absolute annihilation of Tokyo.
He was structurally distinct from Reincarnators like Hakumen or Tianyi, who naturally gravitated toward meticulous narrative manipulation and plot-thread exploitation. He was vastly more accustomed to utilizing pure, unrestrained violence to systematically shatter primary mission constraints, harvesting his rewards from the resulting structural collapse.
But the Marvel universe was simply too colossally vast, and the sheer concentration of god-tier assets it contained was staggering. The sheer scale of it was enough to compel even a greedy, insatiable freak like Kaito to actively unleash the [Heart of Slaanesh] against Hakumen to completely drain her mind of its proprietary tactical data.
"Ugh~"
An involuntary, guttural growl tore from Kaito's throat—a clear, physical manifestation of the hostile, alien consciousness gathering immense momentum within his mind.
Grendel was a terrifying cosmic symbiote capable of forcefully parasitizing and hijacking even full-fledged members of the Celestials. Kaito had never entertained the foolish notion that he could cleanly shrug off its physical infestation.
He meticulously monitored the sensation of that alien will attempting to forcefully suppress and rewrite his own consciousness, methodically studying the exact mechanics of his physical flesh being colonized by a foreign, infinitely colder biological construct.
Suddenly, Kaito's vision went entirely pitch-black. His visual receptors had been completely severed, likely due to his optic nerves being systematically consumed or crushed by the advancing biomass. A fraction of a second later, his auditory perception similarly collapsed into absolute silence.
Kaito blinked within his mind, finding himself instantly marooned within a boundless, featureless void of absolute darkness.
The surrounding space was trapped in a state of flawless, dead silence. There was no trace of biological life, nor was there a single star or cosmic horizon to orient his senses.
Kaito methodically scanned the absolute void. He was actually growing eager, waiting to see if a massive, primordial eye would suddenly snap open within this darkness to erase his existence from the board.
But nothing manifested. This space was an absolute, unyielding vacuum of anti-life—the literal embodiment of primordial chaos.
The human psyche often deludes itself into believing it craves absolute silence, but in reality, the human mind cannot withstand a total, structural absence of acoustic feedback.
Within any terrestrial environment a human classifies as "silent," a dense web of micro-acoustic signals always remains active: the rhythmic rustle of your own breath, the steady thud of your pulse, the distant, low-frequency hum of insects, or the faint brush of wind weaving through leaves.
Every single one of these subterranean frequencies, even those processed entirely beneath the conscious threshold, acts as a critical structural anchor for the psyche.
It is precisely through the continuous processing of these acoustic echoes that the human mind retains a tangible, undeniable verification of its own existence.
Examining it through a philosophical framework, the individual ego is entirely a construct of continuous self-validation—the absolute manifestation of the [Self].
This [Self] requires a continuous, multi-sensory stream of environmental feedback to maintain its concrete, stable orientation.
Through visual data, the mind confirms the physical dimensions of the Self.
Through auditory feedback, the mind maps the precise vocal frequency and spatial orientation of the Self.
Through tactile response, the mind receives a real-time verification of the Self's physical interaction with external reality...
It is entirely upon this multi-layered sensory foundation that the Self can exist.
An individual stripped of every single sensory channel, entirely denied the capacity to execute self-observation, will inevitably suffer a complete and total fragmentation of the ego—becoming identical to a person who, upon losing their hearing, systematically and completely loses the capacity for speech over time. They lose the ability to observe or anchor the baseline coordinates of the Self.
This species of absolute vacuum and pure, crushing void was capable of structurally destroying an ordinary human mind in a remarkably short window of time.
"Warning! An extreme, hyper-dense biological energy signature has just detonated four thousand meters beneath the primary glacial shelf of Lake Vostok!"
"Get a direct secure uplink to regional command immediately!"
"Uplink to who?! S.H.I.E.L.D. is already functionally collapsing under internal—"
Within the cloaked observation outpost, several deep-cover S.H.I.E.L.D. tactical analysts exchanged pale, stunned glances. They had existed for years as an asset completely forgotten by the global intelligence apparatus, entirely disconnected from the ideological civil war fracturing the agency or the grander movements of the world.
Everything unfolding beyond this frozen rim had zero bearing on their deployment.
They had grown completely accustomed to monitoring a localized sector that had yielded absolutely zero structural anomalies for decades. But today, the baseline parameters of their grid had been violently shattered, shattering their operational complacency and leaving them entirely paralyzed, unsure of how to execute a standard response.
On their terminal screens, the tracking reticle representing the subterranean signature was expanding at an exponential rate, forcing the sonar diagnostic suites to emit a series of high-pitched, screeching alarms.
An overwhelming, suffocating instinct of pure, lethal peril locked onto their minds. The analysts scrambled to execute an emergency evacuation protocol, but right before they could clear the consoles, they witnessed a spectacle that would permanently burn itself into their retinas.
The colossally massive, prehistoric ice shelf of Lake Vostok—a glacial formation that had remained entirely unmoved for countless millennia—violently blasted outward into a million glittering shards. A lone human figure, completely entwined within a monstrous, sky-tearing shadow, shot straight into the stratosphere.
The titanic black shadow writhed and twisted with an apparently limitless volume, continuously uncoiling its massive length as it tore itself free from the deep subterranean sea below.
Flickering remnants of shattered golden divine light and ancient Rune arrays radiated a species of high-tier cosmic energy that completely defied the analysts' primitive technological diagnostics. But in the sky above, the colossal shadow had already completed its ascension, contorting itself into a massive, roiling cloud of pure darkness that blacked out the entire Antarctic sky.
"What on earth... what is that thing..."
Roar!
The frozen sea below began to violently fracture as an invisible, high-intensity kinetic shockwave radiated outward in an absolute, non-discriminatory sweep. The ancient, iron-clad ice sheet anchoring Lake Vostok shattered down to its deepest layers, as if the prehistoric body of water were executing an instantaneous, cataclysmic thaw.
The twisted, sky-spanning shadow in the upper atmosphere eventually began to contort inward, systematically boring its massive volume directly back into the human man's physical frame.
The man's long black hair flared outward like the jagged talons of a demonic dragon, and a complex, highly specialized biological tissue composed of intertwined pitch-black and deep crimson fibers began to violently erupt across his skin.
The Symbiote Dragon Grendel was a supreme, independent biological construct that possessed absolutely zero structural dependency on a host organism to manifest its power. Standing entirely on its own agency, it was a cataclysmic engine capable of systematically devouring entire planetary civilizations and slaughtering full-fledged deities.
However, millions of years ago, it had sustained near-fatal structural damage at the hands of an early Asgardian All-Father wielding a divine hammer, subsequently buried beneath thousands of meters of sub-zero Antarctic ice for an entire epoch. The prehistoric isolation had systematically depressed its cellular activity to a critically low baseline.
Consequently, the moment its primordial senses captured the arrival of a physical vessel radiating an unimaginably dense, hyper-optimized threshold of pure biological vitality, Grendel had instinctively committed its entire mass toward a total parasitic takeover.
It wanted to completely consume this physical vessel, weaponizing its raw cellular engine to forcefully kickstart its own stagnant activity, and then... devour the entirety of this world!
Kaito Shirogane's physical frame looked as if it were on the verge of violently detonating under the sheer internal volume of the symbiote. His musculature forcefully expanded once more, swelling his height to a monstrous three meters, his entire body encased in the signature, pitch-black armor of a total symbiote possession.
His facial features had already begun to undergo severe, predatory mutation. Grendel was not a low-tier creature like Venom; it was a pure, unadulterated creation of primordial malice—a cosmic parasite designed specifically to systematically consume all biological life and snuff out all light across the stars.
At this exact moment, its sole objective was to completely erase the consciousness of this exceptionally resilient, freakish individual.
It had dragged his mind directly into the crushing depths of its Living Abyss. Yet, despite the total sensory deprivation, this microscopic insect's individual will still refused to dissolve.
Faced with this defiance, Grendel decided to systematically digest his physical body down to the cellular level.
An intense, ravenous wave of acid-like digestive enzymes and vacuum-like absorption force erupted within his tissues. Instinctively registering the existential crisis, Kaito's underlying flesh reacted instantly; rows of brilliant, iridescent dragon scales violently punched through his skin, systematically forming an absolute, structural barrier that forcefully sheared away the invading symbiote tissue.
Simultaneously, a searing wave of Primordial Imperial Flames ignited across the exterior surface of Grendel's biomass. While the heat lacked the capacity to cause terminal structural damage to a primordial creature of its tier, the sheer intensity of the fire still inflicted a stinging, agonizing wave of localized pain.
It thoroughly loathed fire.
Sizzle...
A faint, crackling echo of concentrated electrical static began to ripple through the flesh. Grendel's collective genetic memory instantly reeled as it recalled the single absolute concept it loathed above all else in its long existence.
Lightning!
An energetic force that simultaneously paired devastating electrical output with high-frequency, concussive sonic vibrations—a combination that instantly forced it to remember that wretched, golden Asgardian deity who had anchored it centuries ago.
Grendel's colossal, draconic maw violently burst from the surface of Kaito's chest, resembling an unnaturally massive, living tumor erupting from his torso.
It looked down at the microscopic organism beneath its mass—a creature whose outer skin and flesh had been partially dissolved and liquefied by its initial digestive surge, yet whose entire underlying skeleton was currently radiating a blinding, flawless shield of shifting dragon scales. It cleanly captured the terrifying reality:
This prey was not dead. Its absolute individual will was actively storming back into the physical world!
An ego capable of being cast into the deepest, crushing vacuum of the Living Abyss without suffering a single trace of fragmentation?!
Kaito Shirogane's physical face was completely masked beneath layers of writhing symbiote biomass, rendering him entirely incapable of manipulating his own facial muscles to express his thoughts.
He stared out through the absolute, boundless ocean of darkness occupying his mind. This infinite expanse of pure, unmitigated chaos and abyssal void felt extraordinarily, profoundly familiar to his soul.
It was as if a newborn baby had cleanly returned to the absolute safety of the womb. It was as if a deep-sea predator had been cast back into the boundless currents of the ocean.
He didn't experience a shred of psychological distress, nor did his mind register the slightest difficulty in anchoring or observing the parameters of the Self. Quite the contrary—within this boundless abyss, Kaito Shirogane captured an infinitely more monumental layout of reality and raw, unmitigated power.
It was as if an entire, limitless frontier of pristine, unmapped wilderness had been thrown open right before his eyes.
"This place is... nothing short of my absolute paradise... Ha~ Hahaha... Hahaha!"
"Ha!"
Trapped in a state of supreme, ecstatic exhilaration, Kaito suddenly unleashed a cataclysmic mental roar. The dense sea of ambient ambient ions he had systematically condensed around his coordinates prior to his descent, paired with a vastly more monumental, structural force field, detonated in perfect unison.
It was as if a supernova of pure, blinding lightning violently erupted from every single pore of Kaito Shirogane's physical frame. The cataclysmic flare of pure energy instantly and entirely snuffed out the visual capacity of every sensor and organism on the grid.
The tactical analysts fleeing across the ice shelf suddenly experienced a terrifying, psychological illusion that the entire universe had been instantaneously plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness. The light was simply too monumentally brilliant; it had completely overloaded their optic nerves, causing their neurological centers to experience a total structural inversion of light and dark, black and white.
In the very next fraction of a second, a devastating wave of pure electrical current and concussive sonic force blasted outward from the core of the explosion, as the distorted lines of the local magnetic field were violently pushed to their absolute limits.
[Shocking Heaven Thunder Roar · Maximum Output]!
Sizzle... Boom!
A catastrophic explosion of pure, apocalyptic force detonated with Kaito Shirogane as its absolute epicenter, violently tearing across the frozen atmosphere of Antarctica.
(End of Chapter)
~~~
Get early access to 50+ advanced chapters on Patreon!
https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Hollowborn
~~~
Every 5 new reviews = 2 extra chapters
Every 100 Power Stones = 1 extra chapter