The protective energy layer around the pillar vibrated violently from the impact. I heard a faint cracking sound—the seal inside the pillar was beginning to weaken.
"Damn it," I hissed, spitting out blood.
Jiao laughed, a loud, triumphant sound. "Finally! Finally you show weakness!" He approached slowly, savoring every moment. "I will absorb your Seed, take all the souls you've collected, and become the strongest. Then I will make a deal with Yan—I will be his perfect tool, not you."
He reached out his hand, red energy gathering in his palm—the same forced extraction technique Yan had taught me in the laboratory.
But he made one fatal mistake: he assumed I was helpless.
As his hand almost touched my chest, my "Seed" reacted—not with defense, but with a counterattack. The thousands of consciousnesses I housed flowed out in a single, perfectly coordinated wave, forming something I had never done before: a mass spiritual projection.
Invisible hands—dozens, hundreds of hands made of dark energy—burst from my body, grabbing Jiao from all directions. He froze, his eyes widening in shock and fear as he felt not just the power, but the consciousness behind each of those hands.
"What... what is this?" he stammered, struggling to break free but unable to. Each hand held with a strength born from the despair and anger of souls who had suffered.
"This is them," I answered, my voice echoing with a strange harmony—myself and the thousands of others speaking as one. "The ones who died. The ones who were forgotten. The ones we carry."
I stood up, feeling energy flow through my body in a new way. This was no longer just me controlling the "Seed"—we were now truly a collective, a single entity with thousands of voices moving in terrifying harmony.
My "Seed" stretched further, touching Jiao's Seed—and what I felt surprised me. His Seed wasn't just a killer parasite. It was a wounded soul, forcibly grafted from a serial killer who had died under torture. It itself was a victim, forced to become a monster.
A choice lay before me: I could absorb Jiao completely, taking his power and adding it to my collection. It would make me far stronger. Or... I could try something different. Something that might be insane.
"Join us," I whispered, not just to Jiao but to his Seed. "Not as prey. But as part of the collective. You don't have to be a monster alone anymore."
For a moment, the struggle ceased. The hatred in Jiao's eyes wavered, replaced by confusion, then a flicker of... recognition? Of a longing for an end to the isolation, the constant battle for dominance with the parasite within him.
His Seed, feeling the offer from my collective—an offer of belonging, not destruction—also hesitated. The violent red energy around him dimmed.
"It's a trick!" Jiao roared, trying to reignite his fury, but the conviction was gone.
"It's a choice," I said, the chorus of voices in me softening. "The same one I faced. You can keep fighting, and one of us will devour the other. Or we can become something else. Something stronger together."
I released the spiritual grip slightly, not enough for him to break free, but enough to show I wasn't attempting to force absorption.
Jiao stared at me, his chest heaving. The internal battle within him was visible on his face—the ingrained instinct to dominate and consume versus the terrifying, unknown prospect of surrender and unity.
Suddenly, the crystal pillar behind me let out a sharp crack! The seal had been critically weakened by our struggle. The protective energy layer shattered, and the Seal Fragment clattered to the floor. But that was the least of our worries.
From the top of the pillar, the "something" that had been imprisoned began to emerge. It was a vortex of wailing faces and fragmented consciousness—a Soul Devourer, a more mature and vicious version of the Cursed Soul Shadow from our training. It had been feeding on the trapped souls used to power the pillar's seal.
It ignored the Seal Fragment and fixated on us—two concentrated sources of spiritual energy, locked in a tense standoff.
The Devourer lunged.
"DECIDE!" I shouted at Jiao, raising my own hands, the collective energy surging to form a shield against the onslaught of screaming spirits.
The attack slammed into our combined defense. Jiao, acting on pure instinct, threw his own power into the barrier. For a moment, our energies—his violent red and our multifaceted dark—merged, holding back the abomination.
In that moment of shared struggle, the choice was made. Not with words, but with action.
Jiao gave a curt, grim nod, his eyes meeting mine. It wasn't friendship. It was a tactical alliance, a temporary ceasefire in the face of a greater threat. But it was enough.
"Your Seed!" I yelled over the psychic wails. "Let it connect with mine! We need to harmonize to fight this!"
He hesitated for only a second before the Devourer's next assault made the decision for him. I felt his Seed's energy, raw and brutal, tentatively brush against the edge of our collective. My "Seed" didn't attack or absorb. It orchestrated. It wove Jiao's aggressive power into our defensive matrix, using its strength while our collective provided the control and stability he lacked.
The merged energy flared. A shield of interwoven red and black light solidified, and when the Soul Devourer struck again, it was repelled, its form flickering.
We pushed forward, our combined will a battering ram. The hundreds of projected hands from my collective now glowed with streaks of red, becoming more solid, more potent. They grabbed the wailing faces of the Devourer, not to absorb them chaotically, but to dismantle them, to soothe their torment with the vast empathy of our collected suffering.
The Devourer shrieked, not in attack, but in confusion and then... dissolution. Its fragmented consciousnesses, one by one, were calmed and drawn into our collective. The violent vortex slowed, quieted, and then vanished, its energy and memories assimilated.
Silence returned to the chamber, deeper than before.
Jiao and I stood panting, the merged energy dissipating. He looked at his hands, then at me, a complex expression on his face—disbelief, residual anger, and a dawning understanding.
He had felt it. The power of the collective. Not the brute force of domination, but the resilient, adaptable strength of unity.
He bent down and picked up the Seal Fragment from the floor. He looked at it, then at me, and tossed it to me.
"You take it," he grunted, his voice rough. "Your... method... was more effective." He wouldn't meet my eyes. "This changes nothing between us, Stone-Eater. We are not friends."
"I know," I said, catching the Fragment. "But we survived."
He gave another curt nod and turned, walking towards one of the other tunnel exits without another word, leaving me alone in the chamber with the now-dormant pillar.
I clutched the Seal Fragment, my mind reeling. I had not just survived an attack from a fellow disciple and a Soul Devourer. I had discovered a new potential of my power—not just absorption, but integration. And I had forged a fragile, temporary alliance with my greatest rival.
But the Fragment in my hand felt cold. It was a fake, I could feel it now—a clever construct of energy meant to test us. The real trial wasn't about finding these trinkets. It was about what we became while searching for them.
And somewhere in the depths of this living Labyrinth, the true Parasite's Heart beat on, and the Fragment of the Primordial Core in my pocket seemed to pulse in response.
The game was far from over. It had just become infinitely more complex.
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