SQUELCH!
The sound was wet and revolting. It was not solid ground beneath his feet, but a biological valve giving way. The floor of flesh parted like a giant maw swallowing its prey, sending him sliding down into the dank darkness. He plummeted, slicking past mucous-lined walls, before finally landing at the base of a colossal organic cavern.
It was cold here. A strange chill, as if body heat had been forbidden to exist. In that pitch darkness, the ember in the bowl of his pipe hissed and died, choked by air far too dense with the rank vapor of copper and rot.
With a calmness that bordered on the mundane, his skeletal hand reached into his pocket.
SCRATCH... FWOOSH.
A small flame from a match ignited, dancing feebly at the tips of his bone fingers. He brought the flame to the bowl of his pipe, inhaling deeply until the tobacco glowed red once more. Grey smoke billowed out from between his ribs.
However, the tiny light of the match revealed the true nightmare.
In that brief, flickering glow, he saw the walls of the cave... no, the walls of this universe. Hundreds of thousands of flesh monsters, piled atop one another, crawling, fusing together. They were not mere lumps; they possessed faces. Thousands of faces, familiar yet hideously distorted.
The matchlight died, leaving only the cherry-red glow of his pipe in the darkness.
And then, the sound came. A rumble of flesh grinding against flesh from all directions, like the sound of a million worms writhing in unison.
"Ludwig... Ludwig... Luuudwiig..."
The whisper came from the walls, from the floor, from the very air itself. Wet, sighing, and ravenous.
Sheepman Sailor: "Hmm..."
That was his only response. He drew his blade.
And the endless slaughter began.
SLASH!
The sound of a slash cleaving the air. Flesh minced, blood spurted. It mattered not how many he cut down, nor how many bodies he cleaved in two. How long had he been swinging his sword? Minutes? Hours? Centuries?
It did not matter. Time had died here.
Inside this conceptual womb, the laws of nature had been rewritten. There was no such thing as "decay", no "death", and no "violence". Those concepts meant nothing.
Because here, everything, in the end, was Girl.
The sword that slashed? That was a Girl's caress.
The severed flesh? That was the birth of a new Girl.
The spilled blood? That was a Girl's milk.
SHIIING! (The sharp sound of metal slicing)
Girl.
SPLAT! CRUNCH! (The sound of flesh tearing and bones crushing)
Girl.
"Hihihi... Ahhh~" (Echoing sounds of feminine giggles and spoiled sighs)
Girl.
VOOOOOM... (The low hum of the blue orb behind the Sheepman Sailor's ribs, trying to endure)
Girl.
Everything. No concept could resist this assimilation. Existence itself was being violated and transmuted into a single form.
But... the Sheepman Sailor was not a figure who would bow to base concepts. He was a primeval anomaly that refused to be digested.
He stood motionless there, amidst a sea of continuously regenerating undead. The blue orb behind his ribcage began to shine brightly, casting a cold sapphire light, illuminating the infinite chamber.
The light revealed the true scenery: the cave walls towered endlessly upward, vanishing into eternal darkness. And its contents... Girls. Thousands? Millions? Trillions? Their numbers were infinite, a fractal of flesh endlessly repeating itself. Physical violence could never resolve them. They were an undying hydra.
One variant of "Polgha"—a flesh creature wearing that girl's face—crawled closer, attempting to embrace the sailor's skeletal leg.
STOMP!
Without hesitation, the Sheepman Sailor stomped on the creature's head.
SPLATCH!
The head burst like rotten fruit beneath the sole of his heavy boot. However, the Sheepman Sailor did not step forward. His posture went rigid. Tense.
The vibration from that stomp... The taste of these creatures' existence... He felt it.
Sheepman Sailor: "This feeling..."
His voice was heavy, laden with the weight of memories that should have long since drowned.
A familiar feeling. Too familiar.
This Girl... The flesh filling this universe... She is "Her". Her essence resembled the Goddess he knew in the past. But... this was not Her.
This was a repulsive parody.
This was a living hollow cell. A cancer wearing the face of memory, growing wildly without a soul, attempting to mimic a warmth it never possessed. A starving shell.