Becoming a Monster

Chapter 509: Chapter 508: I’m Not Your Property

The process should’ve been normal.

When merging a core directly into himself, the soul would normally immediately fuse within the core inside his soul realm.

That was how it had always been with his other creatures.

The soul would be assimilated before undergoing a massive change that would alter it into a core that represented the best of both, with the originator cores acting as the foundation.

Noah didn’t expect this case to follow that same process.

And as he suspected, the moment the soul was brought into his core, its behavior had already begun to differ.

It fused with his core, his soul, but its consciousness didn’t immediately disappear, remaining intact as it integrated like a parasite.

It wasn’t rejecting him. Instead, it was attempting something far more deliberate, something similar to what Ailetta had done, but in a far less impactful way.

It took over a part of his soul and anchored itself to it while preserving what little of its sense of self it could keep separate.

The intent behind it was clear. The soul was playing the long game, waiting for a moment when Noah’s soul would be at its weakest so it could attempt to take control.

Or, at the very least, expand the portion of his core that it had anchored itself to.

This was exactly what Noah had been concerned about, and it was also why he was relieved that he had chosen to use the soul on himself instead of one of his creatures.

Even now, he didn’t have a way to completely disperse the consciousness from the soul, not after willingly merging it into his own.

But he had already considered that something like this could happen, so he didn’t despair.

It wasn’t as if he didn’t already have a godlike existence trying to take over his soul.

At the very least, the benefits of merging with it were worth the risk.

His physical stats didn’t experience the massive leap that his mana and spirit received.

And because the soul wasn’t as potent as the archon’s. There weren’t any massive changes within his soul realm either.

But strength was one thing. What Noah gained outside of strength was far more important. His thought process and the way he perceived mana and life’s mysteries took on a qualitative change.

He didn’t just see and observe. He no longer just questioned and thought about it.

It was as if his mind became a web of hypotheses that was never-ending.

And he experienced it firsthand with his soul. Just by being within his soul realm, he had already questioned what a soul was. How did it define him? Why is he only able to see what was within it, but couldn’t interact with it?

From the short moment, he also began to process his own understanding of it, and within just seconds, he thought of an alternative that he wouldn’t have thought possible before.

With just a thought, the star-like energy gathered at the center of his core.

The energy formed a being made purely of energy that was a reflection of his true self, without the dark veil.

As it stabilized, Noah could feel that it was similar to how he shared two consciousnesses when he created another version of himself.

The ability didn’t seem worthwhile. But Noah could sense that as long as he expanded on it, he could perhaps create a way to finally fight back against the entity when he grew stronger.

And this was just the start.

—

Noah now understood why Ethaniel became so arrogant after his change.

Strength felt relative as long as one held an understanding of what that strength was.

It was similar to a trained fighter believing they could beat a bodybuilder simply because they held the knowledge and experience, while denying the possibility that a bodybuilder’s knowledge and experience were incomparable to theirs.

But Noah wouldn’t allow him to become so convinced. In the end, strength is still what truly matters.

At least now he wouldn’t lack understanding of how to better use it.

—

With the changes he had already experienced in his soul, he wanted to test them in his physical body.

Before doing so, he sensed something else within his soul realm moving towards him.

The soul spawn had returned.

It didn’t attempt to hide its presence; it moved directly back toward his core, drawn in to something that he hadn’t felt before.

It slipped past into Noah’s core as if it were its own.

At the same time, the soul body Noah had created remained where it was, standing across from it.

The two faced each other.

The spawn’s form didn’t immediately react with hostility, but its eyes locked onto Noah’s manifested self, staring at it with a scrutinized confusion.

It was as if it was struggling to process what it was seeing. It was aware of Noah’s spiritual aura. It had been upset with him for some time now.

Yet it didn’t recognize him in the way it should have, not in this form. It’s not like it knew what Noah looked like in the first place.

Or perhaps it did, but couldn’t understand it.

Despite its somewhat hostile nature, its focus wasn’t on attacking. Instead, it lingered on the connection between them, something far deeper than what it had felt with the tree before.

That connection drew its attention.

Its first instinct was to devour it. If the thing across from them felt as if they were one, then they should physically be one.

It wanted to take it into itself and preserve that feeling permanently.

But at the same time, another instinct surfaced, one that opposed it just as strongly, warning that doing so would leave it empty rather than fulfilled.

The conflict didn’t cause it to act. Instead, it maintained its distance, its eyes unrelenting as they stared deeply at Noah without a hint of disinterest.

If nothing had changed, it might’ve stayed like that indefinitely, staring at Noah as it tried to understand what it was sensing.

But then it seemed to sense something that didn’t belong. Its head snapped to the side, its eye glowing with intensity as it fixed its gaze on another part of Noah’s soul.

Just like before, it began to scrutinize it, but this time a dangerous aura spewed forth, as if it had found something that it despised.

Noah followed its gaze and immediately understood what it had found.

It was the place where Ethaniel’s soul resided.

The moment the spawn focused on it, the space around that part of his soul shifted unnaturally, as if the presence there was trying to retract what little of itself it had revealed.

But that reaction only agitated the spawn further.

Its hostility spiked instantly.

A low, distorted sound escaped it, something close to a shriek as it locked onto the unwanted presence. The intent behind it was clear.

It saw it as an intruder that didn’t belong and needed to be removed.

The next moment, it moved.

The speed at which it lunged was abrupt, closing the distance before Noah could react, and as it did, its jaws dislocated, its mouth opening unnaturally wide until it matched the size of the patch of soul it had locked onto.

Then it bit down.

Noah braced himself for the pain that should have followed.

But what came wasn’t pain.

The moment the spawn’s jaws closed, a violent wave of nausea surged through him as his entire perception shifted off balance, like something that had been anchoring part of his existence had been abruptly torn away.

His thoughts staggered for an instant. A hollow sensation spread through him as a part of his soul now needed to settle to stabilize the removed space.

At the same time, his awareness sharpened, honing in on the soul spawn.

If this were before, Noah would’ve immediately braced himself to retaliate, fearing the possibility that it wouldn’t stop there.

But Noah’s thought process sought to understand whether to react.

And it was that new thought process that allowed him to understand that everything it did was confined to the portion of Ethaniel’s presence.

What it latched onto wasn’t Noah’s existence, but the foreign fragment that had been fused into it.

Ethaniel’s soul was no different than a cancer cell. To remove the cell, it must first remove what it was also attached to, so the crossfire was unavoidable.

" Thank you, I guess?" Noah’s voice reached the spawn, but it didn’t seem to register. It’s not that the spawn was ignoring him. Something was happening to it after devouring Ethaniel’s conscious soul.

The spawn’s body stilled for a brief moment.

And then its limbs drew closer to its body, settling into itself as if it had instinctively chosen the position that felt the most secure.

Then slowly it began to drift back to the center of Noah’s core.

He watched it for a few breaths of time, his focus steady as he followed it. At the same time, his thoughts were unnaturally active.

Was the soul trying to take over the spawn?

How was it even possible for the spawn to interact with the soul when he couldn’t?

Should he wait until everything fully stabilizes before leaving?

And more importantly, why exactly would a creature who was tied to the very thing that wanted to take over him be driven to do such a thing?

Noah’s gaze fixed on the entity above.

"Did you give me this thing to make sure that no one else gets to me first?"