That night, the room at The Iron Barrel inn, which should have been warm and comfortable, felt like a torture chamber for Vaelen.
He wasn't sleeping. He was drowning.
In the dim moonlight filtering through the window, Vaelen's body convulsed on the cold wooden floor. He clutched his chest, his nails digging into his skin until it bled. The veins in his neck bulged, pitch black, pulsing irregularly as if worms were moving beneath the skin.
Inside his head, there was no silence. His head was overcrowded.
"Please... I have children..." (The voice of the alley thug). "Grraah... meat..." (The voice of the Ghoul). "Mercy! Mercy! Don't kill me!" (The voice of the fat bandit).
Memory fragments of the creatures he had swallowed in the last 24 hours screamed in unison, overlapping into a deafening white noise. They were dead, but their lingering last emotions—fear, hatred, despair—had not been fully digested.
"SHUT UP!" Vaelen hissed, banging his own head against the floor.
Thud.
Physical pain helped distract from the mental pain a little. But it wasn't enough. His stomach churned violently, not nausea from rotten food, but ontological rejection.
Vaelen crawled toward the washbasin, his legs weak as jelly.
"Urghhh!"
He vomited a thick black liquid into the white ceramic basin. The liquid was viscous, oily, and smelled like a mixture of sulfur and old blood.
Horrifyingly, the liquid moved. Black bubbles popped, forming small faces screaming soundlessly before dissolving back into slime.
[SYSTEM ALERT: ESSENCE INDIGESTION]
A blue screen appeared in front of his cold-sweating face, the only stable light source in the room.
[Analysis Report:]
- Consumed: Fenrir (Rank 8 Boss) -> Quality: High. Integration: 98%.
- Consumed: Street Thugs & Ghouls (Rank 9 Trash) -> Quality: Toxic. Integration: 15%.
[Diagnosis:]
You tried to fill a jet engine with used frying oil. The "Trash" you swallowed contains contradictory emotions and filthy desires. This filth is now clogging your Abyssal Root.
[Status Effect:]
1. Qi Stagnation: Energy flow efficiency down 40%.
2. Auditory Hallucination: Medium Level.
3. Decreasing Sanity: -1 per hour until purified.
Vaelen wiped his black lips with the back of his hand. His breathing was ragged. His eyes stared at his reflection in the mirror—a face pale as a corpse, with deep black bags under his eyes.
"I was greedy," Vaelen whispered to his reflection. "I thought this system was omnipotent. Turns out... my stomach has limits."
He learned the hard way: In this world, you are what you eat. If you eat trash, you become trash.
A soft knock sounded on the wall next door. The wall separating his room from Isolde's.
"Vaelen? Are you okay? I heard a noise..." Isolde's voice sounded anxious.
Vaelen froze. If Isolde saw his condition now—a face full of black veins and monster vomit in the sink—the girl would run screaming for the guards. Their alliance would crumble because Isolde would deem him a monster who lost control.
Vaelen washed his face with cold water, forcing the black veins to recede with his remaining mental strength.
"I'm fine," Vaelen answered, his voice hoarse but controlled. "Just... tripped over a chair in the dark. Go to sleep."
Silence for a moment. "Alright. The rental carriage comes tomorrow morning. Don't oversleep."
Vaelen leaned his back against the cold wall.
"Tomorrow morning..." he hissed. "I'm not even sure I can survive until sunrise without going mad."
He needed a laxative. But not medicine from a human pharmacy. He needed something that could dissolve this spiritual filth.
Morning in the dining room of The Iron Barrel.
The incoming sunlight felt piercing to Vaelen's sensitive eyes. The clinking of spoons and forks from other patrons sounded like hammer strikes in his ears.
Isolde was already sitting there, neat and ready to leave. But her smile faded when she saw Vaelen walking down the stairs.
The man wore his hood low. His face was grey, like someone seriously ill. His movements were stiff.
"You look terrible," Isolde commented bluntly as Vaelen sat down. "Did Fenrir's wound open again?"
"None of your business," Vaelen answered briefly, not touching the food in front of him. "And plans changed. Cancel the carriage. We are not leaving today."
"What?!" Isolde almost dropped her glass. She whispered sharply, leaning forward. "Vaelen, are you crazy? Uncle Hendor's assassins might be sniffing our trail at the city gates right now! Every hour we stay put, the knife at our throats gets closer!"
"Listen, Princess," Vaelen looked at her. His grey eyes now had faint red patches in the whites. "If we leave now, and we get ambushed on the road... I can't protect you. I am in zero percent combat condition."
Isolde stared at him sharply, trying to read a lie, but she only found exhaustion and suppressed pain.
"Two days," Vaelen said, raising two fingers. "Give me two days in this city. Rent the room again. Do not leave the inn. I have to sort out... this internal problem."
"And what will you do? Go to a doctor?" Isolde quipped sarcastically, but there was worry in her eyes.
"Something like that."
Vaelen stood up. The chair screeched on the wooden floor, a sound that made Vaelen's head throb.
Without further explanation, he walked out of the inn, into the busy streets of Oakhaven.
He walked without a clear destination at first, relying only on one thing: His nose.
His Entropy System was now resonating with hunger. To clean out the complicated human "emotion" poison, he needed something pure. Something corrosive. Something that could burn away the trash in his soul.
In the middle of the smelly fish market, amidst the crowd of housewives bargaining prices, Vaelen stopped.
His nose caught the scent.
Very faint. Ordinary people would only smell the sewer. But Vaelen smelled the Sweetness of Death. It was the smell of chemicals mixed with ancient Miasma.
The smell came from the gaps in the iron sewer grate at the street corner.
[Quest Generated: The Alchemical Purge]
[Detection: Rank 8 Anomalous Source beneath the city.]
[Type: Toxic / Corrosion.]
[System Hypothesis: High-grade corrosive essence can dissolve low-grade soul residue.]
Vaelen smirked. His smile looked painful.
"Fighting poison with stronger poison. Classic medical theory."
He wasn't heading to a clinic. He was heading to the entrance of the city's main drainage channel. Down there, in the darkness everyone avoided, Vaelen would find his cure.
Meanwhile, on the roof of the Oakhaven clock tower.
A man in a grey cloak, whose color blended perfectly with the chimney bricks, lowered his magic binoculars. On his chest was pinned a small emblem: Black Eclipse.
He touched the communication crystal in his ear.
"Target confirmed," he reported coldly. "Vaelen Rour and Lady Isolde. They are not leaving the city. They extended the room rental."
A heavy, static-filled voice answered from the other side. "Did the bodyguard notice your presence?"
"Negative. He looks sick. Severe injury, possibly. He is staggering towards the lower district."
"Good. Don't touch him yet. The 'Cleaner' Team will arrive at sunset. We will slaughter them while they sleep, and burn the inn to make it look like an accident."
The cloaked man smiled behind his mask. "Understood. Nothing will be left by tomorrow morning."
Black clouds rolled over Oakhaven. Vaelen thought he had two days, but fate—and Uncle Hendor—only gave him until tonight.
And his only hope for fighting was the monster waiting in the sewer.