Divine System: Land of the Abominations-Chapter 302: The Devouring (1).

The darkness inside the creature’s maw was absolute...

For it was not the simple absence of light.

Nor was it a void so complete that it seemed to devour the very concept of illumination.

Rather it was blackness that had never known any light.

Ancient and curse, was what it was.

Nero’s transformed body hung suspended in that blackness, surrounded by crushing pressure and the stench of ancient decay.

The tendrils constricted tighter, their shadowy flesh pressing against him from all sides. They were trying to digest him. To break his parts down vengefully.

But the form of the beast was darkness and curse.

It was in its home.

His mouth opened wider, jaw unhinging like a serpent’s. The golden glow from his eyes cut through the darkness in twin beams of divine light, illuminating the writhing mass of tendrils that filled the creature’s throat. His skin, now black as Vulcan Stone, rippled with faint golden runes that were visible in the darkness.

The shadows poured from his mouth like smoke.

Like liquid darkness.

They wrapped around the nearest tendril and ate at it.

The flesh tore.

It came apart in ragged strips, its dark substance shredding under the assault of Nero’s darkness. It offered no resistance to the consuming darkness that emanated from Nero’s transformed body.

Then he bit down.

His teeth, elongated and sharp, sank into the torn tendril. The flesh was cold and tasted like salt and iron. It had the texture of rotten flesh, slick but yielding under his jaws.

Nero’s human consciousness seemed to try to fight the pervasive foulness that had reached his tongue.

But his instincts didn’t seem to care as his breathing and heartbeat quickened.

The desire to keep eating filled him up.

It filled him up until there was room for naught else.

There was no room for disgust or revulsion. There was only an endless hunger. A need to consume and to take.

Nero swallowed.

The tendril’s flesh slid down his throat, and immediately his body seemed to change. Energy flooded through him— the purest Ein Sof flow he had energy felt flowed into his body and spirit , igniting his essence like he had just swallowed fire and ice.

More tendrils wrapped around his body, trying to crush him. The darkness that bled out through his teeth swelled violently.

They spread out from his body like the roots of some terrible tree, seeking, grasping, finding purchase in the writhing mass of appendages. Each shadow that touched a tendril began to consume it, breaking down the dark flesh and drawing it back toward Nero’s transformed form.

He grabbed a tendril with both hands and pulled it to his mouth.

He bit down then tore it up before swallowing.

The flesh was freezing cold going down. Nero’s throat contracted around it, forcing the mass of flesh deeper. He trapped another, and this time simply forced it down his throat, not even bothering to swallow.

The cold turned to unquenchable heat the moment it reached his belly, turning into energy that filled him up.

It was inexplicable.

The creature in the depths stirred.

Nero felt it through the connection of flesh and darkness. The body of the creature, in its slumber, had detected the annoyance within itself and was beginning to purge it

A sound echoed through the darkness. A low, reverberating call that struck at the fleshy walls of the insides of this creature. There was a vibration that followed next as the internal muscles of the beast twitched and spasmed.

The tendrils around Nero constricted with a renewed vigor, breaking down at his even now enormous body.

If he was human, Nero would have cried out in pain as all the bones in his body were crushed to powder.

But Nero was no normal human.

The pressure seemed to only fuel his hunger even more.

It was rabid.

This form didn’t care about broken bones or crushed organs. It had transcended such concerns. Pain did not exist in the face of hunger.

His body seemed to have turned into a funnel as the darkness began to pull them all, wrapping around them and brutally dragging them into his face as he began to gorge himself.

He ate.

And ate.

And ate.

The flesh kept coming, an endless stream of dark blood and flesh that filled his mouth faster than he could possibly swallow, it seemed. His throat bulged obscenely as mass after mass of tendril was forced down. His body began to give off heat as it broke down the essence of the beast, and an even greater horror within its belly.

Deep in the buried fragments of his human consciousness, Nero felt himself fragmenting.

’I...’ he thought.

’I am losing myself. This isn’t me.’ he thought.

Could this beast that ate a disgusting creature so ravenously a human?

No.

But that was what he was, was it not?

"DEVOUR!"

The imperative crashed through his thoughts like a wave, scattering them. There was no room for identity, as the space for the construct called "Nero" or "human" or "self." had fallen into limbo.

It was damning.

He would be unwittingly digging his own grave a couple feet deeper. But at this point, perhaps there was no helping it.

His humanity was drowning in darkness.

But even as it drowned, even as the Yang form’s nature threatened to consume what little remained of his human mind, something in Nero refused to let go completely.

A memory surfaced through the hunger.

His mother’s face.

It was not clear. But it was warm. And warmth was much needed at the moment

’Nero. I am Nero. I am Armageddon, Angel of Judgement.’

The thought was fragile and flimsy and pathetic.

But for some reason, it held on.

The creature in the depths thrashed, and the entire lake seemed to convulse with it. Water churned violently, creating currents that tore at Nero’s body. More tendrils emerged from the vast thing’s flesh, hundreds of them, thousands, all converging on the source of pain within its gullet.

They wrapped around Nero like constrictors, like the roots of some terrible plant seeking to strangle and crush and destroy.