Nightmare Mythos

Soon, the Green Water inside the cauldron was reduced to a small amount of a newly formed blue liquid. Once Rizz managed to see it, he picked up a huge metal straw, placing it at the lid of a flask standing on the table.

Right after, Rizz clicked the metallic straw's button producing a whirring sound that guzzled the contents of the cauldron. Just a few seconds later, the result of the potion was transferred into the flask which was oozing out a gurgling resonance, looking all outlandishly exotic.

Like what Rizz had promised, there was no foul stench involved.

But the smell was the least worrisome part of the procedure.

"Oops… There,"

Heaving a sigh of relief, Rizz managed to clutch the flask in his gloved hands and put the container onto another set of tables that Baron placed after seeing the potion-making reach its ending stage.

"Here you go,"

Cesar walked to the table and stared at the potion blankly. The boiling of the potion gradually decreased, and it looked like it came out normally if one just forgot all those ingredients meshed out together to form this singular brewed product.

Rizz watched Cesar for a while and when he noticed that he was taking a bit longer, he suddenly asked suspiciously.

"Uhm, anytime now Mr. Sparrow,"

"Oh, yes…"

Flustered that he almost short-circuited on thinking about the answer, Cesar grabbed the flask and pondered everything he needed to know which was mostly drinking it. There are no special positions required or additional equipment to prepare to make the process smoother since it all depends on the person drinking the potions.

'Drink all of it…'

One golden rule on drinking potion is to savor every last bit of it, not leaving a single drop behind from the flask.

With dark resolve and sparing his nervousness at the back of his head, Cesar gulped strongly before raising the flask near his mouth and devouring every single liquid inside.

He chugged it down to his throat, feeling the liquid falling down to his body. He tasted every drop of the potion that tasted awfully bitter yet disgustingly sweet.

"Ugh…"

Dropping the flask on the floor which magically disappeared after being submerged in the shadows with the help of Baron, afraid that its shard would spread out, Cesar momentarily stood in his place, dormant.

'That's it?'

After digesting the potion, Cesar felt a brief of tranquility, thinking that taking an unknown substance which was a result of trial and error processing Nightmare Facets would end so peacefully.

In the end, he was entirely wrong. Even though there was a slight chance of this kind of result where the pain was expected to rise, Cesar still hoped he wouldn't have to go through such torture.

Alas…

"Gahhh!"

Gasping out a huge breath, Cesar came to his knees. His throat felt like burning as he appeared to be itchy all over the place which made him scratch his skin to the point of bleeding out.

'I considered this much…!'

Instead of doing something to, probably lessen the pain he was feeling or anything at all, Rizz remained standing. Still, he wasn't entirely idling around as he remained focused on the changes happening to Cesar.

"Fuck!"

There are different kinds of changes when taking potions. Everything has been considered whether it is physically, emotionally, or mentally and these types of 'considered changes' are accepted as normal in the books.

A horn protruding out from someone's forehead, ears becoming longer, eyes changing colors, face turning into something else…

These changes are all but borderline safe.

That was the first type of change. The second one, on the other hand, is much more sinister as it involves Corruption.

Anything that looks corrupted while distinguishing 'normal changes' is very hard to spot but those who were assisting the students with this selection are all experienced and competent enough to make decisions for themselves.

"God…! It hurts!"

All the mischievousness and playful expression from Rizz disappeared, replacing it with the cold mentality that is enough to adhere to self-judgment in case something goes wrong.

And what went wrong means Cesar is corrupted and becomes the monster itself.

Baron, on the side, walked out from the shadows, holding a pair of knives in his hand to be ready if Rizz ordered him to move swiftly.

"Let's just wait for a moment. I don't see any signs of corruption yet,"

Rizz ordered Baron to stand by, already seeing that this was one of the visual symptoms of being corrupted. Even so, he trusted Rizz's decision.

Standing, the two old men watched Cesar trash around the surface as a cacophony of screams rang in the entirety of the hearing-proof room.

…

Cesar felt like he was dying, burning, itching, crying, drowning, and dying again. All these emotions swirled up inside him but instead of feeling restless, he knew what he had to do.

He even knew what was going on with him, transitioning from experiencing painful psychosis to becoming unable to distinguish reality and not.

Now, he saw a different kind of view.

In his eyes, he was swiftly running fast to the never-ending landscape of a huge forest, escaping to the encroaching darkness behind his tail. His skin was tainted with a black, grotesque pellet that was replacing his skin, tearing off its original skin apart.

"Leave me alone!"

His eyes remained forward, not daring to look back to whatever chasing him around. Even so with that focus and hard intention to escape, 'he' felt his steps growing weaker. His pace slowed down and he appeared to be even struggling to move an inch.

Eventually, he found himself completely stopping.

His gaze that was looking forward turned sullen as a sense of helplessness crept upon him. His eyes became unfocused as he couldn't help but look down out of prying why he had become sluggish.

In there, he finds the darkness tightly hugging him, replacing every inch of his body with the same black shadow. It slowly reached out to his neck, up towards his head before the only thing left in his vision was his gaze moving forward.

The darkness soon enveloped his vision, making Cesar unable to pry through more as the only thing he could perceive was the shrouded black of darkness.

What seemed to be an eternity of darkness soon vanished as his clouded vision of nothing but blackness was replaced with another vision, clearly different from the vast expanse of forest earlier.

Only this time, there was a human piercing through his heart with dozens of bodies littered across the area.

His hideous fang with convoluted lips tried to move that the soldier on his front was left stupefied by how resilient of a monster he had become. The soldier struggled to leave to do another type of attack but he wasn't lucky enough to do so due to his hand being stuck on the monster's chest.

He let out a demonic growl before cutting the head of the human.

The head of the person was forcefully removed from his ribs, blood gushing out endlessly of his chest. His breathing soon became ragged as he slowly fell on the floor.

Cesar thought it was the end of it, and it was supposed to be if not for the fact that he heard yet another sound, not coming from the monster he was currently inhabiting through his visions.

It didn't come from his lips nor stemmed from his mind.

"Oh? What a fabulous coincidence! Surely, this is not some arrangement made by him, right? Darn you, Apathy… You really want me dead, huh? To the point of even setting me up with a corrupted, no less!? I'll get my—"

Soon, the voice was cut off, and the Nightmare was dead.

Cesar, who viewed the same impenetrable darkness looming around his eyes, woke up and had his attention moving around his field of vision.

The same as always, there was a black color hanging onto the ceiling wall, making him shiver at the stark difference, knowing this kind of shadow didn't exclude any eerie feelings for him at all.

In fact, that's the thing he was afraid of. He kept being exposed to the same absolute darkness that this kind of darkness he was currently viewing fell rightly short.

"Is our prince awake now?"

Soon, his eyes darted to the origin of the voice seeing the playful Rizz wearing a mischievous smile. Though there was a trace of nervousness surrounding him and he was excluding beads of sweat from all over his forehead, now, he looked fine.

Partially fine…

"Ugh…"

Sitting up straight with a groan, Cesar touched his aching head as he questioned.

"What the hell happened…?"

Rizz bent down to look at Cesar with a worrisome expression before tapping his shoulder, "Oh, nothing very serious."

Hinting what that meant, Cesar asked, "Nothing very serious…? What is nothing serious then? What about the serious one?"

"Wow, you even hinted that I was making a joke—but anyway, I guess this kind of situation isn't really up for stupid jests," With a sigh, Rizz finally revealed, "You just showed signs of being corrupted that's all,"