Chapter 782 (2/2)

The rest of Silo’s words were choked off in a low sob.

Then his eyes narrowed into slits. His heart began to beat with a ragged ferocity. More and more blood pumped out of his arms. His vision cleared further. Even his headaches slowly began to fade. There was a shift in him, a slow and gradual one. But his fury lay coiled around his heart like a tightening python.

“It’s not fair…” Silo mumbled. “I am… I am a person too. I’m real. Why didn’t you pick me…?”

His heart hammered in his chest. As if shivering after a long slumber, his Corrupted Physique Skill began to vibrate.

“I’ll prove it. I deserve you. This whole world… I deserve it…” Silo tried to reach into his shirt and grab the necklace with the jewel, but of course, his hands were lying severed on the ground out in the street. So Silo just spent several minutes drenching himself in his own blood as he used the blunt instruments of his forearms to produce the gem.

The wounds didn’t hurt per se… but they were beginning to ache with a throbbing regularity. Wet with blood, the jewel looked small and cheap. But Silo leaned forward and bit it, unsure of what else to do. It tasted like blood and dust. Then Silo began to suck.

The black, violent power he had drowned in rushed in like a torrent. The strength surged down through his body and reached the wounds. Once more, his head began to throb.

Like a dam breaking, a whole wave of blood surged out through the stumps on the ground. With a cry, Silo fell to his knees. His limbs convulsed. Although it was difficult to see with the shakes that gripped him, this new blood seemed to be a deep burgundy. There was a prickling around his chest as a low heat seemed to build in him.

More burgundy blood pumped out, slowly turning more black as all of his old blood was removed from his body. The heat slowly spread. Once more the curtains of darkness closed over his vision. And hot on the heels of the heat was deep pain. His muscles contorted and his bones cracked.

I’m… being remade… Silo abruptly realized. His Twisted Physique Skill began to groan and tremble like his body, barely able to withstand the energy running through it. The dark energy keened its unwilling stubbornness. Silo couldn’t think.

Pain knifed into Silo leaving him screaming. The heat was building too much, too quickly. Fire was running into his heart, searing it into seizing up. He couldn’t breathe. But the darkness was no escape from the pain. Silo continued to scream as the fire wound its way through his veins to his arms.

Here the pain slowed and lingered. Then it intensified.

Silo could sense a few people approach warily, but none dark shift the wreckage of the old building to discover who was screeching with such murderous intensity within. Silo was vaguely disappointed. Killing something was exactly the sort of distraction he needed right now.

Then a frigid hatred twisted him. If he could even kill right now, without his hands-

“MY HANDS!” Silo roared.

The fire exploded. His arms didn’t exist anymore. There was just pain and gore and blood… and bone.

Eventually, Silo awoke to a gasp. His eyes struggled to focus for several seconds before he could convince them to do their job.

Panting, Silo lay in a pool of his own blood as the pain receded like a tide. Surprisingly, the only consequence of the ordeal he felt was a deep hunger. The pain in his stumps vanished. Silo attempted to spit out the stone, but he realized with a start he had swallowed it. A constant flow of energy emerged from the pit of his stomach, filling him with images of violence and bloodshed.

Although it wasn’t ideal, it at least seemed to be working…

Silo attempted to push himself upward but his arms- his hands?- got caught on something. He broken nose hit the puddle of blood and throbbed painfully. Grimacing, Silo rolled over and slowly straightened. He had to throw beams and rubble off of himself sometimes… and others he just waved his arms and the material was sliced apart without resistance. It was only when he stumbled out into the street that he could view himself.

So Silo stood above his severed and claw-like hands and saw that his elbows were wrapped in a thick coating of bone. And from each elbow, twisting and hooked, were meter long poles of sharpened bone. Small, but… they were spears.

They were made to kill. Silo’s eyes flashed.

A good spear.

Slowly smiling, Silo turned to regard horrified onlookers.