Chapter 123: The Soul Eater
He’d spotted traces of additional writing on the last page. He hurriedly picked up the log and turned to the very back.
There, packed densely across the page, was a record quite different in nature from what had come before.
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I’m taking a moment to leave an additional record.
As of now, monsters wearing human skin are roaming the Savannah industrial complex and the surrounding area.
For convenience, I’ll refer to them as ’Skinwalkers.’
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"This is..."
Judging by the context, it seemed to have been written after she investigated the abnormal phenomenon at the industrial complex.
According to what he’d heard from Colton before, Helen had once returned to the shelter alone, separately from the investigation team.
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Skinwalkers are no ordinary monsters.
They are vicious creatures that eat into people’s brains, absorb their memories, and mimic their victims.
The Skinwalkers are concentrated at the center of the fog that caused the abnormal phenomenon, and a monster presumed to be their superior species was there as well.
According to the Powerful Enemy Appearance Alert, the monster’s identity is an A-rank Elite Monster, the [Soul Eater].
It is a creature that corrupts people’s minds, scrambles their senses, and distorts their memories to create hallucinations.
The investigation team and I entered the industrial complex without knowing any of this, and we were quickly caught up in hallucinations and scattered in all directions.
We were attacked by Skinwalkers in the process, too.
I in particular suffered severe mental corruption and was nearly out of my mind.
Then, just before I lost consciousness, the Blessing of Clarity activated, and I barely managed to come back to my senses.
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"Blessing of Clarity?"
What was that?
Walfred tilted his head.
But his confusion didn’t last long. The answer was right there on the next page.
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The Blessing of Clarity is a passive skill that every nature-attribute Hunter possesses.
When you’re about to lose consciousness from a mental attack, it activates automatically, temporarily protecting your mind and restoring your sanity.
The blessing lasts 24 hours.
If the blessing wears off, the mental corruption will take hold again. So while the blessing held, I hurried back to the shelter.
To warn everyone about the [Skinwalkers].
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It was a wise decision.
Rather than wandering around searching for the Hunters who’d vanished into their hallucinations, quickly returning to the shelter to report the situation was the more rational choice.
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After informing everyone about the Skinwalkers, I conducted one-on-one interviews to check whether any Skinwalkers had infiltrated the shelter. Fortunately, there were none, and afterward I gave everyone strict instructions.
If any outsider or unfamiliar face shows up, they could be a Skinwalker, so no matter the reason, never let them into the shelter.
I also warned everyone that the industrial complex is crawling with Skinwalkers, so they must not go anywhere near it.
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With that work finished, Helen hurried to prepare to leave the shelter before the Blessing of Clarity wore off.
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I’m heading to Macon now.
There’s an A-rank light-attribute Hunter in Macon.
My final goal is to explain the situation here to him and evacuate everyone to Macon.
If you’re reading this record and you’re a Hunter who came from Macon, please, I’m counting on you to handle what comes next.
Oh, and one more thing.
If you happen to meet me out there, it will already be something other than me.
Don’t hesitate. Kill it.
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A message that read as if she’d sensed her own end.
Walfred’s expression turned bitter.
He could feel how she’d tried to fulfill her duty as shelter manager to the very last.
’But...’
There was one thing she’d failed to anticipate.
That the scattered Hunters of the investigation team would return to the shelter transformed into Skinwalkers. Still, that could hardly be called Helen’s fault.
After letting out a frustrated sigh,
’In any case, this settles it.’
The Soul Eater had made its home where the White Dome had appeared. With that, Walfred was certain the theory he’d come up with earlier was correct.
"A Soul Eater, huh..."
The moment he became aware of the creature’s existence, the first thing that came to Walfred’s mind was SSS-rankProfessor, who was active on the Info/Strategy Board.
The name ’Skinwalker’ had been coined by Helen on the spot, so searching for it had turned up nothing. Soul Eater, on the other hand, was clearly an official species name.
’Let’s look it up.’
So he logged straight into the community.
As he continued searching through the strategy guides written by SSS-rankProfessor, he found a post written before the liberation of the Antarctica gate.
[Title]: The Worst Elite of Them All, the Soul Eater
[Author]: SSS-rankProfessor
That’s right. I knew I could count on you.
Walfred grinned and tapped the post.
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The world is a big place, and it’s full of shitty monsters.
The undead being the poster children.
But species aside, if I had to pick the single shittiest Elite Monster out there, this bastard takes first place, hands down.
[A-rank Elite, Soul Eater]
There are countless reasons why this unhinged son of a bitch is so awful, but for you busy modern folks, I’ll boil it down to the top three.
First. This bastard is a ghost type.
The sharper Hunters will have caught on already, but for the newbies, let me kindly explain: all ghost-type monsters are immune to physical attacks.
And unless your skills are light, life, or nature attribute, even skill damage gets cut in half.
So how do other attributes deal damage?
Simple. Get the [Blessing of Light].
The [Blessing of Light] comes with a special skill called Radiance, and that thing is basically the ghost type’s personal bully.
Second, this bastard messes with your head.
Say you come face to face with a Soul Eater.
It’ll interfere with your mind and corrupt it. Once your mind is corrupted, delirium and psychotic breaks will hit you one after another.
And then the hallucinations pile on top of that?
At that point, most people just stand there with their minds shattered until this bastard gobbles them up.
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Mental corruption. And hallucinations.
Troublesome abilities at a glance, but none of it applied to Walfred.
Because he’d been granted a blessing far superior to the [Blessing of Light] that SSS-rankProfessor mentioned, an upgraded version of it.
’The Blessing of Eternal Light.’
The blessing bestowed on him at Trenton Station.
The [Blessing of Eternal Light] came with a special skill similar to Radiance, but far better.
The special skill that had shone brightest in the battle against the Frost Spirit King: [Brilliance].
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[Blessing of Light: Brilliance]
[While the Blessing of Light is active, skills of all attributes can deal resistance-ignoring damage to ghost/spirit-type monsters.]
[Grants immunity to mental interference and corruption.]
[Additionally, when attacked, there is a 10% chance to completely nullify the attack’s damage, and a 5% chance to reflect the enemy’s attack right back.]
▷Active duration: Constant
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The [Blessing of Eternal Light] and [Brilliance].
As long as those two existed, the Soul Eater posed no great threat to Walfred.
Of course, the immunity only covered mental corruption; whether it could block hallucinations too was anyone’s guess.
’I’ll worry about that later.’
For now, gather information first.
Walfred turned his eyes back to the post.
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Finally, the third reason the Soul Eater is so shitty: it sucks up mana from its surroundings and cranks out its disgusting servants nonstop.
The servants are called [Memory Eaters].
They look like squishy jellyfish and their combat power is a joke, but the problem is that these bastards eat into people’s brains and absorb their memories.
A [Memory Eater] uses the absorbed memories to impersonate people. I’m talking about it approaching you while posing as your family, your girlfriend, your friend.
And the moment you let your guard down,
it’ll jam a brand-new [Memory Eater], made through self-division, straight into your skull.
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The moment he read that far, Walfred realized that the [Memory Eater] was the Skinwalker. Even just going by the description, everything matched the Skinwalkers perfectly.
But there was a problem.
"The Soul Eater produces Skinwalkers?"
On top of that, a Skinwalker alone could create new Skinwalkers through self-division.
Didn’t that mean their numbers could effectively multiply without limit? What would happen if they grew beyond any scale that could be rooted out?
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But don’t worry too much.
No matter how many [Memory Eaters] there are, in the end, if you just hunt down and beat the crap out of the main body, the Soul Eater, they all vanish at once.
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"Ah..."
Exterminate the Soul Eater, and every Skinwalker it produced would disappear.
A silver lining, at least.
With a sigh of relief, Walfred read the rest of the post.
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Next up, how to beat the Soul Eater.
First off, the Soul Eater looks like a giant jellyfish. And it’s slow as hell. It’s practically a stationary target.
The catch is that getting close is stupidly hard.
The Soul Eater has hundreds of tentacles, and they can stretch up to 160 feet.
Touch a tentacle and it’ll drain your mana and slap you with all kinds of nasty debuffs. So I recommend taking it down with ranged skills rather than melee.
Lastly, the closer you get to the Soul Eater’s main body, the worse the mental interference and hallucinations get, so keep that in mind too.
That covers the warnings.
One last word before I go.
If you’re truly qualified to exterminate a Soul Eater, do it as fast as you can.
Leave a Soul Eater alone, and that region turns into a hopeless hellscape. Well, the choice is yours either way. Good luck out there.
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And with that, SSS-rankProfessor’s post ended.
Walfred agreed with the opinion written at the end of the post: if you’re qualified to exterminate the Soul Eater, do it as fast as possible.
’If that thing is left alone...’
The Skinwalkers would keep multiplying.
Then it wouldn’t just be this region; all of Georgia might end up overrun with Skinwalkers. And if that happened, the situation would spiral completely out of control.
’I have to nip this in the bud.’
As quickly as possible, if he could.
The one saving grace was that, thanks to the record Helen had left, he already had a rough idea of where the Soul Eater was.
’...The Savannah industrial complex.’
The place where the White Dome had appeared.
Walfred gazed steadily in the direction where the Soul Eater’s main body was presumed to be. A moment later, he left the room with Elsa in tow.