221. Crimson Hunger: Complex Heart

The City of Spades was sparse of sapient life, contrary to the population that was known to exist in S4 and its neighboring Sectors.

The disease that was the Crimson Hunger had plucked countless lives over course of the Nex Megalopolis’ lifespan. What they all allowed to fester within their walls was worse than the nightly invasions of Brandar’s plains, sanctioned by an Atelier no less.

What was once a nightly fear that kept the streets of S4 and beyond silent had sept into the day. Frost listened to the cries all around her as her flames brimmed like a giant beacon.

Things were not always like this. Two weeks ago, the Crimson Hunger had spontaneously assaulted S4 in broad daylight. Only those affiliated with the major Syndicates and the Impuritas were spared.

It coincided with Frost’s return and the subsequent defeat of the Heart of Ours. Each unwanted life, and perhaps even the wanted ones, were slain, and assimilated into the giant crimson egg-shaped masses along the nest that was S4.

Faces of despair and grief were immortalized into the creeping ivy that climbed buildings, acting as reinforcement. The fleshy ivy sept into the windows and beneath doors. At the end of each trail, one could find a blob that was once a person.

The Complex hearts housed tens of thousands of lives each, and Frost eyes watered when she realized that they are the only ones who had chosen to fix this mess.

What remained were ruins – the proof that these did in fact exist. But Frost’s fire both physically and metaphorically erased what remained of them. Whether for better or worse, her destruction mattered little compared to the egregious threat of the Crimson Hunger.

Not a single strand of the Crimson Hunger were to remain. Her one hundred flaming hands made sure of this. Whether it was the Fragment of Bers, the Macro Clumps, Angered Clumps or the Our Bodies – the Impuritas created by Infested and Plague Hearts respectively.

The people who were still alive were either major syndicates or people living alongside them. They littered the streets screaming whilst others slipped through the cracks and crumbling crevices of their fragile world.

These people all wanted to live, and they clung into whatever desperate hope they could. Ignis was a gentle giant and out of all of them she could transport the most people to and from a designated area where Frost left a forest of healing Unlying Tablets, just at the foot of the fault line.

The triplets did not care whether they trampled on the living or not. What mattered to them was only their victory. In such an environment the last thing on their mind was the safety of those that could not fight.

Jury was thankfully the opposite. But Frost was in the unfortunate circumstance where she could only do harm.

Her appearance was always the first that would mentally shatter them. Where the people in the Derma Layer were awed by her presence – the people of S4 despaired at the sight of herself and Jury.

They believed them to be the Apostles of Justica Arms – the enemies that had reduced their homes in the past to rubble, painted their streets in red, and eliminated who they saw fit.

Her careful ears heard all as she approached one of the Hearts with the triplets following closely in her shadows.

“They’re here to kill us all again!” A woman’s cry could be heard.

“It wasn’t enough that you had to condemn us all here! This hell was already screwed as it is with all the criminals you lumped here with us!” A man shouted as he dragged himself free from a crack, his hands trampled as none stopped by to offer a hand.

Frost released a periodic pulse of [Area Heal]. Her mana was rapidly depleting for she had no way to quench her flames. And so, she ate whatever organic matter she could find so long as they were not people.

Stuffing her mouth and cooking strands of creeping ivy, which happened to be none other than the Yearning Flesh that sought to smother all with a coat of pulsating mass. She stripped them from walls like the bark from a tree and devoured them as they clashed with the Fragments of Ber and the clumps of meat.

“I-it’s Wolf-Demi –! B-black hair and tail –! Are they back to slaughter us!?”

“There’s no healer! There’s nothing here! Get out Justica murderers! We’re not doing anything wrong!”

“Get out! Can’t you see you’re destroying everything!? Just – it was all so perfect! You’re not saving us! You’re condemning us agaaaaaain –!”

Nearly every single person here had lost their fingers or their hands.

These people believed that the reason everything had gone downhill was because of Frost and her companions – the ‘Justica Arms’ personnel. It was as if they were blind to the truth – to the real enemy that haunted their nights right outside their doorsteps.

The collective illusion and mass hysteria were unbelievably bewildering, to the point where she found it ridiculous. But these people were so broken by wars, the Scarlet Logic and the scum that accumulated and proliferated here like a malignant cancer.

However… this was not always true. People and children cried into the deaf ears of loved ones. Others begged along Ignis’ side when they recognized her gesture of good will. Her giant skeletal hands scooped the innocent masses as the scenes of the loss of Divas Pass drove her to do what no one else could for her home.

Save them… Lend the hand that they no longer possessed. Even a small gesture of care would have sufficed. The giant skull of tendons and flesh silently screamed as superheated steam blasted the grey skies away, casing a light upon her as though she was sent down from the heavens.

Frost bemoaned that she could not do the same.

She was an advocator for life. But her beliefs were far too out of reach for her countless hands to grasp. Anguish. Hatred. Agony… She never allowed herself to fall into despair because she believed that no struggle was futile. In her ever-climbing state, she believed that maybe she could impart change in this disastrous world.

What hurt her the most was that this change could not happen in this very moment.

Following a long, broken main street, they finally reached the base of a Heart and were met with a legion of Our Bodies, which flooded through its pores. Similarly, tentacles grew from the Yearning Flesh that smothered the earth, each equipped with countless smaller, hollow tentacles used to externally digest their victims, like that of a starfish.

Pillars of Hatred
Crimson Hunger
< Main Course >
LEVEL : 100      ORIGIN : Impuritas     HP : 40,000     ATT : 4,000 MAG     ATT : 0
ATT DEF : 1,500     MAG DEF : 0     MP : 100     RESIST : 300     AGI : 30

And as for the gargantuan Heart itself, which hung suspended between each of these pillars reminiscent of the Pillars of Happiness:

Complex Heart Crimson Hunger
< Complex >
< Forever we hunger for our moment to become whole. Wrathfully reconstructing what we’ve lost, our appetites whetted for what we will gain. Stomachs screaming; we must be unpalatable to avoid being eaten ourselves >
ORIGIN : Impuritas     HP : 12,500,000     ATT DEF : 2,000      MAG DEF : 2,000

As the amalgamated bipedal and quadrupedal flesh-monsters – the Our Bodies – cried: “I DIDN’T TO ANYTHING WROOOOOOOOOOOOONG!”, and “I WASN’T PART OF THAT TRAIIIIIIIIN!;

And the Fragments of Ber wailed: “SOMEONE PLEASE HEAR ME!”, and “I JUST WANT TO BE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE!” –

There was another unique Crimson Hunger Impuritas that oozed through the membrane of the Complex Heart. The giant tentacles jittered as if they were connected with this bipedal being. Now that Frost had a closer look at their environment, she realized that the tentacles appeared like fingers, and the Heart like the egg in the palm of a giant, putrid hand.

The entity was a tall, slender, ambiguously gendered being. It was humanoid in shape, with a smooth head and an equally smoother face. Its head was slightly transparent, and within one could find worms willing through. From the nose down it was relatively normal, until one reached their gaping mouth.

A long, thick tongue hung loosely from their throat like a business tie, mimicking a certain execution method on Earth named the Colombian Necktie… For its necktie-like appearance, of course.

It was harmless, but Frost begged the differ. The being simply stood there without a care in the world, knowing that even if it perished it would be replicated by the Complex Hearts. This thing was different from the Bloody Herring and Leitmotif.

It was an entity stemming from the Heart itself.

“Memory Bistro… Memory B? Memory B Cell?” Frost spoke loudly as the triplets did not waste any time and began to one-sidedly obliterate their foes.

The reason why she believed him to be the equivalent of a B Cell was one: because of its name, and two: because it appeared to carry specific events in its status. If the Macro Clumps were also B Cells, then they were the Naïve B Cells that fetched information to create the Our Bodies.

This entity was the one that memorized all.

The world was suddenly struck like drums as the tentacles came crashing down, and the Memory Bistro was killed by the combined Electric Field of the Moon triplets. However, and as expected, yet another replaced them, standing in the mush that was their old self.

“Memory B is a decently abridged name. It’s tasteful. Certainly to us both, Amalgam –!”

It perished once more, revived, and trudged through its former bodies.

“Quite the sight, no? It’s been a long running gag that no matter where the Monkey Brothers moved they’d be haunted by the ghosts of the Wise Black Wolf –”

“SHUT UP AND JUST DIE ALREADY!” Ber caught the being and, with a brilliant heave, threw him straight into Frost. “GET RID OF IT SO IT CAN SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

She did not need to be told twice. Her Touch of Golds ensnared him and took a chunk of his head off with several bites. She stuffed every drop of blood into her mouth like a starved beast.

The only reason she refused to use [Punch] was to ensure that he was ‘devoured’ in every sense of the word.

Her meal was hardly nutritious, and she did not bother to clean up after herself. Because in the next moment –

“… Interesting. There were rumors that you had similar capabilities as that insufferable Demon. I shall commit it memory.” It politely taunted as its status saw a sudden change.

Memory Bistro

City of Spades Massacre

Wishes of the Solemn Paw

Avoidance of the Amalgam’s Maw

“Particularly dangerous to most. But to us – We soulless clumps of pure, synthesized hatred – Such soul snatching does little. Those flames are something else up close. Who would have thought that the Amalgam we all so fear would be a mere woman in black. It was foretold that the Prophesized destroyed was a man –”

Once more, as she ejected a stream of Liquid Fire in its direction, and as the triplet’s electrifies umbilical cord-like link repeatedly bisected and seared its flesh – the Memory Bistro simply ‘respawned’ from a different section of the Complex Heart.

At the same time, the tentacles attempted to pulverize Frost, only to be caught by her Touch of Golds which plucked them straight from the earth like an unwanted hair from its follicle. Like a writhing club, she swung the massive heap with the combined power of her one hundred additional arms and pummeled another Pillar of Hatred.

The Crimsion Hunger could not be bribed like the Blood Festival, and their heart’s intentions were as clear as day.

Because the only heart she could conceive of was the Complex Heart itself.

“Irregularities, and now a giant diamond floats in our skies beyond the grey veil. Sect of Gears fail to adequately read you, and neither can the Authors of Existentia. But that flame does not lie! Devastation awaits us all long as you are alive!”

“Devastation? But erecting your Hearts over the homes of countless is fine in that fucked up mind of yours!? All of you Impuritas fucks love throwing that word around me like I’m the one to blame for all of this!” Frost, having heard enough to confirm the Crimson Hunger were as deluded as the Blood Festival, launched her assault.

Not a single Heart was to be left standing.

“But must we forget our special guests? The three Moons of the Amalgam. The three sisters of the murderous Wise Black Wolf. And – The three paws he condemned by taking others.” It exclaimed, its voice originating from within the Heart itself.

“Raoul…” Res let out an agonized groan, suddenly understanding the reason why they had become so sought after. It not merely because of their affiliation with Frost.

Rather, this was driven by personal woes.

“Raoul is the name of that abominable fallen Star. From Grandis to Brandar, he had shed enough blood, and severed more hands than the Monkey Brothers can count. All this condensed rage redirected to his precious Moons!”