Mutagen

Day 44 – 1:20 PM - San Marcelino, General Nakar, Quezon

Everyone gathered around Mark but no one tried to touch him due to Amihan's warning. Despite being unconscious, they could see Mark trashing around, gritting his teeth and was releasing a faint growl from his mouth. His forehead was heavily frowning. From these signs, it was obvious that he was in deep pain.

"Amihan, you said its possession. Can we do anything aside from watching him suffer like this?"

Karlene asked while feeling helpless as she watched Mark suffer.

However, she did not receive any reply. She turned to Amihan just to see her standing in front of a weird altar-like contraption under the acacia tree. Karlene walked towards the altar to take a look at it and she saw Amihan. She was crying. Finally, Karlene heard the little sylph's reply.

"I don't, I don't know. What my lord is undergoing is not just some normal possession." Amihan said as she tried to wipe her tears with her arm. "This altar, I heard of it before. What is trying to possess my lord is not just some evil spirit or a normal demon."

"What do you mean?"

Karlene asked with further worry. The conversation of the two immediately caught the attention of Edzel and Miracle. Amihan turned to look at Mark and the black smoke emanating from his body and answered.

"When other spirits that are capable of trying to possess someone, specifically a human, the disparity between the vessel's body soul and mind will hinder the foreign entity to some extent. When the possession succeeded, he one that possessed the person would not be able to control the body to the full extent and ends up having strange movements, growling and at worst cases, they and up not being able to stand at all. It also applies to normal demons. It is because they could only possess the body and not the soul. If that was the possession my lord is undergoing, he should be fine afterward. But…"

"But what?"

"The one trying to possess my lord is not a normal demon. If I'm correct, it's a strong demon born of miasma. In the worst case, it might even be the demon sealed thousands of years ago."

"What are you saying? How are you sure of that?!"

Karlene started to panic. Her voice even started to rise.

"Miss Karlene, calm down! Look at Miss Amihan before going hysterical."

Edzel hurriedly tried to intervene and forced Karlene to calm down. His voice made Karlene look straight at Amihan. The little sylph was biting her lip that it almost bled. She was even shivering. Compared to everyone here, she was the one with the weakest mentality. Yet, she was trying her best to keep as calm as possible. She was crying but still answered Karlene's questions. What Karlene did was just plain unreasonable.

"I'm sorry."

Karlene apologized and Amihan shook her head.

"I-Its fine." Amihan then turned to the altar. "This altar looks like something that is used to seal a formless demon, a demon born of miasma. They are demons that are not too strong at first but grows by absorbing negative energy. Also even though they are not immortal, they are very hard to destroy. Their kind had no bodies so they always try to possess people and take over their bodies. But since they had no bodies in the first place, it became easier for them to adapt to the human body they possessed taking over the victim's identity in the process. After they succeeded, the victim's mind and soul are destroyed permanently."

Amihan took a deep breath. Even though the air was quite unpleasant in the surroundings, she had no problem as she could purify the air around them.

"Also… This altar is more complex to normal ones. The demon sealed here should be a very strong one. I just wish that this is not the altar that I heard about or it will be hard for my lord to come back to us."

"That's…"

Karlene slumped to the ground while Edzel gripped his fists tightly.

While the three were feeling remorse for Mark's possible outcome, a child's voice was heard.

"Such impudence. His Majesty will not fall to such a filthy creature."

It was Miracle. It was not surprising for Amihan but Karlene and Edzel were shocked to the unfathomable change that they saw.

"Aephelia…"

Amihan voiced.

"Little one. Shouldn't you put more trust in His Majesty?"

Aephelia admonished in a strict tone accompanied by a glare.

"I'm sorry… Will My Lord really overcome this?"

"I told you to put more trust, didn't I?"

With those words, Aephelia started working. Even though it could not be helped that her king had to lie on the ground, at least, she wanted to clean the surroundings. After all, the aftermath of her king's battle caused the surroundings to become unsightly.

***

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Thousands of years ago, in a time unrecorded by history, a time where deities and lesser gods walked the earth, a time where spirits and elementals walked the land, often, tribes in the Philippines lived worshiping their gods while waging war against evil spirits, foreign usurpers and enemy tribes.

Wars between tribes were a normal thing especially when the chieftains of the tribes had things against each other. Most of the time, the losing tribe be absorbed by the winning tribe while at times, it could also lead to the annihilation of the losing tribe if they did not want to submit.

The causes of these wars could sometimes be a conflict with the hunting grounds, a conflict with the territory or at rare times, conflict because of a woman or a contest for domination. Even inside tribes, infighting was common especially when two men competed for a single woman. A duel for the sake of the woman was always seen as a way of courting them. At worst times, however, these duels of courtship could lead a war between tribes killing many people in the process.

Wars because of these causes were common at those times. But at very rare times, a war could happen…

Just of the sake of bloodshed.

Resentful souls of the innocent victims left negative energies at the place where their tribe was annihilated. This made those places uninhabitable according to the beliefs of the people during those times.

At one time however, hundreds of innocent tribe members were killed causing a huge amount of resentful energy to gather in one spot. Thick malicious had drawn in a huge amount of evil spirits and demons to linger the area almost all the time. The dispersed energy by these creatures soon accumulated in the area and turned into miasma.

Then… A formless demon was born.

This formless demon forsook the area and wandered in the forest. For an unexpected event, the demon found the first human to possess. That human was wounded to a high degree and was almost dying. That person was the sole survivor of the massacred tribe that had been chased after the other tribe for a long time.

As a new demon, it possessed the human and inherited the human's lingering resentment. During the time of the possession, the assailants found the human and tried to kill him for good.

That was where the massacre began.

The tribe that caused the massacre of the previous tribe was massacred in return. But it did not end there. All the tribes that had ties to the previous tribe soon followed its steps to destruction.

,m As more resentful souls appeared, the man possessed by the demon became stronger and stronger. The negative energy birthed by the massacre caused the demon to grow. The demon soon gained an ego which it used to gather followers. Soon, he was worshiped as a deity of bloodshed. He used bloodshed and suffering of humans as entertainment. The victims were subjected to torture and their blood-curling screams served as music to the demon's domain.

Soon, the humans in his domain were eradicated after he turned them all into entertainment. Due to that, he started to put his hands in places he should not put his hands to. He left the mountains and started to spread bloodshed towards the tribes inhabiting the plains.

With their domains and tribes worshiping them becoming desecrated, the true deities and lesser gods did not find it amusing, especially the Goddess of Cultivated Land, Ikapati and her husband, the God of Seasons, Mapulon. The two were lesser gods inhibited the plains at that time while teaching the tribes about agriculture. Many of the tribes that were attacked in the plains worshiped the two lesser gods and the ones they gave their gifts to.

The two lesser gods retaliated but it was too late, not only that the fighting capability of the two lesser gods was low but the demon had grown too strong. Although the cooperation of the two managed to defeat the demon and kill his vessel, they were never able to destroy its formless body.

The two then sought the help of the greater Goddess of the Wind, Amihan and they were able to seal the demon in the middle of the forest in a certain mountainous area. To keep the seal from being broken, it was placed under a spirit tree to provide energy for the seal and a sylph which was the kin of the Goddess of the Wind was placed to guard the place. Soon, that forest became a forbidden place where people with evil intentions could not go back once they entered it.

After several thousand years, the guardian had been replaced several times. Nevertheless, the tree remained the same and the seal remained intact.

Suddenly, an unknown energy invaded the Earth which affected the current guardian, the spirit tree and the seal. A plane crashed near the spirit tree and the supposed to be dead humans from the plane shambled towards the tree and hugged its trunk like drunk people. Their bodies soon merged into a ball while exuding a faint stench to attract the animals around which soon joined the disgusting ball of flesh around the tree.

Due to energy and the ball of flesh, the guardian was never able to enter the spirit tree anymore and remained outside the tree for more than a month. Although it wanted to stay away from the disgusting ball of flesh, she was still the guardian of the altar for this generation. Fortunately, the spirit tree continued to supply the seal of energy it needed.

Until the day came…

The magical energy in the area was being sucked towards the east in large amounts. Dark clouds formed in the east as if it was going to rain very hard. As if the day that the Earth was flooded would come again.

Without sufficient energy, the seal started to weaken. In a panic, the current guardian forced the spirit tree to supplement the seal causing it to weaken. Nevertheless, the magical energy continued to drain and the seal finally started to break.

One of the stones in the seal cracked and the miasma started to leak from it. As the guardian, the sylph tried to confront the miasma but she was unable to resist it. In exchange, she became the first casualty and was controlled. The miasma then seeped into the ball of flesh and the red lichen was created.

The red lichen then spread out on the forest floor which victimized more creatures in the forest and contaminated the northern part of the river.

Nevertheless, the demon still stayed inside the seal. Being imprisoned for thousands of years weakened it far from being able to fully break the seal. It needed more sources of miasma to fully break the seal. Instead, it used the red lichen to gather more energy to corrode and convert to miasma.

***

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"What is this?! Wh're in the w'rld is this?!"

The demon bellowed he watched the scenes of his own history flashing around him. He should have possessed the insolent mortal that confronted it and destroyed the physical body it chose to inhibit but why did he end up in this place?

"Can you stop shouting you piece of smoke? Your story looked similar to anime stories so I want to watch more."

The demon heard a voice which made it shiver. It then saw the insolent human who it should have possessed in unexplainable shock.

"Even if you don't seem to have eyes, don't stare at me like that. In any case, welcome to my world you lowly demon."

The mortal smirked while looking at the demon with his red glowing eyes.