Venterus was paving the way for his energy, with eerie calm, as if awakening a beast from its slumber, not to scream... but to adapt.
The ancient energy, which had remained dormant within this incarnation, finally began to expand, breathing with him, beneath his skin, reshaping his silence into an irresistible presence.
As it reached its acceptable peak, Venterus turned toward the Dark Souls with a gaze that carried not anger... but resolution.
It was cold, clear, but imbued with murderous intent.
In an instant, he pounced on one of them.
It wasn't a chaotic attack, but a ritual, an energy ingestion, a spiritual rupture.
It was as if Venterus wanted to reset these creatures, who had thought they held the power of existence.
The Dark Soul tried to escape, to cling to the last drop of its existence, but it couldn't.
The void created around Venterus was deeper than death.
The rest... froze in place from the pressure of the energy radiating from Venteros.
They viewed him not as an opponent... but as an entity outside the equation, something incomprehensible, unconfronted.
"He's dangerous! ..." whispered one of the spirits, before their eyes exploded with panic.
Half of them rushed to hide within the earth, as if they thought its depths might protect them.
The other half scattered, fleeing like smoke in the wind, not caring about direction, not caring about fate.
All they knew: they had to be far away... from this being.
But Venteros wasn't satisfied.
The silence behind him was shattered with every step, His footsteps on the ground felt heavy, and the forest that had grown accustomed to embracing shadows also trembled under the weight of his presence.
He rushed after them... not with the speed of a human, nor with the lightness of a creature.
But it was as if the void itself had moved, time folding beneath it, and the fates of the living convulsing around it.
He approached the first fugitive, and before he could even turn around, he reached out and dug his fingers into his spiritual body, not to hold him… but to tear his soul apart from within.
A scream heard only in another dimension erupted from the soul, but Venterus didn't care.
He slowly opened his mouth… and began to devour him. Slowly consuming his soul.
Not as a being would, but as a law would, as death swallows the light of the weak, "because that is the law of this universe."
The soul continued to flutter, disintegrate, disintegrate into atoms, and then evaporate completely, as if it had never existed.
The second tried to change direction.
In an instant, he pointed at him…
Suddenly, black spikes were embedded in his translucent flesh from all sides, as if the void itself had issued a verdict.
He was torn apart before his eyes.
The third was faster… but he didn't realize that Venterus was no longer bound to space.
He appeared before him without warning.
He just whispered:
"Parasites are unforgiving."
Then he placed his palm on his chest... and it burst like a bubble of blood and darkness. This wasn't ordinary blood, but a mixture of dark spiritual power that had formed into black blood containing energy.
The rest began to scream in an incomprehensible language, calling for help from older powers, from those they had forgotten in the void... but no one responded.
The forest was no longer their refuge.
The universe itself seemed to have closed its doors behind them.
Everyone who fell within the range of Venteros's consciousness was not only killed...
but erased from existence, and they became what they were... devoid of any consciousness of their own except his own absolute consciousness.
Finally... when nothing remained but the energetic ash, Venterus stood upright under the moonlight in the middle of the void, his head held high, his eyes closed, and black blood splattered around him, his mouth, and his hand. He breathed deeply, as if in a moment of contemplation.
Until... the black blood evaporated like a black mist.
He said in a calm voice, "Whatever exists in creation without my knowledge..." "exists without my consent."
Venterus said those words because his consciousness wasn't merely a perception; it was a condition for existence itself.
In his view, everything that takes shape outside of his knowledge takes shape outside of law.
He doesn't see himself as a mere being in the system. He doesn't remember who he is completely, but he feels, he feels, as if he is a source of order.
Because he doesn't recognize randomness in creation.
Either something came into being with his knowledge, or it doesn't deserve to exist...
Then he fell silent for a moment, his eyes turning lifeless... as if time itself had stopped to listen.
He raised his gaze to the sky, laughing hysterically—a laugh that was a mixture of sadness, awe, and power—and said, his voice muffled by the same echo:
"Hate?... I feel hate."
He touched his heart and said :" Is this feeling... called hatred?
The feeling consumed him, and he continued repeating in a brutal tone..:
"Hate!"
"Hate! Hate! Hate!"
His words came not from his mind, but from something deeper, something that fed on pain, on the shadows that grew in the hearts of humans.
Which was food for the spirits of darkness...
His voice trembled... angry, mysterious, as if reflecting the collective voice of the spirits of darkness he had absorbed, a struggle to remain conscious and alone... for the strongest.
The feelings weren't to Venteros' consciousness, but rather a massive collection of dark, deadly feelings! That the Dark Spirits had fed on throughout their existence for millions of years on everything not only humans , because they provided them with energy, their energy growing stronger and stronger the stronger the feeling any being emitted.
Venteros focus began to fade, as if another consciousness was creeping in... distorting his voice, his form, his perception.
Then he whispered in a battered voice, unlike his own:
"—he breathed heavily—"It's... it's so much about you... you gave me sensation... you gave me the ability to think... and I...
I... I... I was trapped, I alone...
His tone of voice became almost savage:
" HAD. .NOBODY.. NO FEELINGS ...
NO SENSE..."
"I was in hell... looking at heaven."
"I AM !...I AM !!" he said in a savage tone.
"I was a machine!" He said it in a tone of despair
And at that moment... tears streamed from his lifeless eyes.
He began to breathe heavily.
He was writhing inside, oscillating between his consciousness and the consciousness of the souls that had been devoured by the spirits of darkness and that were still inside them, forced, LOST.., EMPTY.. .
They were in agony...
Calling...
Screaming in PAIN ...
Souls frightened,
ANGER..
And suddenly, he burst into laughter,
He laughed madly, his voice a blade of darkness:
"I AM !"
"I AM!...I was created to hate!"
"To kill!"
"To destroy!"
Then he fell silent... and his voice echoed like a lost whisper:
"I..."
"I..."
"Who am I?..."
A black surge of energy emanated from Venterus's right side, his right eye sunk into pitch black, like a window into endless darkness.
With every passing moment, the struggle intensifies between the consciousness of the dark spirits he devoured and his own consciousness, which he tries to seize control of.
The universe, with its strict laws, does not recognize the absolute and easy nonexistence of souls. Rather, the souls of those killed do not disappear, but remain rooted deep within the mind and soul of the killer, experiencing an endless cycle of remembrance and suffering.
Venteros' devouring of the dark spirits was the beginning of his struggle.
This struggle will only end when one of the two forces triumphs, granting its full consciousness and power to its owner—the stronger, the one who deserves to survive.
Venteros began to repeat in a frightening tone, "I want to kill, kill!... kill!
Kill! Kill!...
Kill!... kill!
With a look of clear indignation, filled with hatred and a desire to kill, he said: Kill them all..."
Venteros felt a crushing sensation tearing him apart from within, as if a powerful force was clashing deep within his being. This was the "beginning of the merging of two consciousnesses." His own consciousness, and the consciousness of the dark spirits he had devoured, were intertwined, and a relentless struggle was raging between them.
At that moment, he felt he was no longer a single entity, but a shifting battlefield, where different memories and feelings converged, and destinies intertwined into a single, shifting fabric.
This merging was not just a clash of two forces, but the beginning of the destiny of a darker, more powerful being.