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Eldritch Horror? No, I'm A Doctor
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The moment Ren's finger touched the selection, reality rippled.
You have selected the Path of Identity and Skin. Initiating integration.
Tome of the Skin God acquired.
A book materialized in the air before him and dropped with a heavy thud onto the operating table. The sound was wet, organic, like a slab of meat hitting stone.
Ren stared at it.
The book was wrong in every possible way. It wasn't made of paper or leather or any material that belonged in a book. It was made entirely of skin. Human skin, stretched and stitched together in irregular patches, each one a different shade ranging from pale white to deep brown. The stitching was crude, done with what looked like sinew or hair, and the whole thing pulsed faintly as if something inside it was breathing.
A foul stench emanated from it. Rot and formaldehyde and something else, something sweet and cloying that made his stomach turn.
"What the fuck is this?" Ren said aloud.
Your instructional manual.
"This is not a skill. You said I'd get a skill!"
I never said you'd get a skill. I said you'd get power. Reading comprehension, Ren.
"What the fuck is it then? Do I have to read it?"
Read it and you will understand.
Ren reached out hesitantly and touched the cover. The skin was warm, body temperature, and slightly damp. He suppressed a shudder and opened the book.
The first page was blank except for a single sentence written in what looked like dried blood.
The words didn't just appear on the page. They slammed into his mind like a physical blow, bypassing his eyes entirely and carving themselves directly into his consciousness.
To walk the path of skin, you must accept that identity is not real. You are who you are because of your skin. Without your skin, your identity becomes nothing. What defines a person is their skin.
Ren blinked, his head throbbing. "What kind of psycho wrote this shit?"
The System didn't respond.
He turned to the next page.
THE RITUAL TO BECOME A SKIN APOSTLE
Ren's hands started shaking as he read the instructions.
Step One: Strip yourself of all your skin. Every inch. Including your eyelids, your lips, the skin between your fingers and toes. Leave nothing. You must be raw flesh, exposed to the air, vulnerable and undefined.
Step Two: Using your own stomach acid, draw the Symbol of the Skin God on the floor. The symbol must be drawn with your hands, using the acid extracted from your own stomach. Dilution with other fluids will result in ritual failure.
Step Three: Light a fire atop the symbol. This fire represents your acceptance that without your skin, you are nothing. The skin defines you. The skin is you.
Step Four: Burn your removed skin in the fire until it is reduced to ashes. Watch it burn. Understand that you are destroying your old identity completely.
Step Five: Once the skin has been reduced to ashes, throw yourself into the same fire. You must survive for 24 hours without dying. During this time, you must Realize the True Meaning of the Law of Skin. If you fail to achieve this realization, the ritual will fail and you will die.
Warning: This ritual has a 3% survival rate among those who attempt it. Most candidates die within the first hour. Those who survive longer but fail to achieve realization often lose their minds and must be eliminated.
Ren dropped the book.
It hit the floor with another wet thud, and he took several steps back, his breath coming fast and shallow.
"System," he said quietly. "Can I... can I not do this?"
If it's too hard for you, you can just not do it and remain stuck as a half-ass A-rank hunter until the day you die.
"..."
But you know that's not possible, right?
"Yeah. It's not possible."
Ren ran a hand through his hair, then down his face, feeling the contours of his skin. His skin. The thing that would need to be completely removed for this ritual to work.
Strip yourself of all your skin. Including your eyelids.
He tried to imagine it. Tried to picture himself as nothing but exposed muscle and nerve endings, no protective layer, just raw meat standing in a room.
The pain would be indescribable. Beyond anything he'd ever experienced, even during his transformations.
And then he'd have to survive being burned alive for 24 hours while somehow achieving philosophical enlightenment about the nature of identity.
"Fuck. Do I really have to do this?"
That's up to you. But you chose this Path. You wanted the Law of Identity and Skin. This is the price.
Ren stood there for a long moment, contemplating his life choices. Every decision that had led him to this point. Every surgery, every transformation, every time he'd pushed himself beyond human limits.
This was just another step on that road. A bigger step, sure. A step that might kill him. But still just a step.
He took a deep breath.
"System. Do you have a fire that can last 24 hours?"
Yes.
"Then let's fucking do it."
You're sure?
"If I die trying to become a god, then so be it. I didn't expect the path of Law to be easy anyway."
Spoken like someone who's about to regret every decision they've ever made.
"Shut up."
Ren walked over to where Adrian lay unconscious on the floor. He picked up the soldier carefully, trying not to jostle his new skin too much, and carried him back to the operating table. He laid Adrian down gently, checking his pulse one more time. Still alive. Still breathing. Good.
The lieutenant would probably wake up in a few hours with a hell of a headache and a lot of questions. By then, Ren would either be a Skin Apostle or he'd be dead.
Ren left the operating room and walked down the hall to the grafting room. This was where he performed his most complex surgeries, where he had the most space and the best equipment. It was also isolated from the rest of the clinic, which meant if something went catastrophically bad during the ritual, the damage would be contained.
He stood in the doorway and looked around. The room was about ten meters square, with smooth concrete floors and walls. Perfect for drawing symbols. Perfect for containing fire.
"Alright," he said aloud. "This place will work."
He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
"Whew. This shit is not easy."
Ren opened his inventory. The Outer God Surgical Set materialized in his hand, the familiar weight of the scalpel settling into his palm. The blade gleamed in the fluorescent light, sharp enough to cut through dimensions.
Sharp enough to cut through his own skin.
"Let's begin."
For a moment, he hesitated. This was it. Once he started, there was no going back. He'd either complete the ritual and become a Skin Apostle, or he'd die trying.
But he'd made his choice. He'd chosen the Path of Identity and Skin. And he'd walked too far down this road to turn back now.
Ren positioned the scalpel against his abdomen, just below his sternum. The blade was cold against his bare skin.
His skin. The thing he was about to lose.
He took a deep breath.
And with his right hand, he stabbed the scalpel into his abdomen.
Pain exploded through his body, white-hot and all-consuming. But Ren didn't scream. He'd felt worse. He'd survived worse.
He dragged the blade downward, opening a long vertical incision from sternum to navel. Blood poured from the wound, hot and wet, running down his naked body and dripping onto the floor.
He could see his intestines through the opening. Pink and glistening, pulsing with each breath he took.
Ren reached into the wound with his left hand, ignoring the fresh wave of pain, and found his stomach. It was slippery and warm, contracting rhythmically. He gripped it carefully and squeezed.
Stomach acid began to leak from the incision, mixing with blood on the floor. The acid burned where it touched exposed flesh, adding another layer to the symphony of pain.
But Ren kept squeezing, kept extracting the acid, pooling it in his cupped hand. He needed enough to draw the symbol. Enough to complete Step Two of the ritual.
When he had what he estimated to be about a cup of stomach acid mixed with blood, he knelt on the floor and began to draw.
The Symbol of the Skin God was burned into his memory from when he'd read the book. A complex geometric pattern that hurt to look at, that seemed to fold in on itself in impossible ways. He drew it with his fingers, using the acid and blood as ink, creating lines that hissed and smoked against the concrete.
The smell of burning stone mixed with the smell of blood and stomach acid. Ren's hands were covered in burns where the acid had eaten through his skin, leaving raw patches of flesh exposed.
A preview of what was to come.
It took him twenty minutes to complete the symbol. By the time he finished, he was dizzy from blood loss and the pain in his abdomen had settled into a constant, grinding ache.
But the symbol was done. It glowed faintly on the floor, pulsing in time with his heartbeat.
Ren stood up unsteadily and looked at his work.
"System. I need the fire now."
Are you sure you want to proceed? Once the fire is lit, the ritual begins. There's no stopping it.
"I'm sure."
Very well. Deploying Eternal Flame.
A small flame appeared in the center of the symbol, hovering about a foot off the ground. It was a strange color, shifting between blue and green and purple, and it gave off no heat that Ren could feel.
But when a drop of his blood hit it, the flame flared bright white and grew larger.
This was the fire that would burn for 24 hours. The fire that would consume his skin. The fire that would either kill him or transform him.
Step Three was complete.
Now for Step Four.
"Let's strip some skin."