I was there, truly there, in that moment, surrounded by hundreds of wolves in an unnaturally vast cave. Had this cavern always been here? No, that was impossible. Its sheer scale, its sudden, inexplicable presence, was a violation of all known reality. But the unsettling reality of its sudden appearance was secondary to the immediate, snarling threat: the hundreds of hungry wolves that now filled my vision, their eyes like glowing embers in the gloom. As I stood contemplating, measuring my impossible odds, the pack began to stir, a low, guttural rumble rippling through their ranks, their collective gaze fixed on me, ready to pounce and devour.
Just then, the mark on my hand, the -98%, blazed with an blinding, internal light. Time itself seemed to distort, then freeze. The world around me slowly dissolved into an abyss of absolute blackness, until I existed in a space of total, profound void.
Suddenly, words, foreign and ancient, spilled from my lips. I spoke in unknown tongues, sounds that resonated with primal power, alien yet intrinsically familiar. A surge of raw energy, a torrent of wisdom, knowledge, and understanding, flooded my mind. Ancient secrets unveiled themselves before me, concepts too vast for my mortal comprehension, yet inexplicably grasped. It was a baptism of pure information, a download of existence itself. Then, as abruptly as it began, it stopped. The number -98% shimmered brightly above my head, suspended in the blackness. Instinctively, I knew. This percentage wasn't just a mark; it was my current limit, the cap to this burgeoning power, a tether to my former self. I had to decrease that number more.
I returned to reality, and everything about me had changed. My original abilities, the fragmented powers I had used to survive and learn – regeneration, apparent immortality, the subtle plundering of vitality – no longer felt distinct. They had coalesced, unified, into a single, overarching force.
I understood. I possessed one fundamental power: the Original Tongue of the End. And currently, I had gained profound insight into a specific aspect of it: the Tongue of Death. This insight granted me the ability to escape the grasp of death, to regenerate from even the most lethal wounds, and crucially, to feed on the death energy of those I consigned to oblivion, growing stronger with each demise. And after killing the wolf king, I had gained insight into another facet: the Tongue of Corrosion. I could now cause any part of anything I touched to corrode, to decay and crumble with a mere thought or touch.
The accumulated death energy from the king and its pack had increased my overall physical and sensory stats, sharpening my reflexes to impossible levels, strengthening my body to an unprecedented degree, and deepening my perceptions to encompass more than mere sight and sound.
I stood there, watching the once-threatening wolves. They were no longer the apex predators that had hunted me. Now, they looked like… sport. Their primal instincts recoiled from the raw, cold power I now exuded, their snarls dying in their throats. I began chanting the strange languages that had flowed through me in the void, and both my hands became enveloped with crackling, dark death energy, radiating an almost visible miasma of finality. With my vastly superior stats and newfound skills, it was a one-sided slaughter.
I moved through the pack like a phantom, a living embodiment of death. Each touch, each strike, each whispered word in that ancient tongue, brought swift and utter cessation. Their bodies dissolved into the familiar black smoke, absorbed into me. After killing all of them, my -98% number didn't decrease further – a clear sign of my current limit, a barrier I still needed to breach. But I had gained another ability, another insight into the Tongue of Death: a Death Aura. I could feel it radiating from me, a suffocating field of pure entropy that seemed to bend the very will of those around me, a tangible presence that whispered of finality.
My gaze drifted from the last dissolving wolf to the vast, impossible cave. The question of its origin, the date on the phone, my missing family – they still lingered, but the immediate threat was gone. My path was clear: I had to understand this power, this Tongue of the End. And I had to find a way to reduce that damned
percentage.