There was a city at the border of the former Divine Empire of Sydnia.
Not a single soul to be around, in this place, there was only one... thing? that could be seen.
Held by two human arms protruding from a tree formed from an amalgamation of body parts, the baby, despite being born only just recently, had now grown to be a dark grey-skinned, red-headed one year old child.
The dark grey-skinned child suckled from a teat of this Flesh Tree[1].
The strange beings, Grotesquelings[2], that once took care of the huge Flesh Tree had undergone an extreme transformation with the birth of the grey-skinned child.
Although they were still far from humanoid, they appeared more refined, and were now able to move smoothly and with more freedom in comparison to how they were in the past with their impaired movements.
Their strength and intelligence were at the level of goblins back when they first turned grotesque, but now it’s at the level of orcs.
If they had been adventurers, then this would be a different matter. However, they were once priests of the Light God Faith. They weren’t the devoted religionists that threw themselves into ascetic practices, but rather greedy individuals who borrowed the authority of their church and only had their vested interests in mind.
And before Sydnia’s collapse, these beings were mainly the lower ranks among the church officials who had been encroached by miasma who weren’t allowed to escape to the Demon Continent and didn’t participate in the final battle there. When they first turned into grotesque monsters, their ranks were higher than a slime but lower than a goblin’s.
Beneath the grey child cradled by the Flesh Tree, the Grotesquelings slowly gathered strength.
While cursing the world.
To dye the world with miasma.
Covertly, but steadily, to accumulate the power to destroy the world......
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Footnotes:
1. Changing Meat Tree to Flesh Tree.
2. 異形 There was no monster name that I know of that would be fitting but there is a need to differentiate them from other monsters, so I will start calling them Grotesquelings or maybe Fleshlings because they’re from the Flesh Tree. �