Autophagy

A wicked grin appeared on Rufus' face. He seemed amused by Song Lei and Aston's actions.

"I knew you two were scheming something," he said. His normally friendly tone was gone. It was replaced by a one filled with cruelty and animalistic desires. "If you join us at the festival, you guys will be able to have a good life. Let all your desires out. You two are good. Our god will give you two good rankings."

Aston and Song Lei looked at each other momentarily. They didn't expect that they would be able to speak.

"I refuse," Song Lei said. His eyes were burning with fighting spirit. Although they were at an absolute disadvantage, he didn't feel worried at all. 

"Pity... I liked that look of yours," Rufus muttered with a dark expression. "Fortunately, I'll be able to hear your screams while ripping you apart!" Shouted Rufus. He charged towards both of them. Albeit his size, he was still very fast, so it was hard for Song Lei to dodge.

Fortunately, his senses were raised to their end. Both he and Aston managed to jump to the side. Passing by them, Rufus knocked his head to the wall. A small crack appeared on the wall. Using this small window of chance, both Song Lei and Aston jumped towards him. Song Lei jumped up and slapped Rufus' both ears.

At the same time, Song Lei made his attack, Aston slid on the ground and passed between Rufus' legs. After taking his position, he started punching Rufus' crotch as fast as he could. Because they were at a disadvantage in the physical aspect, they had to play it dirty. Whatever attack they did had to be cruel and swift.

In this case, attacking spots such as the neck and crutch were the most reasonable decisions.

Meeting a flurry of blows, Rufus screamed in agony and kicked Aston. With his kick, Aston flew up to the air. He hit his back to the ceiling and fell to the ground. Fortunately, he had only broken a few bones.

Grunting, Rufus took a few steps back and tried to shake Song Lei off. However, Song Lei was like a monkey, he was avoiding all of Rufus' attempts on grabbing him. While doing so, he was also punching his nose time after time. After doing this for more than ten seconds, Song Lei managed to break Rufus' nose.

Rufus grunted but couldn't make too much noise as he couldn't breathe from his nose. Unfortunately, he managed to grab Song Lei and threw him off of him, resulting in Song Lei hitting his head to the wall. As Song Lei fell to the ground, he felt his consciousness fluttering. The only reason he was still awake was his willpower.

After throwing Song Lei off, Rufus walked towards Aston and picked him up. Aston was still trying to recover from the shock of being thrown to the ceiling. He didn't have as strong of a will as Song Lei.

While Aston was trying to recover, Rufus opened Aston's mouth forcefully.

"Blerghh..."

After opening Aston's mouth forcefully, Rufus started puking into his mouth. Seeing this, Song Lei started struggling to get up. From what he could see, there were lots of purple worms in Rufus' puke.

'He's trying to corrupt his soul!' Song Lei shouted in his mind. Slightly recovering from his concussion, Song Lei got up and shuffled towards Rufus. As the time passed, Aston's eyes started fading as if he was losing his reason. 'If I don't save him, he'll be lost!'

Steeling his resolve, Song Lei charged in and jabbed Rufus' eye sockets with his fingers as fast as he could. Rufus, being busy with puking into Aston's eyes, couldn't move. As Song Lei's fingers penetrated into his eyes, he lost all of his sight. Blood came pouring out of his eyes as he stumbled backward and fell to the ground.

The crazed expression on Rufus' face disappeared, leaving its place to his normal one. Smoke started coming out of his eye sockets. The blood on his face quickly dried and his eyes healed back to their normal state.

Seeing this, Song Lei frowned. He went to Rufus' side and was about to gouge his eyes out again until he felt a hand grabbing his arm.

"Urgh... Don't..." Aston stopped him. "He won't wake up until its morning again. If you kill him, we don't know what will happen tomorrow."

Song Lei stopped as Aston told him to. He looked at his face and patted his back.

"Are you okay?" Song Lei asked. Aston had gone through something very traumatizing. No matter what someone experienced, it would be hard to get used to getting puked into their mouth.

"Somewhat," Aston said while holding his eye. From time to time, short bursts of a weird expression would appear on his face. He looked like he was fighting with the worms' effects. Suddenly, smoke started coming out of Aston's chest, just like what had happened to Rufus. In no time, he felt the tight pain in his chest lessen and disappear.

Song Lei lifted Aston's shirt and looked at what was happening curiously. There seemed to be something wiggling under Aston's chest. After the healing process stopped, the wiggling stopped.

"Umm..."

Song Lei looked at Aston's eyes. He still seemed normal.

"I think the worms have a healing effect. At least while they're active," Aston muttered. He still seemed to be in pain because of his fight with the worms.

"Well... Sorry for this," Song Lei said.

"What? Blerghh..."

Before Aston could understand what was going on, he felt Song Lei punching him in his abdomen, causing him to start puking. Lots of worms started coming out of his mouth as he crumpled to the ground.

After puking for half a minute, Aston wiped his mouth with his hand.

"Thanks for the help," he said to Song Lei.

"No problem," Song Lei received his thanks. "We should clean this place up."

"Indeed," Aston said as he went to the metal cleaning cabinet in their room. Every room had one of these filled with all kinds of cleaning tools. The cleaning of the dorm rooms was made by the orphans.

He picked a mop and some cleaning tools up. He then started cleaning while Song Lei carried Rufus to the bed and covered him with his blanket.

It took them twenty minutes to clean the place. Unfortunately, there was a crack in the wall. They didn't know what to do about it. On the fortunate side of things, it wasn't that big. It was highly probable that it would go unnoticed even if they left it like that.

After making sure that everything was in its place, they slightly pulled the curtain and started looking for the trainee that Aston had given the devouring worm.

After looking for some time, Aston located him amongst the trainees that were worshipping Clark.

"That proves our theory..." Aston muttered. He took out a notebook and noted some things down.

"I think we've already proved our theory but..." Song Lei said. "Whatever. So? What do we do now?" Song Lei asked. Hearing his question, Aston held his chin and started thinking deeply.

"We have to learn who is doing all this," Aston said. "Before that, I don't think we can do much."

"Why so?" Song Lei asked.

"If we act without knowing our enemy, we'll just fall right into their hands," Aston explained. "Our main enemies are not the other trainees. It's the opposite actually. We have to save them. If we can find a way to counter the effects of the worm, we can gather allies."

Song Lei nodded. He knew that it would be too hard for the two of them to deal with everything on their own.

"For now, I'll take note of every single trainee that participates in this festival," Aston said. He took out his notebook again and went to the window. "Then I'll make another list that contains every single trainee's name in it. When we take out the ones that match, we'll have a list of the trainees that are immune to or not yet infected by the worm."

"How are you gonna do that?" Song Lei asked.

"I know every single trainee's name, so it won't be much of a problem," he said. Shortly after, he started writing in his notebook. His hand was weaving through the pages like a ballet, filling them up to the brim with different names. Song Lei was truly astonished by Aston's writing.

"What do you think Rufus will do tomorrow night?" Song Lei asked. They knew that the worms made people swap personalities in the night. Song Lei was scared that Rufus' memory would come back when the worms activated.

"I have no idea..." Aston muttered. "Hopefully, he'll have lost all of his memories about tonight. But even if that happens, Clark will get suspicious of us. The most we can hope is that they won't attack us in the morning so that we can gather some allies."

"Even if we gather allies, can we beat Clark? Isn't he the best fighter trainee in the orphanage?" Song Lei asked.

"Indeed. You gave the answer yourself. He is the best, 'Fighter' trainee in the orphanage," Aston said. An expression of pride appeared on his face that Song Lei had never seen before.

"But I'm the smartest one...."