#subject09

...Interesting.

Gaster didn't reply immediately; singular eye focusing on the individual before him before flicking away, only to repeat.

Somehow, the multiverse always found something new to throw at him.

Not that it was surprising; exactly, given his understanding of SOULs, it was already known that monsters could absorb human souls and also merge with one another; a combination of the two situations didn't seem impossible, simply... improbable, given the scarcity of the two individual situations to begin with.

But, calling attention to that would be rude and he wasn't quite as uncouth as he knew some of his variants could be.

Send “Pain is weakness leaving the body” and I will randomly generate how your muse will find mine 5. with a stab wound

It wasn't as if he intended to come there; perhaps it was subconscious bias towards something that was familiar, perhaps it was a result of already weakened pathways in space and time, perhaps it was a yet undiscovered link that connected entities that were bonded with the void.

Whatever it was, he arrived unbalanced, stumbling backwards before regaining his balance.

Truthfully, the injury looked much worse than it was; having blown away his shirt and crumpled the ribs on his lower left, the edges of the bone either crumbling to dust or melting into a gooey sort of substance. But he was no ordinary monster and his HP was still in the tens of thousands--but that was only because the human was not striking to kill, only to seriously wound. He truthfully wasn't sure which was worse.

To want to kill an enemy was natural, to want to see them suffer was nothing other than pure evil.

That didn't mean it didn't hurt, though. Exhaustion crinkled around his closed eyes, and there was a certain mechanical quirk to the way he lifted his arm, curled his fist and pressed it against his mouth, giving a light cough.

//for whatever muse you like, and this is my muse saying this.

&. 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬.

"Well! That would, perhaps, be one option of how to proceed.

"But--I've put so much effort into catching you, that'd be quite a waste, no?

"Really, do you have any idea how difficult it is to trap something that can step outside of reality? How lucky I am that the monsters already had research on exactly that."

There was a perfectly polite facade of a smile on his face, eyes crinkled with amusement.

"And oh! Don't get me wrong, I don't have any issues with monsters, they're quite the fascinating creatures, but you...