Transmigration in Mordor

He stayed there for a long time, floating, his gaze lost in the cascade of light, his mind a silent, empty desert. Finally, he stood up and approached. The interface appeared, its spectral letters floating before him.

[Waterfall of Night] 

[Tears of Regret: 31] 

[Coward's Stealth: 0/?] 

[Healing Stagnation: 0/?] 

[Forge of Brutality: 0/?] 

[Echo of Ungoliant: 10,612] 

[Echo Distillation: 102%]

Over ten thousand. The number was a drug, the intoxication of a promise. The promise of a power that might finally make a difference.

'One more dose. Just one.'

He focused, feeling the Echoes being ripped from his reserve and pumped into the skill. A toxic vibration ran through him, a poison that warmed, a corruption masquerading as strength.

[Echo Distillation: 200%]

'Yes… YES!' He pushed further. A resistance, as if he were forcing a spiritual lock. He gritted his teeth, pouring almost everything he'd amassed in blood and death.

[Echo Distillation: 296%]

Panting, cold sweat beading on his forehead, he stared at the number. So close. '300%. A threshold. There has to be something. A new ability. An evolution. That's how games work, right?' Frustration gnawed at him. Curiosity became an unbearable itch, an obsession. He had to know.

He returned to the charnel pit, but differently. Fifteen tears in `Stealth`, sixteen in `Brutality`. A balanced predator. The fight was disconcertingly easy. He killed a dozen creatures in less than a minute. Then he stopped and watched their behavior again. The hesitation. The reluctance.

'It's not fear. It's… something else. Confusion?'

He tested a theory. Stepping out of the shadows, he stood in the middle of the tunnel, mentally canceling his stealth. The spiders encircled him, their legs scraping the stone, but they didn't attack directly. They "sniffed" him with an invisible energy, their mandibles clicking in a kind of perplexed recognition.

'It's not stealth. It's not fear. Then what is it? It's… me? What have I become?'

Back at the waterfall, his heart pounding with a new anxiety, he spent the few Echoes he had gathered.

[Echo Distillation: 301%]

The threshold was crossed. And something broke inside him. It wasn't a wave of power, but a subtle, insidious sensation. A taste of ash at the back of his throat. A cold stain anchoring itself in the very marrow of his spirit. Something he had instinctively ignored, but which was now undeniable, screaming.

'Tainted. I feel… tainted.'

His mind raced, the pieces of the puzzle snapping together in a flash of pure horror. 'Echo of Ungoliant.' Ungoliant. The primordial evil. Hunger incarnate. The original spider who drank the light of the sacred Trees.

'The Echoes… they're not just experience points. It's her essence. The essence of evil that I'm distilling… into myself. I'm not becoming stronger. I'm becoming like them.'

The spiders' reluctance. They didn't fear him. They recognized him. A kindred. A fragment of their cursed mother.

'The gift… is a poison.'

The realization hit him like a physical blow. Fear—true, icy, uncontrollable terror—gripped him. This was worse than death. This was active, voluntary damnation. He rushed to the interface, hands trembling. 'Remove it. I have to remove it!' He searched for an option to withdraw the points, to purge the poison. Nothing. The option didn't exist. It never had.

'Naive. I was so terribly naive. So focused on the gain that I forgot the cost. I forgot where I was. This isn't a game. It's a hell.'

As he sank into despair, the interface flickered. A new line of text appeared, cruel, as if the system were mocking him, offering a crumb of hope at the very moment all was lost.

[Echo Distillation: 301%] 

[Song of the Ainur: 0 / 999,999,999]

'The Song of the Ainur… The music of creation. The opposite of Ungoliant. A way… a way to purge myself?' A mad hope was born in his panic. He focused on his last Echoes, the 92 remaining fragments of evil, and poured them into this new skill.

[Song of the Ainur: 92 / 999,999,999]

He waited, probing his soul.

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing had changed. The stain was still there, cold and permanent. The 92 points were a drop in an ocean of nothingness, a futile gesture in the face of an impossible debt. And then, the final truth, the cruelest of all, struck him.

'The waterfall… it's not here to help me. It's here to keep the accounts. To quantify my punishment. Every Echo was a new mistake. And the Song… it's not an antidote. It's the price of redemption. A debt I will never be able to pay.'

He didn't scream. He didn't cry. All emotion left him, leaving him empty, hollow, a devastated shell. Slowly, he turned and slipped into the water of the fountain. The mystical water, which once calmed his torments, was now inert and icy against his skin. It offered no comfort.

He was alone, trapped in a body he no longer recognized, with a soul he had himself, meticulously, poisoned.