The Dawn of the New World

"If 'it' is nearby, it will probably attack around that time."

"Don't worry, we will be ready this time," Burak patted Hao Xuan's shoulder reassuringly, getting a nod in return. They watched the other barbarians eat, drink and dance as the night reached its darkest hours.

Spending so much time together, there was no way they wouldn't be close by now. There were only eight of them left including Hao Xuan and knew each other's habits by heart.

Hao Xuan's eyes strayed towards the silent barbarian sitting to the side, Jarek, who turned around to meet his gaze.

He gave half a nod with a twitchy smile that made Hao Xuan chuckle. Even this strange creature had somehow managed to grow on him.

Hao Xuan got up and walked up to him, taking the seat next to him.

"Like that, but smoother. Control your facial muscles better, the ones right next to your eyes and ears. Don't smile just with your lips," he whispered.

Jarek straightened his face before one of his eyes partially closed like he was squinting and the other one twitched while his lips arched halfway.

"Close, but more like this," Hao Xuan quickly flashed him a smile which Jarek mimicked.

"Yes, do it like that when you meet someone for the first time, or when someone nods at you. And drink when somebody offers, it's the polite thing to do, even though you don't need it. And remember, don't eat raw meat, not in front of others, okay?"

Jarek's brow knitted as he tried to remember everything, lightly nodding along to everything.

Hao Xuan saw the look of concentration on his face and felt a little proud. He..."it" had come a long way.

A few months into their stay here he had caught Jarek red-handed, trying to attack Burak while he was sleeping. Or at least that's what it looked like to him.

He confronted him about it and with Baracus's help, managed to identify and communicate with the thing that controlled his body.

It turned out that black gel-like liquid was a parasite that needed a sapient lifeform as a host to survive. It was actually quite common in the abyss and could be found in most places there. It was a void creature that fed on its host's neural signals and depended on them for survival.

It could learn and procreate, infecting others as time went on but in the end, it was only trying to survive. He should have killed it but there was no malice in its actions. It was just following its biological instincts which Hao Xuan understood all too well.

But the most important reason he let it live was that it could, to a degree, detect when other sentient lifeforms were nearby. It didn't matter if they even had a physical form or not, as long as they were able to think for themselves, Jarek could detect their presence which was extremely helpful.

It was neither too strong nor too deadly by itself, the detection ability being the only redeeming quality about its existence.

Any normal cultivator would be able to push it out of their bodies using Qi and even destroy it completely if they so wished. The only reason Jarek "the Barbarian" actually lost to it was because he wasn't a cultivator and the way they processed energy was different.

Hao Xuan had been teaching it to fit in, among other things. Once Hao Xuan threatened it, it completely stopped trying to infect others which mostly included Burak who was, physically, the strongest person here and in turn its biggest target.

Seeing its growth over the last few months Hao Xuan couldn't but feel a little proud, as weird as it sounded. It was even able to understand the barbarian's native language but couldn't properly speak it, for now.

So just like Tasgall, he taught it to use sign language as well so they could communicate more easily.

"You have to be careful tonight, it will probably attack," Hao Xuan warned.

Jarek's body straightened and his expression turned grim.

"The....darkness?" it asked, Hao Xuan nodded.

It had relatively low intelligence, equal to a 7-8-year-old human child so the words it used were not that complicated. It called things how it saw it.

The creature in question was the same one they had been running from for the last four months now. It was the thing responsible for the disappearance of the first two barbarians within the mine, and all the ones after that.

It was not a demon, but its actions were similar to one. It had been sleeping within the depths of the mine and was the source of the 'madness' that was mentioned in the records he found.

Hao Xuan had come face to face with it more than a handful of times but it never attacked him head-on. It was smarter than any enemy he had come across so far, human or otherwise, and deadly wicked.

Unlike other biological creatures, it was not driven by a primal need to feed or to procreate. It toyed with them for its own amusement, torturing its victims in various ways before ultimately devouring them alive.

Even now Hao Xuan had failed to identify what kind of beast it actually was. It could change appearances to a degree and from what he could tell, it had just been playing with them so far.

It only attacked from the shadows, hiding until the very last moment. It was more than strong enough to fight head-on but chose not to for some strange reason.

Jarek's name for it was because of this reason.. It never showed itself during the day, or maybe it couldn't.