It was not that it wanted to stop—it simply could not draw in any more.
Its soul body had already swollen up, like a balloon filled to the brim with water. One more drop and it would burst. It withdrew the black mist from the man's severed palm and drifted back a step.
The second person had already squeezed forward.
He was a man whose chest and abdomen were covered in knife wounds. His clothes were crusted with dried blood, black scabs layered over one another like armor.
He drew another slash across his own stomach with a knife. Flesh peeled open, revealing dark red muscle and white fat beneath.
Blood gushed from the wound. It was not bright red, but dark crimson, like jam. He aimed the wound at Goren's black mist, cradling his belly with both hands like a pregnant woman holding her swollen abdomen.
"I endured for fifty years! Every day was worse than death! Choose me first! My wounds are the freshest, my life force the strongest!" As he spoke, he shoved his way forward, pressing his stomach against the black mist.
Goren drifted backward. It did not want to eat. It could not eat any more.
But the alley behind it was a dead end. There was nowhere left to retreat.
It drifted to the base of the wall, its soul body pressed against the cold stone as it tried to float upward.
But those people were tall enough. They stood on tiptoe, stretched out their arms, raised their wounds above their heads, and offered them toward the black mist.
Someone brought over a stone from behind and stood on it, rising higher. Someone else climbed onto another person's shoulders and held his severed arm up before the black mist.
A third person, a fourth,