Chapter 62: The Birth of a Calamity

Caelus drove his sword into the stone wall.

The blade sank deep enough to hold, and he wrapped one hand around the hilt as his boots scraped against the rough surface. His descent slowed immediately, allowing him to lower himself rather than simply fall into whatever waited below.

Eve and Lucian had no such concern.

The two of them dropped through the darkness with far less difficulty, their bodies adjusting naturally to the descent. Lucian’s boots found the wall once before he pushed away from it, while Eve twisted in the air and landed lightly on a jutting piece of stone before continuing downward.

Caelus watched them disappear below.

Of course.

Knights and martial artists got to enjoy gravity as a suggestion.

He pulled his sword free and continued after them.

The deeper he went, the heavier the air became.

Corrupted mana pressed against his skin, thick enough that even breathing felt unpleasant. The walls were no longer clean stone. Dark veins ran through them, pulsing faintly beneath the surface as though something had forced its way through the earth and left its corruption behind.

Caelus landed hard at the bottom, the impact jolting through his knees. His boots struck stone with enough force to send a dull crack through the cavern.

Eve was already standing several meters ahead, twin blades drawn. Lucian stood beside her with his longsword held low, his expression far more serious than it had been above.

The thing in front of them occupied most of the cavern.

Calling it a creature required generosity.

It was an amalgamation of flesh, limbs, organs, and faces fused together without any recognizable shape. Arms emerged from its torso at unnatural angles, some ending in hands with too many fingers, others ending with malformed claws. Faces were embedded across its body, some half-submerged in muscle, others stretched across the flesh like masks that had grown there naturally.

A mouth opened near its abdomen.

Another formed beneath a shoulder.

Several faces moved independently, their lips twitching and their eyes rolling beneath swollen flesh.

One began laughing.

One whispered something too distorted to understand.

A third face turned toward them and screamed.

The sound came from somewhere deep inside the mass, vibrating through the cavern.

Caelus’s stomach tightened.

He had designed monsters before. He had imagined things far worse than this, filled pages with descriptions of creatures that existed only inside his head.

Seeing one breathing in front of him was different.

This was what had been pulling everything toward the center.

The creature shifted, and its body compressed.

For an instant, the mass seemed almost smaller as layers of muscle and flesh pulled inward. Then its right side expanded violently. Meat disappeared from its torso as muscle flowed along an elongated arm, thickening the limb until the hand alone was larger than Caelus’s entire body.

The arm blurred despite its size.

Caelus’s body moved before his thoughts caught up.

The limb crashed into the ground behind him.

The impact punched through the cavern, rattling his teeth and sending a violent tremor up his legs. The ground exploded, carving a crater into the cavern floor and throwing chunks of rock through the air.

Caelus twisted beneath one fragment, felt stone scrape across his shoulder, and rolled across the ground before coming back to his feet.

Eve was already moving.

She crossed the distance with both blades low, her steps almost silent against the broken stone. The creature turned toward her, several faces twisting in anticipation.

One arm stretched and shot toward her.

Eve ducked beneath it and drove one blade into its side.

Her second sword followed immediately, tearing upward through the exposed flesh.

Black blood poured across the stone.

A faint smile touched her lips.

The creature shrieked.

Eve’s eyes sharpened as excitement flickered through her otherwise calm expression.

Its body convulsed, and another limb erupted from its back, swinging toward her with enough force to crush the ground beneath it.

She crossed both blades and caught the attack.

The impact shot through both swords and into her shoulders. Her arms went numb for a heartbeat, and her boots tore lines through the stone as she struggled to keep her footing.

The creature kept pushing, its malformed arm bulging as more muscle shifted toward the limb.

Lucian appeared at its flank, his sword igniting with white light.

He drove the blade into the creature’s exposed side.

The light burned through its flesh.

The arm pressing against Eve recoiled, and she slipped beneath it and cut across the creature’s knee.

The limb supporting its weight buckled.

Caelus saw the opening.

Caelus spoke, his voice carrying through the cavern.

"Left."

Lucian reacted without hesitation.

He shifted left as another arm swept through the space where his head had been. His sword rose with the movement and cut into the limb, white light burning through the wound.

Lucian tightened his grip before the sword could slip.

The creature’s flesh shifted around the wound Eve had created moments earlier, thickening before her blade could reach it again.

Lucian saw it.

So did Eve.

Eve’s next strike landed several inches away from where she had aimed.

Her blade bit into muscle instead.

Her expression changed.

It had moved before her blade arrived.

Caelus stepped forward.

The creature swung its deformed hands at him.

He stepped inside the attack instead of retreating, allowing the enormous limb to pass behind his shoulder. His sword drove into the softer flesh beneath the creature’s ribs.

Black blood burst across his sleeve.

The creature jerked.

Caelus ripped the blade free and moved before the returning limb could crush him.

Eve attacked from behind, her blade sinking into the creature’s spine.

It screamed and twisted violently.

Lucian took the opening.

His longsword struck across its chest, white light flooding the wound. The creature staggered.

For the first time, it looked less like an unstoppable mass and more like something struggling to keep itself together.

Then its flesh shifted around the wounds.

The tear in its chest narrowed.

Muscle thickened beneath Eve’s blade.

A malformed joint rotated out of its original position just before Lucian’s next strike landed.

The exchange became a vicious rhythm.

Lucian drew its attention with bright, direct attacks that forced the creature to turn its malformed body toward him. Eve used every change in its posture to get inside its reach, cutting tendons, joints, and exposed organs before retreating whenever another limb moved.

The creature was powerful enough to kill any one of them if they allowed it a clean hit.

But strength was not the problem.

It was learning them.

Every time they attacked the same area, the surrounding flesh shifted before the next strike arrived. Limbs changed their angles. Its faces turned toward incoming attacks before the rest of its body moved.

Caelus waited until the creature turned toward Lucian again.

He moved.

The deformed hands passed through the space where his head had been, his sword biting into a different section of flesh, deeper this time.

Black blood splashed across the ground.

The creature recoiled, its countless mouths stretching wide.

Eve was already there.

She cut through another arm.

The creature twisted toward her.

Lucian struck again.

It turned back.

Caelus waited.

His Eclipse Ring spread his perception through the moisture filling the cavern. Blood, sweat, condensation, every trace of liquid became another thread connecting him to the battlefield.

He could feel the creature’s movements before they fully happened.

The moisture moved first.

Caelus turned.

An arm crashed beside him.

He brought his sword down as it passed, cutting through the thinner section beneath what looked like an elbow. The blade sank deep before the limb tore itself away, leaving a trail of black blood across the floor.

Caelus stepped back.

Too much blood covered the cavern floor.

Death Stalker would work beautifully here, but the cavern was becoming saturated with moisture from the creature’s wounds and their own injuries. Every drop expanded his perception, but it also threatened to overwhelm his control.

He couldn’t afford to let his own blood become another weapon for the creature.

"Lucian, keep its attention."

The Hero glanced toward him.

"For how long!?"

"Until it tries to kill Eve!"

Lucian stared at him.

"That’s your plan?"

"It’s already working!"

The creature lunged and Lucian met it.

White light burst from his sword as he drove beneath the descending limb and slashed upward. The strike opened a long wound across the creature’s torso.

The impact jolted through his shoulders. His fingers tightened around the hilt.

Eve appeared from the opposite side and cut through another arm.

The exchange became faster. Limbs and swords tore through the air, blurring as they met each other.

The creature began changing before every attack reached it.

Caelus felt it through the blood before he saw it.

His stomach dropped.

The creature stopped retreating.

Every face across its body turned toward them.

Its mouths opened, stretching far beyond what flesh should allow.

Laughter rolled through the cavern.

Caelus froze.

Something was wrong.

No.

Everything is wrong.

The wounds stopped closing.

Instead, the creature’s entire body contracted, muscle folding inward as though something inside it had begun pulling everything toward a single point.

Limbs collapsed against its torso.

Organs vanished beneath layers of flesh.

The corrupted mana around them surged.

Caelus’s Eclipse Ring screamed against his finger, his perception expanding involuntarily.

Every drop of blood in the cavern seemed to move at once.

The moisture in the walls trembled.

Condensation lifted from the stone.

Blood on the ground began sliding toward the creature.

Too much.

His vision blurred as hundreds of tiny movements reached him simultaneously. His breath caught.

His eyes widened.

It’s feeding.

It was consuming everything around it to complete the transformation.

Caelus’s voice tore out of him.

"Back off!"

Lucian reacted first.

Eve did too.

But neither moved quickly enough.

The creature’s body expanded.

The shockwave hit like a physical wall.

Eve was thrown across the cavern. Her back struck the ground, knocking the air from her lungs. She rolled once, twice, then slammed into the wall hard enough to crack the stone.

For a moment, the world around her went silent.

Then pain returned all at once.

Lucian drove his sword into the ground and held himself against the pressure. His boots slid backward anyway, stone grinding beneath them as his shoulders shook under the force.

Caelus dropped his center of gravity and raised one arm across his face.

The air itself seemed to pull inward.

Black blood lifted from the ground in streams.

The corpses scattered around the cavern began to twitch.

Caelus stared.

A body dragged itself across the stone and vanished beneath the creature’s flesh.

The creature’s torso swelled.

A new arm pushed through its chest.

Then another.

The corrupted pressure became almost unbearable.

Lucian’s knees bent beneath it.

Eve slowly rose from the rubble.

Blood ran from her forehead, down the side of her face and across her cheek.

She wiped it away with the back of her hand.

Pain still throbbed through her skull, but the smile remained.

Caelus stared at the creature.

His mind raced through everything he knew.

But he found nothing that would save them from this.

The cavern walls cracked as corrupted mana forced its way through the stone.

Caelus gulped.

Whatever emerged from that transformation would make everything they had fought so far look insignificant.

For the first time since entering the cavern, Caelus stopped thinking about how many points the creature might be worth.

He looked at the swelling mass of flesh before them.

They had just run out of time.