Chapter 88: Uncle Elijah (1)
Tap!
Tap!
Tap!
The sound of footsteps echoed alongside the choked laughter. A scraping sound followed the footsteps, and the friction between the floor and whatever it was sent shivers down their spines.
Zaid wanted to run away; the last thing he wanted was to come face-to-face with a creature trapped in an A-Rank dungeon. He wouldn’t survive, no matter what he did.
Who knows what rank it might be? Rank A? Rank S? No one knows just how powerful the traps—also known as "second dungeons"—are inside a Rank A dungeon.
They had nowhere else to go, for they saw that the water beneath them began to churn strangely, as if something were about to emerge from it.
Running in the opposite direction would have been a good decision, but where would that take them? How many beasts might be here?
"Let’s pray the beast is a Rank B... maybe we’ll have a chance." He swallowed hard, not wanting to find out any more about what this dungeon had in store.
Although what really kept him rooted to the spot was the chance that their pursuers might spot them from the opening above and come down to look for them... surely they could escape then.
Trsshh!
Suddenly, they heard rocks falling on top of them. They immediately looked up, thinking: Are we really that lucky?
But what was falling wasn’t their pursuers; it was a beast. Its form was imposing and humanoid; protrusions jutted out from its back and formed a strange, crab-like shell. The crab shell extended down its arms and ended in them as enormous crab claws.
It wasn’t a beast that had emerged from a portal. It was a beast mutated by some unknown ritual or curse.
Zaid and Valia leaped backward to dodge its fall, managing to avoid it by just a few centimeters.
The beast landed on the ground with a firm step; it showed a hint of confusion and then looked around. Its gaze settled on the pair of weak humans.
It scrutinized them carefully, searching for something on their bodies. After a silent scan, the beast took a step toward them and opened its mouth, which had mutated to resemble a giant raven’s beak with filthy teeth.
Ke!
Ke!
Ke!
The grotesque laughter rang out once more, and suddenly, the Rank B mutated beast froze as it sensed danger approaching from behind...
Zaid and Valia couldn’t move either... It was too close.
Suddenly, a mysterious, abnormally human-like creature leaped like a shadow from behind the crab-shelled Rank B beast.
CRACK!
A flick of its hand tore through the surrounding wall and split the creature in half. Instantly, a corrosive poison began to consume the Rank B creature, and the newcomer "roared" at it.
"KEKE!" It was a strange roar; it moved to the rhythm of a soft chant, and every time it uttered a new syllable, black smoke poured from its mouth.
The black smoke enveloped the creature and consumed all its flesh in a matter of seconds. The pile of bones, along with a few body parts, fell into the black water, where a swarm of mutated fish—both small and large—quickly appeared and devoured it.
Not even its bones remained.
Finally, the beast materialized before them. Valia and Zaid couldn’t take even one more step back...
It was enormous, measuring more than 3 meters. Its long limbs were also abnormally muscular, but these muscles had countless sharp protrusions sticking out in all directions. No one could imagine how difficult it must have been to sleep with all those sharp protrusions.
Toward the top, it was a grotesque beast; two protrusions jutted out from its back, like the cursed wings of some demon. Its hands—which dragged along the ground—were almost as large as its entire body.
On its head, the flesh had grown upward, forming a strange, grotesque throne with its mouth and nose; a pair of eyes protruded from it, topped by a human head, which was seated on that "throne," covered by a great deal of flesh and bones at the back and on the sides.
Not even in the fantasy novels Erick read had Zaid ever seen anything like this. His body was oozing dark "water"—it was his blood. He was constantly losing blood, but he wouldn’t die. Behind his body, a tail stretched out and fell into the black streams of water, absorbing them.
That was when Zaid realized what it all was: blood. Cursed blood.
When the creature saw them, their bones grew deathly cold, and a cold sweat ran down their bodies. They couldn’t even step back.
"Uhh... humans, humans... It’s been so long since I’ve seen humans."
At the sound of that voice, Zaid’s blood ran cold. ’A talking beast? Will it retain its memories from when it was human?’
He looked up to meet its gaze. If it could speak, perhaps there was a way to talk to it? To negotiate? To trick it? He clung to that one chance, but swallowed hard before staring directly into its eyes.
Its eyes were sunken, but they were still there; deathly dry, no one could understand how they worked, but they were there and they functioned.
"M-Major..." Zaid tried to speak, but suddenly frowned and fell silent.
He stared intently at the face as if trying to discern something.
His mind tried to connect this person to someone he knew... Those unnaturally human features weren’t what triggered that feeling in him; there was something else.
A... strange and damned resemblance to someone who had been all too close to Zaid in the past.
He looked too much like him!
No...
"No..."
"Impossible..." Zaid took several steps back. At the same time, the creature in front of him frowned at a similar reaction.
In the blink of an eye, that astonishingly powerful, cursed creature—which had managed to devour a Rank B beast in a single breath—turned around and began to flee.
Zaid froze for a moment... Why was he running away? He understood. They had recognized him.
This cursed creature didn’t just resemble the person from Zaid’s past—it was the same person!
Almost instinctively, Zaid ran after him; his fear vanished, leaving Valia frozen in place, terrified.
"Uncle Elijah!"