Chapter 126 - Dungeon - XXXIV
The golden glow of the barrier still pulsed above the oppressive sky of the sixth mountain when Dália turned, staggering, back to the battlefield.
She was dragging her feet.
Her left arm dripped with blood.
Her face, once pale like porcelain, now bore a sickly, almost bluish white hue.
Her legs trembled. The air refused to enter her lungs, as if the world around her were a thick liquid and her nostrils too narrow a capillary to absorb it.
Her heart pounded, erratic and fast—not from adrenaline, but from circulatory imbalance. The hemorrhage was taking its toll.
A buzzing in her ears muffled the dungeon's sounds. A sharp bell ringing in her head, each chime doubling her vision.
Everything around her was a blurred, muffled haze.
But she didn't stop.
"Not now. Not yet..." she muttered, even too weak to keep her head upright.
She tripped over a rock, fell to her knees, arms stretching forward as if swimming through an invisible sea. Her nails scratched the rocky ground as she dragged herself, inch by inch, into the mountain's depths, toward the nearest body.