Date: January 2, 2018 | Time: 12:23 PM
Location: Scarred Crater - Below Hell
Perspective: Lucas
We kept descending. If the Matriarch's lair was a basement, this was the secret sub-basement where the landlord hides the bodies. The air was getting thicker, tasting less like damp earth and more like... ozone and old copper.
My arms were starting to feel like lead. We hadn't stopped for more than five minutes since the spider-mom went boom. I lost count of how many things I'd sliced through.
Gloom-Weaver Mites the size of poodles, Bone-Cracker Beetles that actually tried to eat my daggers, those disgusting Acid-Spitting Myriapods, and a swarm of Hollow-Shell Larvae that made a sound like wet Velcro when they popped.
「 You know, if you spent less time complaining and more time actually aiming, we'd be done by now. You missed that last beetle by three inches. I'm embarrassed to be linked to you, bro. 」
Oh, shut it, System. Give me a break.
「 I'm a GPS that keeps you from becoming bug snacks. You're welcome. Also, your hair looks terrible in this humidity. 」
I ignored the digital sass and focused on the path. The jagged, natural cave walls were changing. Slowly, the rock smoothed out, and then I saw it.
Stairs.
Not just "steps in the rock," but actual, carved stone stairs winding down into the dark.
Celia stopped dead, her white hair swaying as she tilted her head. Her red eyes narrowed, scanning the masonry.
"Stairs? This isn't a natural formation, Lucas. Monsters don't build architecture unless they have a hive mind or... intelligence."
"Maybe it's a secret layer," I whispered. "Like an ancient dungeon hidden under the crater."
We started down the flight. The walls were getting thinner, the passage narrowing until we had to walk single file. The silence was heavy.
"How long has it been?" Celia asked, her voice hushed. "An hour? More?"
I checked the HUD. "It's noon. 12 PM. We've been down here for hours, but it feels like time is stretching. The deeper we go, the weirder it gets."
"Think about it," Celia said, her chains rattling softly as she moved.
"This place has been sealed for hundreds of years. The monsters above... they were just the ones that couldn't handle the pressure down here. Whatever has been living at the bottom has had centuries to evolve without interruption. Anything could be crawling in the dark down there."
Great. Thanks for the nightmare fuel, Celia.
The stairs finally ended, opening up into a ledge. Both of us stopped. My heart didn't just beat; it tried to jump out of my chest.
"No way..." I breathed.
Below us, the world opened up. It wasn't a cave anymore.
It was an abyss that looked like the sky had been turned inside out and set on fire. A burning, bruised orange horizon stretched out forever, illuminating a subterranean world that shouldn't exist. It looked like a postcard from Hell.
Celia's heels clicked nervously against the stone as she stepped toward the edge. I could see her hand trembling—just a fraction—near her side.
System, tell me I'm hallucinating. Please.
「 I wish I could, bro. But my sensors are screaming. This isn't just a cave. The amount of Cursed Mana down there is so high it's literally terraformed the environment. It's an artificial ecosystem powered by pure spite and ancient energy. Bad call coming here. Seriously. 0/10 stars on Yelp. 」
"Look at the ground," Celia whispered.
We climbed down the final ridge onto the 'floor' of this orange world. It wasn't dirt. It wasn't sand.
Crunch.
I looked down. I was standing on a ribcage. Not a human one—something much larger, partially fused with hundreds of other skeletons. Sculls of monsters I didn't even recognize, shattered armor, and white, bleached bones stretched out as far as the orange light reached.
"Why are there no bodies up there?" I asked, a chill running down my spine. "The Matriarch, the Mantis... they were all above. But all the remnants... they're all here."
It was a graveyard. A dumping ground for everything the "Divide" had ever consumed over the last millennium.
In the center of this hellscape, miles away but still visible in the eerie glow, stood a single, massive tree. Its branches were black and leafless, reaching up like skeletal fingers toward the orange ceiling.
The closer we got to the center, the more my instincts screamed at me to run.
Celia stopped, clutching her chest. Her breath was coming in short, ragged gasps.
"Lucas... it's suffocating. Something... something is here. I can feel it in the mana. It's... it's heavy."
System, scan. Now! What is that?
「 [ERROR: Entity power level exceeds current analysis parameters.] 」The System's voice wasn't joking anymore. It sounded cold. Static-laced.
「 [Warning. I have no record of this signature in the world database. Estimated Rank: S+. Repeat: S+ Rank. Lucas, if it looks at us, we are gone.] 」
Suddenly, a sound echoed across the field of bones.
THUMP.
It was low, rhythmic. Like a heartbeat, but loud enough to vibrate the marrow in my own bones.
THUMP.
"Get down," I hissed, grabbing Celia's arm.
We didn't look for cover—there wasn't any. We just dropped, crawling into a hollowed-out pile of massive ribs and pelvic bones, trying to blend into the sea of the dead. I pressed my face against the cold, dry bone, holding my breath until my lungs burned.
Something was moving out there in the orange fog.
And it was big.
It was a nightmare that had been given a physical form and told to play house.
The entity was fused with the black bark of the tree, her skin the color of bruised lilies. She was massive, her proportions subtly wrong—arms too long, fingers like tapering needles. And in those needles, she held a child.
The infant was pale, covered in jagged, crimson birthmarks that looked like lightning strikes frozen under the skin. It didn't move like a baby. It twitched.
Its eyes were wide, staring at nothing with a vacant, milky haze.
Then, it "cried."
"Krrr-chhh… hhh-eeee… nngh-vrrst."
The sound wasn't human. It was the sound of a violin string snapping combined with the wet tearing of meat. It set my teeth on edge, making my stomach do a slow, nauseous flip.
「 Wow. Hey, Lucas, you still alive? Or did your soul just leave your body to find a better host? 」
Shut up, System, I thought, my knuckles white as I gripped the bone-dust floor.
Give me a threat assessment. Why can't I move?
「 Assessment: You're terrified. Also, there's a localized field of 'Despair Mana' so thick it's basically physical. It's like swimming in liquid lead, bro. Good luck with the drowning. 」
Beside me, Celia was trembling. Not with the excitement she usually showed before a kill, but with a raw, primal shiver. She leaned closer, her breath hot and shallow against my ear.
"Lucas," she whispered, her voice barely a thread. "The fear… it's not just ours."
I glanced at her. Her red eyes were blown wide, reflecting the orange hell-glow of the sky.
"Look at the bones," she continued, her gaze fixed on the field of skeletons.
"These are remnants from the Great War Marcus talked about. Hundreds of years ago… thousands of soldiers, monsters, everything died here. They died in terror. That thing… it's feeding on it. It's a hive of lingering trauma. We're feeling the echoes of every death that happened in this pit."
"So it's a debuff?" I whispered back, trying to force my brain to be rational. "A psychological attack?"
"It's more than that," she hissed, her fingers digging into my arm. Her eyes suddenly flared.
"It's a test. To be the best, Lucas… you have to be odd. You have to be the thing that the monsters are afraid of. Most people run from fear. They die running."
"But if it doesn't kill you, it makes you the new god of this place."
She's actually insane.
She's talking about an S+ rank entity like it's a training dummy.
"Celia, be real," I muttered. "That's an S+ rank. Going out there isn't 'odd,' it's suicide. We need to go back, report this, and bring backup."
She turned her head, her face inches from mine. A jagged, mocking smile pulled at her lips.
"An army? An army would just add more bones to the pile. You wanted to be strong, didn't you? You wanted to stand at the top. You don't get there by being rational. You get there by stepping into the fire when everyone else is looking for safety."
I looked at her, then back at the tree. The Mother was swaying now, a rhythmic, haunting movement. She leaned down toward the child, her voice a distorted, melodic hum that vibrated in the air.
"Hush now, little heartbeat… the world is so cold…" the Mother crooned, the words sounding like they were being spoken through a mouthful of glass.
"The shadows are hungry, the stories are old… don't you weep, don't you cry… mama will feed you before the stars die…"
The baby let out another one of those rhythmic, mechanical sobs. "
"Hhh-rrreee… vvv-nnn… gh-ack"
"Why do you weep, my little baby?" the Mother whispered, her long fingers stroking the child's red-marked face.
"Is the silence too loud?"
The baby's head jerked. It didn't look at the Mother. Its neck snapped around with a sickening crack, its milky eyes locking directly onto the pile of bones where we were hiding.
"...Monster," the baby rasped.
The Mother stopped swaying.
In the center of her forehead—a vertical slit tore open. A massive, golden eye, pulsing with a vertical black pupil, expanded until it took up her entire forehead. It rolled around wildly before snapping into focus.
Right on us.
"Monster?" the Mother repeated, her voice dropping an octave into a guttural growl that shook the very ribs we were hiding under.
My blood turned to ice.
「 Well, Lucas, on the bright side, you don't have to worry about the 'should we stay or go' debate anymore. Option C just arrived: Run or die. Personally, I'd recommend both, in that order. 」
Celia didn't move. She just gripped her chains, her ego clashing with the terror as the Mother slowly began to peel herself away from the black tree.
S+ Rank. That's not a challenge; that's a death sentence.
But then I looked at Celia. She wasn't looking for an exit. She was looking at the Mother like she wanted to peel the skin off her bones.
If I run now... what am I?
I thought back to my old life. Playing it safe. Being the guy who stayed in the middle of the pack because the top was scary. I didn't get reincarnated into this hellhole to be the same.
I didn't get a Divine System just to use it to run.
If I back down because the "Rank" is too high, I'm just another skeleton on this floor. I'm just bone-meal for the next guy with more guts than me.
To win—to truly be the best—I have to be an anomaly.
I have to be the thing that shouldn't exist.
If I don't have the ego to believe I can kill a god, I'll never even be a king.
「 That's the spirit sorcerer. Time to engage in battle. 」
Watch me, System.
I stood up. The weight of the Despair Mana hit me like a physical wall, but I pushed through it. I felt my Celestial mana hum, responding to my ego, sharpening into something jagged and lethal.
"Get up, Queen of Curses," I said, my voice flat.
"We have a monster to kill."
"Hehheheh…" She stood up beside me, her chains rattling with a hungry, metallic hiss.
"About time you found your spine, Lucas. I was beginning to think I'd have to kill her and babysit you at the same time."
She stepped forward, her red eyes locked onto the Mother. "Stay back, little hero. I'm going to carve that giant eye out of her skull and turn it into a grave."
"She's far too ugly to be alive in my presence."
The Mother, still holding the twitching child against her chest, tilted her head. Her voice came again—sweet, airy, like a lullaby sung by a ghost.
"Little humans… why do you flutter so close to the nest?" she crooned, her long fingers stroking the child's hair.
"The nursery is a place for sleep, not for the clatter of war. Leave this place. Go back to the shadows above before the cold truly finds you."
"I am being kind… mama is being so very kind."
Celia scoffed, her chains expanding. "Kind? You're a heap of rotting meat attached to a dead tree. I didn't come to play nice. I came to win."
"What is this place?" I asked, my hand hovering over my daggers. I didn't care about her 'kindness.'
"And what the hell are you? A remnant of the war? Or just the trash the world forgot to sweep up?"
The Mother's swaying stopped. The child in her arms let out a sharp, static-filled cry.
"This is Home," the Mother whispered, her voice losing its sweetness, replaced by a dry, rasping hollow.
"And I am the Memory of what was lost. If you will not leave… if you refuse the mercy of the Mother…"
Suddenly, her skin turned a shade of bruised charcoal. The vertical slit on her face ripped wider, the golden eye pulsing with a violent, sickening light. The affectionate motherly curve of her spine snapped straight. She grew taller, her fingers lengthening into jagged obsidian scythes.
"...then you are just monsters that need to be silenced."
Celia didn't wait.
"Die!"
She lashed out with a ranged chain attack—Withering Scar: Serpent's Strike. The heavy, cursed metal whistled through the air, aimed directly at the Mother's throat.
The Mother didn't even move her feet. With a flick of her obsidian claw so fast I barely saw it, she caught the chain and sliced it in half. The cursed metal shattered like brittle plastic.
I moved instantly, manifesting a Celestial Mirror in mid-air and firing a concentrated beam of light as a test. It was a high-output shot, meant to blind or burn.
The Mother didn't dodge. She reached out and grabbed the beam. She literally caught the light in her palm, the energy sizzling against her skin before she crushed it into nothingness.
Celia hissed, her hair-chains coiling around her like defensive cobras.
"So she can see from every direction with those pest-like eyes. She's reacting to the mana before we even finish the thought."
I gripped my daggers, my eyes narrowing
"Yeah. She's fast. She's strong. She's an S+ rank nightmare." I looked at the Mother, a cold smirk tugging at my lips.
"But we're going to win. Because I didn't come here to lose to a babysitter."
The Mother's golden eye fixed on me, the pupil contracting into a needle-point of pure hatred. The air around her began to freeze, the orange sky darkening as her mana flooded the graveyard.
"PERISH FROM MY HAPPY HOME!" she shrieked.
The sound wave hit us like a physical blow, sent the bones of the graveyard flying into the air, and the real fight began.