Damien moved first.
He shot forward like an arrow, his daggers gleaming in the dim light of the cavern. Igris followed half a step behind, his greatsword raised. Baal brought up the rear, its single eye glowing with crimson energy.
The serpent's massive head turned toward them. Its eye...large enough to swallow a man whole—fixed on Damien with ancient malice.
Damien struck.
His daggers slashed across the side of Jörmungandr's snout. The blades connected...and skidded off. The skin did not break. It did not even scratch. It was like cutting through tempered steel wrapped in layered iron.
Igris's greatsword came down on the same spot. Sparks flew. The blade left a faint white line—nothing more.
"Tough bastard," Damien muttered.
Jörmungandr opened its mouth. A thick, dark ooze poured from its gullet—not attacking, not burning. Just... spreading. It filled the cavern like a creeping fog, swallowing the light, swallowing the shadows, swallowing everything.
Within seconds, Damien could not see his own hands.
"Smoke screen," he said, grinning despite himself. "Smoke screen only helps the assassin type."
He closed his eyes and listened.
The serpent's breathing was heavy, wet, echoing through the fog. Damien tracked it—left, no, right, no, above? He lunged, his daggers aimed at where the sound had been—
They hit nothing.
He landed and spun, searching for his target. The fog shifted. For a moment, he saw something—a shape, massive, coiled, waiting.
He struck again.
His daggers passed through empty air.
'Copies' Damien realized. 'The smoke is not hiding it. The smoke is creating copies of it'
A massive monster with an assassin's skill. He had never seen anything like it.
Then he sensed danger.
He threw himself to the side. Two condensed beams of pure light passed through the space where his chest had been. They hit the far wall and exploded, sending shards of ice and stone raining down.
Damien exhaled. "Close one."
The beams turned.
They curved in midair, tracking him, following him...and slammed into his chest before he could dodge again.
The impact lifted him off his feet. The heat seared through his armor, through his skin, through his muscles. He flew backward, smoke trailing from his chest, his vision blurring.
He did not have time to recover.
Jörmungandr's massive head smashed into him mid-flight. The force drove him down like a nail into wood. He hit the ground—cracked it—bounced—hit again—and finally skidded to a stop in a crater of shattered ice.
He looked up.
The serpent's head was already descending. Its mouth was open, ready to swallow him whole.
"Shadow Exchange."
Damien vanished.
Igris appeared in his place, sword raised. The greatsword drove upward, stabbing into the soft flesh beneath Jörmungandr's jaw. The serpent recoiled—not in pain, but in surprise. The blade had pierced perhaps an inch. To the World Serpent, it was nothing more than a needle prick.
Igris crashed to the ground and rolled to his feet, ready to fight again.
Damien emerged from the shadows at the edge of the cavern. His chest was a mess of burned flesh and cracked armor. He could barely breathe.
But he was not done.
"BAAL! NOW!"
Baal's eye flared. A massive crimson beam erupted from its third eye—not aimed at the serpent, but at the smoke. It swept from the left side of the cavern to the right, cutting through the fog like a blade through mist.
The smoke parted.
Jörmungandr was there, its massive body coiled in the center of the cavern, its neck exposed. Baal's beam struck it directly in the throat.
The serpent staggered.
Damien moved.
He crossed the distance in a heartbeat, his daggers ready. He did not aim for the scales. He aimed for the mouth—still open from the serpent's pained scream.
He landed inside.
The darkness of Jörmungandr's throat surrounded him. The stench of rotting meat and ancient magic filled his nostrils. He did not hesitate.
His daggers slashed left. Right. Up. Down. He carved into the soft flesh of the tongue, the roof of the mouth, the inner walls of the throat. Blood sprayed—thick, black, boiling. The serpent screamed, a sound that shook the entire floor.
Damien kept cutting.
He felt the jaws beginning to close. He leaped—out of the mouth, through the gap between the teeth, and landed on the serpent's snout.
He ran across its face and leaped to the ground, skidding to a stop.
Behind him, Jörmungandr's mouth dripped with black blood. The tongue hung in shreds. The inside of its throat was a ruin of torn flesh.
But the scales remained untouched.
Damien stared at the wounds. He had hurt it—truly hurt it—but only where the scales did not protect. The mouth. The throat. The soft parts.
'The soft flesh beneath the jaw' he thought. 'Igris pierced the flesh there. It was not a strong cut, but it was a cut. The scales are weaker there'
He had an idea.
Then the ground shook.
Not a tremor. Not a quake. The entire floor—the entire cavern, the entire passage, the entire Sixty-Sixth Floor—began to heave and crack. Ice shattered. Stone crumbled. Corridors collapsed.
Damien stumbled, trying to keep his footing.
"What the...."
The ground exploded.
Jörmungandr rose.
Not just its head. Not just its neck. Its entire body. It uncoiled from beneath the floor, from beneath the walls, from beneath the very foundations of the dungeon. It rose and rose and rose, its length unfurling like a river of scales and muscle.
Damien watched.
He could not do anything else.
The serpent's body covered the entire Sixty-sixth Floor. It broke through the corridors he had passed, through the chambers he had crossed, through the ice and stone that had stood for millennia. Its length was impossible. Incomprehensible.
It was the size of ten Orarios
At least.
Jörmungandr....the World Serpent....had finally revealed itself.
Damien looked around for Diana's army. They were gone. They had disappeared into the shadows the moment the serpent emerged. Not because they had been defeated.
Because Jörmungandr had crushed them.
Its own army of Nidhoggs lay broken beneath its coils—shattered, flattened, destroyed. The serpent did not care. It had never cared. It had only used them to distract.
Now it fought alone.
Damien stared up at the massive body coiling around him, blocking out the light, blocking out the ceiling, blocking out everything.
"Well," he said, his voice barely a whisper. "I'll be damned."
He gripped his daggers tighter.
The real battle had just begun.
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