The Demon Queen's Royal Consort-Chapter 103 - Dungeon - XI

** Sixty-two hours earlier

My heart hammered against my ribs like a caged animal, each beat sending waves of throbbing pain through my battered body. The taste of iron flooded my mouth—my blood, their blood, all mixed into a disgusting cocktail that reminded me just how close to the edge I was.

I was finished.

Wounds crisscrossed my body like maps of a lost battle. Deep gashes on my arms where the grasshopper's blades had nearly scraped bone. Jagged cuts on my legs from rolling between the centipede's attacks. And my abdomen... Well, better not think about how that last strike had almost split me in half.

Even my face—my damn, dazzling face—was marked. A diagonal gash from temple to chin, dried blood gluing my eyelashes together.

Half my clothes were reduced to tatters, the fabric soaked in sweat, blood, and fluids I'd rather not identify.

And that pissed me off.

How many times had I trained with Lesley in full armor? How many nights had I spent perfecting movements in full gear? All for nothing—because when it mattered most, I was dressed like some random mage, unprotected, exposed.

"Phew..." I sighed, pushing the thought aside.

I dragged them. Every inch, every step, every breath that burned like fire in my lungs. Dorian, nearly torn apart. Seraphine, pale as death. Aeloria and Dália, so light and yet so heavy at the same time. I dragged them because there was no other choice.

I placed the entire group beneath the exit hole of the dome, but before actually leaving that macabre place, I took one last look around.

"I'm taking these!"

I walked toward the grasshopper's bladed arms, which—even after being vaporized by the centipede's black energy beam remained intact, proof of their exceptional value.

"These might help us later."

I tied all six bladed arms together and headed toward the centipede's remains. Honestly, there was nothing salvageable from its corpse.

At the last moment of the fight, a bizarre idea had crossed my mind. And me, being the lunatic I was, went through with it.

The centipede's final lightning bolt flashed toward me while the grasshopper's six arms glowed with frenzied light, charging at my back.

I tore open two spatial rifts one in front of me, one behind. The centipede's attack passed through me, flying toward the grasshopper, who had also unleashed six razor-sharp beams of green light. Those beams entered the rift behind me.

The black beam vaporized the upper half of the grasshopper's body. The six blades sliced the centipede's head into six equal pieces. And I stood motionless at the center of the chaos.

Not that I didn't suffer. Even the residual energy from the two abominations nearly killed me, leaving me in this pitiful state.

I kicked the blackened remains of the serpent hiding in the centipede's maw.

"You damn thing!"

"Tinkle..." A metallic sound, like a coin rolling on the ground, echoed.

I frowned at the unusual noise. The floor was drenched in gelatinous, stinking green blood. Dragging my foot across the surface, I found what looked like a ring.

Wiping it on the remnants of my clothing, a small, matte black ring revealed itself in my palm. An electrifying sensation shot through my body, as if drawn by a magnet. My instinct was to slip it onto my finger immediately, but I decided to be cautious.

This was my first time in a dungeon, but I'd read about the chance to acquire unique artifacts. Many blacksmiths and mages in Atlas sought them just to study their mysteries, trying to unravel the secrets behind these anomalies.

Carefully, I pocketed the ring and dragged myself toward my group.

'Now comes the painful part.'

With one arm, I hauled Aeloria and Seraphine by the collars of their clothes. Both were intact, so this was manageable. I slung Dália over my right shoulder, belly-down. With my left arm, I grabbed Dorian's leg and tied the grasshopper's blades above his waist.

"Sorry, partner. Don't know how else to carry all this."

I reduced gravity's effect on my body, extending it to the group, and slowly leapt toward the exit hole in the dome's ceiling.

I walked for nearly an hour, dragging the group, until I reached what looked like an opening at a mountaintop's summit. My legs buckled, and I finally collapsed against the tunnel wall.

I had lost too much blood. The path was marked with a trail of my blood mixed with Dorian's. My whole body trembled. My hands were pale. My lungs burned. Not to mention the searing pain from the wounds scattered across my body.

I felt my eyes closing. I was about to pass out—but before I did, curiosity overpowered caution. I held the ring up to my eyes.

"My precious... heh." I chuckled at my own stupid joke.

Without hesitation, I slipped the ring onto my index finger. The band was wide enough to fit two fingers, but the moment it settled, it adjusted perfectly to my size.

A shock ran down my spine. My cores were jolted by an energy I knew all too well. My energy pathways screamed in euphoria as a torrent of spatial energy flooded into me.

And then, I blacked out.

**

The world I woke up in was hazy.

Black walls stretched around me, from the ground to the horizon. High above, in what resembled a sky, a gray sun shone ominously.

I checked my body—it was in perfect condition. No wounds. Even my mage robes were intact.

"Where am I?"

I tried to stir my internal energy and discovered something alarming. My cores were nearly empty. My mana core, dry and barren as a desert. My prana core had between five and ten percent energy left.

"What the hell is this?"

Inside my prana core, the energies related to my lightning and gravity affinities were gone. Only spatial energy remained.

"Crankle." A noise sounded behind me.

I turned toward it and saw the wall warping. From the horizon's sky, cracks began forming slowly. But in seconds, as if triggering a chain reaction, the entire structure started fracturing at an absurd speed.

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"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"

Then the wall exploded. Black fragments hurtled toward me. I tried to dodge—no luck.

A fragment the size of a house slammed into me, crushing my body and hurling me against a side wall.

"FUUUUUCK!" I screamed in panic. "I'm gonna be crushed!"

I churned my spatial energy the only energy I could use—and tore open a rift, vanishing from the fragment's path.

I reappeared in the same spot, crawling on the ground, blood dripping from my mouth.

"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"

The massive fragment struck the side wall, and this time, from bottom to top, the same cascading effect began on the wall to my right.

"Goddammit, what the hell is happening?"

I scrambled to my feet and ran from the wall. I reached a fork and took the right path. Another fork—right again. The pattern repeated twice more before I hit a dead end.

"Damn it! I'm in a maze!"

The wall ahead began cracking. The same frenzied pattern as the first wall.

Again, I stirred my spatial energy and tried to run as far as possible before one of those monstrous black stones crushed me completely.

**

"BOOOOOOOOOM!"

A wall exploded far behind me, but I didn't look back, not even for a second. My eyes were closed, focused on the residual energy of this cursed place, created by some masochistic bastard. I sensed a faint spatial vibration from the left path.

I opened my eyes, and my battered body dragged itself slowly forward.

If anyone could see me now, they might not even recognize me.

Multiple broken bones.

Half my face so swollen my left eye was buried under a mass of flesh.

I was naked—my clothes had been destroyed on the first day in this hell.

How long had I been here?

Well, somehow, I knew today marked six weeks.

"Six weeks! What kind of cursed place is this? That damn ring was a trap!"

My biggest fear was that six weeks had also passed in the outside world. If so, this dungeon would be a total failure. Maybe I'd wake up to find the whole group dead, with me on death's doorstep too.

The big question was: What was this place?

In my time here, I'd figured it out. It was a death zone. A pocket world. And the only energy I could use here was spatial.

On top of that, I was inside a massive labyrinth that self-destructed in timed cycles. Worse, the destruction accelerated every time a wall fragment hit another. Like dominoes.

At first, all I did was run desperately, trying to find the exit. Obviously, with no luck. This damn place never had one.

It wasn't until two weeks ago that an idea struck me. Maybe there was no exit. Maybe the goal here was something else.

I started studying everything meticulously.

The walls cracked for a reason.

It took me three days to realize: a powerful spatial wave struck the walls, triggering the cascade.

For the last two weeks, I'd tried replicating the effect, churning my spatial energy to produce a fracture large enough to destroy one of these walls.

Now, after nearly dying countless times, I was close.

One good thing about this labyrinth: in six weeks, the spatial energy in my prana core had grown by almost fifteen percent. I now had nearly thirty percent in reserve.

In six weeks, I'd gained more than in three months in Atlas.

I dragged myself toward a massive black wall at the end of a dead-end corridor. Running my hand over its rough surface, I analyzed it carefully. My idea couldn't afford mistakes. Somehow, I knew that if I died here, I wouldn't survive out there either.

I sat with my back against the wall, meditating, and began accumulating spatial energy—far more tangible in this labyrinth.

Four days passed with me motionless in the same spot. The sounds of walls being destroyed were so loud they felt apocalyptic, like a planet being torn apart.

Ahead of me, cracks began forming on the side walls.

"It's time!"

I channeled my spatial energy to its limit.

In my mind, an image of a colossal fissure formed—large enough to swallow a three-story building.

Magic manifested in my hands, pressed against the wall.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!" I roared in fury.

All my internal energy poured out in a single second. Beneath my palm, a tiny one-centimeter crack appeared.

A grin spread across my face as that centimeter became two.

Two became four.

Four became eight.

Eight became sixteen.

The crack grew exponentially, shattering the black wall before me. Soon, a deafening sound of splitting stone echoed. The labyrinth's natural effect had been reproduced by me—with my own energy.

"Finally getting out of this hell!"

Behind me, the world was ending. I had found the farthest possible point from the natural fractures to gather enough energy. And I waited until the labyrinth was at its most fragile, most unstable—the moment it would destroy itself.

But before that, I would destroy the wall to my freedom.

The world crumbled at my back, colossal fragments the size of cities hurtling in every direction.

Ahead of me, a wall was about to meet the same fate.

"Go! Go! Go! Go! Go!" I urged, frantic.

The ground beneath me began to give way. The gray sun was blotted out by black fragments launched upward. Everything turned to darkness.

And then it happened.

"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"

The wall before me shattered completely and exploded. But the fragments didn't fly toward me—they shot forward. Into a space that hadn't existed before.

And within that massive fissure, a bright white light shimmered over the labyrinth, enveloping everything.

All the cacophony of noise, stone, and destruction was replaced by nothing.

Everything turned white.

Exhausted, I smiled for the first time in nearly seven weeks.

And then, I rested.

The world around me underwent transformations I didn't see. And above all, from within the great gray sun, an eye emerged.

The eye blinked.

And it was over.

**

That white place was wonderful. Comfortable, as if my head rested on soft, silky thighs. I remembered the euphoric moments with my maids. How I missed Dália's petite, silky body. How I missed Hera's fierce passion.

Then, my eyes opened.

Beautiful pairs of red eyes stared down at me. Silky black hair spilled over my torso. And the voice I'd longed to hear these past weeks pulled me from my stupor.

"Welcome back, Young Master!"