The Demon Queen's Royal Consort-Chapter 119 - Dungeon - XXVII

The path was both different and identical to all the other mountains. A trail carved into the altitude that led to a side entrance.

The formation was simple, but effective.

Dórian led the way, as always, with a shield on his back made from one of the crocodile's scales and his left hand holding up a small artifact—a runestone fixed to a silver mount. It glowed with a soft orange light, similar to a lantern, but without a flame. Just enough to guide our steps, but not enough to push back the crushing darkness gathering around us.

Right behind him walked Seraphine, light-footed and sharp-eyed. I followed, focused on the flow of energy around me, and on the constant feeling that something, formless yet present, was watching us.

Aeloria took up the rear, keeping alert to what might come from behind, while Dália closed the formation. She moved slowly, wrapped in a faint golden energy that snaked around her body, as if stitching her together from the inside out with each step.

The trail we advanced through... was not natural.

It was as if some colossal, blind creature had dug that tunnel in violent jerks, clawing at the walls with deformed and ravenous limbs. The path twisted up and down like a spiraling gut, bending at angles that seemed to defy the laws of geology.

At each turn, the rock seemed... different.

The ground was initially orange and rocky, like the other mountains. But as we went deeper, the color began to change. First to a paler orange, then to light gray, then dark gray, until it became completely black. A dull, lifeless black, like the ashes of long-dead coal.

The strangest thing was the sound.

There was none.

No distant dripping, no echo from our steps, not even the sound of breathing. It felt like everything was being muffled by an invisible shroud that smothered reality itself.

"This isn't just regular darkness," murmured Aeloria, his voice low but firm. "There's magic involved."

"You're right," Dórian replied, pausing for a moment and raising the lightstone higher. The magical glow flickered and seemed to recoil, as if afraid of being devoured by the dense black.

'I've never seen darkness magic like this...'

I tried to activate my mana core, to feel the flow of the environment. But what I sensed was distorted. As if every thread of energy was being filtered through a veil of shadows, turning into something subtly corrupted as it passed through the cavern's air.

"Do you feel that?" Dália asked, looking at her own hands. "The prana in here is contaminated."

'Mana too,' I thought to myself.

Dália coughed behind us. The golden glow around her flickered.

I kept moving, eyes scanning the floor, the corners, the walls. There was something in the black stone. Grooves that seemed to pulse as we passed, as if we were being monitored.

The temperature shifted too. Sometimes the air grew hot and damp, like being inside a closed mouth. Other times, a glacial chill fell over us, freezing to the bone.

Even so, we pressed on.

Because we knew that the stranger the mountain became, the closer we were to its heart—and to the creature guarding the end of this hell.

We had been walking for nearly half an hour into the mountain. With every step, the darkness felt more alive, thicker, more aware. Dórian's runestone was no longer enough, and he had to activate all the others on his belt. One by one, they were clipped to the breastplate of his armor and the strap of his shield. With all of them lit, we could see maybe twenty meters ahead, and even then, the dark threatened to swallow us from the edges of our vision.

No one spoke during that time.

It was as if opening our mouths might attract something lurking in the shadows. The only sound was the muffled echo of our steps and the uneven breathing of Dália at the rear, whose golden glow, though faint, was the only reminder that something alive still persisted amidst the growing rot.

And then the path opened up.

We turned a sharper corner and found ourselves staring into a vast emptiness within the mountain—a spiraling abyss, wide enough to swallow an entire city. It looked like something massive had dug it out, chewing through the rock like an insatiable worm seeking a core it was never meant to find.

Lining the inner walls of the abyss were thousands of tunnels like the one we had followed, twisting in every direction. Like ruptured arteries from an ancient heart. Each opening stretched into the shadows, some releasing dark, almost liquid vapors that dripped into the depths below.

But it was what we saw at the bottom that made us freeze.

The floor... pulsed.

Not figuratively, but literally. As if we were staring into the belly of a slumbering beast. The black rock contracted slowly, rhythmically, emitting a muffled sound like a deep heartbeat.

And on that pulsing ground, eggs.

Hundreds. No. Thousands.

Each nearly a meter tall, arranged in natural rows without any logical pattern. Their shells were black like onyx, but covered in grotesque veins—thick, swollen, alive. Some of those veins seemed to dig into the ground, feeding off the mountain itself, while others coiled around each other like snakes in heat.

Then we saw the glow.

A purple glow.

First in one egg, then another. A sickly, diffuse fluorescence began to spread through the black veins, like a corrupted current running through an unknown nervous system.

The light spread across the field in a chain reaction, slowly, but inevitably.

A faint, pulsing light, jumping from egg to egg, spiraling downward to reach the deepest layers. It felt like we were witnessing the awakening of something ancient and furious.

"What... is that?" Seraphine whispered, her voice caught between disgust and fear.

Aeloria didn't answer.

Dórian stepped forward, eyes narrowed, analyzing.

"This isn't a nest... it's an infestation!"

I took a deep breath, trying to suppress the chill racing down my spine.

The air was heavy. Even the prana was flickering, as if repelled by an invisible presence drawing nearer with each passing second.

"The ground is absorbing energy..." I murmured. "It's like a virus. These eggs... they're feeding off the mountain itself."

At that moment, I thought I saw something at the bottom of the spiral.

'Did something move?'

I felt the ring on my finger heat up. It sent vibrations through my body. It wasn't familiarity—it was desire, greed, or euphoria. I couldn't explain it. It was almost like it had found something it wanted.

Again, I thought I saw something at the bottom, but it vanished before any of us could make out its form.

"Did you see that...?" I muttered, but none of us answered right away. It felt like asking if fear itself had taken shape.

Aeloria stepped up to the inner cliff and observed carefully, trying to detect any magical trace.

Dórian, silent as stone, examined the tunnels in the walls. Seraphine held her spear with both hands, eyes sharp, muscles tensed.

Dália leaned against the side of the tunnel we came from, the golden glow of her healing magic steady, though faint. Her breathing was measured, restrained, as if every step into the mountain drained something from within her.

We needed to decide what to do—and fast.

"The Guardian is either at the bottom, or _is_ the bottom," Aeloria finally said, eyes still on the abyss.

"Or that shadow we saw was him," Seraphine added.

"Either way," Dórian growled, "finding it has to be the priority. We can't climb the seventh mountain if this thing still breathes."

That's when it happened.

"CRAACK."

A sharp sound, like wood splintering under the weight of an axe.

We all turned at once.

Dórian bent slightly forward from the impact, the shield on his back trembling. A black snake, over three meters long, was coiled around the metal disc, its fangs sunk in with animalistic force. The creature's eyes were lifeless, and its body viscous, as if made of living oil.

"What the hell...?!" Seraphine shouted. freewēbnoveℓ.com

Before anyone could act, she stepped forward and, with a swift and precise flick of the wrist, her spear sliced through the air like a cutting breeze. The blade glowed blue for an instant before splitting the snake in two, its body falling limp, writhing until still.

That's when my body froze inside.

Instincts surged.

Not whispering. Not warning. Screaming.

I turned to the side on impulse and let the energy flow.

Lightning.

My muscles tensed as magic burst from my core.

An electric aura spread across my skin, and without hesitation, I released the discharge toward my left shoulder.

"ZZZZZZZRRRRKKKTT!!"

The electricity exploded against something none of us had noticed. A second snake, identical to the first, was emerging from a void in the wall—a spot that had just been pure shadow now revealed the coiled creature.

Or had it been invisible until then?

It vaporized in the surge of my lightning, leaving behind only ash and a faint scent of charred flesh.

"Full alert! Now!" I shouted, my aura still crackling. "Where the hell are they coming from?!"

"I didn't sense anything approach," Aeloria said, his eyes already scanning the cliff's edges.

"Neither did I!" Seraphine replied, spinning her spear, her gaze darting between the ground and ceiling.

"They're too quiet... or there's something else going on," Dórian muttered, moving back to the front of the group, shield now in hand.

I looked around, my eyes jumping from shadow to shadow. The black veins on the eggs still pulsed. The floor still beat like a monstrous heart.

The snakes hadn't come from tunnels. They hadn't fallen from the ceiling.

"Where the hell did those damn things come from!" Dórian cursed.

While we worried about the mountain's guardian, little did we know those cursed black snakes would be the cause of our nightmares for a long time to come.