The Demon Queen's Royal Consort-Chapter 121 - Dungeon - XXIX

You know what no one tells you about being caught in the middle of a magical bombardment inside a living mountain, surrounded by pulsing eggs, invisible snakes, and a wingless flying serpent that shoots homing lasers?

That there's no time to think.

No time to be afraid.

No time to crap your pants with dignity.

Every thought is replaced by reflex.

Every attempt to reason is cut off by a purple explosion flashing across your vision. Every two seconds, a new serpent appears out of nowhere and for some damned reason, they always pop up behind my neck, like they studied advanced military tactics.

While I protect the ice dome with Dália inside, all I can do is dodge, cast, and shout insults I didn't even know I knew. Not because it helps. But because screaming keeps me from going insane.

The mountain vibrates, roars, bleeds beneath us.

Seraphine kills like she's dancing.

Dórian has turned into a punching bag for homing lightning.

Aeloria is in "nuclear winter" mode.

And me... I'm starting to suspect the universe has some kind of personal grudge against me. Because between one serpent bursting with electricity and another trying to kiss my face with venomous fangs, the only constant here is surviving one more second and hoping that, in the next, death might be just a little less humiliating.

Dórian hasn't been lucky since the first bite.

From the moment that damned serpent sank its teeth into his hand, he became a beacon for the colossal creature hunting us in the mountain. Every time he was thrown, stripped of his dignity, smaller serpents seized the moment to attack him mid-air. Like each impact was a cue. An invitation. And even when he crashed against the wall or the ground, the damned things were already waiting silent, loyal, always ready for another bite.

His body was covered in circular marks. Open wounds like grotesque little smiles, filled with a dark liquid that wasn't exactly poison.

If it were just poison, we'd be fine.

No, it was a living curse. Some trackable essence that turned Dórian into a beacon, a target, a magnet for destruction. Because since then, the mountain's guardian hadn't missed a single shot.

His armor—patched together with the artifact he'd been given, the symbol of the wall he once was—now looked more like twisted, scorched metal glued to his body. In less than a minute of combat, Dórian was already on the ground, almost on his knees, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, his chest heaving like a furnace about to go out.

I finally reached him.

Two orbs of darkness were forming again in the guardian's mouth, high above us, slithering between the warped tunnels. I didn't think. There was no time for plans or calculations. Only action.

My eyes lit up like living thunder.

Two colossal bolts surged from them with savage fury, colliding with the enemy's purple beams mid-air.

The impact was absurd. The collision made the air itself tremble.

The mountain's pulsing floor exploded as if its heart had been torn out. Dozens of eggs were launched like projectiles, bursting in the air like black balloons full of pus and slime, spraying that foul, viscous liquid all over the battlefield.

Dórian, still alive, looked at me. His face was bleeding. But his eyes... his eyes carried guilt.

"Stay with me, big guy," I said, twirling my fingers and summoning another bolt behind my back. "We've still got a lot of snakes to fry."

In the middle of the chaos, Seraphine landed like a dancing bolt of lightning.

She joined me and Dórian, spinning her spear with a lightness that seemed out of place in this hell. Blood streamed down our shield-bearer's face, his chest rising with effort... but her? She seemed to be on another plane entirely.

Her spear drew destruction in the air.

She was the only one in the group with the luxury of ease.

Her armor, as we knew, was a bound artifact, almost symbiotic, and none of the lesser serpents could bite her. The ones that tried had their fangs shattered before even touching her skin, repelled by a defense that reacted on instinct.

And that... that gave her freedom.

Freedom to advance. To crush eggs the size of children. To explode serpents mid-leap. To collapse parts of the upper tunnels with a brutal thrust in just the right spot.

One of those collapses nearly buried us alive—and even then, Seraphine laughed.

"If we keep just defending," she said, mid-pirouette, decapitating three serpents at once, "we'll die exhausted. We need to cut off the head of the snake. Literally."

The shout came right after.

"GLENN!" It was Aeloria, surrounded by colliding ice and shadow. "PUSH THAT THING THIS WAY! BRING IT DOWN INTO OUR ZONE!"

The plan was insane. But there was no better one.

I understood instantly.

The Mountain Guardian—the serpent moving through dimensional portals as if it were everywhere at once—needed to be brought to us. Into this hell where we were already on our knees.

If it fell here, maybe... just maybe... we'd have a chance.

"Hold on tight, Dórian," I muttered, releasing a wave of electricity around us as I positioned myself next to Seraphine.

She smiled. "Time to bring this monster down from its pedestal."

Dórian, still on his knees, spat blood and nodded weakly. His eyes still burned.

But none of us knew what was coming.

Gravity flipped in my body and, for a moment, the world seemed to stop.

I tore a rift in the fabric of space, ripping reality until I emerged near the mountain's black vaulted ceiling. My feet stuck to the surface with concentrated gravitational force as the first sparks of lightning slithered across my body.

Static and fury.

I covered my arms in chains of lightning, shaping each pulse of energy into two brutal spears.

At first, they were nearly the size of trees—long and bright like bolts on the verge of striking. But as I condensed them, they shrank, gaining mass, density, savagery. Now, just over a meter each, every inch vibrated as if reality itself was about to collapse.

The serpents tried to reach me—stupid, fast, and useless.

Electric spasms flared like fireworks. They were vaporized before touching my skin.

And then he appeared.

The Mountain Guardian—translucently colossal—leaping from tunnel to tunnel with terrifying fluidity. His body dissolved and reappeared, as if swimming between dimensions. In one of those jumps, he stopped, right beneath me, and his gaping maw opened with the sound of a cornfield being torn apart.

The purple glow lit up. A new laser—straight at Dórian.

My instinct acted before my mind.

I kicked the ceiling with all my strength, releasing gravity. A rift opened before me, and I dove through it.

I reappeared ten meters above the monster, descending like a comet, two thunder spears in hand. The air cracked around me with a sharp blast. Time seemed to slow once again.

"DOWN!!" I shouted, but my voice was swallowed by the electric surge.

The two spears flew from my hands as if they had a will of their own.

The inside of the mountain lit up as if the sun had risen there. Everything went white, vibrant, blinding. The roar of thunder echoed through the cave walls like a storm trapped in a giant bell.

The Guardian reacted.

Before the spears could strike, a rift opened in its back. The projectiles passed through the void and exploded in a side cavern, destroying everything—rock, egg, serpents—everything turned to rubble and smoke.

The colossal serpent didn't hesitate—leapt into another portal, disappearing from view.

But I felt it.

I felt the flow, the distortion, the trace left by its magic.

I took a deep breath, even as my lungs burned, and opened another rift in front of me, diving in without a second thought.

"Let's play cat and mouse, you bastard!"

**

As I plunged through spatial tears chasing the Guardian, the chaos below gave no respite.

Down in the belly of the mountain, the real massacre had begun.

The smaller serpents—silent, imperceptible, cruel—kept emerging from holes like a living infestation, black as death and so numerous the ground seemed to crawl.

But they were no longer alone. Now, the larger ones began to surface, slithering from the tunnels like grotesque roots. Snakes as thick as tree trunks, gliding with agility and fury—massive black anacondas with glowing purple eyes—charging like machines of destruction.

Dórian, Seraphine, and Aeloria fought like demons.

Dórian, even with ruined armor and a cracked shield, swung his sword hard enough to break the ground. Aeloria, wrapped in ice down to his hair, summoned spikes and storms, freezing the enemy's advance. Seraphine danced with her spear—fast, lethal, almost untouchable. But it wasn't enough. freēnovelkiss.com

They were being overwhelmed.

A sea of black scales and soulless eyes surrounded them. Bodies tired, magic began to wane, and each missed strike meant another bite.

And without anyone noticing, the worst began.

Dórian blinked. Just once.

His eyes started to itch.

They burned for a second.

Nothing serious—maybe dust from the explosions.

But... deep inside his pupils, a dark gleam, almost imperceptible, stirred like a drop of black ink dissolving in water. Tiny, silent. A nearly invisible trace of whatever the serpents had injected. It didn't hurt. It didn't throb. It just itched.

And in the middle of that carnage, with the world collapsing around him, who would care about an itchy eye?

Maybe...

Maybe that was our biggest mistake since entering this cursed dungeon.