The Demon Queen's Royal Consort-Chapter 97 - Dungeon - V

The mercury dome held an unnatural silence as the group recovered. Dália worked for thirty uninterrupted minutes, her fingers dancing over Seraphine's body like a divine weaver. Each movement drew out traces of the phosphorescent venom, which dripped in dark-green threads before evaporating into the air. The warrior's skin, once corpse-like, slowly regained life, though it still bore the pallor of someone teetering on the brink.

"We need... time," Dália panted, her fingers trembling slightly. "She needs at least an hour."

Dorian nodded, rubbing his necrotized shoulder, now scarred. Suddenly, his body convulsed in a violent coughing fit. When he straightened, he spat a black, viscous mass onto the ground. It bubbled for a moment before dissolving into the stone.

"Goddammit," he muttered, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. "Persistent fucking poison!"

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yeah. Just my body purging the crap—don't worry about it!"

As we discussed the group's precarious state, Aeloria paced like a caged beast, his impatience palpable.

"Ten minutes," he spat. "We barely set foot in this damn dungeon, and we're already cornered like rats."

"Wasn't my fault," Dorian defended. "Things moved too fast!"

"Not blaming you. If Seraphine hadn't acted quickly, the damage would've been worse," Aeloria said.

"But it's not just bad luck. This place... something's wrong," I added. "Ever since we entered, I've felt this... lingering sense of doom."

"I've never seen a dungeon with a lower floor like this," Dália murmured. "They usually follow a theme plains, forests, ruins, frozen zones, volcanic regions. Up there, it was a swamp. But down here? We've been running for minutes and still don't know how deep we are."

I glanced at the others, waiting for confirmation. Dorian and Aeloria shook their heads.

I was the most lost. This was my first real experience, and apparently, a complete anomaly. Every book I'd read described dungeons with homogeneous environments, one dominant elemental theme. And to make it worse, we still hadn't found the core.

In the stories, the core was where the pulsing energy resided, guarded by a creature and an artifact causing the disturbance. Unlike Earth's tales, killing the boss wasn't enough you had to destroy the artifact. The creature was optional, but in a hundred percent of cases, it tried to kill you first. Destroying the artifact could open an exit rift or simply eject you.

**

Time crawled, minutes stretching into hours, amplifying the ruins' eerie atmosphere. Slowly, color returned to Seraphine, who awoke and meditated to recover.

Dorian grabbed the luminescent stone and stood with a grunt, snapping me from my thoughts. Handing another stone to Dália, he addressed the group:

"I'll scout for an exit. We can't stay here."

As he walked away, the walls continued their sinister pantomime. At first, they were just distorted reflections, mimicking movements like a broken mirror. The farther ones even lagged. But soon, details emerged.

In the dome's darker recesses, the reflections began taking on a life of their own.

Dorian's image didn't just copy his steps, it mirrored his mannerisms. The hand on his wounded shoulder, the tight-lipped worry, the habit of touching his sword's hilt.

Dália, out of the corner of her eye, saw her own reflection run fingers through her hair—exactly as she did when nervous. But something was off... the motion continued, fingers tangling with exaggerated delicacy, almost too tender.

Aeloria froze.

His copy didn't stop. It kept walking, speeding up, until it began clapping rhythmically while soundlessly whistling, a nervous tic from his childhood, long abandoned.

"Stop looking at them!" I shouted, but my own reflection no longer obeyed. As I spoke, my image stayed silent, smiling with an expression I'd never wear.

Dorian returned, finding no exit but bearing worse news:

"The centipede's moving again. And there's something else out there... bigger. Causing tremors wherever it goes."

Then, the first attack came.

From the dome's darkest corner, a figure emerged, no longer a reflection, but a solid copy of Aeloria. Its movements were nearly perfect, save for small details: when the real Aeloria reached for his staff, the copy did so a second before.

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Then, without warning, the Aeloria-copy struck. Its fingers elongated into ice claws, aiming for the original's throat. The motion was lightning-fast, almost feral. The mage barely dodged, but the attack shredded part of his cloak.

"THEY'RE NOT JUST IMAGES!!" he screamed as more figures materialized from the walls.

Each had subtle, terrifying alterations. The Dália-copies smiled too much. Many positioned themselves behind the Dorian-copies, as if waiting for openings to "support" them. Some glowed intensely, illuminating the area, while others liquefied into silver puddles.

The Dorian-copies had jagged teeth, and in place of sword and shield, their arms morphed into white bone blades and elongated shields. All were aggressive.

My copies behaved bizarrely some with pure-white eyes emerged but remained inert, others attacked each other, some collapsed unconscious or convulsed mid-reflection.

Seraphine's were the strangest: they dragged themselves sluggishly, pale as if drained by venom. Some melted along the way, while others bled silver liquid from their eyes and ears.

**

The air grew heavy as the Dorian-copies initiated their siege.

Three silver figures advanced in perfect sync, liquid bodies solidifying into living weapons. The first, with sword-and-shield arms, attacked in a sweeping arc. Dorian blocked at the last second.

"CRAAACK!"

The impact rattled his bones. A crack spiderwebbed across his shield as droplets of mercury splattered, hardening into needles that shot toward his face. Blood trickled down his cheek, mixing with sweat.

"Mother Fuckers!" he spat, countering with a strike that should've cleaved the copy in half.

His sword clanged against the metallic shield, leaving only a tremor on its surface.

Two other copies seized the opening.

The left one slashed at his flank with a liquid claw. His armor cracked, and Dorian felt the searing pain of internal lacerations. Blood dripped from the claw's tip, reflecting his distorted image.

The third attacked low. Its foot elongated like a whip, coiling around his leg. Dorian felt his tendons burn as microscopic barbs tried flaying his skin. He coated himself in red prana, shielding just in time, but blood already streaked his calf.

"Running out of options here!" he growled, staggering back.

The copies advanced in unison, faces now deformed, eyes too large, mouths too wide, smiles too sharp.

The center one stretched out its hands, fingers morphing into a dozen vibrating needles, poised like striking snakes.

Dorian raised his shield, bracing. The needles struck like a storm. One pierced the crack in his shield, embedding in his forearm with a dry snap. Another grazed his neck, leaving a red line that soon dripped down his chest.

"Damn it..." he muttered. His steps faltered but didn't yield. Not yet.

The copies paused, tilting their heads in eerie unison, studying his resistance. The center one opened its mouth and, in a voice almost his—but not quite—whispered:

"Why resist? We are you... only better."

Dorian shuddered. Not from blood loss or pain. That tone, that cadence, almost familiar, as if something were learning to be human through him.

**

Aeloria's world narrowed to a nightmare of crystal and shadow. The copies moved in a supernatural ballet, their steps leaving geometric frost patterns on the ground. The first strike was a black-ice lightning flash, three claws slicing parallel trajectories he barely predicted.

"SHIIING!"

His ice barrier shattered into a thousand shards. A fragment cut his cheek, the wound instantly burning as if doused in acid. The stench of his own searing flesh made his stomach churn.

"Persistent roaches!" he snarled, unleashing a barrage of ice needles with a fluid wrist flick.

The copies dodged most with unnatural speed. Those hit lost entire limbs, liquefying upon impact.

The nearest copy tilted its head at an impossible angle, examining its hands with scientific curiosity.

Then it happened. The copy raised its right arm, and with a bony crack, its limb morphed into a black-ice spear, studded with red star-like flecks resembling frozen blood.

Aeloria swallowed hard. That was his technique, one he hadn't even used in this dungeon.

"Are they reading my thoughts?" he whispered, chilled by something unrelated to temperature.

The three copies raised their hands simultaneously. The air around Aeloria began crackling, forming crystalline patterns he knew too well, the start of his Ice Prison, a technique that took minutes to cast.

"Shit!"

He rolled aside as the first crystal burst from nowhere, impaling the ground where he'd stood. A shard sliced his thigh, and Aeloria felt hot blood trickle down his leg, freezing instantly in the frigid air.

The copies advanced in a triangular formation, mouths now stretching into grins too wide, too full of teeth.

The center one pointed at his wounded leg, and Aeloria felt the frozen blood in his veins begin moving against him, forming sharp needles beneath his skin.

"STOP!" he roared, clapping his hands with force.

A shockwave of cold exploded outward, blasting the three back—but the copies only laughed, their bodies glowing brighter as they regained their footing.

His breath crystallized in the air, each icy puff reflecting his copies' distorted faces. They now surrounded him completely, each wielding a different black-ice weapon—one with crystalline whips, another with a serrated sword, the third with floating needles.

But before another round began, the nearest copy spoke—in his voice, but without his accent.

"Why fight?" it whispered. "We are what you could be. Perfect. Immortal."

"Me?" He laughed painfully. "You're nothing but cheap knockoffs."

Then, he slammed his palms onto the ground, unleashing his energy in an explosion of ice that engulfed the entire dome—himself included.