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Don't forgot power stones guys ...
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Third POV:
The silence that followed Kurokaz's fall was a fragile, fleeting thing, a held breath in the throat of the damned. It didn't last long. The mountain of flesh and bone, the titan known as the Bonebreaker, lay crumpled in a growing pool of his own dark blood and settling dust, his immense, terrifying presence no longer dominating the hall. The sheer mass of the man seemed to displace the very air, a fallen monument to brute force now reduced to a cooling carcass. Akai stood over him, chest heaving, each breath a ragged pull of the blood-scented air that tasted of copper and ancient, subterranean rot. His knuckles were raw, skin split and dripping crimson onto the stone, the stinging heat of his injuries pulsing in sync with the thrumming adrenaline in his veins. He had won—barely, smartly, by a hair's edge, using every ounce of his cunning and the system's cold calculations to dismantle a giant that should have crushed him like an insect.
But Level 6, the Eternal Hell, did not forgive victories. It only offered new, more terrible challenges. The very stones of the prison seemed to soak up the violence, hungering for more.
"You fucking brat… you killed my captain!"
The voice ripped through the simmering chaos like a serrated blade, sharp and venomous, vibrating with a frequency that spoke of a hatred deeper than the abyss itself. Akai turned his head slowly, his eyes narrowing against the dust motes dancing in the air—specks of pulverized stone and dried skin illuminated by the dying embers of the overhead torches. Out of the gloom and from behind half-collapsed cell doors stepped another figure. He was leaner than Kurokaz, wiry and coiled like a spring under tension, but he radiated a raw, predatory menace that was somehow more immediate, more personal than the giant's brute force. Where Kurokaz was a storm, this man was the lightning—fast, focused, and lethal.
Akai groaned dramatically, the sound laden with genuine exasperation, a long, drawn-out noise that echoed off the damp walls. "Oh gosh… the big boy had a teammate. Of course, he did. Couldn't just be a solo act, could it?" He shifted his weight, feeling the ache in his thighs, the protest of muscles pushed to their absolute limit. He looked at the newcomer with a mix of boredom and sharp, analytical intensity, cataloging the way the man moved—low to the ground, weight distributed on the balls of his feet, eyes never blinking.
The man's eyes, a startling and unnatural shade of crimson, glowed with pure, undiluted fury. They weren't the eyes of a man seeking justice; they were the eyes of a shark that had caught the scent of a bleeding wound. His lips, thin and pale, curled back from his teeth into a feral, promise-filled grin that revealed gums stained by the local grime.
"You said captain, huh?" Akai mocked, wiping a fresh trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth with a torn sleeve that was already stiff with gore. "And your crew left you? I see just you… all alone. Oh, and by the way," he added, looking the man up and down with deliberate slowness, a mocking appraisal that lingered on the man's shorter stature, "you're too short for this kind of drama. Usually, the vengeful types are at least six feet. You're more of a... mid-boss minion vibe, honestly."
The man's jaw twitched, a muscle leaping in his cheek like a trapped pulse. He was ready to snarl back, to unleash a torrent of threats, but Akai raised a bloodied hand, cutting him off with a dismissive gesture that was as insulting as a slap. "No, no, wait. I know what you're about to say. Save your breath. You don't have to." He smirked, tilting his head to the side, his voice dripping with sarcastic condescension, ignoring the way the air around them seemed to thicken with the man's killing intent. "You're about to tell me I'll pay for this… that I'll suffer. Heard it before. Hardly original, right? Can we skip to the part where you try and I humiliate you? I've got a schedule to keep."
The veins in the man's temple pulsed visibly beneath his skin, looking like blue worms squirming under the surface. "You have a big mouth. I'll smash it. I'll tear it from your face. I'll make sure you can't even scream when I start peeling the skin from your ribs."
"And how," Akai shot back instantly, his grin not faltering for a second, though his mind was racing, calculating the distance between them and the state of his own stamina, "will I kiss the hot woman if you do that? Think about it. You'd be ruining my future prospects. That's just rude. Do you have any idea how much a facial reconstruction costs in this economy? Probably more than your entire bounty."
The prisoners surrounding them, however, had no patience for witty banter. The brief pause in the violence—the momentary vacuum created by Kurokaz's death—had ended. The chaos had not subsided; it had metastasized into a monstrous, all-consuming storm. Level 6 was a pressure cooker, and the lid had been blown off.
All around them, cells stood ripped open, their doors hanging from twisted hinges like broken wings of some great, metallic bird of prey. Heavy chains dangled from the shattered walls and ceilings, swaying like dead, metallic snakes in an unfelt breeze, clinking together with a rhythmic, funeral sound. Fists and rusted blades and broken teeth clashed in a hundred individual duels to the death. Some prisoners, too far gone into madness from decades of isolation, tore into each other with bare hands, gnashing teeth, ripping flesh from bone in wet, tearing sounds that made the stomach churn.
Screams of agony, rage, and insane delight echoed down the endless, dark corridors, blending into a horrific symphony with the sound of cracking skulls and tearing muscle. The ground was slick with blood and other, less identifiable fluids—sweat, bile, the very essence of human suffering—each surface glistening evilly in the dim, flickering torchlight that seemed to be failing, as if the light itself was being choked out by the malice in the room.
Bodies were already strewn across the floor in a macabre carpet—limbs bent at impossible angles, heads split open like overripe fruit, spilling their grey and red contents onto the uncaring stone. One prisoner, his eyes rolled back to show only the whites in a trance of pure violence, was on his knees, biting deep into another's throat, arterial spray painting the wall behind him in a violent, abstract arc of crimson. Others clawed at each other's eyes, their laughter manic, high-pitched, and utterly animalistic, a sound that bypassed the ears and grated directly on the nerves. The level had become a grotesque carnival of gore—hell's own theater, and the performance had only just begun. The stench was overwhelming: the iron of blood, the musk of unwashed bodies, and the sharp, acidic tang of terror.
And in the center of it all, amidst the swirling madness, Akai faced his next devil. He felt the vibration of the stone beneath his feet, the collective weight of thousands of tons of rock above them pressing down, mirroring the pressure building in his own chest.
DING!
The familiar, intrusive chime of the system cut through the bedlam. A blue notification lit across his vision, superimposing itself over the hellscape like a digital ghost.
[Next Target Identified]
Name: Basha the Bloodhound
Class: Zoan User (Beast Type)
Traits: Enhanced animal instincts, heightened senses, savage regeneration, berserk combat mode
Danger Level: High
Objective: Eliminate Target
Akai squinted at the glowing text, reading the name with a sense of weary inevitability. He felt the phantom itch of the system's influence, the cold logic of the interface contrasting sharply with the hot, messy reality of the prison riot. "Basha the Bloodhound? Fuck me… ugly ass name. Sounds stronger than the other big ass, though. Zoan type, huh? Great. Just what I needed. A furry with a grudge."
As if to punctuate the thought, the figure before him began to change. It wasn't a sudden shift, but a grueling, visceral transformation. His body twisted and contorted, bones popping with loud, sickening cracks that sounded like dry wood snapping in a fire. Muscles swelled and re-knit under skin that stretched and tore in places, reforming into a thicker, bestial hide that looked like scarred leather. His mouth elongated, the jaw unhinging and resetting as his nose flattened and darkened into a wet, twitching muzzle. Teeth sharpened and grew, turning into yellowed, deadly fangs that gleamed with thick, viscous saliva.
His fingernails thickened, turning obsidian and curving into black, wicked claws that scraped against the stone floor with a sound that set teeth on edge, leaving deep white gouges in the rock. His face melted and shifted into something monstrous, a horrific hybrid of man and ravenous beast, dripping ropes of hot saliva as a low, continuous growl rattled up from his chest, vibrating through the stone beneath their feet. His eyes, now fully animal, lost the last vestige of human reason and burned with a pure, undiluted animal hunger. He looked like a nightmare given flesh, a creature designed for no purpose other than to hunt and kill.
Akai winced, a genuine expression of distaste crossing his features. He could smell the musk of the beast now, a wild, pungent odor that cut through the metallic scent of the blood. "Yeah, that's… not cute. You were definitely better looking as a human, and that's saying something because you were a solid four out of ten."
DING!
Another message flashed urgently in his vision, this one bordered in a threatening, pulsating red that seemed to bleed into his retinas.
[Quest Timer: 30 minutes remaining]
Akai froze. The mockery died in his throat, replaced by a cold, hard lump of realization. His eyes widened, all the playful light draining from his face as he stared at the countdown. "Oooohhh… shit. Shit, shit, shit! I forgot about this!"
His heart slammed against his ribs like a trapped bird, a sudden, cold flare of panic seizing him before he ruthlessly shoved it down. He couldn't afford panic. Panic was for the corpses on the floor. Time was running out, slipping through his fingers like sand. The system wasn't going to wait for him to play hero or trade insults. It was a cold, unfeeling machine, and its deadlines were absolute. If he didn't finish this, if he didn't stand over Basha's corpse before those numbers hit zero, the punishment would hit him harder than any monster in this hellhole ever could. He remembered the feeling of the system's "penalties"—the sensation of his very soul being scraped raw.
He looked back at the fully transformed beast, Basha the Bloodhound, now crouched and ready to spring, his hind legs tensed like massive springs. A grim, determined grin spread across Akai's face. The playfulness was gone, replaced by a sharp, lethal focus. He adjusted his stance, ignoring the burning pain in his knuckles and the fatigue in his limbs.
"Alright, Basha. No more chit-chat. No more jokes. I've got a hard deadline, and you're standing in the way of my survival."
The Bloodhound dropped to all fours, his powerful claws scraping deep grooves into the stone floor with an ear-splitting shriek of friction, saliva dripping from his jagged fangs in thick strands that hit the floor with a soft, wet sound. The chaos of Level 6, the screams and the bloodshed, the sound of men dying and men killing, swirled around them like a violent vortex, a background noise to the singular confrontation. But in that moment, for Akai, all sound fell away. The roaring of the crowd, the clanking of chains—it all became muffled and distant, like a radio being turned down in another room.
There was just Akai, feeling the rush of his own blood in his ears.
Just Basha, the predator waiting to strike.
And the relentless, silent clock ticking down in the corner of his mind, measuring the distance between victory and total annihilation.
Akai's eyes locked onto Basha's. He could see the twitch of the beast's nose, the way the fur—or was it hair?—stood up along the ridge of its spine. Every muscle in Akai's body was coiled. He didn't just need to win; he needed to win fast. The system's timer glared in his periphery, a digital executioner. He took one last deep breath of the tainted air, centered himself, and prepared for the onslaught. The beast let out a roar that shook the very foundations of the prison, and then, it moved.
[ End of Chapter 12] .
To Be Continued...
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If you want to read more about my works or just to support me then here is my patreon:
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