"The world turned into a meat grinder in a matter of seconds. It was a symphony of wet thuds and the metallic ring of chitinous blades."
The Abyss Warden didn't hesitate. It didn't roar for glory or posture like the Ogres. It simply moved. It was a blur of bladed legs and bio-mechanical precision. Within a single minute, the platform was slick with the black, oily blood of the Abyss Ogres. At least twenty of those massive heads—some the size of small carriages—rolled across the stone like discarded marbles.
The slaughter was so absolute, so efficient, that I found myself paralyzed. I didn't breathe. I didn't blink. I just stood there, a tiny 1.44-meter speck of dust in the shadow of a god-tier predator, praying to whatever dark spirits listened that if I remained perfectly still, the Warden would treat me like a rock.
While the carnage unfolded, I desperately tried to dig through the Naga's stolen memories. I needed a weakness. A crack in the armor. But all I found was a vision of nightmares. I saw the Warden facing off against a Goliath—a creature so massive it could flatten a fortress. I saw the Warden decapitate that mountain of muscle with a single, casual flick of its bladed leg.
A Goliath is a world-ender. A creature that could push a man like Folia to his absolute limits, even if he used every scrap of his royal mana. And this... this thing had ended it in ten seconds.
I was so close to pissing myself. Honestly.
The Warden stopped. Its knight-like helmet turned toward me. The silence was heavier than the darkness around us. I held my breath, my heart hammering so hard against my ribs I thought it might shatter them. Stay still. Be a stone. Be a shadow.
But the universe apparently hates me.
One of the surviving Oger grunts, driven mad by terror, lunged directly toward me, trying to use my position as a shield. The Warden reacted instantly. A blade-leg swept through the air, bisecting the Oger in mid-stride. But in doing so, the Warden's gaze locked onto me. I was no longer a stone. I was prey.
"Jessica! Help me!" I hissed, looking toward where the 'Angel' had been standing.
But there was no silver hair. No white flame. Jessica had seen the Warden's first strike and had taken the opportunity to vanish into the upper tunnels. She didn't look back. She didn't hesitate. She just ran, leaving me to face a creature that could kill a Goliath in seconds.
"If I survive this," I growled, my voice trembling with a mix of fear and lethal promises, "I am going to slaughter that bitch. I'll peel that silver armor off her piece by piece."
How I wished Folia were here. That golden-haired psychopath would have at least stayed to fight, if only to prove he was the strongest thing in the pit. He would have bought me time. But no, I got stuck with the coward of Nordara.
The Warden and I stared at each other for two agonizing minutes. It was a standoff between a hurricane and a blade of grass. Then, without warning, the Warden lunged. Two of its bladed legs stabbed toward my chest like twin spears.
I dodged. It was pure instinct, a desperate jerk of my body that saved my life but cost me dearly. One of the blades grazed my side, opening a deep furrow that began to pump blood immediately.
"Fine! You want a fight? Let's see how you like the sun!" I roared.
I channeled the Sawing Sun of the Four Colors. I didn't care about the risk anymore. I gathered every scrap of mana I had and hurled a violet-white sphere of solar radiation at the Warden's chest. The impact was blinding. But as the light faded, my heart sank.
The Warden's bio-armor didn't just resist the magic—it reflected it.
The solar energy bounced off its polished chitin and slammed back into me. I screamed as the backwash of my own spell engulfed my left arm. The heat was beyond anything I'd ever felt. I could smell my own flesh cooking, the shadow-markings on my skin bubbling as my arm was practically incinerated.
The pain was a white wall that blocked out the world.
Just as the last of the Ogres vanished and the platform fell into a haunted silence, a new sound emerged—a heavy, rhythmic trampling from the depths. Something even bigger was coming.
The Warden didn't stay to fight the newcomer. But it wasn't going to leave empty-handed. Before I could even register the movement, the Warden drove one of its front legs through my shoulder, pinning me like a butterfly to a board.
I tried to grab onto a nearby Oger corpse, screaming as the Warden pivoted and leaped off the platform, dragging me into the yawning black void of the lower abyss.
"SHIIIIII—!"
The wind whipped past my ears. We were falling. I was dangling from the leg of a monster, staring down into a darkness that seemed to have no end. I was a dead man. I knew it. And even if I survived the fall, I had no food except for the Oger corpse I was clutching, which would probably rot before I even hit the ground.
Screw it. If I'm going down, I'm taking this armored freak with me.
I focused on the tiny spark of White Flame magic I'd stolen from Jessica. It wasn't much, but I used it to create a localized thermal expansion in the rock wall we were falling past. I targeted a massive obsidian outcropping.
CRACK!
The heat fractured the stone. A rain of massive boulders began to fall alongside us. Several of them slammed into the Warden, jarring its body and forcing it to release its grip on the wall. We transitioned from a controlled descent into a pure, chaotic freefall.
The blade-leg slipped out of my shoulder with a sickening pop. Now, we were both falling separately.
The Warden was relentless. Even in the air, it tried to lash out at me with its legs, its chitinous blades whistling past my ears as we tumbled through the dark. I watched the altimeter in my head spin out of control. We fell for thirty minutes. Thirty minutes of absolute terror, suspended in a column of cold, dead air.
The end came suddenly.
The Warden hit first. I heard the thunderous CRUNCH of its armored body slamming into solid ground. It sounded like a mountain collapsing.
A split second later, I hit the water.
The impact felt like hitting a stone wall, but the liquid gave way. I sank deep into the icy, black current of an underground river. My lungs screamed for air, and my burnt arm felt like it was being dipped in acid. I fought my way back to the surface, gasping for breath as I broke the water.
I scrambled onto a muddy bank, coughing and shivering. Across the narrow stretch of water, I saw the Warden. It had survived the impact—of course it had—but it was damaged. Its legs were cracked, and its bio-armor was leaking a thick, translucent fluid.
It stood at the water's edge, its knight-helm head tilted. It hissed, but it didn't step in. For some reason, the terror of the abyss didn't want to touch the river.
"Haha... stay there, you bastard," I wheezed, clutching my charred left arm. "Stay right there."
Until next time.