"Is this a joke?!"
A hobgoblin muttered, looking around with skepticism and confusion.
The space was vast, just as huge as the previous chamber they had encountered.
But there were no monsters here, no dungeon boss nor impending doom.
"We all came prepared, but was it all for nothing?" Luna grunted, her voice heavy with irritation as she found her tiny, lost clone lying nearby, unhurt but slightly disoriented from the journey.
Lyssandra stood like a monument, eyes scanning every shadow, every crack in the walls with intense scrutiny. There was truly nothing here…
Except one thing.
Beside a massive stone column, a single, pulsating purple orb rested, centered on the pedestal as if it was waiting for their arrival.
"Stand aside," Lyssandra commanded, her voice stern and unyielding to those behind her.
She moved forward with steady, unhurried steps and made her way toward that ominous orb.
"Will this one summon the beast?" she asked herself, her voice barely a whisper against the silence of the cavern.
Her arm stretched outward, reaching into the unknown.
The moment contact was made, a strange, cool sensation surged through her fingertips, flowing through her digits and into her marrow.
The smooth surface of the orb felt ominous like under her touch.
Wait…
Nothing happened at first.
She began to withdraw her hand, intending to retreat from the possible trap.
THUD—BOOM!
A violent, sudden pulse erupted from the very heart of the purple orb.
Shockwaves blasted through the chamber, hitting the gathered crowd like a heavy sledgehammer.
Everyone was thrown back, falling onto their buttocks or stumbling against walls from the sheer pressure of the mana discharge.
Yet, Lyssandra stayed.
Her hand remained glued to the surface of the orb, held by an unseen, gravitational force, even as the air itself began to tremble.
One shockwave blasted.
Two followed.
Then three.
The rhythm of the impacts quickened, the pulses of energy squeezing the air out of everyone's lungs as they were hammered flat against the stone floor.
Was this a mistake? Had they wandered into a place where they were never meant to be?
'Probably not!!!' Lyssandra's voice screamed in her own head even as she struggled against the tide.
Then her body was jerked upward.
She felt the tug of an unseen force, a gravity that didn't recognize the world she knew, pulling her steadily into the sky.
Her blonde hair flickered and lashed chaotically around her face, mirroring the violent, pulsating mana.
"AAAGH!" she screamed, the sound echoing through the hollow chamber.
She felt as if a thousand needles were picking at her very brain, sharp and relentless, shreding her composure.
This sensation!
It was both bizarre and strangely, hauntingly familiar. She had encountered this energy before wasn't it? But where?
Her eyes snapped open wide, and the bright blue orbs she once possessed were gone.
In their place lived a void, a darkness so vast and ancient it could swallow the entire universe into its maw.
BOOM!
A spectrum of seven colors burst from her entire being, an aura of pure, primordial power.
Graaah…
Rrrrgh…
Mrrrgh…
A chorus of countless, unknown entities. Roar, screech, and clamor crashed against her consciousness like waves against a cliffside, flooding the chamber with the noise of a world being reborn.
Knowledge flooded into the darkness of her mind, a torrential, rushing river of truth.
It was like the leveling process, but magnified by a thousand, a chaotic descent into the deepest secrets of time.
Every time she had risen in power, she had been gifted a fragment of the world's history, bits of an era that didn't even exist.
"I remember! But…" she moaned, the pressure of the information being so colossal it felt like her skull might crack under the weight of a mountain.
"AAAGH! NO MORE!"
Dark, crimson liquid began to leak from every opening of her body—eyes, nostrils, and even from the corners of her lips, trickling onto the ground.
"TOO MUCH! MAKE IT STOP!" she roared, a desperate plea cast into the void, a scream for mercy against the relentless tide of truth.
The sensation was unbearable, as if every single fiber of her existence, even the atoms deep within her core were being boiled over the yellow-hot surface of a sun.
She felt her very being being crushed, shredded, and rewritten by the sheer volume of information.
Is this the end?
Is her tale closing just after half a month of existence?
She looked down at her hands, seeing her skin turning white and crackling with that strange, multi-colored energy.
Is she truly destined to perish in such a silent, intellectual death?
"MASTER!"
Luna's voice broke into a shriek as she witnessed the agonizing spectacle unfolding before her.
But there was no help to be given.
The sheer, crushing pressure was too immense, Luna's body melting away until she became nothing more than a pool of liquid on the floor.
The rest of the soldiers met similar fates.
They were flattened, their lives almost snuffed out by the weight of the atmospheric collapse.
Weakest among them simply fell unconscious, but the relentless, violent shockwaves spared no one from the madness of the light.
Lyssandra's eyes watched a dark, spider-webbed crack spreading across her own skin.
It crawled from her hand up her forearm, traveling with a scary grace.
The fracture climbed to her upper arm, racing toward the crook of her elbow.
It snaked upward to her neck, finally meeting at the zenith of her head.
Her entire frame looked like a shattered vase, cracked and fragile.
Then, with a sickening pop, piece after piece of her skin began to flake away.
They drifted down to the stone floor, disintegrating into nothingness before they could even settle, as if her very essence was being wiped clean from reality.
The only thing that remained after her skin was stripped away was a white, luminous skeleton, a skeletal structure of pure light.
She felt it—the sensation of existence, yet it was not constant; it was a flickering candle in the midst of a hurricane.
"There is no such thing called System...," she thought, even as the half-stripped remains of her body felt like it was dissolving into nothing.
"There is no Dungeon Boss at the beginning," she continued, her consciousness drifting in the sea of light.
Her arms flung open wide, embracing the end of all she knew.
The final strand of singed hair tumbled from her head, falling into the abyss like a dying leaf.
She looked up, towards the eye of the storm.
"And there is no freedom," she whispered, her final, resolute sentence.
A vacuum roared swallowed the space.
A sudden, thunderous suction erupted from the heart of the chamber, a cosmic hunger that demanded everything.
With a final gasp, Lyssent's entire body was swept away into the darkness.
"NOOOOOOOOO!"
Luna's piercing scream echoed through the dying chamber before the world plunged into an absolute, heavy darkness.
Then, a silence so profound it felt like the end of time, descended upon the void.
Silence.
Nothingness.
-
-
-
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CRACK!
Inside her private quarters, Morgana sat in silence, her hands moving with rhythmic grace as she wove soft garments for her forthcoming offspring.
"What is that…"
She touched the cold, heavy slave collar cinched around her neck, her brow furrowing at the strange, sharp noises echoing in the air.
CRACK!
"That sound again," she muttered, her gaze dropping to the stone object.
A violent, final crack reverberated through the room, a sharp, splintering explosion.
The magic slave collar snapped into two pieces, sliding down from her shoulders and clattering to the floor.
It lay there for a mere heartbeat before disintegrating into nothingness, leaving her skin unmarred and her throat exposed.
"Mast...Lyssandra…?" she whispered, her eyes widening as she felt the sudden absence of the controlling power.
A fierce, burning anger surged through her veins, a hot wave of rebellion fueled by the memory of her loss.
She thought of the title The Mother that had been stolen from her, and the heavy humiliation she had been forced to bear.
Her grip tightened on the silk threads, her gaze turning sharp and predator-like.
The woman who had once ruled was awake.
Yet, the fury faded, dissolving as quickly as it had risen, replaced by an overwhelming sensation of protectiveness.
Her hands drifted, almost by reflex, to the swollen curve of her pregnant belly.
This feeling, this profound, visceral connection was entirely distinct from the simple, instinctual warmth she felt for the many spiderlings she had birthed in the past.
She contemplated the new lives, the tiny, fluttering spirits that were destined to meet her and her partner in the coming days.
But was she her wife, or her husband? The distinction seemed to blur into a single, powerful essence of love and devotion.
'They will be special,' she mused, a soft, serene smile finally touching her lips.
'I hope she is okay… but why do I feel this hollowness inside me?' Morgana wondered, her heart heavy with an unexplained dread.
Across the vast reaches of the mansion, the others were not finding peace.
Naya, Helena, and all the Bloom Mothers were suddenly gripped by a searing, agonizing heat within their loins.
"No! What is happening?!" Naya cried, writhing on her bed in a frenzy of pain.
"W-where… where is my p-p-penis?!" Helena gasped, her eyes bulging as she watched her massive, towering cock visibly shrinking back into her flesh.
"This can't be real!" the other Bloom Mothers shrieked in panic, their hands frantically clawing at their crotches.
Some even spread their wide, fertile vaginas open, begging their sisters to peek inside and find the reason for their torment.
But the harsh reality was undeniable; it was truly, utterly gone.
A single, desperate cry rang out through the minds of every woman in the building, a singular, collective thought:
"Master!"