(Chapter 6) Slaughter

In a land long forgotten and shrouded by mists and howling winds was The Heavens Dungeon.

The Dungeon was completely inaccessible as the entire area had been detached from the mortal world and placed in a pocket dimension of an extremely powerful god.

The laws of the Dungeon might seem similar as the laws of the universe but…..They had been tampered with.

Created by powers that mortals would simply not understand, the Dungeon had many peculiarities.

The Dungeon would get more and more dangerous as one progressed through it. Also the guardians of the dungeon were monsters and beings from long forgotten lands and empires that behaved in interesting ways. One quirk of the guardians, if one bothered to notice, is that…..if you asked them how they got here……they would not know why!

It appeared that the guardian’s memories, of both the intelligent beings, and the beasts had been tampered with.

All they knew was that no matter what, if anything or anyone entered their plateau, they must fight them to the death!

Additionally both food, water and sleep….everything was strangely no longer needed for the Guardians!

The mental state of the guardians was also hazy…..almost as if they had been pacified by some sort of mind control….

As for the dungeon itself, all sorts of strange weather and other problems would begin affecting you.

Take the Rope bridge for example, the distance from one plateau too another was not fixed, it could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days crossing it!

Sometimes it seemed as if the length of the rope bridge altered while you were on it, as if a God was purposely making your passage through the Dungeon more and more difficult…

In those mists, on that rope bridge that sometimes could never end…… One could end up going insane!

But while the Dungeon seemed to make your life worse like it was playing with you, sometimes it seemed that it was helping you!

Oddly enough, despite the size and power greatly differing from one guardian to the next….. If you gave it your all, it was possible to win no matter who you are!

The power of the guardians would never exceed past what would be completely beyond the person progressing through the Dungeon….

How odd that strength would be adjusted depending on the strength of the person himself…….

All throughout the Dungeon. There were signs of tampering.

Another peculiar thing about the Dungeon was that if someone ever bothered back-tracking and would go to a plateau that they had already crossed….They would notice something shocking!

The guardian that they had previously defeated, would be back again! And not only that, their strength would also have been adjusted to match that of the dungeoneer’s growth.

Although the Dungeon did offer fairness in battle….It was by no means, a fair Dungeon. It would take someone enormous amounts of luck or power to be able to pass through all 100 plateaus and out of the 100’s of unfortunate people who had been thrown into it…….Only one had ever managed to clear it!

The man who had managed to clear it, went on to become a powerful God in a world far far away…..

If you would ask the God how he had managed to clear the Dungeon for advice, he would tell you that you needed an extreme amount of mental strength, and be willing to do anything to survive! Also, that the Dungeon contained a trick within it…. All you needed to do was get to the rope bridge on the other side! The guardian would not follow you on it! Fleeing unfavorable battles sometimes would be the best method of survival.

But the current unfortunate soul who had been thrown into the Dungeon, was clearing it at an unbelievably fast pace using a very different method of his own……

On the Fourth Plateau of the Heavens Dungeon was a small frail child weak from starvation…..

The child had collapsed in front of the Guardian from hunger and mental trauma and was about to be killed when….

His small hand shot up and wrapped around neck of the undead beast while it was closing in for the kill….

As soon as the hand gripped the beast, the beast grew furious, how dare its prey touch it!

But strangely the beast wasn’t able to tug his neck free, its legs thrashed wildly but it's body would not budge from the grip of the child…

Then slowly, the child began to stand up and raised his head. The moment the Beast saw the child’s eyes it began to feel fear!

The eyes of the child were Hollow and lifeless, it was like staring into an endless abyss… The beast’s animal instincts from when it was alive were telling it…..to run away from this child as fast as possible!

Then suddenly, the child began to squeeze the neck of the beast and the bones began cracking….

-CRACK!-

The body of the beast fell to the ground as the boy held the decapitated head of the beast, then the boy now using both his hands, began to exert force onto the head…

-SHATTER!-

It only took a few seconds for the head to completely shatter under the mysterious power coming from the boy, and the beast’s glowing eyes slowly darkened and then glowed no more.

The boy walked over to where his spear had fallen from before and picked it up, and then expressionlessly, he sat down and began slicing flesh from his left thigh.

After doing so, he began eating his own raw flesh.

As the child was eating a small part of himself, a blood red mist slowly started coming out of his skin before forming an aura all around him.

The child was now no more.

Instead, there was some sort of feral beast in his place, from the aura alone, any nearby being would sense an undeniably large amount of blood thirst coming from the beast….He was Hungry.

The beast got up and disappeared into the mists.

The beast then began clearing the Dungeon very fast, it would arrive at a plateau and engage the guardian in combat, before brutally murdering the guardian with it's strong mysterious power. The Guardian it encountered after the undead, was a giant spider.

Normally the spider would strike fear into a person’s heart, but the emotionless beast only saw food…...

After the battle, it ripped open the spiders flesh with its hands and devoured it.

But the beast was still hungry, it wanted…..more flesh.

After only a year, the beast had managed to clear its way to the 60th guardian. Many of the battles were brutal and one-sided, but sometimes the beast would encounter a foe that give it many gruesome injuries. Interestingly though, the injures of the beast began healing slowly as it traversed through the mists on the rope bridges. The unique blood mist aura around it seemed to have many interesting magic’s working within.

Another year passed, now the beast was on the 95th guardian. Over the last year, the beast had lost its tunic and cloak and only had rough ripped trousers on. A large number of scares littered its body but the most interesting trait was that the beast still……

Looked starved, if anything it looked even weaker than before, it had thin bony hands, stick-like legs and sunken cheeks. Due to a large amount of mana being spent every waking moment on body strengthening magic sub-consciously, the beast had gotten weaker and weaker from the times in the Dungeon where it would sometimes go many days without edible food. There was a large amount of undead and toxic guardians within the dungeon.

The 95th guardian was very different from the previous guardians though….

The guardian wasn’t a monster, or large insect, neither was it some sort magic user…..

The 95th guardian…..Was Himself!

Or at least an echo of himself, with some strange magic the guardian was identical to the beast, it also had a blood red mist around it, only that it appeared as a sort of living shadow.

The battle against this guardian would be the hardest he had encountered so far!

Both the beast and the guardian with extremely fast movements danced around each other.

They were both extremely fast! The beast and the guardian were moving in quick blurs and exchanging intense savage blows with their spears.

Both sides began to start suffering from injures but the shadow….seemed to somehow heal!

No matter how many times the beast struck the shadow it all seemed useless, even striking vital spots would only make the shadow retreat for a few moments.

The beast steadily began racking up even more injures and slowing down, yet the shadow was still at its peak speed!

The climax of the battle was getting closer, in just a few moments, the beast would finally slip up and suffer a fatal blow, and the guardian could sense his victory!

With heavy labored breathing the beast was now on the defensive. It was simply parrying blows and retreating until finally, the shadow managed to skewer the Beast through the leg!

The Beast howled in pain but then….

The howl turned into a roar, an intense bloodlust filled the beast and with claw like hands it grabbed the shadow! Abruptly the blood mist aura around the beast began thickening and swirling intensely.

With strength far surpassing the beast’s power from before, it roared again and tore the shadow apart!

The shadows scattered and in place of the shadow was a ghost like echo of the guardian….That looked just like the beast.

The guardian stared back at the beast before slowly fading into nothing.

Then for the first time in two years, emotion flickered across the features of the beast, it seemed to remember something.

“Wha……..What?”

After not speaking for so long the beasts voice was raspy and cracked but, it had spoken!

Then Muzumi’s consciousness faded and he collapsed from his injuries into a deep sleep.

-Yuzu here, thanks for reading the chapter and supporting me, I appreciate it a lot. <3