CHAPTER 243: TEN MINUTES IN HELL

Maggie took the lead. Not because she wanted to—she would have preferred a hundred times over to stay back, watching others’ footsteps—but because the role was stuck to her skin. The bait. The vanguard. The piece of meat thrown into the monster’s maw to see what came out.

The colossus advanced just ahead of her, so massive it seemed to swallow the torchlight. Each step from that mountain of stone made the ground vibrate like a funeral drum.

Gripping the shaft of her halberd, Maggie felt ridiculous next to him. She felt like an ant armed with a toothpick following a tamed avalanche.

Yet, her role wasn’t useless. She was the key, the one who bore the bond. Without her, the colossus might have remained motionless, frozen forever in its mineral silence.

"Advance," she thought, and it advanced.

"Stop," she murmured inwardly, and it halted abruptly, the stone of its joints grinding with a low rumble.

It obeyed. To what extent, she had no idea. But enough to walk in her place in the darkness.

Behind her, she could hear the others getting organized. Zirel had assigned the roles with icy precision:

Elisa, at mid-distance, ready to cast her detection waves and lock onto the enemy when it appeared. Inès, hanging back, ready to erect a blessed barrier or pray for luck, which was sometimes worth more than a sword. And Armin, despite his wounded shoulder, positioned on the left, weapon raised, his body serving as an extra shield.

And Zirel himself, of course, in the rear, in the place he had carved out for himself, from where he could observe and command without risking being the first target. Maggie had almost gritted her teeth hearing him explain his "strategic position." But deep down, she understood. He was the head, she was the flesh.

The tunnel grew darker still, swallowing the torchlight as they pressed forward. Maggie squinted. The air was changing: heavier, more humid, laden with that metallic scent that smelled like an open maw and half-digested guts.

She wrinkled her nose.

"It reeks of a lair," she thought.

The colossus stopped suddenly, as if it had perceived the same invisible scent. Its stone head turned slowly, its massive shoulders hunching like a mountain awakening. Pale light surged once more from its helmet, casting long, menacing shadows on the walls.

Maggie gripped her halberd, her fingers whitening on the polished wood. She heard her own breath echoing too loudly in her throat. And behind her, she knew they were all waiting. Counting on her, on her giant, to unleash the storm.

"Well, come on then, you bastard," she muttered through her teeth.

She raised her halberd, slammed the shaft violently against the ground. The noise echoed like a thunderclap in the tunnel, rolling into the darkness.

The echo spread... then died.

The silence that followed was even worse.

A living silence.

Then a scraping sound came from afar.

The scraping grew louder, splitting into two. Not a single sound, not from one precise direction, but two. Like two nails dragging on stone in a discordant rhythm. Maggie clenched her teeth. Her instinct screamed it: they weren’t facing just one beast.

The nearest torch flickered, its glow revealing, around the bend of an adjacent corridor, the silhouette of the first nightmare. A mass of muscle bristling with black hair, standing on its legs, horns twisted like living blades. Its clawed hands lowered slowly, almost with relish, towards the impaled corpses of beasts they hadn’t even noticed before. Maggie gagged: this wasn’t a simple beast, but a patient executioner who enjoyed arranging its trophies.

The stone colossus, however, stood motionless. The ethereal light shining in its helmet focused on the horned creature. A raw, animal tension passed between them.

Maggie was about to give the order to advance when another noise erupted behind them. Softer, more repulsive. A thick panting, like a living forge choking on its own saliva. She turned her head—and her blood ran cold.

In the shadows, a second horror was advancing. A hunched, hairy silhouette, but with a face twisted into lumpy flesh, covered in malformed eyes and a gaping mouth full of irregular teeth. It dragged a gigantic bone, still dripping with flesh, which it licked with an overly long tongue.

"Fuck..." Maggie breathed, her voice strangled.

Two. There were two of them.

Zirel swore in his corner, his mask of coldness cracking.

"I didn’t anticipate this..."

No shit. Maggie felt her guts twist. She was no longer just the bait: she had just walked into the center of an improvised arena, between two monsters that seemed to have arranged to meet for the feast.

Elisa suddenly blazed with an incandescent green, her waves surging forth to erect a fragile barrier of information. She gasped:

"They... they know each other. They hunt together."

The ground vibrated under a step. The stone colossus advanced, ready to protect Maggie. But she, tense on her halberd, understood that none of Zirel’s plans had anticipated this. One of them, maybe... but two? Two terrors, two predators, and them caught in the middle like mice.

Maggie inhaled. Her thoughts hammered: stand tall, don’t give up, if you tremble now, everyone dies.

She placed her hand on the colossus’s mineral shoulder.

"Well, big guy... time to show if you’re really worth your weight in rock."

The horned beast crouched, muscles tensed, like a predator ready to pounce.

The thing with multiple eyes raised its bone like a club, its jaws clacking in a silent laugh.

And Maggie knew that hell was opening, here and now.

Maggie took a step. Then another. Each movement echoed in the tunnel like a provocation, as if she were striking the ground in the faces of the two abominations. Her sweaty hands slipped on the halberd’s wood, but her back remained straight.

She advanced slowly, deliberately, following a calculated rhythm. Not to impress—impossible to impress horrors like these—but to give herself time. Time to feel the flow of essence rise from her core, coiling around her spiritual nucleus like an over-tightened rope. Time to prepare her one trump card: the internal explosion. A technique she didn’t like to name, let alone use, because every time she awakened it, one thought returned: what if this time, she was the one who burst into pieces?

But she had no choice.

At her side, the stone colossus advanced, a massive echo to her steps. Its shoulders almost scraped the low vault, its enormous phalanges grated like crumbling rocks. Maggie glanced sideways: the spectral light in its helmet vibrated, like an ember fanned by a blacksmith’s breath. It sensed the war coming. It was waiting for it.

"Good," Maggie breathed, her throat tight. "Then come with me."

The horned beast was the first to react. It crouched lower, its body coiling with bestial tension, then it leaped. Not a simple jump—a surge, like a mountain torn from its foundations. Its hooves hammered the stone, sending shards flying.

The stone colossus responded instantly. It reared up, arms raised, and intercepted the horned mass in a crash that shook the entire tunnel. The impact was so violent that Maggie lost her balance, her teeth clacking from the shock. The two titans clashed, a battle of brute masses, fists against horns, roars against mineral rumbles.

But that was only one of the two nightmares.

A wet hiss made her pivot. The thing with multiple eyes was advancing, swinging its huge bone like a ceremonial club. Its dragging steps echoed, unhurried—no, it was savoring. Its malformed eyes blinked in an unhealthy disorder, fixed on Maggie like prey too fragile to flee.

"Shit, shit, shit..." Maggie growled, stepping back, gripping her halberd until her knuckles whitened.

She felt her core burning in her chest. Every breath sent the essence circulating faster, pounding against her bones, against her veins. It was dangerous. Too dangerous. But the beast was approaching, and she knew: she would only have one opening.

"If I have to die, it’ll be in a fireworks display," she murmured, almost to give herself courage.

The thing’s silent laugh answered her, its jaws clacking like an hourglass running out.

So Maggie planted a firm foot on the ground, lowered her halberd into a guard stance, and unleashed her inner cry.

The core within her ignited.

It was the first time since she had carved the mark of her stigma that she dared to go this far. And even then, "technique" wasn’t the right word. Her stigma already possessed a gift of power, a flow that swelled her flesh and hardened her nerves. But this... this was controlled suicide.

She was heating her essence, compressing it, making it explode within her core like crushing a grenade in her own chest.

And the effect was immediate.

The world tilted around her. The air began to vibrate, her lungs seemed to drink flames, and every beat of her heart struck like a war drum. Her body loosened, her muscles swelled with an unknown vitality. Her halberd, which she usually dragged like a burdensome weight, suddenly became a feather ready to split the world.

Faster. Stronger. Her senses multiplied tenfold. She could hear the veins pulsing in the creature’s bloated flesh, distinguish the clicking of its multiple eyes blinking in a sickening chaos. She could even smell the distinct odor of its drool, acrid and sweet, like an overripe fruit left to rot in blood.

She had become something other than herself.

But she knew the price. Ten minutes. Ten pitiful minutes to strike, to kill, to survive. And after? After, her body would collapse like a rag doll. A full day of paralysis, left to the mercy of those who hated her, or worse... to the mercy of these monsters.

So she had to finish it. At all costs.

"You wanna dance, you bastard?" she spat, advancing. "Well, let’s dance."

The thing raised its gigantic bone, an impossible smile spread across its misshapen lips. Maggie lunged forward, her body crossing the distance like lightning. Her halberd whistled through the air, a clean line of death, and for the first time, she saw surprise in the beast’s asymmetrical eyes.

Because it was no longer prey waiting for it.

It was a human firework, ready to explode until it burned out.