The deepest depths beneath the village.
This place was less a cave than a suffocating, enormous ovary. Thick roots of black Mold crawled across every inch of the rock walls like dark veins, writhing slowly as if alive, oozing a nauseating stench of decay.
Before the massive fungal core, Miranda hung suspended in midair.
The six wings of black Mold on her back beat in a slow rhythm. A golden holy crown sat atop her head, and her pale, sculpted face carried a skin-crawling "divinity," the look of something gazing down on all living things.
"Where is Mia?!"
Ethan's roar shattered the suffocating silence. He gripped his M1911 in both hands, the barrel locked on Miranda above, his eyes bloodshot with rage. "You crazy bitch, where did you take her?!"
Miranda tilted her head slightly, regarding Ethan with the pitying gaze one might spare for an insect. Her red lips parted. "Your wife is not imprisoned. She is gestating for a great cause..."
"Gestating my ass!"
Heisenberg cut Miranda's cult-leader sermon off with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. He spat his cigar stub onto the ground and crushed it under his boot.
As his furious roar echoed through the cavern, the metal in the air went haywire. Scrap steel from every dark corner of the cave whipped toward him like a tornado had touched down, slamming onto the head of his heavy hammer, assembling into an absurdly massive war hammer in the span of a heartbeat.
"Ethan! Do you even know how this works?" Behind his sunglasses, Heisenberg's eyes burned with a bloodthirsty red glow, his lips peeling back to bare chalk-white teeth. "Why are you wasting breath on some cult-brained old hag? Once I hammer her skull down into her ribcage, you can find whoever the hell you want!"
Heisenberg spun and slammed the hammer into the ground.
The impact rang through the cavern like a cathedral bell.
"Boys! Tear this shithole apart!"
At his command, the reek of machine oil instantly drowned out the Mold's rot. Row after row of mechanical assault soldiers marched forward, each over two meters tall, arms refitted into massive chainsaws and spiral drill-bits, crimson reactor cores glowing in their chests. A tide of steel crashing toward the enemy.
Miranda merely raised a single finger.
In the darkness, hundreds of glowing red eyes lit up. Hundreds upon hundreds of frenzied Lycans and mutant Ghouls poured from the shadows along the cavern walls, smashing headlong into the steel legion.
The shriek of metal grinding through bone and flesh. The agonized howls of Lycans caught in drill-bits and torn apart. The stench of machine oil mixing with blood. In an instant, this sacred underground sanctum became a slaughterhouse.
"Defective rejects who defy their god. You will pay for your arrogance."
Miranda's gaze turned to ice. The six black wings on her back snapped wide open.
Hundreds of Mold filaments, hard as steel, erupted toward the three of them like a black rain of needles.
"Kill her!" Heisenberg roared, and instead of retreating, he launched himself into the barrage. The magnetic field around his body formed an invisible shield, deflecting the incoming filaments in every direction. He raised the colossal hammer overhead and brought it crashing down on Miranda with the force of a thunderbolt.
The impact could have flattened a heavy armored vehicle into a steel pancake, and it landed square on Miranda's head.
But the manic grin on Heisenberg's face froze before it could fully form.
Miranda hadn't moved half a step. The instant the hammer fell, the Mold beneath her surged upward like a living thing, weaving itself into a thick, impossibly resilient black shield directly in front of her.
The recoil nearly snapped both of Heisenberg's arms. The webbing between his thumbs and forefingers split open, blood spraying. He was launched backward, hammer and all, slamming into the cavern wall hard enough to crater the rock.
"Heisenberg!" Ethan rolled sideways, yanking the RPG launcher from behind his back, the one he'd been saving. He didn't even aim. Just pointed and pulled the trigger on instinct.
The high-explosive warhead detonated against Miranda's shield, a pillar of fire roaring upward.
When the smoke cleared, Miranda stood without a scratch. She didn't even glance at Ethan. A casual flick of her wrist, and a Mold tentacle as thick as a barrel burst from the ground, whipping toward him like a battering ram.
Ethan threw himself sideways. He dodged the killing blow, but the shockwave from the tentacle's passing tore a gash down his arm, deep enough to show bone.
Despair.
The word hit Ethan and Heisenberg at the same time. They'd opened with everything they had. Maximum magnetic force, heaviest firepower, all of it gone. And she hadn't even shifted her footing, let alone been forced into some kind of transformation.
And on the other side of the battlefield...
In the middle of this suffocating boss fight, one figure stood out like a glitch in the matrix.
Ryan strolled through the storm of lethal filaments and tentacles with his hands in his coat pockets, looking like he was out for an evening walk.
A razor-sharp filament shot straight for the spot between his eyes. He tilted his head just enough to let it whistle past his ear and embed in the wall behind him. A massive tentacle swept toward him and he tapped off the ground, hopped lightly onto the tentacle itself, used it as a springboard, and landed on a clear patch of floor.
He wasn't just not fighting. He was stroking his chin with genuine academic interest, muttering to himself like a researcher running field observations.
"Hm, the Mold's neural reflex speed is around 0.01 seconds, high rigidity, excellent elasticity... Gotta hand it to a monster who's been alive for a century, she really knows how to push the Mold's potential..."
Ryan gave his honest assessment. "Miranda at full power is legitimately top-tier. Not bad."
Miranda had clearly noticed the man slipping through her attacks like an eel, casually critiquing her while he did it. For the first time, a flicker of something crossed her eyes. Mold from every direction began surging toward her, massing for a direct kill on this arrogant fool.
But before she could strike.
A deafening blast ripped through the ceiling above them.
A boulder weighing several tons was punched clean through the cavern roof by sheer brute force. It plummeted through a cascade of dust and rubble, crashing into the center of the battlefield and interrupting Miranda's attack cold.
Before anyone could make out what had come through, a sound filled the cavern. Dense, maddening, like tens of thousands of flies beating their wings at once. It drowned out the clash of steel and Lycans in an instant.
The dust settled.
A figure nearly three meters tall rose slowly from the pile of rubble, radiating murderous intent thick enough to choke on.
Her proud white vintage gown had been burned to scorched, tattered rags. The wide-brimmed hat was long gone. Patches of charred, ruined flesh still clung to her face, the Mold visibly knitting itself together to repair the damage. She looked worse than a demon crawled out of hell.
Behind her, three swirling masses of black flies twisted and writhed, coalescing into three soot-covered daughters clutching blood-stained sickles.
"You filthy outsiders..."
Alcina Dimitrescu's eyes, fully bloodshot with humiliation and unbridled fury, swept past Heisenberg, swept past even Miranda, and locked on. Locked hard on Ryan, who was mid-stretch, and on Ethan beside him.
Half-meter bone claws shot from her fingertips with a metallic ring, gleaming with a cold, lethal light.
Lady Dimitrescu let out a shriek that sounded like it had clawed its way up from the depths of hell itself.
"You think that piece-of-shit pipe was enough to kill me?! I will flay the skin from your bodies inch by inch today even if it's the last goddamn thing I do!"
[Read 50+ chapters ahead on Patreon: patreon.com/NiaXD]