The tunnel was oppressively silent, save for the sound of our boots clicking against the damp floor. The space was wide enough for us to walk in a line, yet the walls seemed to close in on us with every step. I stayed in the rear, watching "Muscle" lead with a dangerous level of arrogance.
"Listen up," he growled, his broad shoulders blocking half the view of the tunnel. "If anything shows up, LEAVE IT TO ME! I need to show the boss I've got the strength to join the Operation."
"What operation?" I asked, my voice echoing strangely against the stone walls.
Shorty turned to me, adjusting the glasses that kept sliding down her sweaty nose. "They're rumors. Word is your uncle is putting together a secret infiltration into Classes City. He wants to plant people inside disguised as normal civilians without alerting the Mayor or the security system."
My mind raced. If I got into that operation, I could finally find Ren, Kai, and the others. Maybe that was why my uncle was in such a rush. But my thoughts were cut short by a sound that made the hair on my arms stand up: a high-pitched roar, like metal grinding against bone, echoed from the depths of the darkness.
The Skinny Guy froze, trembling so hard the sound of his teeth chattering was audible. DJ, the girl with the headphones, pulled them down around her neck and tilted her head, closing her eyes.
"Footsteps... many footsteps," she whispered, her voice thick with dread. "There are more than fifteen Corrupted."
"Fifteen?!" Shorty exclaimed, her voice jumping an octave. "That's more than Ember's squad ever faced! Are you sure?"
I didn't know who Ember was, but the smell that hit my nostrils at that moment stopped me from asking. It was a metallic, rotten odor. On the ground by the path lay the remains of a man. His chest had been ripped open with brute force, his ribs shattered outward like blood-stained ivory stakes. His entrails were scattered across the floor like grey, slimy serpents, and his face... his face was just a mass of overturned flesh. Someone—or something—didn't just want to kill; they wanted to deconstruct the victim's biology out of pure sadism.
Deep in the back, a pale light began to flicker. Little by little, a flashlight appeared, casting distorted shadows across the jagged walls of the tunnel. Shorty reached out her hand, concentrating. The ground beneath her feet cracked as she decomposed the rock, recreating it into a crude, sharp stone blade. I looked with my System Eye, but I saw no codes, no data clouds. She was a natural user, lacking the interface I possessed.
The light drew closer. A face emerged in the beam: he looked like a healthy, clean-shaven man.
"Hey! You almost gave us a heart attack," Muscle shouted, relaxing his posture. "DJ, you sure this guy equals fifteen monsters?"
DJ didn't answer. She was paralyzed.
As the man stepped fully into the light, the horror revealed itself. There was no body. It was just a human head, severed with cruel precision, floating in the void of the darkness. A second later, we saw the trick: the head was skewered onto the top of what looked like an external spinal column belonging to a creature in the shadows.
Fresh blood dripped from the base of the severed neck, creating a rhythmic, sickening sound on the stone floor: Ploc. Ploc. Ploc.
Skinny Guy collapsed to his knees, sweat breaking out on his skin as he stared at the man's lifeless face, whose eyes still seemed to glint with the last remnant of agony.
"What the hell... whoever's back there in the shadows, SHOW YOURSELF!" bellowed Muscle, too stupid to feel the terror suffocating the rest of us.
From the shadows, the Corrupted lunged. It wasn't like the others; its body was a mass of black, translucent muscle, moving with inhuman flexibility. It leaped toward the leader, but Muscle was faster. With a punch loaded with raw power, he slammed into the creature's ribs, dodging to the side with surprising agility for his size. The sound of the impact was like a sledgehammer hitting rotten meat.
Before the monster could react, Muscle stomped on its head with monstrous violence, crushing its skull against the floor. The core shattered, releasing a foul, black dust.
"Is that all?" Muscle spat on the ground.
But he was wrong. From the walls, the ceiling, and the cracks in the tunnel, fourteen more pairs of red eyes flared to life. The bloody banquet was just beginning.
The first Corrupted leaped from the wall with inhuman speed, aiming for Muscle's throat. With a raw reflex, the leader ducked, and the moment his hands touched the damp earth, his body underwent a metamorphosis: his skin took on the grey texture and density of solid rock. The monster collided with him, but it was like hitting a granite statue.
The creature ricocheted and landed right in front of Shorty. She reacted fast, thrusting her stone blade toward the monster's skull, but it was quicker. The stab caught only its shoulder, tearing through the black, viscous flesh. The Corrupted let out a metallic shriek and scaled the wall in seconds, vanishing into the shadows of the ceiling while four others pounced on Muscle. He was surrounded, but his rock armor held against the slashes. With a roar, he grabbed two of them by their necks and slammed their heads together with a force that made the sound of breaking bone echo through the tunnel.
Meanwhile, danger came from above. A Corrupted crawling along the ceiling launched itself at Skinny Guy. I tried to react, my hands reaching for the structure of my chains to create a defense, but DJ was faster. She stomped the ground, and the terrain obeyed; a spike of sharpened stone erupted from the floor, impaling the monster in mid-air. The tip burst through the creature's chest, tearing through its heart, but it still writhed, struggling to break free.
I took the opening. I wrapped my arm in chains for protection and charged. I landed a punch, two, three... seven continuous blows, crushing the creature's face until the core glowed amidst the mangled flesh. But the victory was short-lived.
Another monster was already on the ceiling, positioned directly above me. Just as I closed my eyes expecting the impact, I heard a high-pressure spray. A white, viscous liquid hit the Corrupted dead-on. Within seconds, the liquid hardened like cement, pinning the monster to the wall. I looked back, shocked. Skinny Guy was panting, sweat pouring down his face, but with a shaky grin.
"Ah... ah... I saved you, didn't I?" he wheezed, nearly collapsing from exhaustion. "I really saved you! Now finish that bastard off for me!"
I nodded and unleashed a sequence of punches into the skull hardened by the chemical "milk" until the core shattered into black dust. Five dead. Ten remained.
The scene was a nightmare. Muscle was fighting three at once while two others tore chunks of his rock armor from his back. One of them hammered relentless punches into his stomach, sending stone debris flying everywhere.
I ran to help him, but two new Corrupted blocked my path. I looked around: Shorty was trying to finish one off, while DJ and Skinny Guy fought desperately against three others. DJ was already bleeding from her face and arms, deep claw marks tearing through her skin.
The two in front of me split: one to the right, one to the left. The one on the right slashed at my face; I dodged by millimeters, using every ounce of the training I'd had in the ring. I ducked a lateral strike from the second and grabbed its head, trying to break it against my knee, but they were too resilient. It felt like I was trying to break concrete with my bare hands.
Then, the other one pounced on me, pinning me to the damp floor. For a bizarre second, my brain locked up. Beneath the flickering light, the figure pinning me had feminine features and a sculpted body, yet distorted by the darkness. Before my teenage mind could process the confusion, the pain arrived.
She drove her claws into my chest, tearing from my collarbone down to my navel. Hot blood spurted out, soaking my shirt. I let out a scream of agony that seemed to deafen my own ears. The other monster moved in for the kill, aiming for my head, but I rolled away at the last second, feeling my blood pulse rhythmically from the wound.
I looked to the side. Muscle was still roaring, but he was covered in blood—one of his ears had been brutally torn off. We were being massacred.
As I struggled to dodge the next attacks from the two monsters, a thought hammered in my mind. Where was the System? It always popped up with a mission or a warning when my life was on the line, but so far, nothing. "Is this piece of junk broken?" I wondered, executing a lateral weave to avoid a blow that would have taken my head off.
Beside me, I heard a frantic exchange between DJ and Skinny Guy. Before I could make sense of it, Skinny Guy let out a shout and "expelled" his chemical compound across the entire cavern floor. In an instant, the white liquid reacted with the air and hardened, freezing everything it touched in place.
"Hell yeah!" I shouted, realizing the monsters' feet were trapped in the solidified milk. "You immobilized all of them!"
The monsters fought against the substance, but the hardening was too fast. Only one of us managed to break free through sheer brute force: Muscle. He roared as he shattered the core of a trapped opponent, despite bleeding from multiple wounds. I tried to pull free, but my body lacked the physical strength to break the crust. Skinny Guy approached, using an enzymatic secretion to dissolve the hardening around my legs.
Free at last, I didn't waste time. I lunged forward, landing a kick fueled by all my frustration into the first Corrupted's head, and immediately spun to strike the female figure. The impact shattered both their cores, turning them into black smoke. The milk "ice" was slowly disappearing, but we had won. All fifteen were dead.
The peace didn't last long. Muscle stomped over to Skinny Guy, getting right in his face with pure fury.
"What the hell do you think you're doing, you piece of shit?!" he snarled, his severed ear still leaking blood. "You ruined my fight! You trapped the beasts and took all the fun out of it! What is your problem?!"
DJ tried to intervene, but Shorty was faster. She stepped between them, pointing her finger directly at the leader's massive chest.
"Listen here, 'Muscle.' I'm done with your tantrums. Fix your attitude right now or we're kicking you out of the group!"
The brute let out a sarcastic, disgusting laugh. "You bitch... did you forget I slept with you? I'm the one who got you into that training for the squad selection!"
"That might be true," Shorty shot back, her eyes blaring like fire, "but I didn't know you were such a low-life. You cheated on me with your neighbor! Dammit, you screwed Cletiode! She was a damn senior citizen, man! Look at your size and look at hers!"
Before the argument could devolve into total filth, the roar returned. But it wasn't like the others. It was a deep, guttural sound that made the ceiling stones vibrate and my stomach turn. That didn't come from any ordinary Corrupted.
The ground began to shake. From the densest shadows of the cave, a colossal figure emerged. It was a black, cubic monster, but with the proportions of a two-story building. The creature's muscle mass was bizarre; each arm was a mountain of dark, rigid flesh.
"No way..." Muscle muttered, his arrogance vanishing for the first time. "That thing's biceps are the size of my entire body."
In that same instant, a neon blue panel flashed before my eyes, illuminating the darkness:
[EMERGENCY MISSION: Extreme Survival]Objective: Defeat the Ancestral Entity threatening your existence. Reward: System Evolution to Version 2.0. Penalty for Failure: Permanent Death.
I swallowed hard. The bloody banquet had only been the appetizer. The main course had just arrived.