The farther they went, the more frightened Saruman became. He couldn't even imagine what kind of twisted, evil beings lay sealed within this city.
"Damn it... If we want to get out of here, we'll probably have to face one of those horrifying creatures."
The realization left his face grim. Even now, he was barely holding on. He had no choice but to keep casting 'Psychic Barrier', an ancient mental shield woven from runes and sheer force of will.
"My magic is disappearing too fast."
Saruman gripped his wand so tightly his knuckles turned white, veins throbbing at his temples.
Every time another whisper invaded his mind, the barrier shimmered with faint silver ripples, like circles spreading across the surface of a lake. He knew that the instant his magic ran dry, even for a heartbeat, madness would flood in like a tidal wave.
And once that happened, Kag wouldn't escape it either.
"Hang in there!" Kag shouted through gritted teeth. "I'm sharing my Warrior's Heart with you!"
His own face looked just as bad. He had no magic and no spells; all he possessed was a body forged by endless battles and hardship, paired with a heart that refused to yield.
Cold sweat covered both of their foreheads, and they had bitten their lips hard enough to draw blood.
Their eyes remained fixed straight ahead, not because they needed to see the road, but because they dared not let their gaze wander into the writhing shadows surrounding them.
"We're going home," Kag repeated over and over, silently reciting the name of his homeland. "We're going home."
It was the only anchor he had left, the only piece of driftwood keeping him from being swallowed by the sea of madness.
Even so, he began hearing his own inner voice answering the whispers.
"Maybe...
…maybe it's time to stop...
…It's peaceful here...
…It's warm..."
Both Kag and Saruman knew it was a temptation.
They barely spoke anymore.
Any words they exchanged could become another path for the corruption to creep in, twisting their voices into fresh seeds of insanity.
Instead, they communicated with nothing but glances: a weary yet determined nod, a brief, reassuring pat on the shoulder.
Their silent alliance became the simplest, and most precious, weapon they had against this cursed domain.
Night deepened. No stars shone overhead, only a sickly moon hanging above the warped horizon, slowly shifting colors as it bathed the city in its ominous light.
Perhaps on this cursed land, the true destination had never been a physical place. Perhaps the real finish line was whether one's soul could preserve that tiny spark called 'self' amidst the endless flood of madness.
Of course, the dangers weren't limited to the mind.
About half an hour later, a very physical threat finally appeared. As they passed beneath an archway formed by two twisted stone pillars, a pool of thick black liquid beside them suddenly began to boil.
The sludge bulged upward, rapidly taking the shape of a humanoid creature made entirely of slime and shadow.
It had no fixed form, and a wet, choking gurgle escaped its body like the desperate gasps of a drowning man. Several blade-like tendrils shot toward Kag's legs.
"Look out!"
Saruman reacted instantly, thrusting out his wand as a blazing 'Fire Snake' roared forward and slammed into the slime creature. But instead of bursting into flames, the attack vanished as though it had plunged into deep water.
The creature's body rippled violently. It let out an even harsher hiss and kept charging without slowing down in the slightest.
"It has extremely high resistance to physical and elemental attacks!" Saruman reached the conclusion immediately and switched spells.
A powerful shockwave smashed into the slime creature, blowing part of its body apart and splattering chunks across the ground. Yet the remaining mass continued writhing, absorbing the surrounding shadows and black slime as it rapidly tried to rebuild itself.
At that same moment, the walls on both sides, coated in living membranes, suddenly opened.
Countless pale, pupil-less eyes stared back at them. Invisible waves of psychic force shot from every eye like a storm of needles, piercing directly toward the two men's minds.
It was the counterattack of one of the surviving monsters.
"Urgh!" Kag let out a muffled groan. His head felt as though it had been struck by a massive hammer, the sudden dizziness making his movements falter.
Lina, strapped to his back, also seemed affected by the psychic assault as a pained moan escaped her lips.
"Hold on to your mind!" Saruman roared, slamming the butt of his wand against the ground.
A translucent spiritual barrier expanded outward from him, barely managing to intercept most of the incoming psychic assault.
Even so, his face grew noticeably paler. Keeping the corruption at bay already demanded an enormous amount of concentration, and now he had to fight on top of that. The strain was pushing him far beyond his limits.
By then, the slime creature had almost completely reformed. Several tendrils lashed toward them again like venomous snakes, moving with terrifying speed.
"Get back!" Ignoring the splitting pain in his head, Kag let out a furious roar as his warrior's ferocity exploded to the surface. Instead of dodging, he poured magical energy into his greatsword and swept it across with all his strength.
Slash!
This time, the blade worked. Empowered by Demon-Breaking Magical Energy, it sliced through the slime tendrils at their roots. The severed appendages writhed violently on the ground like living creatures before slowly dissolving into puddles.
The monster shrieked in agony and stumbled backward, its body rippling more violently than ever.
"It can't handle enchanted weapons or concentrated energy attacks!" Kag shouted.
Saruman immediately understood. He abandoned ordinary elemental magic and began chanting a short, ancient incantation:
"'Holy Light Judgment!'"
It was one of his most powerful Light spells, devastating against negative energy and evil creatures, one he wouldn't even have been capable of casting before his recent breakthroughs.
A beam of pure, blazing radiance erupted from the tip of his wand, shining like a fragment of the sun itself as it shot forward with unstoppable force.
"SKREEEE...!!"
The slime creature let out a final, piercing scream. Bathed in holy light, its body churned like boiling water before rapidly evaporating into strands of foul black smoke. Within seconds, nothing remained.
The countless pale eyes covering the nearby walls seemed to recoil in fear, snapping shut and vanishing one after another.
"We finally got rid of that thing."
As the battle ended, both men stood there breathing heavily. The black markings on Kag's arm had spread a little farther during the fight, worsened by both the burst of power and the psychic attack.
Sharp stabs of pain shot through his arm, while Saruman's magic reserves had taken another heavy hit.
"Those things..." Kag stared at the black stain slowly fading from the ground, swallowing hard.
"They're even worse than the monsters we fought in the corridor. At least those had physical bodies. These... they're like corruption and pure malice given form."
Saruman nodded grimly.
"Exactly. And they seem to be part of the city itself. They can draw strength directly from their surroundings. We'll have to be even more careful."
He finally understood where the creatures' resilience came from.
After a brief rest, the two forced down the lingering headache from the psychic assault and ignored the pain spreading through Kag's arm before continuing along the dangerous path.
They had no choice, stopping would only give the city more time to erode their minds with its endless whispers and twist their bodies through its ever-present corruption.
The road ahead became even stranger, but they kept moving. Gradually, it felt less like they were walking through streets and more as though they had entered the digestive tract of some colossal living beast.
The walls were no longer cold stone; instead, they were covered with thick, translucent membranes that pulsed faintly.
Beneath them, twisted vein-like patterns slowly flowed through the walls, radiating a sweet yet sickening odor infused with mental corruption.
Even Saruman found himself growing dizzy. The constant humming in the air changed too, becoming more distinct, as though countless tiny insects were crawling and feeding beneath the living membranes.
"Stay close. And don't touch anything," Saruman kept his voice low, deliberately dimming the light from his wand so as not to provoke the seemingly dormant walls. His senses stretched to their limit, scanning every inch of space ahead like an exquisitely precise radar.
But R'lyeh's malice always exceeded expectations.
As they entered an especially narrow passage where dark green gelatinous masses hung from the ceiling like stalactites, the next danger arrived without a sound.
Drip.
A thick, dark yellow droplet carrying a sharp acidic smell fell from above, landing on the ground less than half a step in front of Kag.
SSSST...!
A harsh sizzling sound echoed through the passage as the liquid ate straight into the hard green stone floor, leaving behind a smoking crater.
"Above us!" Kag reacted instantly, leaping backward and tightening his hold on Lina as he did.
The moment the words left his mouth, the stalactite-like masses hanging from the ceiling suddenly came alive, bulges rapidly swelling across their surfaces.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Like festering boils bursting open, they erupted all at once, raining down a torrent of thick, multicolored acid.
Some droplets were dark yellow, so corrosive they could melt stone. Others were inky green, carrying a sickly sweet scent that hinted at powerful neurotoxins.
Some were nearly transparent; instead of burning whatever they touched, these clear blobs writhed across the ground like living creatures, creeping toward their ankles with terrifying speed.
They seemed to possess both powerful adhesive properties and the ability to drain mental energy.
"Damn it! They like ambushes too!"
Saruman snapped his wand through the air, instantly erecting multiple overlapping magical barriers around them just in time.
The acid slammed into the shields with a harsh hiss as colored smoke billowed everywhere. The barriers flickered violently, their light dimming at a visible rate.
"We can't stand here and take this! Move!"
Maintaining the shields was draining Saruman's magic at an alarming pace, but as he poured more power into them, he pushed forward.
Beside him, Kag swung his greatsword, batting away several blobs of slime that tried to slip around the barriers from the sides.
Hiss...
Even his blade began to corrode where it touched the liquid, making his heart skip a beat. This wasn't ordinary acid.
"What the hell are these things? They're even nastier than the slimes we ran into back at the Raven Ruins!"
Shielded by the failing barriers, the two men forced their way forward through the downpour of acid. After struggling another dozen meters, they were almost clear of the stalactite zone when the outermost barrier finally gave way.
Crash!
It shattered into fragments, and several blobs of dark green acid shot through the opening, flying straight at Kag's face.
At the last possible instant, Kag displayed the reflexes of a master warrior. He twisted his body sideways, throwing his armored shoulder into the attack and knocking aside most of the acid.
But even with that reaction, a few drops still splashed onto his breastplate and the exposed skin of his arm.
SSSST...!
Black scorch marks instantly appeared on his armor as the exposed skin erupted in searing pain. Then came numbness, the neurotoxin had begun to work.
"Kag!" Saruman shouted.
"I'm fine! Keep moving!" Grinding his teeth against the agony, Kag ignored the spreading paralysis and burst forward even faster than before.
Saruman followed close behind as the last magical barrier exploded behind them.
"We can't even beat the trash mobs that Legendary wiped out without breaking a sweat..."
The two leaned against a relatively clean section of wall, breathing hard. Neither of them looked particularly encouraged.
"So..." Kag quickly examined his wounds.
The skin on his arm was already swollen and blistered, the numbness steadily spreading.
"Am I about to die again?"
He stared at it for a moment before shrugging.
"Never mind. Looks like I'm still salvageable."
Without hesitation, he grabbed the bottle of 'Advanced Antidote' Saruman handed him and drained it in one gulp.
Then he pulled out a dagger, cut away the dead flesh around the wound, and packed it with a powerful healing powder. His movements were clean and practiced, the sweat pouring down his face the only sign of the pain he was enduring.
"These damn things..." Kag looked uneasily toward the patch of acid still hissing against the stone floor. "They're not just traps."
Saruman watched as the gelatinous stalactites slowly withdrew and returned to their dormant state, his expression growing even graver.
"No. They're more like defensive symbiotic organisms... or perhaps they're the city's immune system."
The realization made both of them feel even heavier. If the entire city was alive, or possessed some kind of collective consciousness, then their presence here was no different from a virus invading the body of a giant.
"Whatever the case," Kag muttered, "I'd really rather not get digested."
After treating his wound as best they could, they wasted no time and pressed onward.
The next stretch of the journey was relatively quiet, but the feeling of being watched never disappeared.
Sometimes the passage opened into spaces as vast as plazas, filled with gigantic fossilized structures resembling the organs of some unimaginable creature.
Other times it narrowed into cracks so tight they had to crawl through on their stomachs.
Gradually, the living membranes covering the walls disappeared, replaced by ancient stone walls carved with blasphemous inscriptions.
As they passed a mural depicting twisted stars and countless tentacles, everything changed again.
The surrounding shadows suddenly came alive, flowing together from every direction like thick black ink. The temperature plummeted as a bone-deep chill spread through the air.
"Hee... hee... hee..."
Countless tiny sounds echoed all around them. The whispers no longer tried to tempt them; instead, voices born of pure resentment erupted directly inside their minds, overflowing with vicious curses and endless cries of despair.
(End Of This Chapter)
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