The darkness of the chamber seemed to condense around a single form, a mass of muscle and fury nestled at the heart of the dungeon. Ryuji stood motionless, breath short, facing the Red Wolf. The beast was not simply large; it was colossal. Far more massive than the specimens he had slain before, its fur, a dark crimson almost like burgundy, seemed to absorb the flickering light of the torch fixed to the wall. It looked like a fresh bloodstain smeared across the monotonous gray stone.
Its fangs, yellowed and thickened by years of carnage, gleamed like ivory daggers ready to tear flesh. Its eyes, two burning amber globes, did not blink. They fixed on Ryuji with a malicious intelligence that went beyond animal instinct.
— "Yeah… of course…" Ryuji muttered.
A bitter smile spread across his face, a mix of extreme exhaustion and savage determination. He wiped away the sweat mixed with dust that burned his eyes with the back of his hand.
— "It seemed too easy. Fate just won't let go, huh?"
He straightened slowly, each vertebra protesting against the effort. His fingers tightened around the hilt of the rusty sword, a relic of iron he had torn from the skeletal fingers of a corpse a few corridors earlier. His muscles, still congested with lactic acid from previous battles, trembled uncontrollably. Yet in his mind, fear had no place anymore. It had been replaced by a cold necessity: kill or be killed.
The wolf growled. It was not a simple bark, but a seismic rumble that made Ryuji's ribcage vibrate and the stone beneath his boots tremble. The beast advanced. Each step was heavy, deliberate, marking an unquestionable authority over this realm of darkness. Ryuji felt adrenaline flood his system, a surge of heat that temporarily masked the pain of his fractured ribs. He knew that in this face-off, the slightest misstep, the slightest blink, would be his death sentence.
The first assault came with terrifying speed. Despite its size, the wolf crossed the distance in a single prodigious leap. The ground seemed to collapse under its push. Ryuji did not think; he dove to the side, a fraction of a second before the beast's jaws snapped shut on the space he had occupied. The clack of teeth echoed like a gunshot.
He rolled on the cold, damp stone, staggered to his feet, and launched an instinctive counterattack. His horizontal strike aimed at the exposed flank. The sword struck the thick fur, but instead of piercing, the impact sent a painful vibration up from his wrist to his shoulder. It was like striking an oak trunk wrapped in leather. The beast did not even flinch. It pivoted with feline agility, roaring in rage, and brought down a massive paw armed with black claws.
Every movement became a calculation of survival, precise and agonizing. Ryuji used everything the environment offered. He used the stone pillars to break the monster's momentum, the uneven ground to gain height, and even the corpses of lesser wolves littering the chamber to disrupt the predator's footing.
A leap to the left to dodge a charge, a strike with the pommel to the jaw to create an opening, a desperate roll beneath the beast's belly to escape a claw swipe… each maneuver drained precious energy he no longer had. His lungs burned, the dungeon's air suddenly too rare, too heavy.
The Red Wolf was not just brute force; it was strategic. It quickly understood Ryuji's tricks and began harassing him, not with great leaps but with successive small charges, pushing him toward the walls of the chamber. It sought to trap him in a dead angle, where evasion would become impossible.
Ryuji bit his lip until it bled to stay awake, to resist the lethargy threatening to numb his limbs. He saw the wolf's attack patterns unfolding before him, a macabre choreography of imminent death. He had to anticipate. He had to be more than a man; he had to become an extension of his broken weapon.
Suddenly, the wolf made a mistake—or perhaps it was the overconfidence of a dominant predator. In attempting a paw strike too wide, it lost balance for an instant on the blood-slick floor. Ryuji saw the opening. It was now or never.
He gathered every shred of strength left in his muscles, pushed off his legs as if to take flight, and brought his sword down with all his might toward the beast's gaping maw. But at the moment of impact, a sinister sound rang out: the sharp crack of fatigued metal.
The rusty sword, unable to withstand the pressure of such a blow against the wolf's massive bones, fractured. In a flash, the blade shattered. Ryuji was left with a useless hilt and two or three jagged fragments of iron in his palm. The wolf, though wounded at the jaw, straightened, its yellow eyes gleaming with savage triumph.
But Ryuji's gaze was no longer human. Panic had given way to a murderous trance. Without retreating an inch, he hurled himself directly at the beast's snout. Taking advantage of the monster's surprise at this suicidal charge, he clung to the coarse fur of its neck and, with a damned howl, drove the largest fragment of the blade straight into the wolf's left eye.
An inhuman scream tore through the air, a cry of pain so powerful it seemed to shake dust from the ancient ceiling. The wolf reared, shaking Ryuji like a rag doll. But the young man held fast, his fingers digging into flesh. He seized a second shard and, with the rage of one who has nothing left to lose, struck again. Once, twice, driving the iron deeper into the socket, seeking the brain, seeking the end of the nightmare.
The wolf collapsed. The mass of muscle fell with a dull thud that made the walls tremble one last time. A final spasm shook its paws, then silence fell, heavy, oppressive, broken only by the dying crackle of the torch.
Ryuji let go and dropped to his knees beside the carcass. His hands were a mix of the beast's black blood and his own red blood. He trembled so violently he had to lean against the wolf's still-warm flank to keep from collapsing entirely. Each breath was agony, a rasp tearing his throat.
He remained there for long minutes, body battered, face smeared with debris. In the dungeon's darkness, memories surged back in a chilling wave: the gigantic shadow of the Basilisk, the screams of his comrades, the scornful laughter of those who betrayed him, the cold of oblivion where the kingdom had condemned him. They thought they had cast him aside, a piece sacrificed on the chessboard of their glory.
A glimmer of determination, purer and harder than before, reignited in his eyes. It was no longer just survival. It was a forge.
At last, he lifted his gaze toward the unseen vault of the dungeon, where, somewhere above layers of earth and betrayal, the world continued to turn without him. A weak, gravelly laugh escaped his cracked lips.
— "In the end…" he murmured, his voice broken by effort. "These six months in hell… they're worth something after all."
Ryuji remained there, on the ground, exhausted but alive. For the first time since his fall, he no longer felt like a victim of fate. He was the survivor. And for those waiting above, that was not good news. The red beast was dead, but another, far more dangerous, had just been born in the depths.