Chapter 22
Eight Limbs Part 2
[Inside the hall]
An explosion shook the walls.
Bam!
Laios's body was sent flying like a projectile, spinning uncontrollably through the air. The blood escaping from his mouth hung suspended for a moment behind him, tracing a dark trail across the hall. The officer and the burly man watched him fly, unable to move, their gazes fixed on the slow spin of his arms and his head lolling from side to side.
The second impact was not long in coming.
Bam!
Laios's back slammed against the red doors. The wood first groaned in an agonizing creak, as if trying to resist, but the weight and speed of the body shattered its resistance in a single burst. The two doors bent outward, burst their hinges, and shot out like pieces of a giant toy, crashing onto the floor. Splinters flew in every direction.
The echo reverberated throughout the hall.
For a heartbeat, no one moved. The officer's eyes were wide open, unable to process how his companion had vanished beyond what were once doors. The burly man barely breathed, his mouth slightly agape, as if the air had gotten trapped in his chest.
And then, a new rumble.
Roar.
A dry, bestial roar snapped the officer back to reality. His gaze snapped sharply towards the source of the sound.
The monster's roar thundered in the hall.
The creature lunged forward. Its six limbs dug into the floor with the force of battering rams, leaving cracks in the ground as it gained speed. The charge wasn't a simple leap: it was like a living landslide, a torrent of deformed muscles and bones aimed straight at the burly man.
The two-meter-ten man remained motionless, still processing the image of Laios flying through the air. He barely managed to look up when the monster's shadow was already upon him.
The officer was the first to react.
His left leg struck the floor and served as an anchor. With the other, he pushed himself upward, snatching a piece of splintered wood from the wreckage of the tables. He gripped it in his right hand, twisted his torso, and leaned over until his free palm almost touched the floor to give more inertia to the movement.
—"Hah!"— he exhaled as he threw.
His right arm described a complete arc, and in the middle of the spin, a green radiance emerged from his hand, expanding to envelop the makeshift stake. The energy took shape, a rectangle with sharp edges that crackled before sealing itself like a sheath of translucent light.
The projectile shot out with a cutting hum. It spun on its axis like a double-tipped bullet, illuminating its trajectory with emerald flashes.
The monster barely turned its skull upon perceiving something in the air, but too late.
A wet, dreadful sound filled the hall.
Chac!
The stake smashed into the last remaining eye, piercing the eyeball in an explosion of fluids that splattered onto the floor. The creature roared with a metallic shriek, bending its body backward as if from pure pain.
That scream was the final blow that finally woke the burly man. He blinked, swallowed, and turned his head towards the hulk bearing down on him. What he saw froze his blood: the monster, though wounded, kept charging, its maw open like an endless crack, its limbs ready to crush him.
The burly man was not a small man. He never had been.
At over two meters ten, his mere presence commanded respect in any tavern, any battlefield, any squad. Since childhood, he never had to look up to speak to someone his age; it was always others who looked up at him.
Even prodigies of his generation like Körper, the prana boy, and Laios...
In his early years as an adventurer, when he still wore borrowed armor and the steel felt loose in his hands, he had faced beasts that doubled his weight. Yes, he felt weak then, even helpless, comparing himself to legendary figures and tall Imperials who seemed made of another world.
Even alongside monsters of talent like the prodigies of his generation who even became part of the lesser 'Eleven'...
But he never felt small.
Never….
Until today.
The monster, wounded, with its six limbs spread wide, still surpassed him in size. It wasn't just its height: it was the density, the ferocity, the way its shadow covered the entire ground around it. Seeing it scream with that bleeding hole where an eye should be didn't give him hope, it gave him terror.
The burly man fell to his knees, collapsing the one knee he still had raised. His breath caught. Something inside him crumbled like the doors that had just shattered under Laios's body.
The security of a lifetime—the idea that his size was his shield, his guarantee against fear—shattered in a second.
And what came in its place was a panic he had never felt.
His face twisted, first into a gesture of horror… but then it began to truly deform. His skin changed tone, as if a wave of fever rose from his throat to his forehead. His cheeks trembled, bubbled, and a thin tentacle emerged from the corner of his lip. Then another. And another.
Impossible colors, like twisted sea corals under the light of a strange sun, sprouted in irregular patches across his face. The infection didn't spread slowly: it propagated like fire on dry paper. Where there was once skin, now amorphous masses pulsed and intertwined like exposed viscera.
The officer, who was running towards him after throwing the stake, stopped short. A golden light began to radiate from under the burly man's uniform, growing with each second. The glare covered everything, blinding him to the point of forcing him to cover his eyes with an arm.
—"Hanz!"— he shouted, advancing blindly, unable to see.
The entire hall shook.
Crash.
Explosion.
And suddenly, the light vanished.
The golden radiance extinguished as abruptly as it had appeared.
The officer lowered his arm, blinking, his eyes still irritated by the light.
—"Did it disappear…?"— he murmured, his voice broken.
When his vision returned, the first thing he saw left him frozen.
The monster was leaning forward, slightly hunched, like someone brushing aside an annoyance. One of its left limbs was still extended, rigid, still vibrating from the impact it had just executed.
The officer's gaze followed the line of that arm.
At the far end, embedded in the wall like a rag doll thrown in fury, was the burly man. Hanz.
His body hung crooked, his head tilted, his arms bent at impossible angles. Almost half of his anatomy had turned into a viscous mass of iridescent colors that pulsed as if still trying to recompose itself. The rest was shattered flesh, crushed against the stone.
The wall had absorbed the charge with a dull thud. Deep cracks spread from the point of impact, and fragments of rock fell slowly onto the already inert body.
It took the officer only a couple of seconds to understand what he was seeing. It was enough for something inside him to tear.
—"Hanz…"— he said, barely a whisper.
He tried to take a step forward, but his knees refused to move. It was then that the monster turned its head towards him.
It had no eyes, but still the officer felt a chill run down his entire spine, as if those empty sockets were piercing him through and through.
His body reacted with an involuntary jolt.
"Wait…" he thought suddenly. "Before, its eyes seemed dead. It moved its head towards us, but its eyes didn't… its eyes never followed us."
That flash of lucidity barely gave him time to duck in time.
Bam!
The monster exploded towards him in an impossible leap, its entire mass falling like a meteorite.
The officer had barely managed to duck when two shadows closed in on him.
He felt the brutal pull on his shoulders: the limbs on the monster's thighs had caught him by the uniform.
—"Tch!"— he grunted, trying to break free.
He had no chance.
The monster used its other limbs as levers, pushed off, spun with an agility impossible for its size, and threw him like a sack of sand.
The officer went flying diagonally towards the wall.
The air was cut short. The wall approached at a speed that froze his blood.
"Shit…!"
Mid-flight, he managed to twist his torso and spin around. With a desperate effort, he channeled energy into his legs. Two long, pointed green rectangles erupted from the soles of his feet with a burst of light.
Crrshhh!
The blades dug into the floor just before the impact would have shattered him. The drag was so violent that it opened two deep furrows in the hall's floor, sending chunks of debris and splinters in all directions. His body was held in absolute tension, muscles burning as they resisted the inertia.
For an instant, there was only the sound of crunching wood and the grinding of his own teeth.
Then, silence.
The officer breathed raggedly, his forehead beaded with sweat. He had managed to stop his flight. He wasn't broken… yet.
As the rectangles dissolved and disappeared like dust, the officer landed with a spin.
He raised his gaze.
The monster hadn't moved from its spot. It remained hunched, motionless.
A step thundered to the left.
Tac!
The officer immediately turned towards that side, raising his fist coated in the same translucent green energy. His arm was already ready for impact.
And he saw it.
A new creature, humanoid, made of pulsating flesh, was advancing towards him with a fluid, unnatural movement, as if its bones didn't exist.
The officer clenched his jaw. His fist was already sheathed in the translucent green energy when the creature arched like a snake.
Its torso bent backward beyond human limits, vertebrae cracking like dry branches, and it dodged the blow with an impossible movement.
Whssshh!
The air whistled as the fist passed, cutting through the space where the creature's head had been a second before.
The officer didn't waste time. He pivoted his hips, wanting to chain another blow, but a sharp pain pierced his abdomen.
—"Gh…!"—
He looked down.
One of the humanoid's limbs had struck directly on his left side, tearing out a piece of flesh that hung loose, leaving a hole almost an inch deep. Blood gushed out immediately, warm and sticky, soaking his uniform.
The officer instinctively leaned backward, preventing the blow from going straight through him. Even so, the burning pain forced him to bite his tongue to keep from screaming.
Meanwhile, another of the green rectangles appeared over his wound and it began to smoke.
The creature, however, did not stop. It bent forward with the same fluid motion and attacked again, unleashing a flurry of pulsating arms that seemed to have no bones.
The officer took a step back, raised his energy-coated fist, and struck again. This time the impact hit the monster in its side.
The crack was dry, like hitting wet meat against stone.
The humanoid was thrown sideways, staggering, with a strange moan, a mix of hiss and bubbling. But it didn't fall.
It arched again, bending its back until it almost touched the ground, and turned towards the six-limbed monster, as if it hadn't seen the officer at all.
The officer gasped, bringing his left hand closer to his abdomen, increasing the intensity of the green color, and forced himself to turn towards the creature. But then, what he saw paralyzed him.
The six-limbed fish monster… was collapsing.
Its hollow body fell in on itself, crumbling like empty clothes falling to the ground. The sound was viscous, repulsive, like hollow flesh being crushed.
"What…?" thought the officer, frowning.
And in the same instant, he saw it: the pulsating humanoid lunged towards the mouth of the fallen monster. It slid inside, torso first, then legs, sinking with a disgusting speed, as if being sucked in.
The hollow carcass of the monster trembled. Then… it stood up.
The officer was frozen solid.
"Eh…"
For a moment, just a moment, he stood still, involuntarily trying to comprehend what he had just witnessed.
The officer hadn't finished processing what he was seeing. The fish monster, which seconds before had collapsed like an empty sack, was rising again. The hollow flesh now swelled and creaked like stretched leather, as if the body had been stuffed from within by something more solid, more lethal.
A viscous sound rumbled from its interior.
The officer took a step back, breathing rapidly, his legs ready to launch him in any direction.
And then he felt it.
A new pressure, different, erupted in the hall. It didn't come from the creature in front of him, but from the entrance.
Tac!
The echo of a single step resonated louder than any previous roar.
The officer turned his head sharply.
There, in the broken doorframe, a black foot emerged from the gloom. Its surface wasn't skin: it looked like volcanic rock, cracked, with incandescent veins glowing from within like embers.
The foot descended calmly, and upon touching the floor, it released an explosion.
Fwoooosh!
A wave of fire expanded in a fan, sweeping through the hall with a scorching roar. The wood reddened on contact, the columns creaked as they were licked by the flames, and the air itself became unbreathable, searing, like a red-hot iron entering the lungs.
The officer barely had time to crouch and cover himself with his right arm while with his left he touched the floor, at which moment three small but dense green walls rose in front of the officer, one on top of the other.
The wave shattered two of the three walls and at the same time the officer pressed himself against the last wall which held,
but the fire reached behind, surrounding the wall from the sides and above, almost reaching the officer, though it did burn part of his uniform.
The wave lifted pieces of wood and debris. The back wall took the full force of the flare and cracked into a web of fissures that sizzled like burning coal before catching fire.
The fish monster was engulfed by the flames. The officer caught a glimpse of it out of the corner of his eye: it writhed, as if trying to close any orifice in its body, while tongues of fire licked its deformed flesh.
The silence that followed was suffocating. The air still vibrated with the echo of the fire, and the floor was burning, as were all the debris in the hall. Everything emitting smoke.
The officer gritted his teeth.
While watching through the translucent green wall, he saw the new monster move and emerge from the darkness of the stormy night.