Henry prepared to shoot his arrow, the golden shaft humming with contained energy as he drew the bowstring back to his ear. His muscles tensed, silver light gathering around the arrow's tip as he aimed into the darkness where the Skin Walkers' laughter echoed. The sound was getting closer, more organized, and every instinct he possessed was screaming at him to attack first and ask questions later.
Then a voice rang out across the plain, cutting through the maddening chorus like a knife through silk.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk. What rude guests, aiming we apons at their host."
The voice was smooth and cultured, carrying the tone of someone commenting on poor etiquette at a dinner party rather than addressing armed hunters in a hellscape. But underneath the politeness was something cold and ancient, a weight that spoke of centuries spent in darkness.
All of the hunters felt chills run down their spines simultaneously. The voice wasn't coming from the laughing horde—it was coming from something else entirely, something that commanded enough respect to make five hundred monsters fall silent.
The Skin Walkers began to part, their synchronized movements creating a clear path through their formation. They moved with reverent precision, like worshippers making way for their god. Their bandaged heads turned toward the darkness behind them, and their endless grins widened with anticipation.
From the shadows between them emerged something that redefined everyone's understanding of terror.
The creature crouched low in the dark, its body massive and built from bulging muscle that shifted and pulsed beneath skin that looked like melted flesh. Every movement sent ripples through its form, as if its body couldn't quite decide what shape it wanted to hold.
Its arms were far too long for any earthly anatomy—four in total, each one thick as tree trunks and ending in bony fingers that looked strong enough to snap a man in half. The joints bent at impossible angles, suggesting bones that had been broken and reset according to alien principles of design.
Two of those hands held open a massive mouth that dominated the creature's torso. The opening wasn't human in any recognizable way—it stretched across its entire lower chest and stomach like a horizontal wound, filled with dozens of sharp, perfectly straight teeth. Each tooth was identical to the others, arranged in neat rows like a shark's mouth scaled up to monstrous proportions. The grin never closed, never wavered, just maintained that constant expression of hungry anticipation.
Above this monstrous mouth sat another face, smaller but somehow even more disturbing than the grotesque maw below. The skin was pale and smooth like carved wax, unmarked by any blemish or expression except for lips stretched into a faint smile. The eyes bulged from their sockets, wide and unblinking, staring ahead with the fixed intensity of something that had forgotten how to look away. The face held one finger pressed to its lips in an eternal gesture of silence, as if the entire world was a library where noise was forbidden.
Behind the creature, huge structures jutted out of its back like the remains of broken cathedral spires. They looked like rows of giant teeth or jawbones, each one the size of a grown man, fanning outward like the ribs of some impossible umbrella. The structures twitched and shifted slowly, flexing with muscular contractions that proved they were very much alive and very much part of the creature's body.
At the very top of its form, just above the smaller face, sat a single massive eye. It had no eyelids and remained always open, black and empty as a void, staring down at everything with the patient attention of something that had watched civilizations rise and fall. The eye never moved, never blinked, just observed with the cold interest of a scientist studying specimens.
The creature's legs were bent low like a crouched spider, its impossibly long arms resting on the ground to support its enormous weight. Even while perfectly still, it radiated the coiled tension of something ready to leap across vast distances in a single bound. Every part of its body suggested controlled violence, potential energy waiting for the right moment to explode into motion.
The smaller face kept its finger raised in that eternal shushing gesture, while the huge mouth below smiled wider with each passing second, as if savoring the fear radiating from the hunters.
Henry aimed his monster encyclopedia at the creature, the device's camera focusing and refocusing as it tried to process what it was seeing. The screen flickered with scanning data, algorithms working overtime to match the creature against every known monster classification.
The result came back negative.
"There's no information about it in the database," Henry said, his voice barely above a whisper. The device had never failed before—it contained data on every creature ever encountered by human hunters, from common goblins to legendary dragons. For it to come up empty meant they were facing something completely unknown.
Everyone felt the tension ratchet up to breaking point. Hans's chimeras whimpered and pressed closer to their summoner, their animal instincts recognizing a predator beyond their ability to fight. Irene's knuckles went white around her sword hilt, her training warring with the primal urge to run. Nox's tentacles twitched beneath his coat, responding to his elevated stress levels.
"This guy is definitely Calamity rank at least," Hans whispered, his face pale as old parchment. Calamity rank monsters were the stuff of legends—creatures that could level cities, that required armies to bring down, that most hunters would never see and live to tell about it.
"Don't be so tense," the creature said, its voice dripping with mockery wrapped in false concern. The smaller face's smile widened just a fraction, while the massive mouth below seemed to chuckle without making sound. "We're here to negotiate."
The casual tone, the reasonable words, the complete disconnect between its appearance and its manner—everything about the creature was wrong in ways that made their minds rebel against processing it.
"Huh, you bring an army and want to negotiate?" Nox asked, his gatling gun still spinning but not yet firing. The absurdity of the situation wasn't lost on him—five hundred monsters surrounding them while their leader discussed terms like a businessman.
"Well, if I came here by myself, I would be at a disadvantage, right?" The creature's tone was perfectly reasonable, as if explaining basic tactics to slow students. "And with this army, I can at least make sure one or two of you die without suffering any damage myself."
The casual way it discussed their deaths sent ice through everyone's veins. But for Nox, the words triggered something worse than fear—they triggered a sudden, alarming realization that crashed into his consciousness like a physical blow.
The quest. The penalty for failure. The system's cold, mechanical warning echoed in his memory: "If anyone of them dies, Quest will fail. Penalty: DEATH."
He couldn't let any of them die. Not Hans with his useful chimeras, not Henry with his tracking abilities, not even Irene with her limited effectiveness in this nightmare environment. The system had bound their fates together, making each of their lives essential to his own survival.
The creature was talking about killing one or two of them like it was discussing the weather, and Nox realized with growing horror that he was completely powerless to prevent it. They were outnumbered, outclassed, and facing something that wasn't even in the hunter database.
The red moon pulsed overhead, its light growing brighter with each passing moment. Around them, five hundred Skin Walkers waited with infinite patience, their stolen laughter reduced to whispers that sounded like wind through a graveyard.
And in the center of it all, the pack leader smiled with mouths that had never known human warmth, waiting to see what choice the hunters would make.
"So," the creature said, its voice carrying across the plain like a funeral bell, "shall we discuss terms?"