A few minutes passed.
I couldn't say how many exactly. Time didn't feel the same in this place, but my breathing returned to a steady rhythm, and the burning in my legs faded enough to stop being a constant distraction.
I approached the fountain.
The water was clear, motionless, as if it reacted to nothing. When I leaned over, my reflection showed me a calm image, too calm for what I was about to do. I drank a couple of times, unhurried. The water was cold, and as I swallowed it, I felt something inside me settle. Not energy. Not strength. Clarity.
I didn't think much more about it. Overthinking in situations like this wasn't ideal. Besides, what I had to do was simple.
I just had to kill them all.
I crossed the portal without hesitation.
The corridor was the same. Silent. The four chimeras stood exactly where I had left them, motionless, aligned as if time itself had not passed for them. For a brief moment, I thought they might not activate again.
I stopped in front of the first one.
And then it moved.
There was no surprise this time. The leap was just as violent, just as fast, but my body didn't react too late anymore. I shifted to the side before its claws tore through the space where my head had been.
I pivoted on my heel, took two steps back, and avoided another downward swipe. The strike was powerful, but predictable. Not perfect, but no longer chaotic.
'Good… you're not so unpredictable anymore.'
The chimera fought with brute force. Wide sweeps. Direct blows. No feints. Every attack left a narrow but consistent margin. I slipped into those margins again and again, letting the blows pass centimeters away, sensing the intent of each strike before it reached my body.
My breathing stayed even. My legs responded. The aether sense set the rhythm.
Still, it wasn't enough.
I could dodge. I could endure. But I couldn't hurt it.
That had been the problem from the beginning.
I made a short jump backward, just enough to gain space, and let the chimera advance. I needed something else to happen. My plan didn't work with just one.
As if the world had heard that thought, seconds later the second chimera activated.
The thinner one.
Its movements were erratic, less direct. It advanced with uneven steps, its taut arms moving like living whips, striking the ground hard enough to make it tremble. The distance between the two creatures closed quickly.
Now this would work.
The plan was simple. Brutally simple.
I couldn't damage them, but they could damage each other.
I started moving differently. Not just dodging, positioning. Letting the first attack from awkward angles. Forcing the second to adjust its strikes. Every time one attacked, I shifted just enough for the other to have to correct.
And they corrected poorly.
A whip-arm passed too close to the first's torso. Semi-transparent claws slammed into the second's forearm. The sound was a dry crunch, different from air being cut.
They didn't stop.
I kept moving, guiding them without them realizing it. One step left. A minimal feint. A calculated retreat. Each collision made them clumsier, more aggressive. They weren't thinking, they were simply attacking.
Then it happened.
A poorly measured blow. The second lunged forward, and the first raised its arm to strike at the same time. The claws collided head-on with one of the other's tense arms, and the force of the impact caused something different this time.
One of the first chimera's fingers was torn away.
It hit the ground with a dull, almost metallic sound.
I didn't think, I moved.
I picked it up as I retreated, feeling its uneven weight in my hand. It was hard, sharpened at one end, longer than I had expected. It wasn't a weapon… but it was damn close.
Almost a dagger.
I tightened my grip around it.
'This will do.'
Something changed.
The chimeras didn't retreat, but they slowed down. Their movements became more contained, more deliberate, as if immediate violence had given way to controlled caution. They advanced with heavy, calculated steps, closing the distance without rushing, showing a faint trace of intelligence that separated them from mindless dormant beasts.
I used that opening.
I filled my lungs slowly, forcing the air deep inside. I let my pulse stabilize, let the background noise fall into order. The aether still vibrated with the chimeras' movements, but it was no longer chaos, everything was measured.
I took my stance.
The sharpened finger aligned with my forearm, the tip pointed forward. I lowered my center of gravity, one leg ahead, the other firm behind, ready to move in any direction. I wasn't comfortable, but I was ready.
A few seconds passed.
No one moved.
I could feel the weight of both chimeras bearing down on me, their presence pressing against the space around me. They watched from above, deformed bodies tense, ready to shatter the balance at any moment. I couldn't read expressions on those monstrous faces, but if I could, I knew what I'd see: rage… and disgust. As if my very existence offended them.
Then violence exploded again.
The second chimera attacked first, too fast, too direct. Its whip-arms lashed out in a wide arc, trying to ensnare me. I shifted to the side, just outside the line of impact, and at the same time stepped forward, feigning an attack toward it.
A feint.
The first chimera reacted instantly, interposing itself with a brutal motion. Its claws came down, aiming to crush me before I could reach the other.
That was what I was waiting for.
At the last second, I changed direction.
My body rotated along a line that, thanks to the aether sense, I knew was possible. At the end of that trajectory, an opening awaited me, clear and exposed, in the creature's chest. The wound was there. Not large, but deep, torn open earlier by a clumsy strike from the second chimera.
I slipped into that space.
I drove the sharpened finger in with the full weight of my body behind the motion.
The impact wasn't clean. There was resistance, a wet sound, and then the sensation of something giving way. The chimera let out a muffled roar, its torso convulsing violently. I pulled the improvised blade free and retreated at once.
It wasn't lethal, but it was close.
The first chimera staggered. Its movements lost coordination; one arm dropped uselessly. Its chest contracted irregularly, as if something vital had been severed.
The second chimera saw it and lost control.
It attacked with a different kind of ferocity, no longer measuring angles or distance. Its blows no longer targeted just me; they tore through the space around us with blind violence. I moved however I could, dodging through razor-thin margins, using the first chimera as an unwilling obstacle.
One strike passed too close.
The second chimera's whip-arm slammed directly into the weakened torso of the first. The impact was devastating. A deep crunch echoed, followed by a wet sound impossible to ignore.
The first chimera fell.
Its body hit the ground with dead weight and didn't move again.
'Damn it… I should've landed the final blow.'
The second chimera froze for a brief moment, as if only then realizing what it had done.
It didn't have time to react.
The ground vibrated faintly.
From the depths of the corridor, the third chimera finished rising.
It had two short, thick legs set too close together, and a long tail that struck the ground with sharp, rhythmic movements. For a moment it looked as if it had three legs until the tail's motion broke the illusion.
Its torso was grotesquely long, stretched in a way that felt fundamentally wrong. From it emerged three limbs. Two of them were not arms at all: from what should have been shoulders extended long blades, like living swords, with no hilt or visible joints. They didn't look like weapons. They looked like part of its body.
The third arm grew lower, from the right side of its torso. It was long and thin, ending in a hand with slender fingers that twitched in small spasms, as if probing the space around it.
The moment it fully awakened, it attacked without hesitation.
Using the few seconds before the third chimera was on top of me, I decided to deal as much damage as possible to the second one. Taking the initiative, I exploited the difference in size, positioning myself to the left and dodging a whip strike aimed at my chest. I used the corpse of the first chimera to push off, launching myself toward the only wound the second one had.
The instant my body left the ground, I sensed something through the aether.
Something I wasn't going to like.
The chimera twisted its torso mid-motion, clenched its other arm into a fist, and drove it toward where my head was about to be.
'Shit.'
I didn't fully understand what happened next. My body moved on its own, pure instinct. My legs contracted, my torso twisted, changing my trajectory mid-air. I ended up planting my foot on what I could only describe as the elbow of its normal arm, using it as a springboard.
I jumped again.
Both hands shot forward, gripping the near-dagger.
It struck the chimera's forehead.
The sound that followed was the same as a bone snapping. The blade pierced through without resistance, and thanks to the speed of the motion, the chimera's body fell backward with a dull crash.
As it collapsed, I heard the spell's voice confirm the kill.
[You have slain a dormant monster, Fleshwhip Abomination.]
[You have received a Memory: Infinite Whip.]
I barely paid attention. As obvious as the name was, I summoned it before the third chimera could reach me.
When the whip materialized in my hand, I felt the Residual Echo attribute shut down. Only then did I realize that all the movements that had led to that kill hadn't truly been mine.
The attribute had acted without my awareness.
With the whip in my left hand and the improvised dagger in my right, I lowered my center of gravity once more and took position.
The third chimera was already in front of me.
The blades growing from its shoulders shifted slightly, angling in different directions. It didn't attack right away. It measured. Its tail struck the ground again, setting the distance.
Behind it, the last chimera began to move.
The fourth one.
Until then, it had remained motionless, almost forgotten. It was more compact than the others, with a low, wide body covered in irregular plates that overlapped without order. Its arms were short but thick, ending in hammer-like masses built for crushing.
Great… one's going to cut me in half, and the other's going to turn me into paste.
The third chimera attacked first.
The blades descended in a crossing strike, fast, precise. I propelled myself sideways using the whip as an anchor, wrapping it around a rock jutting from the damaged floor and pulling hard to escape the attack line. The blades passed through the space my torso had occupied a fraction of a second earlier.
The aether sense warned me of the next attack: not from above, but from the side.
I rotated around my axis, letting the blade skim the air centimeters away, and at the same time hurled the whip forward, not to strike, but to interfere.
The whip coiled around one of the living blades, diverting its trajectory just enough. It was sufficient for the chimera to correct poorly. That adjustment left it open for an instant.
I couldn't exploit it.
Because the fourth chimera arrived.
It charged from the side with all its weight, wide, clumsy, devastating. I threw myself forward, rolling between both creatures, feeling the space collapse behind me. The ground shook when the blow landed where I had been.
The third chimera didn't move in time.
The impact from the fourth slammed directly into its elongated torso. It wasn't clean, but it knocked it off balance, forcing it to stab one of its blades into the ground to keep from falling.
There it was.
The mistake.
I sprinted straight at the third chimera, using the whip to launch myself again, flying over the fourth's shoulder. The embedded blade restricted its movement, it couldn't retract without exposing itself.
I drove the dagger in.
At the base of the neck, where the elongated body met the deformed skull. The strike was deep and decisive. Resistance was minimal. The chimera convulsed, its blades vibrating erratically, and then its body collapsed forward.
[You have slain a dormant monster, Bladebound Abomination.]
Before I could retreat, the fourth chimera attacked with renewed fury. Its arms came down in a double blow, aiming to crush me into the ground.
The whip shot out on instinct, wrapping around one of its arms. I pulled with my full body weight, spinning with the motion and using the monster's own strength to throw it off balance. The other arm slammed into the floor, missing me by a narrow margin.
Using the pull, I got too close.
Focused on driving the dagger into its chest, I failed to notice a crucial movement.
With the whip binding one arm, the chimera clearly remembered what I had done to the others. Before I could close the distance enough to strike, it twisted its body nearly ninety degrees and lifted its head.
The shift altered my trajectory.
Straight toward its teeth.
Unable to crush me, it chose a more primitive solution.
To eat me.
And, in a sense, it succeeded.
Given the speed I was moving at, the only thing I could do was avoid a fatal blow, by sacrificing a part of myself.
More precisely, my left arm.
The bite was clean. My arm offered no resistance. The chimera bit down and tore it away, swallowing it whole.
Fortunately, I managed to release the whip before losing it.
The pain was overwhelming and in that moment, I could do nothing.
Once again, I lost control of my body.
It moved without my will, and with the dagger still clenched in my right hand, I drove it into what I assumed was the chimera's cheek.
Using it as an anchor, I pushed with what little balance I had left.
The blade was buried in the dense flesh of its face, not fully, but deep enough to hold. The chimera roared, a deep, resonant sound that shook my chest, and opened its jaws wider, trying to finish what it had started.
I couldn't feel my left arm.
Just emptiness, paired with pain that hadn't yet organized itself in my mind. The world tilted for a moment, as if the corridor itself had been twisted slightly out of alignment.
Then the aether sense warned me.
My body reacted before thought could form.
Residual Echo took over again.
I drove the dagger deeper and twisted my torso, using the chimera's own mass against it. My legs repositioned on their own, bracing against its shoulder, while my right arm traced a motion I didn't remember ever learning.
The improvised blade cut.
It wasn't a clean slash, it was a brutal opening, tearing from the side of its face down toward the base of the neck. The chimera let out a choked sound and staggered back, trying to shake me off.
I didn't let it.
I launched myself upward, using the wound as a foothold, and dropped down onto its head. The world narrowed to fragmented sensations: the metallic stench of blood, the violent tremor of the body beneath my feet, the erratic vibrations of aether marking a single weak point.
There.
I plunged the dagger down with everything I had left.
The blade pierced bone.
The chimera collapsed forward, taking me with it. I rolled across the ground as its massive body struck the floor, lifeless, kicking up dust and shattered stone.
The impact knocked the air from my lungs. I lay on my back, staring at where the ceiling should have been.
The chimera didn't move.
Long seconds passed before the Spell spoke.
[You have slain a dormant monster, Devouring Abomination.]
I exhaled a breath I hadn't realized I was holding.
Residual Echo shut off abruptly, and pain crashed down with its full weight. A sharp scream tore from my throat when I finally looked to where my left arm should have been.
There was nothing.
Only blood, and a jagged edge where my body had been torn apart.
I closed my eyes for a moment. All aether vibrations faded. My mind stopped screaming.
A state of exhaustion and dangerous calm washed over me, unstoppable.
And then darkness embraced me.