It took a lot of hours and was still counting but she woke up and opened her eyes at last, and that was when the new girl pulled her out of the circle and dragged her to the other room by strapping her mouth to keep her silent.

All the members were exhausted beyond their borders and so they dozed off into deep slumber without any control over their bodies.

"Where am I? What's going on here? Who the heck are you and what the heck are you doing to me?"

Liss let out sentences in a very much muffled voice due to the strap fastened on her mouth soon as she gained a quasi-full access to her senses but it was a little too late till then.

She found herself locked inside a metal box. It was small so to fit her measurements with a hard precision, and it had no contact with the outer atmosphere whatsoever.

She stopped struggling for a moment and thought about what she last remembered. And she regained her memory upto when she got assaulted insensibly by her little brother who had turned into a monster not so long before.

She tried her best to keep her mind off the fact that she was sealed in something closed but she couldn't, not for long anyway.

She could feel oxygen levels dropping in the air touching her as the hot carbon dioxide brought out tiny sweat drops from every minute pore in her skin.

She was hyperventilating, living through the worst possible nightmare for a claustrophobic young girl that she was. And no one was waking her up from it.

But the prolonged quaking of the metal box she was in, lighted a thought in her mind. And she would have to make do with that thought to divert her mind from thinking about that tight space she was shoved in.

"I need to stay calm and maximize my perceptive skills." she thought to herself and started controlling her air intake.

"Now what can I sense? I'm in some kind of a case with no holes and it has been shuddering nonstop sometimes less while sometimes more. So someone has been carrying the case I'm in, to somewhere."

"And whoever they are, either they didn't plan any of this beforehand or they don't want me conscious where they are taking me, seeing as to how I am totally shut off from the natural air supply on the outside."

Back at the sacrament scene, Riley was the first to wake up from the tired-doze but given her elite class stamina level, we could say she got a little too tired in powering up that rite.

As she shook her head to stabilize her shaked up vision, she eyed the room for the young girl who was supposed to be the live reward for all the effort she put in but Liss was nowhere to be found in her sight.

"Wakey...wakey, sunshine! I think we have got a big problem." Riley shook Sir Nick right and left, hard and rough until he came to his senses and stood up like he saw a ghost or something.

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"That stranger girl isn't here either. Any guesses, father-of-every-little-girl-you-just-saw?!"

Ryan and Zoe woke up and followed the others to the next room. A tunnel was open from it and it went deep in like a lion's den.

"Let's not push our luck, alright. We all need to get out of here real fast before the omega wakes up, guys!" Ryan said.

"He is right. It will be pissed when it wakes up so before that, we should leave this dungeon, I used half of my chi in the last attack that slayed the omega. Even I can't stop it this time around." Riley supported Ryan's argument.

"Why are you guys hell bent on leaving all of a sudden. We handled situations far worse than this and we are still on two feet all of us. That's because we worked as a team, we backed each other throughout those hardships but now you're spouting utter nonsense you two." Zoe said, trying to talk to the two.

"You go ahead and get to safety, madam Riley. She is my daughter. She is my responsibility and mine alone. No one needs to pay for my mistakes any longer. Thanks for staying with me all this way, Ryan. You will always be like my son, you just know that." Sir Nick bowed to the two in respect and gratefulness.

"Sir, Nick?! But Liss is in trouble!" Zoe said.

"You too, Zoe. Go on, along with them. My daughter can not forgive herself if anything were to happen to you because of her." Sir Nick spoke.

"Hey old man, you are coming with us. This is not a dramatic soap opera scene. We're all getting out of here as one, either it's through this strange, and hideous crawling space called den or through the way we got here. It's an order, comrade!" Riley said.

Amidst their inconclusive debate, a second wave of a loud roar entered the room and this time it was ten-folds more intense than it was the first time.

"Looks like time's up for us!" Ryan said. The team crawled into the den and started heading into it one by one but at full speed. During that time, the omega was smashing anything and everything it could see around in its sight.

One minute they were inching on their hands and knees inside the narrow cave while the next minute, they weren't. Each one of them got teleported back into the big hall where omega was going insane inside.

"Shit! It's a freaking trap and walked right into it. How much more childishly naive could we be! Heh!" Riley said, in surprise and shock. But it looked like she expected something similar to happen beforehand as she defended the whole team by using her special attack on the charging omega dragon-bull.

But she got hurt pretty bad in the process to the point where she couldn't even stand straight on her feet without Zoe's support backing her up. The team ran completely out of fuel and the omega was just warming up.

The omega had let out a wild terrifying roar conveying how angry and pissed off it was as it darted positioning its horns forward towards the unarmed team in distress. When all of a sudden the floor beneath the omega cracked open like a slipped egg, and a hand emerged out of the crack.

The hand got hold of the omega's foot and stopped its motion completely to zero. The omega then struggled as it tried to pull itself out of the grasp but in doing so, pulled the owner of the hand out of the crack in full package.

He was a little boy. A frail looking one at that. His face was brimming with brightness and he looked cranky and hyperactive without any specific reason. One brief look at him, anyone could say awe in his adoration.

At the same time, his expression was sinister and he had a grim look on his face. He was holding the omega's limb up in his hand like it was a candy bar or a fruit bar.

"Hmm. Now where do you think you are going, you tasty-looking beast. You're my first feast in a millinium and I will savor every organ inside you with my tongue and teeth. But first, let's play for a while. I'm not hungry enough to feel the taste palette your well-nutritioned monster body will have to offer to me. Heck yeah!"

... to be continued.