Novels2Search

Chapter 2 - Belly of the Beast

The darkness vanished around him and Max landed on his face on the ground. When he got up he realized he was somewhere else. Somewhere else entirely…

Max found himself in a cave of high walls black with red glowing streaks snaking all over, like lightning. It was a large space, like a football stadium. In the middle of it stood an unspeakable horror that let out a nightmarish roar, making Max’s blood curl.

It stood tall, at thirty feet. Twisted horns protruded from its large head and steam rose from the ground in its wake. A red body bulging with muscle and a hunch and long arms resemblant of a monkey. But this was no monkey…

It had evil red eyes and a slack jawed mouth capable of swallowing an elephant whole. Jagged rows of teeth and tusks filled its mouth in discordant rows and angles. It roared again. In excitement and glee. It had realized what had stumbled into its cave.

Two hundred men and women in camo uniforms were screaming and shooting at the unholy beast in a frantic panic. This was Max’s company. The beast laughed at the soldiers shooting at it. The bullets seemed to have little effect. Max noticed something strange. A green bar with a tick of red was hovering above the beast.

Is that a… Health bar?

Above the Health bar was a text.

[Malgaroth, Avatar of Wrath]

[World Boss], [Level ???]

What the hell is happening?

In the upper left corner of his vision another green bar appeared. Under it a blue bar of equal length. And under that a green bar.

Are these mine? This isn’t real.

But it felt real enough. The beast ahead roared again and clapped its hands together, emitting a thunderous blow. A shockwave blasted any nearby soldiers away and lifted Max off the ground. He flew a yard or so and landed on his back. The RPG-28 landed on his chest, emitting an oof.

Max looked around frantically, trying to find an exit. There was none. The black and red stone walls were smooth and held not a single crack, much less a crevice or a doorway. They were trapped. They were going to die.

“Get it together, Max!” someone shouted. Max turned and saw Kat a few feet away. She was on a knee, reloading her assault rifle.

Max got up with tremulous hands. He was so scared his mind was going blank.

“What is going on?” he asked.

Kat gave him an outraged look.

“JUST SHOOT THE THING!”

With trembling hands Max reached for the assault rifle that was cinched on his shoulder. He clicked down the safety and unloaded on the beast towering in the distance. Its Health bar had moved some, but it seemed the bullets didn’t penetrate the skin. How was that possible? Maybe they could hurt it with explosives. Max knew some soldiers in their company had grenades. Should I use my bazooka?

Max’s weapon clicked empty and he unclipped the magazine. He fumbled with another one, but dropped it. As he picked it up, he glanced at Kat. She screamed with fury as she unloaded another clip on the demonic thing. So fierce… Was she not scared?

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The gunfire around was dwindling. The monster grabbed another unlucky person, lifted them up in the air and grinned widely with that twisted mouth of his. He tossed the screaming soldier in his mouth. Max grimaced.

Stray rounds of RPG-28 were hitting the beast along with the rifle-fire. The blasts staggered it, and chipped at the health bar, but not to a significant degree. What was that thing’s skin made of?

Max’s weapon clicked empty for the last time. One would be surprised by how fast you go through a clip when shooting on full auto against a goddamn otherworldly demon from hell. Kat’s weapon clicked empty and she cussed. Wasting no time she vaulted towards a dead comrade. Max didn’t recognize who he was, but the way his body was twisted by landing on the ground made Max sick.

Kat wasn’t bothered. She slid next to the body and grabbed the magazines from the corpse and loaded her rifle. Impressed, Max followed her lead.

But just as the gunfire was dying down, so were the screams. The cave was a den of carnage, blood, guts and death splattered everywhere. Few explosions hit the demon intermittently, as a result of a well aimed grenade, but the towering beast only jerked a bit and laughed. It was a discordant, guttural blasphemy.

The Health bar above its head had turned a bit more red, but not enough to warrant hope. [Malgaroth, Avatar of Wrath], swiped at the ground with his massive arm and grabbed a handful of soldiers in his grip. The gargantuan demon squeezed and blood burst out of its fist.

Max swallowed down bile as he watched in stunned horror. He knew he should act, but it was hard. He tried to push the gravity of the situation to the back of his mind. The forceful rush of adrenaline helped. But with every death cry, with every body crunching to the ground with a sickly sound, the despair crept further to fill his mind.

Having dealt with everything interesting in its immediate vicinity, [Malgaroth, Avatar of Wrath], looked around with a gleeful grin. It clapped its hands again emitting another shockwave that blasted through the cave. It sent bodies flying and Max huddled down behind a corpse he’d been using to steady his rifle. A mangled torso, cut from the waist flew past him, pattering his face with warm blood. The iron taste made him sick.

Max checked his right. Kat hadn’t been so lucky. She was hit directly with a corpse that knocked her down. Max heard the cry of pain and saw that Kat did not move.

“Kat!” Max cried out. Big mistake. The creature took note. Max was probably one of the last things moving in this pit of hell. With a slow, leisurely gait it approached, sadistic glee in its eyes. The lanky orangutan-arms made the air woosh as they cut air. An aura of steam trailed behind it. As it approached the air grew hot, almost unbearably so. Yet, Max froze.

As he watched wide-eyed the approaching beast, he realized he would die here. Running would do no good. Like a cold heavy rock dropped inside his stomach, despair took over. The beast reveled in his stunned fear. Carefully it lifted Max from the neck of his jacket with two gigantic fingers. It brought Max up in the air to look at him closely. The pure evil in the monster’s eyes was unbearable. Max couldn’t breathe.

The monster chuckled and opened its giant maw of protruding teeth. A breath smelling like death and brimstone, overwhelming Max. But it also brought him back to his senses from his death trance. He looked down, as the creature slowly lifted him higher above its mouth, clearly about to swallow him. Inside of the demonic creature’s gullet a red hot fire burned. It called Max to action.

You won’t swallow me without chewing, bastard!

With practiced, mindless moves Max grabbed the cinch and slung the RPG-28 from his side to his shoulder and unclipped the safety mechanics, popping the lid of the weapon open. Wasting no time he fired. The blast made him swing backwards as he dangled between the beast’s fingers.

The rocket-propelled grenade left a trail of faint smoke and zipped inside the demon’s mouth. Max heard a muffled explosion from inside the giant monster. Its face shifted from glee to surprise, from surprise to shock and from shock to pain. It cried out. Max saw the health bar plummet to full red. It wasn’t as tough on the inside as outside. In the upper corner of Max’s vision, suddenly a strange symbol appeared and an urgently blinking red dot on top of it.

[Malgaroth, Avatar of Wrath] let out a bellowing death rattle as his skin started to crack. Smoldering orange veins started filling the cracks. His avatar of steam turned into black smoke. As he was being incinerated from the inside out, he dropped Max from his clutches.

A thirty feet fall, Max thought, strangely calm and disassociated.

He closed his eyes and his life flashed in his mind. Time seemed to slow down. Short life and kind of a mess at that. He wished he hadn’t wasted all his time. He should have made his mother proud and gone for that engineering degree. He should have moved out and tried to repair things with his dad. He should have done many a thing.

What a pointless life. If I got a second chance, maybe I could try harder...

The ground never came. But it did feel like he had stopped falling. Max opened his eyes, but could see nothing. He was floating in darkness again. An emotionless, robotic voice spoke out.

[Apologies on behalf of your Patrons, the Zoos-collective. There was an unfortunate input error made by an intern that misplaced your spawn location.]

“Intern..?” Max said in disbelief. “Inte— WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!”

[We are allowed to disclose limited information to not provide advantage to our representatives. Everything you need to know will be disclosed in the starting zone.]

[Assigning customized spawn point to subject #266830151…]

“W-wait!”

[Customized spawn point assigned.]