The path we took didn’t change much from where we came besides turning to the left even more. By now, from what I could notice, we had walked in a sort of semi-circle… making me worried that this whole path might just be a huge circle that connected back to where we started with no way out.

Eleanor didn’t seem to notice yet as she continued to walk forward. There remained a tired look in her eyes, and her stomach started gurgling already. She was lucky enough to keep a couple of pieces of meat from the dead minotaur that didn’t fall out of her backpack, but that wouldn’t be enough to satiate her hunger forever.

It looked like she didn’t want to reach for the meat in her backpack quite yet, trying to stall her need for food for as long as she could, but I could tell that she wasn’t going to be able to hold it much longer.

The sound of her footsteps kept echoing in the empty halls for while, only to be interrupted when she gasped in surprise. Up ahead, there was an empty hall. Very large from the looks of it. It seemed like this road wasn’t just a circle after all.

Eleanor was about to break into a sprint to go in there, but I moved to be in her way before she got ahead of herself and shook my head. It would be best for her to be in top condition, so I pointed at the backpack.

“What… This?” she asked, pulling the backdown down to place it on the ground. “There’s nothing in here, remember? We lost it all to…”

As she said that, she opened the backpack and noticed a couple of pieces of meat. Judging by the wide eyes and nearly drooling mouth, it seemed like she didn’t know about them… I was certain that she did, since she insisted on carrying that thing with her, but well, it didn’t matter. Now she knew, and she should put it to use.

There was a smile on her face when she realized the same thing, which is when she reached her hands into it and pulled a hand-sized piece of bloody meat. She looked around a few times, both at the place where we were planning to step into and the road we just took. Once she made sure that there wasn’t anything coming, she stood up, pointed her left open palm to the ground, and with yellow-glowing magic particles, she summoned a similar stone grill to the last one to cook the piece of meat.

Just like last time, she cooked it with focused eyes. I just watched, curious about what it was that made that piece of meat so special, but ignoring my desire to find out whenever she threw me a questioning glance. It was clear that she didn’t want to share it with anyone, and I didn’t need it, so I wouldn’t make a sound about it.

She ate it up differently than last time. Instead of doing quick, wide chomps, she chose to savor it by taking small bites and chewing it as much as she could. An expression of bliss was painted on her face as she closed her eyes and enjoyed the minotaur’s meat, until eventually, she finished the piece of meat.

She stood up with renewed strength and determination, and looked at the wide space up ahead. “Okay. Let's see what's waiting for us.”

After taking a deep breath, Eleanor walked into the zone. At first, there was hardly anything different from the hallway we had been walking so far, but the deeper we went, the clearer the picture became.

With widened eyes, she stopped a short distance after entering. All over the floor, the walls, and even the ceiling, there were remains of corpses, blood, and destruction. It was different this time from the first zone or the few places we saw coming here. Everything here was fresh, and it was all mangled.

Eleanor reached for the sword in her hips and hastily pulled it out. Good call. There might not be anything moving now, but something did this; something powerful. With hesitating steps, she moved forward. The soles of her shoes were the only sound that could be heard besides the eerie noise of liquid dripping from different places.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

There were pillars here as well, with torches illuminating the darkness—and even around them, there were marks of blood. Thanks to them, the deeper that we went, more details could be noticed, like a large round door to our right made from yellow rock, flanked by both torches and braziers that clearly illuminated it; and another wide, open path, opposite from this door that showed nothing more than darkness. Finally, opposite from where we came, there was a hallway that mirrored the one we were walking before—likely the same path that Eleanor tried at first.

Eleanor’s eyes shifted from the big round door to the dark hallway. She likely had the same strange feeling that I could feel from that place, so her eyes were opened wide in attention at anything that could happen.

Silence filled the hall for a moment. Eleanor’s hands tensed on the hilt of the sword, and her feet were planted firmly on the ground.

The loud sound of metal hitting something from that dark path caused her to sharply inhale in surprise and to take a step back. More of those sounds could be heard a couple of times, and then, the shout of a man.

“I-is someone there?!” Eleanor exclaimed, before breaking into a jog to get closer to the sound.

However, she didn’t get even half-way there before a man did indeed walk out of the dark path. He had black hair, silver knight armor, and pale skin. He was limping, had an arm dangling on the side, being supported by the other one, and blood pouring from the side of his face, completely covering the armor.

After hesitating for a moment, Eleanor started running in the man’s direction again. “Sir Knight! Are you okay!? Do you need—”

“W-who goes there?!” the knight shouted back, a look of complete fear as he looked up. “You must help me! This place is—”

The man was cut short when a large, gray spike pierced him through the chest. Eleanor stopped and watched with widened eyes as the blood poured out of the wound and to the ground, with the man vomiting even more as the spike lifted him off the ground.

He hardly struggled as whatever impaled him pulled him up until he was about twice his height off the ground. There he stayed, struggling as he slowly died. Then, a gray pale hand, about the size of his head appeared from behind and wrapped around his face. It had long pointy nails, and despite the monstrous size, it looked like a woman’s hand.

With a gurgling voice, his head was pulled back, and from the darkness, a woman’s face appeared. It was much larger than a normal human’s, her skin was the same gray color as the hand, and she had the delicate features of a noble lady, with long, straight black hair cascading to the side of her face, almost covering her closed eyes.

She had a soft smile that slowly got closer to the man’s face. With an alluring and almost sexual chuckle, she passed her lips over the blood that the man was letting out of his mouth. Once her lips were soaked in blood, a black tongue came out and cleaned it away, savoring the taste, before her mouth completely opened from one side of her face to the other to reveal a maw of sharp, red teeth that chomped down on the man’s head.

There was a loud crunching sound from the bite, and the man’s body was let go, falling on the ground with a splatter of blood.

Eleanor watched horrified at both the death of the knight and the monster that just ate him. It was in that frozen state that the monster noticed her, turning that pale gray face in our direction without opening her eyes.

Slowly, with a soft sway and the same smile from before, the woman-faced monster got closer to us, stepping into the dim light of the torches. It was then that the monster’s body was revealed.

The bottom half of this monster was an amalgamation of different beings, with the apparent body being like that of a spider. The legs, however, were more than those of a normal spider, with some of them looking like a human’s, others like a demon’s, and a handful of them like different animals. There was a lump at the back that resembled a spider’s sac, but it was so deformed that it could’ve been something else, like the minotaur's lump.

In the middle of that body, the torso of a woman could be seen. It was long and slim, with a pair of featureless breasts. This torso, like the lower half, also had things that didn’t match it, like a long tentacle that popped from the back, small arms all over the stomach, and the arms at her side being uneven, with one longer than the other. Finally, her head was attached via a long neck that made her look like a snake was coming out of her torso.

It playfully chuckled like a woman as it got closer, and Eleanor still refused to move. But it was when the woman finally opened her eyes that Eleanor finally snapped, raising her weapon and summoning the dark arm to her side, as a pair of completely black eyes with white irises coldly looked down at her.

“Ahhh! Ahaha!” the woman-faced monster laughed, and quickly moved towards Eleanor.