Episode 26
1
Hunger was like a fire in his stomach that devoured him from within. He had tentacles, but more than some octopus, he felt like a spider, searching for flies, slowly extending its web.
And the fly that fell into its web turned out to be a three-meter-tall orc with a proportionally sized club, who knows where he had gotten it from.
Well, Labyrinths were that kind of place, capable of creating something out of nothing. Almost everything.
It didn't have to make sense, and Caim was too hungry to bother himself with useless questions anyway. Wasting time thinking about nonsense was a privilege reserved for after filling the stomach.
The orc roared, but didn't immediately pounce on him. It seemed cautious, even. He had never seen something like him, so no wonder. But eventually, it did pounce, succumbing to its animal instincts, ignoring its survival instinct, the fear that had made it stop.
Well, even if it had run in the opposite direction, he could never have escaped him anyway.
Caim also ran, only without his feet touching the ground. He continued moving as until now, moving the tentacles, with a speed greater than if he were running on his own feet. He had gotten used to it right away. No, the word accustomed suggested it had been a process and nothing could be further from the truth. Everything he was doing now was as natural as breathing.
When he arrived in front of the orc, he let himself fall to the ground, sliding between the beast's legs. As he passed, with a single tentacle, he ripped off the right leg.
The monster fell to the ground, screaming. It made a great commotion, but fortunately, the floor didn't come down like the last time. Now that his tentacles were ready, it would be enough to cling to a wall, another, the ceiling, or all three. So it was all the same to him. He was prepared for everything.
Using the torn off leg as his own club, he hit the orc in the head over and over while it tried to get up with one less leg and under relentless assault.
The leg he wielded exploded before the enemy's head.
He had hit too hard. Caim simply laughed and finished the job with the tentacles, one single blow was enough and he probably could have done it even before tenderizing the meat in his own way. But it didn't matter, despite the hunger a hunt wasn't about cold efficiency.
His blood boiled, sang.
He felt it before seeing a congregation of various monsters nearby, watching, with the same doubt as the orc. No, much greater, having seen how easily he had torn it apart. Caim roared from the depths of his throat, a sound that seemed impossible for a human being to make.
That scared them.
They scattered to the four winds like frightened children. Caim couldn't help but laugh, but even that sounded strange, so he quickly stopped. He didn't like this. His head hurt and he couldn't remember much.
It was unpleasant in every way. It was terribly hot, melting, damn it, but at the same time a cold that penetrated to the bones. The wounds were not healing, he had only covered them with strange flesh, the flesh of the tentacles. And now, now his legs trembled without knowing why.
Maybe things wouldn't clear up, but everything would clear up if he ate, so Caim shook his head and set to work devouring the feast he had earned by force.
Not for the fight, since it had ended so quickly.
"I am the strongest monster here."
Not for the patience of wandering so long without finding any monsters.
Patience had never been his strength.
He sank his teeth into the orc's corpse, tore off the flesh, and felt the sweet, sweet blood going down his throat, and it was like returning to a warm, long-forgotten home.
2
They had been paralyzed for longer than Yonah was willing to admit because they refused to believe what they had seen with their own eyes. No, rather they didn't want to believe it. Because even though they didn't understand anything, it didn't look good. It pointed to a future as dark as a starless night, and that was something nobody could easily accept, even if it was inevitable. But this wasn't inevitable.
That thought was what primarily spurred her into action. It wasn't inevitable; there was still time to do something. To act because they were a team, and even though the team of three had been reduced to just a pair, they could move mountains. Yonah had faith. She still had faith, in them and in Caim.
Now, they were racing up a spiral staircase as fast as they could, not unlike that one time, except for the extremely important detail that they weren't being assaulted by an apparently endless army of living armors.
In fact, well, it wasn't that they had been searching for Caim for very long. But so far, they hadn't encountered any monsters, traps, or any other obstacles. It was strange, but they had no mental space to think about things like that. Although, of course, it was a light and relaxing topic compared to... that. Whatever that had been.
She couldn't help but remember again his blazing eye, that strange glow that seemed to be... hunger. But that couldn't be.
“What the hell has happened?” Victoria asked.
“I don't know.” What did she want her to say, for God's sake?
“What can we do?” She was looking for a plan, some hope to cling to, but for that very reason, she should have known the same went for her. She had nothing to offer her, as much as she desperately wished otherwise.
“I don’t know! That wasn't Caim. We just have to bring him back, and everything will return to how it was before.”
Yes, it couldn't be him, it was that simple. Because he had looked at them that way after all. As if he had been about to attack. As if Caim had barely managed to control himself, to leap and get out of there, instead of turning against them.
He had won the fight against the ghost of that elf and the strange woman who apparently manipulates fate, probability, but perhaps he had lost the war. Perhaps they had done something to him.
Perhaps?
If not them, then who?
It had to be that.
The echo of their steps resonated on the cold stone walls of the Tower.
How far might Caim have gotten, breaking through walls and ceilings violently, wild and free? Could it be possible that he could still hear those echoes... or had he already gone beyond their reach?
“We should never have set foot in this Tower. So many people have been devoured, why did we think it would be different for us?”
Victoria was on the verge of tears. It was obvious, even without turning around to look at her face. And she wanted to turn around because she had never heard her so vulnerable. She wanted to turn around and wrap her in a tight hug as if to let her know that she wasn't going anywhere and neither was Caim, she would drag him back if necessary, with her own hands.
But she didn’t turn around.
If she did that, she too would lose her composure.
“It's too late for that,” she murmured. If it weren't for everything being so quiet, her weak voice would not have traveled much beyond her own ears. “And you know he could never have lived in peace if he had turned his back on this, which is like his legacy. The only one he has.”
She was only saying things that both of them knew perfectly well, but...
She needed to hear it.
“I just wanted him to be happy.”
Don’t do this, God, you're going to make me cry. And now I can't waver. We can't waver, with everything that's at stake, with everything hanging by a damn thin thread. Like a spider's web.
Wasn't there a legend like that?
About a sinner to whom a spider web was extended that he could climb to escape from hell? But in the end, he let that golden opportunity slip and it broke between his fingers.
If there was something worse than hell, it was knowing that you had had a perfect chance to avoid it and had been stupid enough to ruin it.
“I know. I know,” Yonah replied, somehow staying strong, her eyes fixed on what lay ahead.
3
A horde of monsters was approaching. The creatures hissed and growled, slowly dragging themselves together, emerging from the darkness where a sea of predominantly blood-red eyes shimmered. It was an impressive sight, if not for the fact that it was merely a pathetic attempt to appear bigger and stronger than they actually were. Unfortunately for them, Caim knew the truth.
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"I see," said Caim, smiling mockingly. "You think you can defeat me with numbers, huh? Come on, then. Come at me, you bastards." That was the plain and simple truth.
When there had been only a few of them, they had run with their tails between their legs. They hadn't wanted to try their luck against the monster who had destroyed that huge orc as if it were merely a toy of a capricious and cruel child.
But now that they had used their limited animal intellect to find company, now they did want to pick a fight. Pathetic.
And to think that he had once been afraid of the Tower, of what would happen when he got here. Whether he would be up to the challenge. And now it was they who weren't up to it, who didn't even come close to his heels, damn it, it was funny, but it had no grace. If only they could give him back the time he had wasted worrying about these frightened little shits.
The monsters couldn't keep fooling around, beating their chests and prolonging the fight as long as possible by moving at a snail's pace, so they finally decided to launch an attack.
Caim drew, first and foremost, not his sword but his gun. He had decided that he too should stop messing around, and that was perhaps the biggest of all. At first, he had been cautious, barely using the weapon, fearful of running out of ammunition and needing it later at a crucial moment. Was this thing that important? No! It wasn't something that would save him, but something that merely served to speed up battles. That is, boring, boring to the utmost!
Therefore, Caim put his finger on the trigger and pressed it over and over again. Once for each "boring" that echoed in his head, hahaha! And with each shot, of course, he killed one of them, hitting them perfectly between the eyebrows or right in the heart. He had good aim, he always had. In fact, maybe he was a better gunman than a swordsman, c'est la vie!
And when it emptied, he didn't bother to reload, even though his belt was full of bullets. It wasn't going to be of much use for much longer anyway.
Instead of reloading, he threw the empty gun, which bounced off the forehead of one of those monsters... Doing nothing, of course. He hadn't expected it to; they were weak, but not that much; come on, everything had a limit.
Except, perhaps, himself.
He wasn't so sure about himself. He would find out, little by little, by killing things like this, by gutting them and feasting on them!
He drew his sword, but not in the usual way. It was time to showcase the Skill he had acquired after defeating the Skeleton Knight. It had an exceedingly boring name, [Quick Draw], and that was precisely what it did.
Except that quick... meant quick.
Far beyond the capabilities of someone with a human body. Caim moved, but to the eyes of the monster horde, to each and every one of those bastards, he must have seemed to disappear.
At first, it seemed like nothing happened.
Then, slowly, five of the monsters fell to pieces. His sword had flown out of the scabbard like a flash of moonlight, slicing them before they realized what was happening.
Technically, he could sheathe his sword and use the Skill over and over again. That way, the fight would end without them even being able to pretend to resist. But that would be boring, too boring. They soon wouldn't dare challenge him again; he had to enjoy it while it lasted.
He unleashed a torrent of spiderwebs, a bizarre and alarming ability. As soon as they hit something, the spiderwebs burned as usual. Besides the devastation they caused (the fire was always hungry, and what animal liked flames? Instinctively, each and every one of them feared fire), they served as barriers forcing them to decide whether to advance through the flames and accept the damage—since the corridor wasn't wide enough to go around—or stay behind whimpering like beaten dogs, waiting for him to come and kill them.
He also put his tentacles to work, no additional ones apart from the many he already had on his body, ready for anything.
Grabbing, throwing, impaling.
It was easy.
It was too easy, even though the numerical advantage of his enemies was enormous.
He should have been pleased, but he wasn't. This wasn't even a hunt, just a cleaning session, getting rid of the trash that impeded his path to the top of the Tower, to the next Boss, to breaking down all the doors and making it his own.
In Caim, there was only primitive ferocity, just like the horde of monsters he was facing. No technique or strategy. It couldn't be called such when simply using all the Skills at his disposal haphazardly, the advantages provided by the burning spiderwebs beyond the obvious hadn't been intentional.
He hadn't been thinking about those things and didn't want to think in the first place.
The cacophony of battle provided a distraction that kept him from digging through the pieces of his memories, now that he was no longer starving. It was a relief, and he intended to prolong the fight as much as possible. Just to avoid thinking about "that", for the sake of... not opening his eyes.
That's exactly what he did.
He tried, he really did give it his all... But still, it all ended too quickly. Silence fell on him like a cage.
It wasn't a complete silence, if such a thing existed. He could still hear, for instance, the blood creeping along the floor or organs slipping out of bodies. But he knew well what it meant, much to his dismay.
Caim stood amidst the devastation, crouched as if ready to leap, to continue, but there was no more. It was the silence of a won fight, of a hollow victory because it had been decided from the start. And the heaviness of his breathing was due to the excitement he could not contain, a flame worse than the hunger that had tormented him until recently.
Especially because now he had nowhere to direct it.
After this horrific spectacle, killing hundreds of monsters, he would not find anything or anyone to satisfy that kind of hunger... No, perhaps the Floor Bosses would do, but…
How long would he have to writhe in the dark, bored and "hungry"? And for how long would each Boss provide relief? The second Boss of this floor had turned out to be a pair in reality, so either they could come in twos, or he had already taken care of the third Boss of this floor too, and now he wouldn't fight anyone until he found the damn exit.
In any case, they had hardly lasted at all.
He had killed one of them with a single strike, for God's sake, and he hadn't been as strong as he was now!
All his stats had shot up above level thirty.
The fires from the still-burning spiderwebs cast his shadow on the walls, distorting it, transforming it...
Into something non-human.
"Oh yeah, it's true."
He laughed.
"God has nothing to do with this."
4
A child of the devil.
A horrendous creature, "something" that should not have been born. If that was the case, why were people born who should not have been born, who were destined to suffer?
Was there any meaning in the first place?
Was there any way out of the darkness?
Caim writhes in the darkness, making his way through labyrinthine corridors, always trying to take the fastest route between two points. That is, a straight line. He has enough strength to break down any physical barrier, but if it were such a simple problem, he would never have had to come to this place to begin with, risking everything, even the few things he had gained.
What should be more valuable to him than any answer.
A child of the devil.
A horrendous creature, "something" that should not have been born. If that was the case, why were people born who should not have been born, who were destined to suffer?
Was there any meaning in the first place?
Was there any way out of the darkness?
Caim writhes in the darkness, making his way through labyrinthine corridors, always trying to take the fastest route between two points. That is, a straight line. He has enough strength to break down any physical barrier, but if it were such a simple problem, he would never have had to come to this place to begin with, risking everything, even the few things he had gained.
What should be more valuable to him than any answer.
Perhaps deep down he had always known that he had already found his long-awaited "answer," that he should have abandoned his foolish crusade and built a life with Yonah and Victoria somewhere. He would always have to hide his horns and flee each time he was discovered, but that was always going to happen, wasn't it?
No matter how many answers they found, even if "something" satisfied every last one of their doubts, they would then have to leave this Tower and return to the real world.
It was a regrettable decision, painful... with no more meaning than his desperate desire to justify his existence, when he needed nothing more than the fact that he was alive.
But there was no turning back.
Some decisions could not be undone.
In the first place, what had brought him here was not a single decision, but a chain of decisions intrinsically linked.
There was no way to break that chain even if he could go back in time, because that required change and people never changed...
Or did they?
There was no turning back, but...
Could there be any possibility of mending things?
Something like a light in the darkness, even if it were as faint as a flickering candle?
5
Upon pushing open the heavy doors, Yonah and Victoria were confronted with a scene straight out of hell itself. It wasn't an exaggerated metaphor. It truly resembled the stories, that river of blood and entrails, even more so because they belonged not to humans, but to monsters of all kinds.
Yet, this offered no relief for Yonah's heart. It did not change what most disturbed her about all this (she was used to seeing death), which she had noticed at first glance. She was too observant for her own good. She couldn't ignore "that" and deceive herself even if she wanted to now.
“It has to be him. Or whatever... has control now,” Yonah murmured, bringing a hand up to cover her mouth. What horror. And what a stench.
But she could not vomit, just as she could not cry, or break down.
“How can you be so sure?”
It should be obvious, but Yonah knew she would be asked that question from the first moment. Not because Victoria hadn't realized it too, but precisely because she had.
“Sword wounds, bullet holes, burns... bodies crushed by... something very heavy and very strong. Like tentacles... It would be too much of a coincidence...”
Yonah didn't believe in coincidences. What people called coincidences were simply events whose causes were unknown.
“He’s not fighting like a human anymore,” said Victoria.
“He’s not fighting like a human anymore,” said Victoria, pressing her lips together, trying to suppress the fear and desperation that her voice betrayed anyway.
They set off.
What else could they do?
The silence surrounding them was almost as terrifying as the carnage they had witnessed. There were no monsters anywhere, and well, perhaps that wasn’t so strange now. Back there, Caim had massacred hundreds and hundreds of monsters, fighting like a wild beast. Fighting like one of them. It was normal that there were no monsters to emerge from the darkness and obstruct their path. He must have wiped them off the map.
That was good, because Yonah was not in a condition to fight.
Mentally, not physically.
Victoria, of course, was not much better off.
They would have to prepare themselves for when they reached the Third Floor, however, because... after that, the monsters would hide from him... and come after them.
The monsters in this kind of place shouldn't know fear, but Yonah had no doubt that now they did.
Episode 26: FIN