Miles lay still, sprawled over the cavern floor.

As free as he was supposed to be now, he could not move.

Everything hurt.

Miles could feel one arm, twisted in the wrong direction like a storm-turned tree. He could feel his rib cage, turned back into itself and stabbing his organs.

As for his legs, he could not feel them at all.

Delirious, Miles stared at the one that had single-handedly assisted his escape and put him in his current state.

The behemoth fist of malformed metal and flesh loomed over the precipice of the exit from the maze, frozen in the air. It was the same for the dozens of rats pouncing after him.

Something kept them out, obstructing their passage here. Something that had not worked on him.

His gamble had paid off. Miles could finally relish his freedom.

The only misfortune was that he had been unable to properly defend against the final attack, even though he had anticipated it well in advance.

Still, it should have been a whole lot worse, and he was still in one piece, somehow.

Miles was unsure, but he felt that his survival had had something to do with the unknown weight that had appeared over his back.

But the worst part was not the pain. No, it was the side-effect of having to regenerate.

Everything was overshadowed by the flashes intense heat burning through him, roaring about the obvious absence of something. As the intense scent of living blood wafted over from the maze, a familiar dryness pervaded his throat, wishing to be quenched and nothing less.

Miles was desperate for it, and perhaps, were it not for his inability to stand, he may have already rushed back in just for the taste.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Conditional Undeath was still underway, healing his broken body, bit by bit.

He focused his mind, persisting through the inhuman, illogical instincts that rattled through his brain.

Miles grimaced as his body inadvertently snapped around like a glitch-ridden cyborg, forcing himself through the muted pain of a skeleton rearranging into its proper place. He could only bless the fortune that had caused the cold iron forged ‘armor’ to fall off during his escape or he might have stabbed himself in an accident.

Soon enough though, Miles adapted to the pain. It persisted like faint echoes, but his mind was far enough away to allow him to expand his senses into the hallway he had left behind.

He was sure now. There was no longer any danger of being attacked, for he was well beyond the reach of the Hordred.

Yet, quite a few rats still attempted it, vainly striking against the invisible obstruction that halted their progress.

Once again, a weight was lifted off his shoulders, and Miles could snap about in less stressful agony.

During the worst of it, Miles forcibly distracted himself by forcing on the regenerative process. The manner in which the blood energy flowed in his body, sometimes even moving in reverse as it rushed to heal and repair.

And so, this continued for a torturous half an hour, by when his bones were more or less where they should have been in the first place.

[Conditional Undeath activated. All internal injuries healed. +3 HP regenerated.

(7/10) HP remaining]

As stated by the notification, Miles felt the intent of Conditional Undeath move away from what had once been the more serious injuries and shift over to the external injuries. It continued to knit through ripped flesh, scabbing over bloody wounds, but he felt he had recovered enough now.

He struggled to rise, breathing in the stench of a mound of garbage he had fallen into. Sensing drastic changes to the wind, he finally got on his feet, spitting out some of his own blood.

A cacophony of unnatural noises echoed in his ears, and the whispers from the wind revealed all.

Miles cast a wary glance at the source, but nothing could have prepared him for what he saw.

There were no individual rats any longer. Nor were there gigantic fists of flesh and steel.

Instead, it was a grotesque, gigantic mass of undulatingly pink tentacle-like appendages.

Once, there had been mighty fists of a giant, now, they were the tendrilled tails of an abomination. They formed pulsing veins of flesh weaving through garbage and steel, as if some natural creature.

That was when he realized.

Tails.

They were a horrible twist of rat tails, extended to the point they formed a nest of gangly worms, coiled around each other. Pulsating to the rhythm of some unseen heartbeat, they wriggled in a macabre dance of flesh and metal, centered on one thing and one thing only.

They were wrapped around a shadowy visage, one whose head had already reformed despite Miles having cut it off a mere while ago.

The Infernal was motionless, as if resigned to its fate. But Miles knew it could break free if it so desired…

Their eyes met.

Dark, abyssal pools of infinite depth. Not even a flicker of light.

Miles wasn’t sure how he had failed to see it before.

There was a twisted sense of connection between them, or at least between the Infernal and a select part of him. Miles could swear the Infernal of pure aether tipped the shadows that formed its head towards him, in a subtle nod of acknowledgment.

And then, its maw widened into a beast-like grin.

Ah, now he knew why the Infernal was behaving as it was.

It wanted this, and he could only watch.

Soon enough, the tentacular limbs began to twist, echoing the noise of squelching flesh and clanging metal, fully covering the Infernal in a nightmarish knot of rat tails and circuitry.

Then, they pulled.

The horrifying amalgamation tightened, compressing the knotted ball of sinewed flesh smaller and smaller. Until at one point it reached a level of incomprehensible density, forming a grotesquely pulsing ball of tail yarn…

Miles blinked.

The very world shifted, and he experienced a familiar yet profound change.

The beating of his heart sped, and an enhanced sense of vitality rippled through him.

Even his thirst seemed to be sated to some extent.

Though familiar with this phenomenon, what Miles witnessed this time was quite unusual.

From the ball of flesh that now wrapped around the Infernal, surges of decaying grey pulsed outwards, passing through the tentacles of flesh. The strange energy flickered and faded, away from the knot of tails and towards elsewhere...

‘It’s almost as if the Infernal is--being consumed?'

It didn't take long for the grey energy to sputter to an end, and as if the tentacular threads had reached their tensile limit, they broke apart with a sickening snap.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

Splatters of flesh, and shards of steel, scattered into the air, but the majority of those eerie slithers of flesh, now covered in darkened gray shades, slithered into the mountains of garbage.

With that, all was still.

Everything should have been as it had before... but that was not to be the case.

The beating of his heart thundered now, echoing in his ears like a war drum. His physique filled with such vitality that even the regeneration seemed to speed up.

His ears failed to hear it, for there was no sound, but Miles could swear that the haunting flute was being played again.

However, something drastic had been changed.

The once hopeful melody seemed discordant and ruined, out of tune, mutated into the opposite of what it had been...

Miles blinked, and the world shifted for a second time.

As if manifested by the song itself, rippling through the air now were glistening silver chains. Translucent as if formed of softened moonlight, they crisscrossed over each other in an endless web that spread throughout the entirety of this cavern.

One end of these chains gathered towards a common direction, disappearing into a wall and leading to who knows where, but… the opposite ends all led into the mountains of garbage.

Miles stared at the sight.

To a certain part of him, these chains felt… just.

Righteous, and well-intentioned. A promise to protect those that could not protect themselves.

But that all changed when the greying energy, re-appeared from the garbage it had previously retreated into. And like fire spreading through kindling, its abyssal decay spread, engulfing every single chain.

Miles watched in dismay as the ‘metal’ that formed these chains aged through millennia in a single moment, rusting, decaying, and degrading into dust, in a matter of moments.

Just like that, the chains were no more.

‘What…?’

Miles blinked again.

Everything inside the hallway had returned to normal. His heartbeat at its slowed pace, and his thirst had returned.

Miles could no longer see anything that he had just witnessed. Not the shadows nor the chains, but he could sense a drastic change…

The very world seemed to hold its breath, waiting for the horrifying revelation to unfold.

Only in that painful moment of pause, did Miles realize that quite some time had passed now, and the last of his injuries had healed entirely.

[Conditional Undeath Completed. All injuries healed. ~5 Blood Points lost.]

[HP: 10/10. Remaining Blood Points: 10/10 (+ Blood Bank: 10/100)]

While the losses to his blood bank were significant, at least his thirst was sated, but before he could ponder any further…

A strangled squeak.

As if the final chortle of an indignant death, a single small rat crawled itself out of the depths of one particular mountain of garbage.

It seemed to be entirely ordinary rodent, except for its dark fur, shuddering as if a shadow from a flickering candle.

Miles almost scoffed at the underwhelming revelation, but… something stopped him.

All this rat had done was come out, but the very air had become turbulent as a result.

Warier now, Miles considered it again, more carefully this time.

He drew a sharp breath.

Its beady eyes were a familiar pool of abyssal black, and above all… it smelled of danger.

Similar rats began to appear all around the hallway, crawling out of the garbage.

The more he watched, the more he saw how unnatural these rodents were.

Though he saw the nearly pitch-black maze with his enhanced vision, these creatures were slippery even for his sight.

They were darkness brought to life, vanishing and reappearing like a shadow.

Their motions were random, stumbling and strange. Like a cross between being drunk and a newborn babe learning to move.

They were aware of his presence however, staring at him at every other moment.

He could smell it off of them. Their rage and… hunger.

Miles had an inkling that none of this was a positive turn of events. Not for him.

Now that he thought about it, although he had killed quite a few of these rats in his escape, he had not received any kill notifications. While he had not seen them regenerate, it was entirely possible the monstrous flesh that formed limbs out of metal were in some way related to the Flesh of the Hordred King.

Now seemed about as good a time as any to examine the creatures before him. Detect activated, manifesting a line of text over the eerie creatures, and a chill swept over his back.

[Infernal Knight of the Hordred King - Vinasha Riessen Ratte - Lvl. 99]

Miles could remain calm, safe in the knowledge that no rat could reach him over the threshold of the exit…

But it did not last long.

An errantly moving black rat changed it all, when it accidentally stumbled over the edge of the maze, crossing the exit and into his side. Just like that, the rat passed over whatever mystical obstruction had existed before.

Hundreds of Infernal rat heads twisted around in unison, abyssal eyes glowing surprise and… glee.

Miles could guess what had happened.

Somehow, his use of the Infernal as a distraction had led to a change in the status quo. Just as he had escaped, these rats had been freed of their original entrapment.

‘Well… shit.’

Barely recovered as he was, Miles did not waste a second longer.

Cursing his dastardly luck, again, he made a run for it.

***

The wind blew past him, whispering whatever secret it could find into his ears.

The outer ring was identical to the middle ring, with walls formed of cold Iron, though there was a distinct lack of excavated holes. The hallways here also continued to be filled with mounds of garbage.

Unfortunately, Miles did not have the freedom to sight see, for over a hundred of those Infernal Knights were chasing after him.

Though he was not sure why all of the creatures had not come after him, for there had been a lot more, this number alone was a challenge to handle.

They were shadow-borne creatures, stronger and faster than any rat he had encountered before. With the size of the smallest Hordred, they struck with the strength of the Digger variant. Not to mention that they appeared at random and vanished into dark corners, striking at his blind points whenever they were least expected.

The worst part was that these Infernal Knights did not know what it meant to die.

Whenever Miles managed to use a bone shiv to slice a rat in two, they would simply splatter down into a black liquid…

And with the overpowering smell of living blood plus a hint of eternal decay. the material would come to life and reform into the creature it had been just prior.

Their regeneration was far greater than his own. Truly knights that took after their king.

Miles felt his bones rattle, muscles aching, as each foot slammed into the cavern rock floor. There was also the intangible weight of having had multiple broken bones just an hour or so ago.

He was fine, the rest prior to his escape attempt had helped him recover some energy, but he was still running on fumes.

Despite all that, Miles managed to maintain his lead by using the full force of Nameless Movement.

This was because in a complete reversal of the situation before, these rodents had no knowledge of the arrangement of the paths in the outer ring of the maze. On the contrary, he had access to his map, granting him the upper hand in that aspect.

Miles could have attempted to confuse the rats, to hide behind a random path and send the creatures down another, but he did not take the risk.

There was no longer anything to stop him, he could escape the maze now, so why waste time?

And so, Miles continued to blast through the hallways, moving at reckless speeds, until he encountered a certain crossroads.

Excitement fueled him as he recognized it. Following the guidance of Cadmus’ map, he made a turn, entering a hallway that was only a few turns before the promised exit.

Miles couldn’t help but pause the moment he stepped inside.

He had imagined many things he may encounter within this Doorway and this maze, but it had not been anywhere near this.

The hallway expanded out to the sides, into a larger space that more than the usual gathered collection of trash and scrap metal.

There was a particularly tall hill of metallic material, brightly lit under some form of sky light.

A familiar light and a heat that caused a chilling sense of danger to rise within him.

Natural sunlight. Somehow. Within a Doorway.

The rays of this sun scattered, reflected off the metallic material, creating a majestic yet deadly sight of diverging light.

Miles could move avoiding all that, that was fine.

The problem was… the figure that stood upon this hill, underneath the sunlight.

A child, a little girl. With her hair an unusual color, a faded wet blue, she stood precariously balanced over the loose garbage, staring at him.

His nostrils expanded and instantly, Miles could sense the absence.

The girl had no smell, no thread to tug upon. It was as if she did not exist at all.

However, from a place that was distant yet close, there was something.

A faint smell of death and animal blood. It was different from those of the Hordred rats. It came…

From a creature of the skies. A three-eyed one, wiser than all the rest, but for some heaven-sent reason had foolishly tried to raise a family in this wasteland. Now, all that was left was this.

The strand of scent led his eyes to a crude gathering of metal, a monument of some sort, in the shape of stars or something. It was placed over a smaller heap of metal, a burial mound…

The strange girl was also cradling something within her hands, something of similar scent, and while Miles wasn’t sure what it was, it seemed to be something alive…

She hid it behind her, as if afraid that he would do something to it.

Miles couldn't care less about it.

But he did care about what happened next.

He was mid-motion, dashing through the hallway, but there was one moment that seemed to last for an eternity.

He blinked.

Huh?

The girl's hair was orange now? An impossible yet natural color, like a setting sun.

Miles could have sworn it had been a different–

He was curious, yes, but he was being chased by a quickly gaining swarm of shadow rats. He did not have much choice on what to do here.

So, with only a single glance and softly spoken, “You should run away,” at the little girl, he was off.

If she was some form of fae, there was no need to antagonize her by attacking. It also felt needlessly cruel, especially when his escape was all but confirmed.

After, he didn’t spare her another glance as he left her behind, moving into the next hallway in a blur of wind.

Miles continued to rush through the following few hallways and crossroads, following the map to the dot, until he entered what was supposed to be the final hallway.

He had thought it would have been different, but no. It was identical to all other hallways that had come before, with the only difference being a slight brightening of the ambient light.

For a moment, a part of him feared there would be no escape, but...

Then he smelled it.

Something he had sorely needed.

He had never smelled this as a scent before, but the moment he felt it, he just knew what it was.

Freedom.

With after-tones of blossoming life, and wet earth.

It was like lightning through his veins, causing Miles to speed up, going all out for the final sprint.

The winds blew as gales, celebrating alongside him, signaling the end of what he had feared was an endless run.

Miles' lips curled into a tired grin, and he finally stepped outside.