The Demon Queen's Royal Consort-Chapter 113 - Dungeon - XXI

Time... ceased to exist.

Sound vanished, as if the world itself had held its breath.

Suspended droplets—blood, acid, fragments of liquid darkness—floated around like tiny satellites orbiting a cosmic event. The air trembled with the power on the verge of being released.

Aeloria was frozen. Not from fear, but from reverence.

Beside him, Dália was no longer just a mage. She had become something even the eldest of her kind would hesitate to name. Sweat dripped down her sharp face, but he didn't blink. A part of him wanted to scream. The other... could only watch.

Across the marsh, Dórian and Seraphine held their breath.

"What is she doing?" Seraphine whispered, her voice dragging as if afraid to disturb the moment.

"That... isn't water," Dórian replied.

His hand clenched tightly around the shield made from locust carapace, eyes wide and fixed on the golden light beginning to form across the swamp.

Dália's body trembled.

But not from fear.

From power and majesty.

The veins in her arms lit up, glowing in golden tones. Her once-gentle eyes now burned with an intense light, nearly impossible to look at. Her formerly pale skin gleamed like ivory carved by gods, bathed in living gold.

She slowly raised her arms. Her entire body curved forward, as if holding the heavens themselves.

Above her head, a rune was born.

It wasn't just magic.

It was something else—beyond known realms—sacred.

Golden lines intertwined at impossible speed, sketching ancestral patterns even elves wouldn't recognize. Symbols of creation, rebirth, healing, and judgment.

At the center of the rune, an eye opened.

And the world trembled.

In the swamp, the grotesque, pulsating heart—monstrous and covered in tentacles with a mouth full of needle-like teeth—reacted.

The flesh surrounding it convulsed in a desperate spasm. The mouth at its center began to spew even more red liquid, as if trying to drown itself in its own venom.

It knew.

It felt.

Aeloria took a step back without realizing, his eyes wide and his voice a muffled whisper:

"This isn't magic... this is..."

Then Dália spoke. Not with words. But with her gaze.

Our eyes met, a warm connection only we could understand.

My right foot was stepping into the dimensional rift. That exchange sealed a pact between us, a language only those intimately connected could comprehend.

"I opened the way. Now you finish it!"

And Dália opened it.

The eye on the rune blinked once.

Then, from its center, a golden beam shot out.

Not an ordinary beam. It was dense, powerful—impossible to look at directly.

A ray of pure life, not meant to heal... but to destroy what should never have existed.

The very antithesis of that darkness.

The beam struck the crocodile's mouth the very moment it leapt furiously from the swamp, trying to devour her and Aeloria in a single strike.

The explosion of energy was colossal.

Light against darkness.

Life against death.

Creation against abomination.

"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM"

The impact obliterated everything in front. The crocodile's jaw exploded with a sound that echoed throughout the dungeon, followed by the crackling of burning flesh, bones disintegrating, and screams that belonged to no natural creature.

The entire front half of the monster was annihilated, vaporized into dark particles that dissipated like cursed ash.

In the swamp, the heart thrashed violently. Tentacles flailed in all directions, the mouth screaming silently, and one of the eyes on its surface burst like a pus-filled bubble. The organ trembled, shrinking into itself like a panicked beast.

"Is this... the end?" Dórian murmured, unable to see the result.

Seraphine didn't respond. She stood still, eyes brimming with tears, body upright like a statue before a divine spectacle.

At the center of it all, Dália fell.

Her body, exhausted yet still glowing, collapsed to the side like a flower uprooted from the soil. The golden light around her slowly dissolved into particles of hope that floated briefly before disappearing.

But the message had been delivered.

The goddess had spoken.

And the monster had listened.

**

Silence.

The air still carried the metallic tang of the light's explosion. Dália lay unconscious, wrapped in golden glimmers fading like fragments of dawn. The crocodile, despite having half its body obliterated, still breathed. Still _pulsed_. The creature was more than muscle—it was rancor, despair, stubborn flesh that refused to die.

But now, the heart—the root of evil—was exposed.

And I saw it.

From above, high above the swamp, a new rift tore through the cavern's ceiling like a wound in the very fabric of the world.

And from it, I fell.

But not like someone falling.

Like a sentence.

My weight multiplied two hundredfold, my body shrouded in lightning, bolts cracking like furious whips in every direction. Like a comet ripping through the veil of night, like a meteor setting the sky ablaze. The blue light spread through the cavern, reflecting off the swamp waters, painting everyone's eyes with its fierce glow.

In my hands, I held a spear made of pure electricity. Not the regular one I usually summoned. A super-concentrated one—a technique not even finished.

It wasn't just a weapon: it was vengeance incarnate.

The spear's blade crackled in sky blue, so hot it burned my arms. My skin scorched, opening charred wounds as I gripped it with all I had.

Even from a distance, Dórian shuddered and stepped back, the air becoming thin and searing. Seraphine gasped, sweat dripping from her forehead. Aeloria, though used to magical excess, felt his skin tighten.

The temperature soared.

The heart below pulsed, tentacles writhing in desperation, trying to curl inward, trying to protect itself. But it was too late.

I screamed with all the rage this damned dungeon had built inside me.

"DIIIIIIIIE!!!"

And the spear struck the heart's center.

The impact was absolute.

Any tentacle that dared intercept was atomized.

Every thread of electricity tore through the pulsating tissue, turning the monstrous heart into cosmic dust.

A blast of blue light bathed the swamp's depths. Tremors shook the dungeon's structure, as if a new sun had been born inside. The swamp waters boiled, bubbled, and trembled in fury. The frozen walls thawed.

At last, I collapsed to my knees atop the remnants of the natural altar that once held the heart, breathing heavily, my arms raw flesh.

That's when the ground beneath me trembled.

The rift began to close.

The watery opening's walls folded inward, like a mouth sealing shut with boiling acid. The edges oozed corrosive red liquid, threatening to engulf me in an infernal embrace.

"GLENN!" Aeloria shouted, eyes wide in sheer panic.

Without hesitation, he rose, his blue hair swirling around him, eyes glowing like furious sapphires. He extended his arms and summoned absolute cold.

The ground trembled again.

A cyclonic blizzard burst around the rift.

Like an icy hurricane, the snowstorm spun and dove violently, invading the collapsing space and surrounding Glenn in a white vortex.

A second later, my body was flung out, launched through the air and crashing to the ground like garbage, just a few meters from Aeloria.

"Cough... Cough..." I wheezed with joy at still being alive.

Silence.

Nothing moved.

The entire group stood frozen for long seconds.

The heart was gone. The rift sealed.

Dália, unconscious.

I was alive.

The crocodile...

Across the marsh, the carcass that had once been the monstrosity of darkness and regeneration began to bubble. The putrid liquid that made up its body lost cohesion, and the form collapsed into red sludge, dissolving like a sandcastle under the tide.

The enemy's final sound was a wet pop, like meat dissolving.

And then—nothing.

The cavern, at last, fell silent.

A deadly silence.

Not the tense kind of waiting, nor the hunter's hush. It was the silence after a storm, the kind where every breath feels like a scream, every heartbeat sounds like a distant drum. freewebnσvel.cøm

The crocodile's putrid liquid slowly evaporated, leaving behind a metallic, acidic stench that clung to the throat. The cavern floor, once hostile and alive, now felt like mere... stone. Cold. Empty.

Dórian let his shield drop with a dull thud. His arm trembled, shoulder throbbing from blocking what had seemed like unstoppable blows. He fell to his knees, head down, sweat dripping, mixed with blood and black slime.

But something in his gaze had broken, as if he had been waiting so long for this ending that now, with it realized, he no longer knew what to do.

Seraphine, meanwhile, stood motionless.

Her silver armor was cracked but self-repairing, the spear dangling from one hand, and the blade-arm in the other was fractured.

She stared at the lake with empty eyes, muscles still tense, as if at any moment she might need to leap, strike, survive. Her body was there... but her soul far away.

Across the shore, I lay gasping on the ground.

My chest rose and fell erratically. My hands were charred, fingers burned down to the flesh, but I still clutched a fragment of the spear—just a flickering spark of electricity.

A manic grin crept across my face. Even in pain, I had taken one more step toward my goal.

"We did it," Aeloria murmured.

Aeloria dropped to his knees beside Dália, checking her pulse with trembling hands. The golden glow had faded, but her skin was still warm, alive. He sighed deeply, his eyes locked on the bizarrely powerful healer who, even unconscious, looked at peace. His voice came out hoarse, faltering:

"Idiot... shining like that makes me jealous!"

But it was a lie. In his eyes, there was pride.

Connection is something that takes time to build. Trust, mutual understanding—all of these need countless moments to form. And in this dungeon, this group had begun to lay a very solid foundation. One that would make all the difference in the future.

The group had gathered, and finally, Dórian broke the silence.

"Did we win?"

The question came out soft. Almost powerless. As if he wasn't sure it even deserved an answer.

"Yeah," I replied, trying to sit up, my voice tearing through my throat. "Barely."

Seraphine turned to me, her gaze still hardened, but there was something else: restrained anger. Not at anyone in particular—at life. At luck. At the hell that nearly killed them.

"We're never underestimating a monster like that again."

"And we're never letting a grasshopper lead the charge again," Aeloria added dryly, pulling a weak laugh from me and a long sigh from Dórian.

Aeloria looked toward the center, where the rift once stood. There, where a monstrous heart used to beat, there was only darkness now. No longer the kind that frightens... but the kind that soothes. The stillness after a fight. The end of a nightmare.

"It's over. But for how long?"

I stood up with effort, glancing around at the group. Exhausted, battered—but alive. I walked to the edge of the former marsh, feeling the lingering heat in the air, and said:

"Two more to go!"

Several deep sighs followed my words. Today, we'd won a great battle.

But the war was still far from over.