Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 166: Ch164. [World Quest] (24) - The real story (5)

Chapter 166: Ch164. [World Quest] (24) - The real story (5)

The floor didn’t fall, it folded.

Not like stone breaking or metal giving way, but like the world itself changed its mind about what floor meant.

One instant they were standing. The next, Miles, Sarissa, and Mara were running across a ribbon of spiraling flesh and obsidian tile that wound downward like a staircase built by madness itself.

"We’re going down?" Mara shouted, voice swallowed by wind and the endless moaning of the stone.

Miles didn’t answer, the obsidian rings in his eyes glowing with purpose.

Sarissa kept pace beside him, her sword drawn, body wound like a spring.

"He’s still alive!"

"I know." Miles panted, looking at his ring from time to time. "But something’s trying to end that."

Behind them, the remains of Floor 99 shuddered once and collapsed fully into a fleshy ceiling above their heard. Ahead, the spiraling path narrowed, lined with towering columns that pulsed like arteries. The descent seemed infinite, yet they were running as though they could catch up to time itself.

Then it changed.

The world tilted sideways.

They were no longer descending, but sprinting across a grand open space that hadn’t been there a second ago. The chamber was impossibly vast, the ceiling unseen, the walls curved with shimmering black scales. In the center, far off, a vertical chasm yawned open like the eye of some buried god.

But between them and it...

Monsters.

Not [Creatures], [Beasts] or [Monsters].

Not system-spawned mobs.

These were true abominations. Blasphemies against form.

A tide of shapes, some crawling, others slithering, some flying on broken wings, others dragging too many limbs, flooded the distance. Their mouths didn’t scream. They wept in sound, like crying turned inside out.

"Move!" Miles growled.

A wave of motion followed his words.

He struck first, the [Harbinger’s Scythe] carving through the lead monstrosity, a centipede-shaped crawler with hands instead of legs, as he began to gather momentum, the rings around his irises glowing with more and more intensity.

Its flesh split in a soundless rupture, a spurt of luminescent blue ichor bleeding from its core. It didn’t die, exactly.

It felt more like it just stopped being.

Sarissa burst forward next, the [Cheshire’s Gleam] piercing the chest of a wolf-headed giant whose ribs opened like blooming petals to catch her strike, and failed.

Her weapon gleamed with crimson fire, tearing through bone and whatever passed for soul. It fell in a shuddering heap, but another took its place.

"I’m back, child!" Cheshire shouted in her mind. "This is not a dungeon! This is an actual-"

His words were cut mid-sentence as if something was trying to rob him of his voice, and he did not speak again.

"Damn it! CHESHIRE?" Sarissa screamed.

All the way from floor 62, she had felt their connection still there, even though the cat had not uttered a purr.

Now, however, it was as if the connection had been severed for good.

Mara followed, her eyes shining gold, her [Trifle] shifting into two pistols, humming with tempo.

"Let’s see how real you are, nightmares." She vanished into the swarm.

Miles ducked a scythe-limbed creature’s slash and countered with a sweep that disintegrated a dozen enemies at once. The ground beneath them was unstable, pulsing, as if the dungeon had become part of a body, and they were walking on its lung.

More monsters came, and came.

There was no end to them.

But there was a direction.

"Miles!" Sarissa called out, blocking a bone-shard arrow with the hilt of her sword. "We’re being funneled! They’re not trying to stop us!"

"They’re testing us!" Miles spat, crushing a crab-headed serpent beneath his boot as he ran. "They want to see who breaks first!"

More eyes blinked into existence on the walls, watching. Thousands of them, tracking every movement.

"Then let’s give them a fucking show." Mara blurred past him, leaving a trail of slashed creatures and golden sparks.

They fought like fury incarnate.

Miles wove through the battlefield, scythe carving arcs of annihilation, each movement loaded with momentum, just like Kurt had taught him, back in the Horizon, his every swing cleaving not just flesh, but presence.

Sarissa held the flank, dancing between void-mouthed spiders and glass-bodied hounds, her body burning white-hot, teeth clenched with effort as she dove deeper and deeper into her Classpect and Attributes.

[Wonderland’s Treasure]

[Treasure’s Nature]

[Wonderland’s Paladin]

Her every strike questioning the existence of the beings in front of her, each swing of her blade burning with [Wonderland’s Inferno], charring the defiled flesh in front of her, the golden, chaotic aura of Wonderland itself swirling around her to protect her body.

Mara surged through shadows, a living storm of bullets and blades as her [Trifle] shifted from pistols to rifle, and then to sword, a pair of knives, and a spear, dragging streaks of blue light across the battlefield that became lines of dead.

But still, more came.

A tower-limbed thing with a head like a screaming choir burst from the wall to their right. It spewed black fire as it charged, too fast for something that big.

Miles dove left, pulling Sarissa down with him. The beast roared past, crashing into a dozen of its own kind, toppling like a meteor.

"New plan!" Sarissa growled. "We don’t kill them all. We clear a path."

"Follow me." Miles nodded once.

He stood, breathing hard, and as he lowered his stance, he charged like a mad dog, the [Harbinger’s Scythe] flaring around him like a blur of movement, each strike gathering more and more momentum.

Until he was a mass of speed, destruction, and devastation.

The monsters reacted, the air screamed, tendrils, claws, teeth, the entire army turned on him.

And Miles carved forward.

Every step was death, his blade moving like an extension of his rage, and his rage had purpose.

Dee.

He glanced at his ring, just enough to see its light. It burned blood-red. He could hear a scream that hadn’t yet reached his ears, could taste the moment of collapse that had yet to reach his tongue.

"No..." He whispered, eyes wide. "Not again." And pushed forward with renewed savagery.

Behind him, Sarissa and Mara kept moving, watching his back, eliminating anything that flanked or circled. They were bleeding, exhausted, but still moving.

Nothing could slow them now.

They reached the inner edge of the monster horde, where the ground turned to blackened bone, cracked and scorched.

The center of the dungeon opened before them, a circular arena, vast as a city square, ringed with impossible walls.

And there, at the heart of it...

Diego.

Falling to his knees, in a moment that lasted a lifetime.

His body glowed dimly, flickering like a dying star. Blood poured from his ears, his nose, even his eyes. His hands trembled, raised toward the Dungeon Boss, a massive chained creature whose body was still writhing.

The Boss screamed.

Not in triumph. It screeched in pain.

It twisted in its bindings, a nightmare alive, a cathedral of horror made flesh, but it couldn’t seem to look away from Diego. Something had hurt it.

Something had stained it.

And that something was Diego’s light.

As it kept screeching, one more chain snapped.

Miles stopped dead.

"No..." He whispered, the scythe shaking in his hands.

"That thing-" Sarissa ran up beside him, gasping.

"It’s afraid!" Mara said, wide-eyed. "But Dee’s... He’s..."

Miles didn’t wait.

The wind turned black, the ground bent toward him, the Dungeon feeling like it was resisting him.

As Miles saw Dee fall, his light dimming more and more, he stepped forward, stomping the ground as hard as he could.

And it felt like the world stopped pretending it could hold him down.

He ran.