Fear cut deeper than pain because it reached all the way to the soul.

  One never forgot the sting of absolute terror, but unlike many things, it never got any easier. Matthew’s head hurt worse than if his skull had been set on fire. His heart pounded so hard his chest hurt. His blood had turned to ice in his veins and his half-vision blurred at the edges. He could barely see the edges of the towering mountain of eyes and fanged maws holding him, but he could feel its rancid, orange breath on his skin.

  “I knew you would come back to play sooner or later,” the thing gloated with bloodthirsty glee. “You couldn’t resist the urge to lose your other eye, am I wrong?”

  Matthew heard a gunshot in the distance, followed by the feeble sight of an energy-powered bullet bouncing off purple skin thicker than bark and tougher than steel. A few of the things’ multicolored eyes glared at the source of the projectile with casual disdain, but most ignored the threat to glare at Matthew.

  “Cute,” the thing said with mocking cruelty. “You’ve brought me new victims. I’m touched.”

  It showed its appreciation by flinging Matthew across the room straight at an arcade machine. His Doom Sense finally triggered one second before the impact, far too late to change anything.

  A surge of pain spread through his back when it hit the screen with enough force to crack it. Matthew’s back would likely have broken from the blow without his Peak spell on. Even then, part of him knew that the monster would have easily killed him had it applied all of its strength, but it toned down the blow to downgrade it from lethal to merely agonizing. He fell onto the floor face first to the tune of raging gunfire. How much ammo did John waste on that creature when they should have been running?

  How… How did it bypass Doom Sense? Did it adapt to it?

  “Matthew!” Kari’s hands grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back to his feet. “Matthew, are you hurt?!”

  “Run,” was all Matthew could answer, his body shaking and his back hurting. “We need to run!”

  “Evacuate immediately!” Crypto concurred. “I’ve dispatched Chang, but you need to take–”

  “You’re not going anywhere, Matthew,” the creature replied. “Disjunction.”

  A mighty pulse of White Flux traveled across the room and hit the Crawlers like a tidal wave. Matthew felt the pain and exhaustion his Peak spell kept suppressed returning with full force and his Doom Sense fizzling in his skull. His and Kari’s navigators fried out and fell off their ears, their very magic stripped away from them.

  Matthew’s Key remained unaffected—the hole in his eye forever hungry—but the pulse had disrupted all of his passive spells. From the sudden sluggish look on Kari’s face, she had suffered from the same affliction.

  Worst of all, the rift between the Dungeons closed on its own. The pathway crumbled to nothingness and severed the bond between them.

  They had lost their escape route.

  “Trying to run away again?” the thing taunted him. “I’m wounded, Matthew, truly. Here I thought you had come to visit me because you cared.”

  Matthew dared to look up at his nightmare, and his head burned like never before.

  The monster crawling into the arcade game area had grown larger and crueler since their last encounter. The chest that marked its humble origins as a mimic-type creature was the only vestige of its first form, its wooden bottom expanding into dozens of tiny humanoid arms carrying it around like a twisted centaur’s legs. The lid’s edges ended in sharp and protruding teeth hungry for blood and death. A central yellow eye circled with purple glared at Matthew in place of the lock.

  However frightening, the creature’s lower parts paled in comparison to the upper ones. There a vile, three-and-a-half meters tall humanoid shape protruded from inside the chest. The twisted jack-in-the-box wore a pinkish hood like clothing merged with purple flesh marred with countless eyes and a good dozen mouths of different sizes; the largest of the latter, which served as the thing’s visage, had blue fingers with claws in place of teeth, all of them salivating with greenish ooze. Its oversized torso eventually split into two humanoid arms thicker than old oaks bustling with power. An oppressive and multicolored aura of Flux brighter than any rainbow suffused the creature.

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  Flashes of blood and screams echoed in Matthew’s brain. Shattered memories of doomed fights and torment flooded his mind, driving home a terrible certainty.

  Death.

  Death crawled among them.

  “My, my, what have we here?” the creature asked, its eyes assessing Kari and John with immense malice. “I recall your scent from your last visit, but I don’t believe we’ve been acquainted. You may call me…” The creature scratched its hideous throat as if hesitating between names. “Durge. Durge will do. Durge is nice.”

  “You and Tarantulas set us up!” John snapped through his clenched teeth, his fingers fruitlessly pressing the triggers of his emptied guns. “This was all a trap to capture us!”

  “Tarantuwhom?” Durge’s hood-head tilted to the side in fascination. “I know no such name, but I did disguise the doorway, yes. I had to draw you people in with care after you so disrespectfully abandoned me last time.”

  It could make plans?

  It could make plans.

  That small detail alone unnerved Matthew more than its ability to bypass his Doom Sense. This monster had been little more than a viciously aggressive berserker the last time they crossed paths, and here it stood, both with a name of its own and frightening self-control. It had learned to curb its aggression long enough to lay a trap.

  The monster had grown smarter.

  John tossed his guns aside and rejoined his teammates. His body was tenser than bowstring and his fingers radiated Red Flux. “Matsumoto, where are his weak points?”

  “It… it has none.” Kari’s face had turned paler than chalk, her eyes desperately searching for a weak point that wasn’t there. “My Key can’t find anything.”

  “W-we need to run,” Matthew muttered, his voice shaking too much for him to shout. Neither tactics nor strength would save them. “W-we need to run to the nearest exit–”

  The monster burst out in laughter.

  The abominable noise of its chittering maws resonated across the arcade, high-pitched and yet deep with unfathomable malice. The Crawlers all froze in place in dread and surprise, with Kari and John noticed the same horrible detail Matthew had so many years ago.

  Monsters never laughed, because they could not feel joy.

  “You’re not going anywhere until we’re done, Matthew,” Durge said, its hands carrying its lumbering frame towards the group at a glacially slow, and yet all so threatening, pace. “I need you. You wouldn’t refuse me a small favor for an old friend? We’re friends, aren’t we?”

  In spite of all its verbosity and eloquence, the way the monster insisted on the name—not with mocking sarcasm, but like a would-be sorcerer would repeat a magical word that would open all doors—betrayed its inhuman nature.

  “What…” Matthew gulped. If he could buy some time to think of a way out… “What… do you want?”

  “What do I want?” A dozen tongues licked twice as many fangs. “I want to savor the taste of humanity.”

  The disgusting hunger and giddiness in its voice sickened Matthew to his core.

  “I hate this place, Matthew. I hate this coffin of steel and concrete where you abandoned me to starve, this… This irreal space of transitional non-existence!” The monster’s claws scratched the floor in cold, animalistic fury. “There is a whole buffet of you out there, Matthew! A banquet of humans salty with that sweet cocktail of fear-laden cortisol and adrenaline!”

  There was thirst in his words; the craving of an addict denied its fix so long it had gone into murderous withdrawal. Once it existed to serve, and now only to indulge, to eat and devour.

  “I’m hungry, Matthew! I’m hungry, but this place… this place won’t let me leave!” Durge pointed a claw at Matthew, and all of its eyes focused on him. “So you will free me! You, my gate and my key, you will unlock the door to the outside so that I may eat my fill!”

  It wanted to escape the Dungeon and rampage in the world outside. To devour and kill its way through anyone unlucky enough to cross its path.

  If it managed to do so and adapted to Disbelief…

  No. Matthew wouldn’t entertain the mere thought. Couldn’t. He couldn’t allow any other Perses.

  He found the strength to glance at his teammates. Both looked about as frightened as he was, but neither of them was foolish enough to argue their case with the monster. They knew that it wouldn’t honor any deal they might make unlike Tarantulas, and that too much was at stake. John prepared to fire a Beam spell at the first provocation, while Kari had drawn her rapier in one hand and carried a knife in the other. The former blade pointed at Durge, and the latter at the floor.

  Pointing down.

  Pointing the way out.

  “Open the gate, now!” Durge raised a hand, crimson lightning crackling between its claws. “Or else–”

  Matthew hit the floor with his hand without warning and opened a hole in the floor.

  John immediately fired a Beam spell at the same time Durge threw a bolt of lightning at them. The former’s projectile bounced off Durge’s skin harmlessly, with the latter’s attack missing the group by an inch as they fell through the floor. They quickly landed into a sanitized corridor below… and then they ran. They ran to the tune of furious shrieks and fists shattering concrete on its way after them.

  They had to escape.

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