Date: January 11, 2018 | Time: 1:32 AM | Location: The Mother's Layer
The ground didn't just get wet. It screamed.
One moment, we were standing on the cracked, grey stone of the chasm floor. The next, a thick, viscous tide of crimson was bubbling up from the fissures, turning the battlefield into a literal Blood Sea.
It wasn't a wave. It was a flood. The volume of blood rising from the millions of corpses below was so immense that the chasm floor was vanishing by the second.
I watched a stray scrap of a mercenary's cape dip into the rising pool. It didn't just soak. It hissed. The fabric dissolved into grey ash in seconds, the iron-scented liquid bubbling with a corrosive, life-draining hunger.
「 Warning: Atmospheric density has increased by 312%. The 'Blood Sea' is currently operating as a high-concentration acidic mana-catalyst. Touching it will result in 'Withered Touch' status. I suggest you stop admiring the scenery and start looking for a dry spot, monkey. The flood rate is currently 15 centimeters per minute. You have approximately 84.6 seconds before this entire chasm becomes a bowl of soup. 」
"Thanks, System," I muttered, my boots sizzling as I hopped onto a jagged obsidian spire. "Your optimism is truly the highlight of my day."
I looked around. Reality was breaking. The crimson liquid was already ankle-deep on the lower ridges, and the air felt like it was made of warm, wet copper. The Aether-Vox on my collar was emitting nothing but a high-pitched, tooth-grating screech.
The comms were dead. The Mother of Despair's heartbeat had finally peaked, and it was taking our coordination with it.
"STAY OFF THE GROUND!" I roared, my voice tearing through the humid, metallic air.
I knew Navina and Alina. I knew they didn't need my help. But their officers—the guys I'd seen talking to her earlier—were looking a lot less legendary right now. Static dodging wouldn't work. Eventually, the blood would reach the spires.
"IT'S ACIDIC!" I screamed again, waving my arms at a group of confused mages. "IF IT TOUCHES YOUR SKIN, IT SINKS IN! IT'S NOT STOPPING! DO SOMETHING!"
Thirty meters away, Navina was a blur of blue static. She didn't jump. She didn't stay still. She simply pulsed. Every time a ripple of the Blood Sea surged toward her, she used Ionic Displacement—firing microscopic, low-power plasma bursts from her heels reflexively. The resulting heat-cushion didn't just repel the liquid; it boiled the acidity away before it could even touch her dress.
She was dodging while thinking, her eyes scanning the battlefield like a predatory bird. Even in the chaos, she was a commander.
"Don't just stand there!" Navina's voice roared, cutting through the steam of her own defense.
"Bram! We need a structural object! Aris, prepare the thermal seals!"
A man with a sharp, angled face—Pryce, if I remembered the name correctly—stood on a small outcrop. He looked like he hadn't slept in a week, but the moment Navina's voice hit him, his deadpan eyes sharpened, his silver coin clicking with mechanical precision.
"Bram! High ground!"
A human built like a literal brick wall slammed a massive hammer into the chasm floor. Bram, the Vanguard's physical anchor, didn't try to fight the blood. He hit the stone underneath it, the impact creating a localized shockwave that forced a pillar of rock to rise several feet.
A twitchy scout I didn't know—Wren—was already moving. He didn't have heavy magic, but he had Restless Motion. He started launching throwing knives into the chasm walls, creating makeshift iron rungs for the mages to climb.
◆ ◆ ◆
Across the chasm, Alina was the opposite.
She wasn't dodging. She was standing directly in the tide, the blood lapping at the leather of her boots. I saw her skin begin to redden, the acidity already starting its work, but she didn't flinch. She was motionless, her eyes half-closed.
Sampling the frequency.
She was letting the blood touch her just long enough to mathematically map its mana decay. Then, in a single heartbeat, the air around her flared with a cold, blue light.
Phase-Shift Repulsion Technique.
The crimson tide didn't just ripple away; it shattered. Alina had built a counter-technique in real-time, vibrating the atmosphere at the exact inverse frequency of the Blood Sea's acidic pulse. A molecular "dry pocket" expanded around her, turning her skin into an impermeable fortress that the liquid couldn't even recognize as a surface.
She opened her eyes, clear and cold, and gave me a single, silent nod of recognition. She had the solution.
"Hey! You in the velvet!" I yelled, pointing toward the arrogant-looking guy with a skeletal staff. "Move out fast!"
The man—Cid, the system's HUD labeled him—didn't look back. He looked annoyed. He slammed his staff into a floating piece of debris.
"Don't tell me what to do, brat!"
His robes flared with a sickly violet aura. From the depths of the crimson tide, a massive, half-rotted Bone-Crusher beast erupted. It wasn't alive, and it wasn't dead. It was a platform of reanimated calcium.
He didn't just hop onto it. He commanded the beast to drink. The skeletal creature opened its maw, siphoning the acidic blood into its ribcage to keep the area around his party clear for a few more seconds.
He hopped onto its skull, pulling a blonde elf and a massive warrior up with him. The elf didn't waste a heartbeat, drawing her recurve bow and launching Wind-Arrows. The high-frequency projectiles didn't hit the Mother; they struck the surface of the rising tide, creating high-pressure air-pockets that literally pushed the blood away from the magic I was preparing.
Then there was Celia.
I looked toward the shifting shadows at the chasm's edge. She wasn't playing defense. She wasn't even looking for a way out.
She was pissed.
Celia was standing on a narrow ridge, her eyes glowing with a demonic intensity. She reached into her hair, and with a sickening metallic ching, thick chains began to spiral out.
She didn't use them to swing away. She wrapped them tight around her legs, the iron links binding her dress and high-heeled boots in a protective, cursed lattice.
It looked painful. It looked insane.
She wasn't trying to stay dry. She was creating a physical layer of cursed iron that the Blood Sea couldn't dissolve fast enough. She wanted mobility, not safety. She adjusted her grip on the scythe, her gaze locked onto the boss.
「 Your sister is currently entering a 'Crazy' feedback loop, Partner. I'd offer to help, but I'm busy calculating how long it takes for these rookies to turn into soup. 84.6 seconds, by the way. And since the floor is literally becoming the ocean, you can't just run. You have to change the state of matter. 」
"I know," I gritted my teeth.
I looked at the group of guild members huddling on Bram's rock. The blood was rising too fast.
I needed something new. Something the world hadn't seen.
System. Analyze the resonance between the Celestial frequency and the Ice magic. We have to come up with something new.
「 Analyzing... 98.7% match found. It's a disaster. The 'Celestial' order hates the 'Ice' entropy. If you combine them, you'll likely blow your own arms off. But it would be very aesthetically pleasing for your obituary. 」
"Do it anyway," I commanded, jumping into the air toward the center of the chasm.
I felt the two energies collide in my chest. It felt like swallowing a handful of frozen needles and a sun at the same time.
My mana channels groaned. My vision blurred.
Celestial Magic: Heavenly Aegis. Elemental Magic: Absolute Zero.
I slammed my palms together mid-air, but I didn't try to stop the tide. I tried to change it. I forced the Celestial light to interact with the Salinity of the blood, stripping the acidic ions while the Ice magic sucked the heat out of the reaction.
"Celestial Frost: Hallowed Neutrality!"
The tide didn't stop, but it shuddered.
A shockwave of blinding white ice-crystals swept across the surface of the chasm. The blood didn't freeze solid—it slushified. The violent, hissing steam died instantly, replaced by a biting, sacred chill.
「 Analysis update: Acidity reduced by 92%. Temperature stabilized at -4 degrees Celsius. Estimation for 'Withered Touch' lethality has shifted from 12 seconds to... 182 minutes. You've given them three hours, Sorcerer. I'm almost impressed. 」
I landed on a semi-frozen slush-bank, my breathing heavy, my charcoal coat smoking from the internal heat. I didn't wait for them to thank me. I didn't have time.
"IT'S NOT OVER!" I shouted, my voice booming across the chasm.
The guild members were staring at the blood, watching as it lapped against their boots without dissolving the leather. Navina and Alina both paused, their heads snapping toward me.
"I've neutralized the acidity for now, but the sea isn't going anywhere!" I stepped forward, the slush crunching under my boots. "It's still cold, and it's still rising. If you stop moving, you'll freeze. If you wait for a miracle, you're dead!"
I looked at the Mother of Despair. She was towering over us, a skeletal nightmare in an ocean of neutralized gore.
"This sea won't vanish until she's dead!" I pointed my dagger toward the boss, my eyes locked onto the commanders. "Stop looking at the ground and start looking at the target! We work together, or we drown together! ATTACK!"
The soldiers let out a ragged, desperate cheer. Navina's eyes flared with renewed lightning. Alina's blue shield pulsed.
The raid was finally entering the endgame...?
The Mother didn't wait for us to finish our cheers.
She stood at the center of the chasm, her towering skeletal frame beginning to vibrate with a frequency so high it turned the surrounding slush into a fine, crimson mist. The massive ribcage that had been closed tight since the start of the raid finally groaned, the bone-plates sliding aside like a heavy vault door.
That's when I saw it.
Tied to the center of her spine by thick, grey umbilical cords was a calcified child. It was human-shaped, but its skin was the color of lead, and its eyes—if they could even be called that—were twin voids of absolute darkness.
It's back now.
「 Analysis update: The 'Baby' is the primary mana-nucleus. The Mother was stagnant during your little ice-show because she was realigning her internal circulation to match the Blood Sea's salinity. She's now effectively 'swimming' through the mana field. Her speed has increased by 42%. Move, genius. Now. 」
"NOW!" I screamed, my voice cracking under the humidity. "HIT HER BEFORE SHE REBINDS!"
I didn't have to tell Celia twice.
She didn't wait for a formation. She didn't wait for a signal. She launched herself off the ice platform like a spring-loaded trap, her rusted chains whipping through the air. She wasn't using the Withering Scar style for defense anymore.
Celia spun mid-air, her scythe trailing a wake of black, oily smoke. She wasn't even using the slush; she was walking on the chains she was constantly firing and retracting. She was a localized hurricane of cursed iron and white hair, aiming straight for the Mother's neck.
Behind her, Cid's Bone-Crusher roared, charging into the tide, while the Crimson Eclipse vanguard tried to provide suppression fire. But the Mother didn't even look at them.
◆ ◆ ◆
The Reaping Blink.
She flickered. One second she was forty meters away; the next, she was standing in Celia's shadow, her obsidian claws raised for a Blood Touch.
"CELIA, BEHIND YOU!" I yelled, throwing a Heavenly Aegis toward her.
Celia didn't turn.
Cursed Evolution: Mirror of the Damned.
A wall of living thorns erupted from her back, catching the Mother's claws and draining the momentum before the strike could land. Celia didn't counter; she just kept swinging her scythe, laughing—a sound that was way too sweet for the gore surrounding us.
"Ahahahha..." Celia cackled, her eyes glowing with a light that I could only describe as 'unhinged.'
"Alina! Navina!" I roared, pointing toward the Mother's exposed flank. "SHE'S PINNED! TAKE THE ARM!"
They didn't need the command, but they used the opening I created.
Navina and Alina moved in a synchronization that shouldn't have been possible without an Aether-Vox. It was pure, high-level instinct.
Navina flickered into her Flow of Reflex. In the span of a single second, she switched her Arc Flingers 12 times.
Plasma.
Ionized Frost.
Acidic Slug.
Plasma again.
She was a gold-clad blur, a constant stream of multi-elemental fire erupting from her hands as she circled the Mother. The heat was so intense it turned the slush back into steam, creating a blinding shroud.
And inside that shroud, Alina was the blade.
Heavenly Stance: Quick Switch X Technique.
Alina didn't use raw power. She used Navina's plasma bursts as gravitational anchors. Every time Navina switched an element, Alina adjusted her blade's vibration to match the exact inverse of the Mother's Skeletal Sanctuary.
They weren't just attacking; they were dismantling her at a molecular level.
"Destroy It All!" Navina screamed, her blue eyes glowing with a blue mana-flare.
Navina fired a concentrated Plasma-Vortex directly at the Mother's shoulder, and at the exact millisecond of impact, Alina stepped through the flame. Her blade was humming with a multi-elemental resonance that turned the steel into a ghost-white line of light.
Technique: Absolute Zero Cut.
The line of light didn't cut; it erased. There was no resistance, no sound of bone breaking. The Mother's left arm simply ceased to exist, turning into a cloud of white glitter that was instantly swallowed by the steam.
The Mother flickered back, her Eternal Heartbeat pulsing with a frantic, wet rhythm as she tried to rebind the arm.
「 Damage report: 14% of the Mother's integrity compromised. Navina and Alina have effectively bypassed her 'Skeletal Sanctuary' for a bit. Celia is currently at 100% aggression. I suggest you find another miracle, Partner, because the 'Baby' just opened its mouth. 」
I gripped my dagger, the ice under my feet beginning to crack under the Mother's increasing mana-drag. The "Baby" in her ribs wasn't just seeing us now.
It was starting to cry.
And every time it wailed, the Blood Sea rose another ten centimeters.
"Keep the pressure on!" I shouted, the adrenaline finally starting to numb the burn in my mana channels.
"Don't let her heal! ALINA, AGAIN!"
The Mother didn't answer with a shriek this time. She whispered.
The sound was worse than the screaming. It was a multi-tonal rasp that seemed to bypass our ears and vibrate directly into our skulls—a distorted, overlapping choral of a thousand dead women trying to soothe a single child.
"Hush, my little star," the Mother crooned, her skeletal jaw unhinging in a way that defied geometry. "The insects are noisy tonight. But they carry such sweet light. Just a little more... and you'll never be cold again."
She didn't look at us. Her two massive obsidian arms cradled the calcified child with a tenderness that was stomach-turning, given the gore she was standing in.
"I won't let them touch you. I'll make them part of our sea."
As she spoke, her structural integrity began to shift. The bone-plates on her back elongated, turning into jagged, arachnid legs that pierced the slush, giving her an unnatural, skittering mobility. She wasn't an entity anymore. She was a landscape of malice.
"SHE IS ADAPTING!" Navina's voice tore through the static of the comms, but it was just a raw scream. "EVERYONE PREPARE FOR A BLINK!"
The Reaping Blink.
She didn't just flicker. She vanished into the shadows of our own fear.
Ten meters to my left, a young mercenary—someone I'd seen earlier sharing a dry ration with Pryce—became a silhouette of horror. The Mother's arm didn't just pierce him; it erupted through his sternum like a jagged obsidian spike.
He didn't scream. He just gasped, his life-light flickering as the Mother began to drink.
A soft, violet light flowed from the boy's eyes as his soul was ripped from his body, and in a sickening display of biological acceleration, the arm Navina had disintegrated just moments ago grew back. The bone-plates knitted together with a wet, grinding sound, fueled by the boy's dying spark.
"No..." Someone in the back sobbed.
The boy dropped into the Blood Sea, his white, withered corpse vanishing into the crimson depths in seconds.
"TIARA!"
Cid's voice was a jagged blade of panic.
The Mother had flickered again. This time, she caught the Elven archer, Tiara, in mid-air. One of the Mother's new arachnid legs pierced upward, grazing Tiara's shoulder and shattering her recurve bow into splinters. The elf fell hard into the slush, her emerald cloak darkening as the neutralized blood soaked into her wounds.
"SILAS! COVER HER!" Cid roared, his velvet robes tattered, his eyes wide with a rare, raw terror.
The formation was breaking. The "Elite" mercenaries were retreating, their eyes glazed with a hopeless, crushing realization. We were fighting a monster that used our own bodies as batteries.
"What are you doing?"
The voice was cold. It was quiet. And it carried more authority than the Mother's entire choral.
◆ ◆ ◆
Celia was standing at the center of the ice platform, her black hair flying in the metallic wind. She wasn't looking at the Mother. She was looking at us.
"You're all pathetic," Celia spat, the sweetness in her voice replaced by a venom that made the Blood Sea look like honey.
"Is this it? The great 'Crimson Eclipse' and their toy soldiers? You're playing 'defense' like a bunch of cornered rats."
She stepped forward, her red eyes locking onto Pryce and the retreating vanguards.
"Look at yourselves! You're terrified of getting hurt. You're scared to die, so you've already stopped living." She let out a short, mocking laugh. "If you die today, it's not because she's strong. It's because you're all losers. You're morons who can't see that the only path out of a grave is over the body of the one who dug it!"
She turned toward the Mother, her scythe humming with a pitch-black resonance.
"FIGHT OR DIE FIGHTING, YOU COWARDS! I'D RATHER KICK HER TEETH IN THAN WATCH YOU ALL WHIMPER LIKE DOGS!"
Celia launched.
She didn't use her scythe. She used her chains to wrap around the Mother's neck, using the momentum to swing her body like a projectile.
BOOM.
Her red heel slammed directly into the Mother's skeletal mask, the force of the impact sending a shockwave through the chasm. The Mother's head snapped back, her dialogue cutting off in a wet gargle.
Celia didn't stop. She retracted the chains, pulling herself back in for a second, third, and fourth kick, her movements a blur of violet heels and white lace.
"GET LOST COWARDS!" Celia screamed at the Mother. "YOU FILTHY TRASH! SHES MINE TO KILL!"
Celia's hands flared with a dark, pulsing light. She wasn't just hitting her. She was using Blood Manipulation—not on herself, but on the soul-blood the Mother had just consumed.
"Scream for me!" Celia hissed.
The Mother's newly grown arm began to bulge and crack, the blood inside it literally rejecting its new host. The bone-armor shattered from the inside out as Celia forced the mana to reverse its polarity.
"You... brat..." The Mother's voice deepened, her choral turning into a singular, furious roar.
"AND ME!"
Cid was back. His face was a mask of cold fury, his staff glowing with a light that looked like it had been pulled from the deepest pit of the abyss.
"I've been waiting for this," Cid growled, his voice dropping an octave. "No more holding back. No more 'contracts'. I'll turn you into pieces for Tiara!"
Cid slammed his staff into the slush.
Three massive Shadow-Golems erupted from the sea, their forms made of solidified, dark mana and the bones of the long-dead. They didn't attack the Mother; they restrained her, latching onto her arachnid legs and pinning her to the center of the chasm.
"NOW!" Cid roared, switching his staff to his left hand and drawing a bone-dagger. "DO IT!"
It was the most beautiful, violent thing I've ever seen.
"Golems! Shift! Pivot!" Cid's fingers danced in the air, pulling invisible threads of mana. "Don't get in my way, you chain-swinging brat. You're blocking my attacks."
Celia didn't even look at him. She launched.
"Attacks?" Celia spat, her scythe carving a black arc. "All I see is a mediocre old man playing with bone-puppets. Move, or I'll shred you along with the trash."
As she hit the peak of her jump, a Shadow-Golem erupted directly beneath her feet. Celia slammed into its palm, using the massive hand as a trampoline to launch herself at the Mother's throat.
"Puppet?" Cid's face twisted into a smirk. "These are Paragon-grade catalysts, you brat. Your kicks are just background noise. Watch a real ego devour the field."
Cid slammed his staff into the slush. A second Golem materialized behind the Mother's back. Celia fired her chains into the new Golem's ribs, reeling herself in at terminal velocity.
"Watch? I'm the one opening the grave," Celia cackled, her red heel connecting with the Mother's skull. "You're relying on your summons like a caged donkey. Shut up and stay in your corner, old man."
Celia retracted the chains, using a third Golem as a swing-point to launch into a vertical spiral.
"Donkey? I'm a Necromancer! You're just a parasite stealing my kill!" Cid flickered, shadow-stepping to the top of a Golem's head. "Golems! Close the cage! Don't let the chain-brat mess up the focus!"
The three Shadow-Golems began to pulse, their limbs becoming semi-liquid platforms that flickered in and out of the Blood Sea. Every time the Mother tried to use the Reaping Blink, a Golem was already there, acting as a density-anchor that dragged her back.
"Parasite?" Celia swung her scythe, the blade humming with cursed resonance. "I'm the only one actually drawing blood. Your shadows are just fancy background scenery. Be grateful I'm letting you watch the show."
"Show? You haven't even cracked the core yet, amateur!" Cid lunged forward, his bone-dagger sinking into the Mother's shoulder. "Switch! And try not to trip over your own chains, mediocre psychotic bitch!"
Slash. Kick. Chain-pull. Reset.
Navina and Alina flickered back into the fray, their movements now synchronized with the chaotic, competitive sync of Cid and Celia. Alina used the golems' shadows as launchpads, her blade creating a strobe-light effect as she delivered a dozen vertical slashes. Navina opened fire with her Arc Flingers, turning the Mother's movement into a sluggish crawl.
I didn't stay behind.
I jumped off the ice spire, my celestial dagger glowing with a white-hot intensity. We were a swarm. A group of idiots, losers, and anomalies, all moving with a singular, desperate rhythm.
We pushed her back. We broke her armor. And for the first time...
The Mother of Despair started to back away.
"DON'T LET HER BREATHE!" Pryce's voice cracked over the roar of the Blood Sea.
He didn't have his silver coin anymore; he had a short-sword, his face splattered with crimson slush as he led the final charge. Behind him, Bram slammed his hammer into a floating bone-shelf, forcing the Mother's skittering legs into a bottleneck. Wren was a shadow on the periphery, his knives finding the gaps in the Mother's newly knit armor.
It was a meat-grinder.
Rengar, the lion beastkin from Cid's party, roared as he slammed his charged fist into the Mother's side, the impact rattling the calcified child in her ribs. Silas provided the anchor, his warhammer creating localized earthquakes that prevented the Mother from sinking into the tide to heal.
Dozens of unnamed mercenaries—men who had been trembling just minutes ago—were now screaming, their blades and spells carving into the S+ rank nightmare.
"Alina! Now!" Navina's voice was a clarion call.
She dismissed her plasma rifle and summoned a sleek, long-barreled Arcflinger—the Needle. She didn't aim for the Mother's head or her remaining arm. She aimed for the gap.
Bang.
The blue-hot needle of mana didn't explode. It pierced. It traveled through the Mother's ribcage and grazed the shoulder of the calcified child.
"Uwaaaaaa!"
The sound wasn't human. It was a high-frequency wail that felt like a serrated blade dragging across my brain. The "Baby" wasn't just a mana-source anymore. It was hurt. It was crying.
The world went still.
「 Warning: Structural integrity has vanished. The Mother of Despair has entered 'Blood Form: Calamity'. Probability of player survival: 0.0012%. Lucas, if you have a god, now would be an excellent time to apologize to him. I'm sure he's busy, though. 」
The Mother didn't scream back. She unraveled.
Her bone-plating didn't break; it liquidized. The logic of her skeletal form simply failed. The massive skeletal frame collapsed into a dark, oil-like gore that didn't just fall; it pulsed, gravitating toward the center like a dying star.
In its place, a humanoid figure rose—slimmer, made of dark, swirling gore, with the "Baby" now pulsating at the center of its chest like a living heart.
◆ ◆ ◆
The fear wasn't a choice anymore. It was an environmental effect. I felt my knees buckle, the absolute weight of her S+ presence crushing the air out of my lungs. Around me, the mercenaries dropped their weapons, their eyes wide with a primal, paralyzed terror.
The Mother raised her hand, and the sky died.
The grey clouds of the crater turned a bruised, violent red. A single drop of liquid hit my cheek. Then another.
First, it was a drizzle. Then, the sky opened up.
It wasn't water. It was warm, metallic rain. The chasm was being flooded from both above and below now, the Blood Sea rising in a violent, hungry storm. The Mother stood in the center of the deluge, her gore-slicked form unmoving as she prepared to erase us from the timeline.
I looked at Celia. She was still standing, her scythe trembling, her eyes locked on the boss. But even she couldn't move.
The Suffocating Domain was absolute.
Then, a sound broke through the silence.
Static.
My collar vibrated. The Aether-Vox, which had been dead for the entire raid, suddenly sparked with a clean, high-frequency signal.
"Yoo... mic test, mic test. One, two. Is this thing on?"
The voice was light. Casual. It sounded like it belonged in a trendy café, not at the bottom of a bleeding chasm.
"Hey everyone, how's the party going? Looks like things are getting a little... damp."
I froze.
I looked up into the raining blood, the Mother of Despair's "Baby" wailing into the red sky.
Click.
"You guys might want to fasten your seatbelts," the voice chuckled, a dark, melodic undertone beneath the humor.
"The real storm is just getting started."