The truth is this: every monster you have met or will ever meet was once a human being with a soul as gentle and light as silk. Someone stole the silk from their soul and turned them into this. Monsters are not born into this world; they are made. Nikita gill
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The dungeon was a kind of giant cave with gray stone walls. There was only one tunnel, and that was where the black wolves with deformed bodies came pouring out. More than fifty of them were charging at us.
Everyone immediately got into formation, as the professional awakened at the front had instructed, while the students took their places behind them, organized according to their skills.
The tanks and melee fighters were on the front line, the mages and those capable of ranged attacks on the second line, the healers on the third, and finally me, with Arthur and Charles to protect me.
"On my signal!"
The wolves kept advancing, drool dripping from their gaping jaws. They finally reached us.
"Fire!"
The student mages launched every attack and every spell they could. They hit the wolves head-on, raising a screen of smoke. A moment later, the wolves came out of it almost unharmed. The attacks were unfortunately too weak to hope to seriously injure them.
Seeing how ineffective their attacks were, the students grew frightened and began to tremble.
"Don't lose heart! Keep going—even if you don't wound them, you're weakening them. Fire again if you want to get out of here alive!"
Immediately understanding the urgency of the situation, they started launching their attacks again.
Finally, as the wolves drew closer, the professional awakened were the first to make contact. They cut the monsters down with their swords, forming a solid block. The fact that the wolves had been weakened made their task slightly easier.
They cut through them quickly and efficiently so that each exchange of blows lasted as short a time as possible. However, they were going to be overwhelmed very quickly, and it didn't take long.
"Move forward!" Yac shouted to the students on the front line.
The students moved forward, but with little conviction. The monsters attacked them without the slightest mercy. Despite the monsters being weakened, the students had a lot of trouble killing them. Some even fell backward, taking claw swipes and bites that tore their skin. Despite the din of battle, their panicked cries of pain could be heard very clearly.
Immediately, the classmates who could tried to take down the monsters attacking them, in order to save them but also to keep the formation from breaking. If it broke, it would be a massacre.
The mages cast their spells as much as they could, while the healers provided care relentlessly. Unfortunately, their troubles weren't over: more wolves came out of the tunnel, more than a hundred this time.
Some groaned and cursed, but they couldn't lose focus or lose heart, otherwise death would come knocking at their door.
The ordeal went on for a full thirty minutes, the wolves still pouring in like ants, while the students began to tire and their spells and healing lost their power.
I was there, frozen at the back, watching my classmates fight at the risk of their lives, while I was protected by Arthur and Charles. There had been no casualties, but fatigue and injuries were starting to pile up. The cries of pain at every bite or claw swipe rang in my ears. I couldn't stand hearing them anymore. What's more, I was depriving the team of Charles, a healer who was also trained for combat, who stayed glued to me to protect me. I couldn't watch the situation deteriorate any further, so I said:
"Mr. Charles, go help them, they need you more!"
He hesitated for a moment, but he finally went to help them. So Arthur was now my only bodyguard.
At that moment, a piercing shriek rang out, making the whole cave tremble. A giant monster appeared: it was a Manticore. It had the body of a blood-red lion, a goat's horns, four rows of sharp teeth running from ear to ear, a purple scorpion's tail and bat wings.
The dungeon boss had come out of its chamber, overwhelming us with its power. At first glance, it should have been bad news, but it was quite the opposite, because it spared us from venturing deeper into the dungeon when we hadn't even moved from the entrance. It spared us from facing more powerful beasts—who knows what we might have run into? It was both a stroke of luck and a stroke of bad luck. The Manticore was a large, powerful, imposing monster.
The wolves immediately fled after it appeared, going back the way they had come. The boss let them flee, its attention focused entirely on us.
"It's the boss! If we beat it, we can go home!" shouted Professor Henry.
Everyone was galvanized by the possibility of going home. But, to dash their hopes, the Manticore fired a beam of energy from its mouth.
"Shit, dodge!"
The beam tore through the formation, which had tried to dodge. It caused an explosion, instantly breaking the formation. I was thrown at full speed against one of the dungeon walls by the explosion. I slammed into it hard, a stabbing pain immediately running through my whole body.
Then, falling back to the ground, I was seized with horror at the sight of one of my classmates' severed head, the eyes still rolled back in terror and pain. I immediately recoiled in fear and noticed that I also had burns from the explosion. Some of my ribs were broken as well, and a burning sensation ran through my chest.
I was barely recovering from the shock when I saw the teacher take a claw swipe that sent him into a wall too. Charles ran over and healed him so he could fight again.
I saw other classmates frozen with fear, and corpses littered the ground. Some classmates were trying to heal them, but they were already dead. Five: that was the number of victims of the previous attack.
"Get up! We'll mourn your classmates later! For now, if we want to get out of here alive, we have to defeat that thing!" Yac shouted.
Arthur came over to me; I was leaning against the wall.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine. You don't need to protect me here anymore, go help them over there, quick!"
He nodded before immediately rejoining the fight. A fierce battle broke out, everyone giving their all. After long minutes, as the battle went on, the Manticore weakened, overwhelmed by numbers. Short- and long-range attacks assailed it. However, during the fight, three more classmates lost their lives. There were only twenty-two students left.
After a long and terrible fight, the Manticore, its body riddled with wounds, was defeated. It was Arthur who struck the final blow, piercing its head with his sword.
The rift opened, but there were many seriously injured. It was even a miracle there hadn't been more deaths. Exhausted and out of mana, we made our way painfully toward the exit. Suddenly, to our horror, we heard piercing shrieks.
It was the beasts that had fled when the Manticore appeared, and now they were coming after us. Everyone started running at full speed toward the exit.
Arthur met my gaze. I nodded to tell him to go; he understood and helped the other wounded get out.
I got back on my feet with difficulty, my ribs hurting. I started running as fast as I could. I was about to reach the rift, finally seeing the end of hell, when I was pulled backward. I was thrown several meters, rolling across the ground. I got up with difficulty and saw several of my classmates in front of me.
"What are you doing?"
"Make yourself useful for once, zombie, and distract the monsters while we get away," said Adam, accompanied by two cronies.
They were the ones who had bullied me in middle school and high school.
"You're asking me to die?"
"Exactly. You shouldn't have been dead weight, zombie!"
"Aargh!" I screamed as he hit me with a blow that sent me even farther.
Already injured, I watched the three classmates who had done this to me flee without looking back. But the worst part was the other classmates, who looked away and walked past me to escape. I saw Professor Henry and looked at him with hope, but he looked away.
"No!"
I found myself there, alone, the beasts heading toward me hungrily.
"Is this the end? No, not like this!" I said, refusing to give in to despair.
I got up with my ribs in pieces, running to escape the monsters. Unfortunately, I couldn't reach the gate, but my eye was caught by a small detail: I saw a hole in one of the walls.
I ran toward it with all the strength I had left, to hide where the beasts couldn't reach me. I dove into it as fast as I could, but a horrible burning sensation appeared.
Where my left arm should have been, there was nothing left but a piece of bone and hanging flesh. Turning my head, I saw one of those monsters eating my arm. The burning sensation turned into unbearable pain, driving me out of my mind.
"My arm! Why did it tear off my arm? I have to get away!"
I began crawling as best I could to take shelter in that small cavity. But while I was squeezing all the way in, my legs were still exposed, and, as if to prove me right, I suddenly couldn't feel my right leg anymore. I knew perfectly well what had happened to it too, but I had to keep crawling despite the atrocious pain to get to safety. The monsters wanted to follow me, but the cavity was barely human-sized and they couldn't get in.
After dragging myself along for a little while, I stopped, unable to bear the pain of my missing limbs any longer.
"I can't take the pain anymore…"
My body was on fire; my consciousness wanted everything to end. Either way, I was bleeding out; death was inevitable.
"Ah, I want to die… Let me die…"
Suffering and grief had been the unshakable pillars of my short existence. Every breath was steeped in pain, every moment marked by agony. Like an unbearable burden, pain had wound itself around every fiber of my being. Pain, grief, betrayal, cruelty, torture and death had been my traveling companions. With every step, they had taken root deeper in my being, erecting a monument of torment. In the end, they had been my only certainties, marking each day with an indelible, red-hot brand.
I didn't want to come back to life once again if it meant living an existence marked by suffering. Because I had known it all too well, I decided to close my eyes, to withdraw from this reality, waiting for death to open its arms to me, choosing to lose myself in the dark abyss where the echoes of suffering would finally fade. The veils of existence slowly closed, inviting me to sink into oblivion, where the darkness could finally soothe my unbearable pain. Because in the end, I preferred that darkness; I had grown used to it as if it were an integral part of my being.
It had woven its dark threads around me, winding around my broken soul to try to heal it, permeating every fiber of my being. The darkness had become my shelter, my secret refuge where I felt strangely safe. In its enveloping darkness, I found a strange familiarity, as if it understood my deepest torments and wounds. It had become my silent companion, the accomplice of my darkest thoughts. In this intimate dance with the shadow, I discovered a strange harmony, a fragile balance between my inner pain and the darkness that cradled me.
I was letting myself be lulled by that soft, silent lullaby when a voice reached me, a voice I knew so well, as gentle as a fire in the dead of winter that warms every part of the body frozen by the cold. That voice was my tender mother's:
"My angel, my little angel."
"Mom, Mom!" I sobbed in the darkness.
I remembered her soft, comforting beauty, a face marked by tenderness and maternal love, every feature of which was a caress for my soul in the darkness that surrounded me. Then it was my sister's face that appeared, her voice and her smile like water in an arid desert. Then my brother's, who would keep growing up and would soon be 15. All of it reminded me that I was cherished, that I was precious in their eyes. My mind was torn between two contradictory thoughts: to finally die, or to live for them.
"I don't want to die… I want to die… I don't want to die… Let me die now… I don't want to die now…"
"Kevin," said Marie's soft voice.
"I don't have the will to live anymore… Let me die… No, I want to live… Don't let me die."
The more I thought about my family, the more the desire to join them took over my mind.
"No! The truth is, I don't want to die. But I'm also afraid to live! Because these pains—how much longer will I have to bear them?"
I thought back to those horrible pains, to the people who had made me suffer, me and my family, in every imaginable way—my family, whom I cherished more than my own life. That was when a change took place in me, something I had accumulated and hidden behind a fake mask called a smile!
Without my realizing it, a dark, terrifying voice accompanied me in each of my deepest and darkest thoughts.
"And so pain has turned into hatred."
"What should I do? I've been hurt far too many times!"
"Be strong enough to be someone even demons fear."
The incessant burning of my suffering gave way to a burning anger, fed by bitterness and resentment. Hatred seeped into me, feeding on my distress and my sorrows. It blackened my heart, clouding my vision. In that state of perpetual torment, I was consumed by vengeance and the desire to make those who had caused me so much pain suffer. Hatred, like an insidious venom, enveloped my being, turning my mind into a dark abyss of rage and the desire for revenge, while the abyss into which I was falling grew darker still.
"Pain is a great source of power."
"I'm done! I've shed enough tears, enough screams! If I can't stay in the light, I'll sit in the darkness. My mind is made up! I want to go home! Yes, I want to go home! My mother, my brother and my sister are waiting for me, I have to go home!"
"Live to return! Whoever your enemies are, kill them!"
"I'll kill them without any compassion or pity!"
"Make them suffer as much as you have suffered!"
"They will suffer!"
"O wretched little shadow locked in darkness, soul drowned in foul karma, do you wish to taste power?"
"I do!"
"And so the black work is accomplished, and you awaken and are resurrected in the infinite darkness of the abyss, revealing an endless landscape, devoid of all light, where only eternal darkness reigns. The bottomless abyss stretches out before you, filled with a devouring cold, where the insidious whispers of darkness seep into your being, erasing the last vestiges of light that might remain in you. Stop trembling and walk this earth once more with your head held high, for from now on the darkness of the abyss walks with you!"
"My angel," my mother's voice echoed again.
"Mom, if I'm an angel, paint me with black wings!"
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They will insult you, hurt you, defeat you, betray you, burn you, and watch you burn. But they will never be able to destroy you. Because just as Rome was built on ashes, you, like a phoenix, will rise from your ashes to soar. Nikita Gill