Chapter 53
To Remember part 4
The monster was still vibrating, embedded in the ceiling, limbs struggling like a pinned insect.
Track—
The ceiling sagged slightly.
Boot soles hit the ceiling's wood and adhered for just an instant, long enough to stabilize to the right of the monster.
His posture low, his breath compressed.
His right leg ignited.
The red aura densified around his shin, wrapping the instep like red-hot metal.
Then…
the kick descended.
The tips of his boot fell like a chisel.
They sank into the monster's head,
crushing the top of its skull with a dull sound,
a KRAK that reverberated through the entire structure.
And the creature fell.
But it didn't fall "downwards."
It fell, shot violently, as if the kick had been an ejecting hammer.
The creature hit the floor.
Bounced.
Bounced so high its shadow passed over three soldiers retreating, unsure whether to cover or exploit the bounce.
And right in that second of suspension…
Teo had already landed as well.
Not behind.
Not on the monster.
But in front, cutting off its trajectory as if he had calculated the exact angle.
His right fist was wrapped in red aura, not uniform, but pulsing, with cracks of red light vibrating in his finger joints like lines of incandescent solder.
The air vibrated.
The fist sank into the monster mid-bounce.
A dry, deep, brutal impact.
The blow buried it into the floor, splitting the wood, the metal beneath the wood.
The monster was pinned there.
Motionless for an instant.
Teo's aura dissipating into red fragments that floated like sparks.
The floor creaked beneath them.
A crack opened in a star shape, marking the exact point where Teo had finished the fall.
He didn't breathe immediately.
His back tensed.
His fingers still vibrated with the resonance of the impact.
And when he finally exhaled…
the monster was still moving, releasing white vapor.
Its three limbs trembled as if trying to remember how to function.
And right in that second…
Teo quickly lifted his gaze, his instinct arriving before his breath.
The other monster was already upon him.
An arm—the left one—descending like a living guillotine,
with black, sharp claws gleaming with a wet edge,
straight at his head.
The attack cut the air with a violent hiss.
Teo reacted a quarter-second before impact.
He twisted his torso, planted his foot, and with a short leap—almost a minimal spring—he retreated just enough for the claws to pass in front of his nose.
During the jump…
the aura on his body exploded, enveloping him.
It moved like a gelatinous mass
concentrating on his left knee and elbow, as if he'd dipped them in liquid metal. They coated in red.
By the time he landed, his body was already ahead of its own fall:
—Elbow above the monster's hand.
—Knee below it.
—Both aligned at the same point.
And with a quick, short hop from his right foot, he closed the distance with a double blow.
Elbow and knee.
Same point.
Same fraction of a second.
Same force.
The impact shattered the joint.
In a human, it would have been the wrist.
In that thing… something equivalent, but coarser, more rigid, more difficult.
Even so, Teo broke it.
The arm twisted backward with a wet CRAK.
The monster shrieked, or something like a choked shriek bubbled from its jaw.
But the inertia of the double impact made Teo spin.
A complete turn in the air.
His right elbow bent backward during the spin.
Red aura enveloped it.
And at the tip of his elbow, like a thorn born from that same aura, a small, pointed, crimson crystal formed.
Straight into the monster's face.
The crystal sank between the deformed eyes with a soft, raw sound,
as if piercing a bag of flesh and bone at the same time.
The creature shook entirely, convulsing backward.
Teo landed on one knee, arm still extended, breath ragged.
The crystal on his elbow shattered into pieces of reddish light.
But the damage was done.
The monster fell to one side, half its face dripping black blood mixed with a faint red glow.
CRRRR—KSHHH
A dry, deep sound.
Floor giving way.
Not wood breaking: structure collapsing.
Teo reacted instantly, turning his head toward the source.
The floor where the first monster had been buried suddenly sank downward, as if a force from below had reclaimed it, and the monster—still writhing, still alive—vanished among broken planks.
A dark, violent hole remained in its place.
Teo leaned his torso forward, about to follow.
—"No!"— Eilor's voice cracked like a whip.
Teo halted his charge.
His momentum stalled halfway.
Their gazes crossed.
Brief. Intense. Loaded.
Eilor was pointing with his still-smoking sword toward the other monster.
Teo stopped looking at the hole.
He looked at the room.
And in a quick sweep—pure training, helical survival calculation—he tallied.
Shattered tables.
Broken chairs.
Weapons scattered.
Fresh blood and dried blood.
Teo's mind worked faster than his breathing.
"Hanz's group isn't here."
"Bairon isn't either."
"Three out of commission."
"One dead."
"Two… transformed."
"Eight."
"Only eight of us left."
—"Shit…"— he whispered, voice barely audible.
Tension ran down his back.
The wounded monster began to rise.
Half its face hung like a torn mask.
Its limbs scraped the floor, warping planks with each push.
Its breathing wasn't breathing: it was a wet creak that made the wood beneath it vibrate.
By the time it finished turning…
Teo, with disgust, reacted to the horrible creature before him.
He rotated his right hand, extended four fingers, palm down, in a sharp, precise motion.
But in that context, that signal was louder than a shout.
Eilor saw it.
The one in the blue coat too.
The other two soldiers too.
That gesture meant one thing:
Four would split off.
"Maybe to find the monster that fell and finish it." That was most likely, what most thought.
The one in the blue coat shoved one soldier by the shoulder; the soldier, catching on that he was being moved aside, started to run at the same time.
Eilor repeated the action a second later.
The logic behind the gesture was brutally simple:
Two third-grade soldiers (Eli and the other psychic) couldn't face the monster…
but they could help in the rearguard, cut angles, pull, push, immobilize, whatever.
Eilor, while running, half-thought it, just to validate the strategy:
"Makes sense… Eli and the other wouldn't survive a direct clash. But they can serve as support…"
It was a thought compressed between footsteps.
The floor creaked under the boots of the four selected.
The one in the blue coat in front, Eilor to his left, two soldiers behind, brushing splinters off themselves after the previous chaos.
The four dodged pieces of furniture, jumped over uneven floor sections, their boots splashing over dark patches of blood that made the floor a trap.
And then they saw the hole in the floor.
It wasn't large.
Just an irregular hole, the wood ripped downward as if something huge had fallen straight through.
It was a direct drop to the lower deck.
The wounded monster was down there.
None of them slowed.
The one in the blue coat jumped first.
Air struck his face.
The edge of the hole passed centimeters from his shoulder.
Eilor was right behind, hand on the hilt, ready to attack even before touching the floor.
The other two jumped a second later.
Those who stayed with Teo moved crouched, using the overturned furniture as cover, sometimes peeking just enough to see how things developed.
As they descended, everything above kept moving:
The wounded monster breathed like a rusted bellows.
Teo advanced one step, then another, red aura climbing his arm like he was igniting an internal torch.
Eli, in the back, swallowed and raised both hands, ready to intervene if anything escaped.
And below…
the four fell straight into the darkness, toward the meeting with the monster waiting among the wreckage of the lower deck.
Teo heard the four THUM-THUM-THUM-THUM impacts, muffled as they landed on the lower deck.
He didn't need to look.
From the sound alone, he knew they'd landed without breaking anything important.
That was enough.
He lifted his head.
The monster did too.
The creature rose as if its spine were a thick cable being pulled from behind.
First the torso, then the shoulders, then the head.
Its vertebrae made a dry sound as they slotted into place one by one.
Teo, with his lean build, 1.9 meters tall, his posture firm…
looked like an irritated teenager staring up at a gigantic, deformed adult over two and a half meters tall.
The monster looked down at him.
Or rather:
it looked downward, because its empty eyes didn't "see" him, as the eye sockets were sunken in a way that made them "look" at each other.
Its face—if it still deserved to be called a face— was destroyed.
Flesh hung loose.
One of the nostrils was gone.
There was a hole where a cheekbone should have been.
And yet, before Teo, that face was beginning to reconstruct itself.
With a repulsive white vapor seeping from every part.
Skin stretching from the edges.
Muscle fibers crawling over each other like red worms, trying to adhere.
Bone peeking through the forming tissue.
But…
There was something different this time.
The elbow area wasn't healing the same.
The regeneration there was clumsy, irregular.
The tissue blackened, left dry patches.
It looked like… a scar.
Something permanent.
Teo noticed it.
Surprised, his eyebrows arched.
Then, slowly guided by intuition, he turned his gaze toward the monster's hand—or what was left of it— the same one he had shattered.
Without moving his head, only his eyes.
And when he processed what he saw…
Teo's eyes widened, surprised.
The destroyed wrist remained broken.
The bones weren't realigning.
The flesh wasn't trying to reconnect.
That shouldn't be happening.
Not having witnessed such a high degree of regeneration as these monsters possessed.
Teo noticed something in that micro-instant.
Quickly, he shook his gaze, scanning the creature's entire body, imagining the other monster's body, imagining a possibility.
And then… he formed a smile. He let out a laugh.
Not a light laugh.
Not a nervous laugh either.
A frank, insolent, deliberately offensive laugh.
The monster tilted its head like a confused dog hearing a noise it didn't understand.
Teo's laughter reverberated in the room, bouncing between the broken tables and the thick smell of blood mixed with vapor.
The air tensed.
The monster took a step forward.
Teo exhaled a smile without stopping his laughter.
---
The monster launched itself.
In an explosion.
Its legs splayed like scissors, generating an impulse so violent the splinters on the floor shot backward.
Its healthy arm shot out.
The other, though shattered, hung like a fractured hook, moving only from the inertia of the leap, but still adding to the final silhouette.
A body opening like a giant jaw.
The three soldiers who had stayed with Teo saw it from behind overturned furniture.
One gasped involuntarily.
The posture was that of a predator not leaping to strike:
it leapt to envelop and break from within.
Eli, watching all this through a broken hole in a table, didn't even breathe.
Her heart hammered her chest once, as if her body wanted to get ahead of the impact.
Then she thrust both arms over the table's edge without taking her eyes off the hole for a second.
A faint light appeared between her fingers.
An almost white, vibrant glow that outlined her hands.
The monster's silhouette suddenly lit up.
For an instant, its body was enveloped in a translucent membrane of invisible force.
An instant.
Just one instant.
And then…
CRSHHH!
The light shattered.
It didn't explode: it split, as if the monster's internal pressure was too great for any third-grade technique.
Fragments of invisible light floated for a moment before vanishing like powdered glass.
But that fraction of a second…
that minimal restraint…
was all Teo needed.
The red aura burst around his body like a violent heartbeat.
It started at his torso.
Rose up his arms.
Ran down his legs.
Ignited his fingers, clenching them like blades.
Hardened his skin to the point it sounded like stone tightening.
Teo grit his teeth.
The monster was still falling toward him like a comet of flesh.
And Teo was now fully coated.
---
In a room full of rubble—split furniture, torn cloth, damp planks—a dense shadow filled the space.
And then…
THUM—THUM—THUM—THUM
Eilor, the young man in the blue coat, and the two soldiers with yellow eyes fell through the hole, rolling through dust and splinters before recovering their stances.
Darkness welcomed them like an open mouth.
The first thing they noticed was the lack of light:
As if something thick were preventing light from entering even though it should have been midday.
The hole in the ceiling let a rectangle of light fall…
but that light didn't reach the floor.
It stopped against one of the walls.
The four peered into the gloom, expecting to see movement, an outline, a groan from the wounded monster.
Nothing.
Not a rustle.
Only the sensation that something very large was in there with them.
The young man in the blue coat swallowed.
Eilor clenched his teeth.
The silence was only broken by the sound of muscle fibers overlapping.
And the air feeling more unpleasant and warm than it should.
The monster was healing.
Then, the young man with the black stone in his ear reacted first.
He raised his right hand before him.
Clenched his fist tightly.
His breathing hitched for a second.
The young man opened his fist.
And a flame was born in his palm.
A red spark at first.
A vertical line.
Then a firm bloom that illuminated just a few centimeters.
But the room remained dark.
So the young man pulled his arm back…
…and threw the flame in a horizontal arc, side to side.
The flame traveled through the air like a brush of light.
A burning semicircle that pushed back the darkness as it advanced.
Displacing it.
As the light traveled, it revealed fragments of the room:
A broken bed.
A wardrobe dented as if by a giant fist.
Torn curtains revealing claw marks.
Blackened walls as if they'd absorbed smoke or something worse.
And finally…
Something else gradually came into view as the arc of fire advanced.
Threads of vapor…
And in less than a second…
At the back of the room—which was barely a third the size of the upper hall—the light of the fire arc finished pushing the darkness just enough to reveal the source of the vapor.
And then they saw it.
At first, it was just a massive, panting, wounded silhouette…
The shadow that covered the entire room.
The monster lying and leaning with its back against the wall.
The monster, even lying down as if seated, occupied over a sixth of the wall space.
The young man in the blue coat let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.
Eilor felt a pull in his stomach, a primitive impulse to retreat that he forcefully repressed.
The creature moved, and because of the room's size, it seemed larger, more suffocating… it moved.
With that minimal movement, the entire place seemed to compress.
Vapor burst from its wounds in short gusts.
Its wounds—two on the head, three on the torso— weren't closing like before.
They were closing… like permanent scars.
Or perhaps worse:
like forced burns, made by a power the creature couldn't undo.
The tense fibers remained in irregular, dry, almost calcified patches.
Vapor seeped from the edges as if the monster's body protested, as if trying to keep regenerating, but something forced it to stop.
Eilor noticed it immediately, more than those scars, whose shapes suggested they were made by weapons.
"It doesn't heal completely…"
The thought was a flash between heartbeats.
But the monster slowly lifted its head.
Very slowly.
The room creaked with the movement, as if the planks doubted whether they could bear that weight.
And then it inhaled.
The monster stood up and then tore off its lower jaw, which was taking longer to heal, which hit the wall to its right with a wet sound.
The one in the blue coat gave Eilor a light nudge with his elbow.
A measured touch, just enough to snap him out of his visual tunnel without revealing their position to the monster.
Eilor glanced at him sideways, barely turning his head.
The one in the blue coat murmured, lips barely moving:
—"Scars…"
A confirmation of what both had seen in the gloom… and of what it implied.
As he said it, his body lowered its posture even more, weight distributed on the balls of his feet, knees bent, breath held.
His right hand descended toward the hilt.
But he didn't grab it hurriedly.
He brushed it. Secured it. Then, with a smooth, almost ceremonial movement, he slid it forward.
The blade left the sheath without a single click.
No metallic scrape.
No leather sigh.
The blade ended up pointing downward.
Eilor responded a little louder, suspecting the cause of the scars: —"The aura cuts. It doesn't heal from those."
The rest of the group reacted immediately.
The other two soldiers glanced at Eilor without moving their heads, then repeated the blue-coat's gesture.
Their weapons were already drawn.
But they changed posture.
One turned left, adopting a low guard, weapon diagonal to his leg to cover a low lunge.
The other retreated half a step, raising the blade to the right, tilting it to have a reaction angle without crossing Eilor's or the blue-coat's attack line.
Four directions.
Four angles.
None obstructing the other.
An improvised micro-formation in the room.
The air was so thick every breath seemed to betray their positions.
The light of the fire arc advancing.
The monster's vapor rising to the ceiling…
Eilor tightened his grip.
The one in the blue coat tilted his blade.
The other two tensed their fingers.
And the monster, at the back, remained still… watching them with that terrifying empty, dark gaze.
The fire arc kept advancing, tracing a perfect curve against the ceiling's gloom.
When it impacted the upper planks…
CRSHF!
The fire fragmented, breaking into an artificial rain of reddish sparks that descended in slow, almost hypnotic swirls.
Incandescent drops, the size of insects, falling by the hundreds.
Each left a curved trail in the dark air, like luminous brushstrokes painted freehand.
As they fell, they didn't burn.
They glowed.
A warm red, thick, almost liquid.
The room, once suffocated by dense shadow, was tinted a condensed, vague hue, as if the light had acquired its own density.
The sparks floated among the broken furniture and torn cloth, bounced off the damp floor, slid down the blackened walls… without fully dispelling the darkness.
They only shaped it, revealing some contours and hiding others, distorting the perception of space.
And amid that reddish rain that seemed like burning snow…
The monster, which moments ago seemed like a statue, in a tense, almost sticky drag, as if its wet, filthy skin slid against the wood.
It arched its body.
A grotesque arc, abnormally wide, as low as its inhuman structure allowed.
That gesture inevitably drew the gaze of the four.
Their eyes followed the curve of the body as if they were prey attracted by a predator marking its visual dominance.
And just as the monster reached the lowest point of that flexion…
the light entered.
The shadow blocking the only window opened at that impossible angle.
And a shaft of exterior light burst into the room, striking the face of the soldier in the blue coat with force.
The young man squinted, blinded for a second.
The contrast between the faint gloom and the sudden light was so brutal his body tensed, as if struck.
To his left, Eilor inhaled sharply.
The two soldiers advanced half a step, weapons raised.
Because the light didn't just reveal the one in the blue coat.
It also fully illuminated the monster in that new arched posture…
…and in that fraction of a second, everyone saw what it was going to do.
Except one.