Leon touched Kumigano’s body and used his spell.
The mont the spell left his fingertips, Kumigano’s entire body dissolved from the floor as if it had never existed, swallowed whole by the darkness pooling beneath Leon’s feet.
*Swish*
Then the ground split.
A single black line tore open across the stone floor directly in front of him, wide and deliberate, as though sothing on the other side had dragged a blade through the fabric of the world itself.
*Crack — Crack — Crack — Crack*
The line fractured outward into jagged cracks that spiderwebbed across the cold floor. From deep within those fractures, a red light began seeping upward, not the warm red of fire, but sothing angrier, like the glow of sothing that had been burning for centuries and had long since forgotten how to stop.
The air around Leon thickened even more. A low, resonant hum vibrated through the soles of his boots, as if the stone itself was groaning under the weight of whatever was pressing against the other side.
The cracks widened.
Leon crouched slightly and looked down into the opening.
The pit beneath had no visible bottom. Only depth, an endless, churning dark that writhed with pale shapes. Thousands of damned souls pressed against one another in a suffocating mass, their translucent forms twisting and weeping, their cries reduced to a faint, distant choir that floated upward like smoke.
They were straining, clawing at sothing, pulling back against sothing, their hollow fingers wrapped around a silhouette that moved steadily, calmly, upward through them regardless.
Sothing was climbing.
It moved without urgency. Each pull upward was slow and deliberate, like a man ascending a ladder he had climbed a thousand tis before. The damned souls around it wailed louder as it rose, their efforts to restrain it growing more frantic the closer it ca to the surface.
*Thud.*
One hand, large, dark, and completely featureless, pressed flat against the edge of the cracked floor.
Then it stepped out.
Leon’s eyes went wide.
It stood upright. Humanoid in shape — two arms, two legs, a torso, a head — the proportions were correct, even ordinary at a glance. But there was no face. No hair. No skin. No texture of any kind.
Where a man’s features should have been there was only a smooth, seamless void — a silhouette carved from pure absence, wearing the shape of a person the way a coat rack wears a jacket.
The ambient light of the room bent slightly around it, as though the air nearest to the creature refused to illuminate it. Even the faint red glow rising from the cracks in the floor seed to stop at the edge of its form rather than touch it.
It was less a creature and more the idea of one — a shadow that had learned to stand.
"What the fuck are you?" Leon asked, and without waiting for an answer, he used his skill.
---
[Na: Malebolge (Thirteen Damned Souls)]
[Race: Spirit]
[Class: ??]
[HP: 800,000 / 800,000]
[MP: 400,000 / 400,000]
[Description: Summoned from the deepest abyssal pits, Malebolge is a volatile, walking oubliette containing thirteen damned Arch-Sinners who constantly tear and reconstruct their shared flesh to seize control.
Cloaked in deep, chiaroscuro shadows, this nightmare of shifting anatomy absorbs ambient light, emitting only a faint, low-light crimson glow from the cracks in its rusted, bone-plated armor. As the thirteen distinct, galomaniacal wills violently cycle through the host body, wielding powers ranging from nerve-flaying strikes to soul-burning hellfire — the entity continually adapts its terrifying, hyper-realistic form to obliterate its enemies, all while quietly hungering for their sanity.]
---
"Malebolge?" Leon repeated, tilting his head slightly, the na sitting oddly on his tongue.
*Swish — Swish.*
The void rippled. Like ink dropped into still water, the featureless darkness of the creature’s form began to churn and reshape — flesh and stitching materializing from nothing, pulling itself together with a wet, rustling sound until a human male stood in its place.
He was broad shouldered and pale — deathly pale — and covered from his jawline down to his ankles in thick, black stitches that crossed his skin in uneven, overlapping lines, like a body that had been taken apart and reassembled by soone working too quickly in the dark. His eyes were colorless. His smile was not.
"Ah..." he said, his voice low and unhurried, carrying the ease of a man who had never once been surprised by anything. "So you are the one who summoned us."
"I did," Leon replied, expression flat, eyes already cataloguing every detail of the man in front of him.
"The na is Maverick the Third." The stitched man rolled his neck slowly, the sound of his joints cracking filling the stone room. "You can also call the Butcher. I like chopping people, demons, monsters, anything built from flesh... into very, very small pieces of at." As he finished speaking, his fingernails lengthened with a soft *schink*, stretching into long, curving blades.
He turned them over in front of his face with visible appreciation.
"So you are a butcher," Leon said. Sa flat voice. Sa flat expression.
"That’s right." Maverick grinned wider, and the stitches along his cheeks pulled taut with the expression. "Used to skin souls in hell. People, when I was still alive. Hehehe. Just give the order and I’ll chop anything for you — since you’re my master now."
"Hey." A different voice. Sharper, feminine, cutting through Maverick’s sentence like a blade. "Change places. Now."
The stitched body dissolved.
*Swish — Swish.*
The void returned for a half-second — that sa lightless, featureless silhouette — and then it rebuilt itself again, smoother this ti, deliberate. A woman took shape.
She was tall. Her skin was a deep oceanic blue, and fine scales traced the lines of her cheekbones and the backs of her hands like natural ornantation — the kind that looked beautiful and dangerous in equal asure. Her posture was impeccable. When she looked at Leon, her eyes didn’t blink.
Without a word, she stepped forward and lowered herself into a bow so composed and unhurried it bordered on theatrical.
*Bow.*
"My na is Lady Marla." Her voice was different from Maverick’s — smooth, asured, with a subtle resonance underneath it that made the air feel slightly heavier. "I am a siren master. I can sing songs so hypnotizing that the weak-minded cannot help but obey them. I can also reach inside your opponents and play with what they feel — fear, despair, obsession — as I see fit." She straightened, and a slow, deliberate smile crossed her scaled face as she held Leon’s gaze. "It is a pleasure to serve, master."
"Huh." Leon looked at her for a mont, then let his eyes drift back to the void form that briefly flickered at the edges of her silhouette. "Thirteen psychotic souls possessing a body that shape-shifts between them." A small smile pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Very, very interesting. I hope you are worth a ss ranked monster’s body and mana core."
*Swish — Swish.*
Marla dissolved.
The form that replaced her was slimr than the others — narrow-shouldered and strange, with elongated legs that bent slightly backward at the knee like a rabbit’s hind limbs, the feet ending in thick, clawed pads pressed flat against the cold stone floor. Where a face should have been, there was only smooth, unbroken skin — no eyes, no nose, just a faint ridge where a brow line might have sat.
It was still. Completely, unnervingly still — the kind of stillness that made made the enviornnt seem a little eerie.
"Master." Its voice was quiet, precise, and carried no inflection of personality. "My na is RXV-666. I am a chira — constructed by Dr. Hofelworth. I have no eyes." A brief pause, as though allowing that fact to settle. "But I can locate any enemy, their position, their movent, their distance, with perfect accuracy, regardless of proximity or concealnt. I can kill on your command. I can die on your command."
It bowed.
’Chiras have souls?’ Leon thought, watching the eyeless face tilt downward. ’I always figured they were just body parts, different monsters stitched together to make sothing bigger and worse. Apparently not.’ He held the thought for a mont, then let it go with the casual ease of a man filing sothing away for later. ’Oh well. Whatever.’
He reached down without looking and picked up a small obsidian stone from the cracked floor.
*Throw*
Leon then tossed it into the air.
"Attack it..." He spoke while looking at RVX-666.
"Yes, Master." He spoke as he imdiately disappeared from his position and re-appeared in the air directly above Leon.
*SWISH-SWISH-SWISH-SWISH-SWISH-SWISH-SWISH-SWISH-SWISH*
Before Leon could’ve looked up, RVX-666 disappeared and re-appeared on his original position, where he was standing from the start.
But as soon as Leon looked up he noticed that the obsidian stone has disappeared from the air and only black dust remains.
"Did you just crushed that stone into dust before it could fell down ?" Leon asked with a serious expression.
"Actually... I chopped it into dust, Master."
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