"OH, THAT IS IT!"
Lita scread, her hair practically standing on end as she began to chant another lightning elent, her mana output skyrocketing.
"You think you can just ignore ?! I’ll blast you into the next dinsion! GET BACK! EVERYONE GET BACK!"
"Lita, wait—!"
Erwin tried to grab her shoulder, but a shockwave of heat pushed him back.
"ADVANCE LIGHTNING ELENT: THUNDERCLAP EXPLOSION!"
A sphere of violent crimson lightning condensed at the tip of Lita’s staff, swelling with unstable mana. The air scread as arcs of electricity lashed across the tunnel walls.
Erwin’s eyes widened.
"OH SH*T!"
But it was too late.
BOOOOM!
The lightning sphere detonated against the wall. The tunnel shook violently, stone dust and calcified fragnts blasting outward as the shockwave knocked everyone off their feet.
Ed scread again, clinging to Erwin’s claymore.
"WE’RE DEAD! WE’RE DEAD THIS TI!"
Gela’s barrier flared to its absolute limit, golden light struggling to contain the violent electrical storm bouncing through the narrow tunnel.
For a few seconds—
There was nothing but thunder.
Then silence.
Smoke drifted through the air. Slowly, the party lifted their heads. Lita was huffing, sweat pouring down her face. She looked at the wall and this ti... there was a hole but barely large enough to fit a human head.
"A hole... larger than my head... THAT’S ALL?!"
Gela stood up, dusting off her robes, and let out a dry, mocking chuckle.
"Wow, Lita. Truly impressive... Should I lend you a ADVANCE Magic Boost just to open a wall?"
"I WILL KILL YOU, CLERIC! I’LL TURN YOU INTO ASH!"
"Enough!"
Erwin’s voice cut through the bickering. He saw the edges of the new hole already beginning to twitch, the fibers reaching out to seal the breach once more.
"Zaun, with ! If we don’t move now, it closes!"
Erwin’s claymore ignited in a blinding white fla—
"Advance Light Elent: Holy Divider!"
Beside him, Zaun’s hands blurred as he drew two daggers—
"Twin Fang!"
Erwin delivered a vertical strike of pure divine energy while Zaun executed a thousand micro stabs in a circular pattern around the opening. They weren’t just hitting the rock; they were cutting through the mana fibers before they could knit back together.
SHIKT SHIKT BOOM!
The "stone" gave way with a sound like tearing leather. A hole wide enough for one person erupted in the wall.
"Go! Go! Go!"
Erwin shoved Ed and Gela through the hole just as the "veins" began to scream and snap at their heels. Lita scrambled through next, still cursing the wall under her breath. Erwin and Zaun dove through last, the hole snapping shut behind them with the wet thud of a closing wound.
They tumbled onto a floor that felt... polish.
Erwin stood up, his sword raised, and his breath stopped in his lungs. They were no longer in a cave. Before them stretched a massive, sprawling hall, its walls, floors, and ceilings polished to a reflective shine, as if soone had carved a natural cavern and then renovated it into a grand, otherworldly apartnt.
Erwin’s eyes scanned the space, wide with disbelief. He whispered, barely audible:
"This is..."
Ed finished for him, his voice hesitant,
"Soone’s... house?"
Gela’s attention stayed fixed on the wall that had just healed itself again.
"Damn that wall... what is that? It literally needed two grown n just to open it wide."
Lita, still fuming, stood up and threw her hands in the air.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS PLACE?!"
As the party tried to process where they had stepped, a sudden, ominous surge of mana exploded from the darkness. The pressure was suffocating, dense enough to feel like they were subrged under crushing deep-sea currents.
"GUAH!"
Ed collapsed to his knees, his musket clattering to the floor. Beside him, Gela and Lita buckled, gasping as the invisible weight pressed against their lungs. Only Erwin and Zaun remained on their feet, legs trembling as they forced themselves to stay grounded, lowering their centers of gravity.
Erwin muttered under his breath.
"N-No way... This... mana... this is... not real."
Lita’s eyes widened, tears streaming involuntarily as her A Rank senses scread in warning. Her vision blurred, drawn toward the source.
"What in... the world..."
Everyone followed her gaze. There, bathed in the sickly pulse of glowing mana minerals, stood The Mobile Womb.
It was a nightmare of biological engineering. Thick, at like tentacles, the size of ancient oaks, pulsed with a dark red glow, rhythmically expanding and contracting as if the cave itself were breathing. They were woven into a terrifying, architectural nest that defied every law of nature. And in the very center, suspended by silken, vein filled tethers, sat a translucent sac.
Inside the sac, a silhouette shifted. A long, segnted form... a Worm.
"What... what is that thing?"
Ed barely managed to croak the words before doubling over, retching.
"It’s... gestating a— a monster!"
Erwin’s eyes flared. To him, the world seed to pulse with an aura, the very air trembling with energy. The Magic and Might readings emanating from the sac weren’t just high... they were overflowing, surging with a raw, violent intensity that dragged mories of that night back into his mind—the night when a dark fire burned like a mountain, consuming corpses in unholy flas.
"We... we arrived... this is the one... the source of all those mana distortions... the Guild wanted us to... investigate this..."
Lita, normally blazing with confidence, was trembling violently, her staff rattling against the floor.
"I told you... Erwin, I told you! Look at the way it breathes! Look at that dark energy! That mana signature... the way reality itself bends around it..."
Her voice broke, fear cutting through her usual fire.
"A D—Demon Lord... is being born right in front of us!"
The words hit the party like a hamr, leaving their faces frozen in shock.
Erwin’s expression drained of all color, then darkened, a cold, murderous rage blazing in his eyes. mories of the Demon Lord that had shattered his past flared violently, transforming fear into unyielding resolve.
"A Demon Lord... that thing that brought misery to everyone... a being of pure evil..."
He stepped forward, and his claymore erupted in a pillar of white-hot, holy fire, illuminating the vast hall. The flas cast long, jagged shadows across the pulsing flesh of the Womb.
"EVERYONE! GET UP!"
Erwin’s roar reverberated through the chamber.
"Gela! Bless our blades! Ed! Load the explosive rounds! Zaun! Slice anything that moves! Lita! I don’t care how devastating your spell is—BURN THIS FILTH TO ASH!"
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