The tentacles struck them hard, tearing through the air like a living slick pink whip. They snapped and coiled with obscene agility, striking from multiple directions at once as if the creature controlling them perceived every angle simultaneously.
Aerchon reacted on instinct, his silver sword flashing as he severed one of them in the air, only to watch it writhe and dissolve into slick vapor before another replaced it.
Lysander stepped in beside him, intercepting a pair that lunged low, sparks of yellow lightning bursting as his Magic t flesh that felt more like compressed muscle than matter.
"HA HA HA!" The woman laughed.
It was not restrained or subtle. It rang across the ruined land with open amusent, echoing against broken stone and the towering skeleton behind her.
She advanced while attacking, walking forward with calm and asured steps as if the resistance only made the encounter more entertaining.
Her movent birthed new longer and thicker tentacles that whipped at them with timing that bordered on mockery.
Adrien felt the pressure crawling up his spine. Now he was more certain that this presence was unmistakable. Not a mory or shadow.
She was real.
"Focus on stopping her movents first!" King Gulben commanded, his voice cutting through the chaos.
Adrius, Saeldir, and Sylmira moved instantly. Years of combat experience and the sa wave of knowledge aligned them without discussion.
Magic surged outward as all three cast at once, their consciousness splitting with practiced control. Instead of forming a single construct of spell, they shaped two barriers simultaneously.
Their spells weave together into a unified technique.
The first barrier blood outward around the entire group creating a massive do of layered force that sealed them in from every direction.
Tentacles slamd into it from above and the sides but each impact rippled harmlessly across the surface, redirected or absorbed.
At the sa ti, the second barrier snapped shut around the Chaos God.
It ford and compressed the space around her. Her forward step stopped abruptly as she collided with the invisible wall.
Tentacles struck outward, battering the prison from within, but the structure held. Its surface adjusting and reinforcing with every attack the woman made.
Her laughter cut off. Annoyance now filling her face.
She blurred to the side, attempting to escape through sheer speed, but the barrier followed and reford instantly around her new position.
She leapt upward, only to be dragged back down as the prison barrier snapped into place again. Her every attempt to relocate resulted in the sa outco, as if the spell anticipated her intent rather than her movent.
For the first ti, her expression twisted into visible irritation.
Adrien watched carefully with his chest feeling tight. The realization solidified fully now.
"This Dungeon level right now is really recreating what had been our worst part of mory."
"This confirms it," Adrien said aloud, eyes never leaving the trapped entity. "This level is replicating the worst experience we’ve ever faced."
Billy nodded, jaw clenched.
Aurdis felt the pressure pushing against her senses, sharp and invasive, nothing like a fabricated illusion.
"So all of this isn’t just an illusion from this world," she said quietly. "It’s a real threat that ca from ourselves."
No one disagreed.
Inside the moving prison, the woman stopped testing the barrier.
Her body began to change shape.
Bones cracked audibly as her flawless form expanded and distorted. Skin split and reknit itself into sothing monstrous.
Her tentacles fused into massive limbs that each lined with unblinking eyes that opened one by one.
Her jaw unhinged and stretched far beyond human limits as rows of serrated teeth erged. Her laughter returned but this ti it was deeper, layered, and reverberating from multiple throats at once.
The barrier strained as her transford body pressed against it, the air vibrated violently under the pressure of her power.
The Chaos God that had beco fully monstrous smiled wider than before, as if this escalation delighted her even more.
The barrier groaned under the strain. Its surface rippled like water struck by a falling mountain. Fine fractures of light spread across it showing just how much force pressed against it from within.
Adrius felt it imdiately, sweat beading along his brow as he reinforced the spell. Saeldir’s breathing steadied into a controlled rhythm and fed structure and correction into both barriers at once. Sylmira’s Magic wove between theirs like a binding thread, compensating where strain threatened to cascade.
The Chaos God slamd one massive limb into the prison wall. The impact sent a shockwave outward.
King Gulben stepped forward, golden light rolling off his armor as he planted his sword into the ground. The weapon pulsed, anchoring the protective do more firmly into the ruined land itself.
"Hold,!" he ordered. "I will prepare my strongest attack."
Inside the prison, the Chaos God turned again. Her many eyes rolled in unison, fixing on the group beyond the barrier.
The amusent returned to her expression, twisted now by hunger rather than curiosity. Her limbs pressed outward in sequence to probe and learn the barrier structure.
Aurdis tightened her grip. Her eyes never leave the prison. The pressure scraped against her senses.
"She’s preparing sothing," she realized.
The Chaos God suddenly stopped pressing outward.
The change was subtle, but imdiate.
Her body drew inward, limbs compressing, eyes narrowing. Then she struck again. Not with brute force, but with precision.
Multiple limbs hit the sa point on the barrier in perfect succession, each impact tid to land before the previous ripple fully settled.
The prison barrier shuddered violently.
Saeldir hissed through his teeth as he redirected flow, reshaping the barrier’s reinforcent on the fly.
"She’s learning the structure, your Majesty," Saeldir said to king Gulben.
"We just can’t let her finish," Sylmira replied from the side, pushing more Magic into the weave.
The Chaos God laughed again, creating a chorus of voices overlapping in delight.
She dragged one clawed limb slowly along the inside of the barrier, carving glowing grooves into its surface. The lines lingered longer than they should have, refusing to fade.
Sylmira, Adrius, and Saeldir felt ringing sounds scraping their head.
—
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