38 Vermist (1)

Lilith heard faint, unfamiliar sounds as hot blades seared her flesh. Her eyes opened wide, blurry, red, and dark. There were screams—her screams assaulted her. They weren't as loud, and the blades weren't as hot or as sharp. The pain had decreased but was still persistent.

She was alive.

[EP: 370/525]

I'll ease the pain first. Pouring eldritch energy into her body, she eased the pain, soothing it until it disappeared. With it gone, her thoughts and vision became clearer.

The red and blur in her vision disappeared, but the darkness remained. She couldn't see through it. An unnatural darkness surrounded her from all sides and restricted her movements, making her unable to move. It was tough and made her body tense. Breathing was difficult as her lungs struggled to take in air.

Despite having the ability to move her right arm, Lilith couldn't break it. It was too thick, and she couldn't harness sufficient strength to break it. She twisted her wrist, applying pressure against the wall, and summoned her dagger, which stabbed through.

She repeated summoning and unsummoning the dagger, chipping away at it until she could move her hand. With her hand free, breaking out didn't take long, and she fell out of what encased her, tumbling down a green, flimsy surface and crashing against the ground far below with a thud.

She gasped for breath, feeling the pain intensify in her lungs, as if she had plunged into a volcano. She paused. The burning sensation subsided after a few minutes.

Can I have a day without crashing or hurting myself? As she breathed in the humid rainforest air, her breathing calmed. She sweated as she glanced up at the sky, from which she had fallen. The green she saw was from a leaf that filled her entire field of vision, still swaying slightly from the disturbance of her fall. On the leaf, she saw the broken remains of the human-shaped cocoon that had trapped her. It wasn't made of silk or thread but of a hardened purplish-black substance.

And it wasn't the only one. Covering the leaf, as well as the hundreds of other massive leaves around it, were thousands of large cocoons. Each cocoon contained insect-like monsters, some intact and others with holes exposing their insides or half eaten. Some of the creatures were small (possibly Hunters), with holes spanning their entire stomachs or missing large chunks of their bodies.

Lilith stood up, stumbling. Despite the loss of her arm and other injuries, she managed to stand without tripping. She gazed down and examined her injuries. She had bruises and cuts all over her body that had stopped bleeding, dried, and formed scabs. The wounds would heal in the next few days, and they didn't bother her. She focused on her serious injuries.

Half of her ribs were broken, but her ribcage had not collapsed, and they did not appear to have punctured her lungs. Her left shoulder was damaged the least, with scorched skin and muscle, a broken clavicle, and a cracked scapula. In her forearm and hand, every bone was shattered into small and large pieces, with their sharp edges piercing and intertwining with her flesh and skin. Her arms looked thinner and paler, making the contours of the bones more noticeable. It was worse than during the battle, but better than she expected. If she receives treatment, her severe injuries could be healed.

She sought a secluded place to further examine her injuries. She knew she was in a dungeon, but she was unsure of its level or the monsters that lived here. Based on the size of the environment and the cocoons in the leaves, the monsters were massive. When she found a spot under some brush near a tree log, she crouched and entered, covering herself.

Lilith channeled her eldritch energy and connected her senses, allowing her to see inside her body. When it entered, her senses flashed black, losing connection. A headache assaulted her as a result, but it soon faded.

She tried once more. The process of pouring eldritch energy inside was no different than before; it went in with ease. But as she tried to maintain her connection, it failed. Something stopped it. When she tried to withdraw the eldritch energy she had channeled into her arm and chest, she couldn't. The third time she tried, she checked her system and found that she had lost energy. During testing, she lost 25 energy points, an unusually high amount given that she had only invested 5 points. Why couldn't she connect her senses and control it? She had no answer.

She tried for the fourth time but didn't apply any eldritch energy to the wounds. She observed it from outside. She connected without any issues, and everything worked. Upon initial examination, the injuries seemed normal (if one were to consider a broken shoulder and ribcage normal), but upon closer inspection of the veins and arteries, she noticed something unusual. The sharp bone edges piercing them, which should've caused blood loss, didn't. Instead, a thin, black, eerie flesh-like gue held the blood and every piece of bone and flesh together, maintaining their natural shape.

Is that why I didn't die? Was it Ayin? Did she do this? Could she have done this? She had saved me before. Lilith didn't know, and she wasn't the only one who didn't. Humans had limited knowledge of demons, and fiends, being half-demons, did not help in that regard.

Ayin! She called, but received no answer.

She called again and again, but with no success. A dreadful, fast, and ominous feeling crept up, making it feel more real: had preventing her death hurt Ayin or, worse, killed her?

Did I…

Tightness gripped her chest, suffocating her.

Lilith wanted to scream, vent out, and erase the emptiness that trailed after that urge, but she held it in. She was fixated on the idea that it was her fault. She initiated an attack on Damion, despite the low odds. On impulse, perhaps, but if that were true, she wouldn't have confronted him in person. She would have run and never looked back after attacking the first time. She underestimated him and assumed her growth would enable her to defeat him. This is where it left her—half-dead and Ayin unresponsive.

She absentmindedly punched the ground, frantic and shivering, not caring about the pain.

The thought of harming Ayin was more agonizing than her injuries or any other experience she had ever endured. Someone who cared for her saved, taught, and gave her a sense of hope; she had thought she had lost since she was abandoned.

And the worst thing? She didn't consider the consequences. She allowed it to happen, setting aside rationality. Is she...?

No, she would have noticed if Ayin were dead. Their contract bound them to the extent that if one died, the other would, without exception. Lilith was alive, and that meant Ayin was as well. Whether Ayin was hurt or not, it was unknown, but the fact that she was alive composed Lilith. A telepathic message was activated, playing in her mind. Ayin left a message.

[Don't be upset. I'll return. The dungeon is ideal for growth, but remember to replenish the spell I cast on your arms and chest every twelve hours—50 points of eldritch energy. It will keep you alive.] It was short—too short, even, but enough. The tightness in Lilith's chest faded, and her mind stopped racing. Her fist paused in mid-air, now dirty with cracked, red knuckles. She held it over the small, flat crater. She was not bleeding. She had stopped before reaching that point.

What's that? She turned and craned her neck to locate the source of a noise. The noise was loud, repetitive, and growing louder. With each step, the ground shook, and the sound grew louder. The sound of shuffling feet was audible. It was not human. It had to be a dungeon monster, and she suspected it was the owner of the cocoons. And there wasn't just one of them. There were several.

The first one passed by, and she didn't see it, with it being on the other side of the log. The second, third, and fourth to fourteenth, she didn't see either. When the fifteenth came, however, it crawled onto the log above her and stopped. She was two feet from it.

[Vermist]

[Type: None]

[Level: 28]

[Class: None]

A Vermist? And peak D-rank. Almost C-rank. She stayed silent, fearing that any movement would alert it and provoke an attack.