'Fuck.'
I sit up with a jerk, my breath ragged. My heart is pounding like it wants to come up for air, and the stone beneath my buttocks is still vibrating like it's seen death in the face.
Earthquake? Collapse? Or just another twist in this bloody labyrinth?
I blink. It's all a blur, but I can still see the remains of the battlefield. Marks, screams in the distance, the smell of hot blood in the air.
And me... I was just sleeping!
"Wait, wait... why was I unconscious?! Did I lose?!"
[Correction: you were defeated by Gried.]
I freeze.
'Huh?!'
[The group leader has thrown you against a wall to form a defensive formation].
I'm speechless. Literally. My brain has trouble restarting.
'Gried... THAT BASTARD SUSPECTED ME LIKE A POTATO BAG TO GAIN SPACE?!'
[Behavioural analysis: at your level of resistance, your presence represented a risk to the cohesion of the group].
I clench my fists. A vein pulses in my temple.
"So... I was in the way, so they threw me out? What am I? An unwanted luggage extension? A bloody side quest?!"
I breathe hard, my nerves jangling.
"Oh, Gried... trust me, if I survive this shit, you're gonna taste my claws. Gods or stats, I swear to God-"
Before I've even finished my sentence, an icy shiver runs down the back of my neck. My body reacts before I do - I propel myself to the side, pure reflex, and right where I was standing half a second ago, schlak, three arrows crash against the stone, vibrating with anger.
I freeze for a second.
Then I turn around slowly.
'...Fuck.'
If I hadn't had [Perception of Danger], I was a skewer.
[The skill has reached the required level. The skill [Danger Perception LV1] has become [Danger Perception LV2]].
I gasp, somewhere between relieved and annoyed.
"Finally! It's about time, this skill has been useless to me since I started."
But then a question starts to twist my mind. Why was I able to dodge this time? Whereas before... I was just a sandbag?
I look up. And what I see almost makes me wish I'd never woken up.
There are dozens of elves.
Not two, oh no, but dozens.
Spells, arrows, screams, falling bodies, rising flames. A fucking war zone.
I slid against a rock face, my heart pounding.
"Where the hell did they come from?! There were TWO of them at the base! Two of them!"
I grit my teeth.
And judging by the trajectory of those shots, I was probably just a secondary target in the general chaos. Not aimed. Just... in the way.
"Great. Now I'm the collateral victim of a script gone haywire."
Meanwhile, an earthquake makes itself felt.
No time to think.
Just a raw, animal instinct. I lower my head, and with a sharp blow - shhhing - a blade whistles through the air, cutting where my neck was just a second ago.
I feel the cold wind of the metal. Half a second slower, and I was decapitated like a cardboard figurine.
But I don't have time to freak out. My body acts on its own, a reflex forged by weeks of surviving in the hellish dump that is the Labyrinth.
I turn round and strike.
Not an elegant blow. Not a stylish shonen move.
Just a good old-fashioned punch of rage, straight in the direction from which the blade came, all my strength concentrated in a single objective: to get this shit out of my vital zone.
My fist hits something. Something thin, sinewy. Bone and muscle. The sound is dirty. A dull crack, followed by a rattle.
I step back, arms raised, breathing hard. And then I see it.
An elf.
Another one. This one armed with a short blade, his face frozen in surprise and pain. My fist may have broken his jaw. Or at least his schedule for the day.
'Surprise, asshole.'
'An... Oni?!'
His voice rises, strained, and his eyes barely widen. Just enough to let me know he's bugging.
But not long enough.
I don't give him time to update his racial hatred software.
My fist slams into his face before he's finished recovering from the blow earlier. He recoils from the impact, surprised, wobbles, tries to regain his posture - but I'm already on top of him.
I follow up. Left claw, flank. Right claw, throat. He blocks, once, twice, but too late. His rhythm is broken. He doesn't understand.
A claw rips his shoulder and he lets out a short scream. Not of pain - of incomprehension.
'Why... are you protecting them...?'
I grab him by the collar and slam him against the wall, his sword falling to the floor with a thud.
"Seriously? That's what's got you so confused? Not my blows, not my claws, but the fact that I don't hang out with your team of psychopaths in dresses?"
I let him go. He collapses, unconscious or dead, I don't know. I don't have time to check.
I just stand there for a few seconds, catching my breath.
And then my brain finally clicks.
"Wait... Why was he shocked? Like, really shocked?"
I frown, wipe a drop of blood from my cheek.
'The Oni... is it that bad for them?'
I turn to the battlefield that continues to roar in the distance, elven cries, blades crossing, magic hissing in the burning air.
And I say to no one in particular:
"I'll have to find out more one day. Just to find out if I'm supposed to be a myth or one anomaly too many."
The ground rumbles again.
And this time it's a real spasm of the earth, as if something colossal has just turned over beneath our feet. The walls vibrate, the dust comes off the ceiling in patches, but the fighting doesn't stop.
Some of the elves stop their movements briefly, instinct stronger than order.
I remain crouched, my nerves taut as cables ready to snap, my eyes alert.
"Another earthquake?! What's this labyrinth, a volcano on the ground?!"
I stand up slowly, my legs still shaking. I walk towards the human group, which has instinctively closed in.
Gried is standing upright, blade in hand, his eyes trained on the darkness of the corridor, as if he's expecting a furious god to appear.
I approached, my voice drier than expected.
"Hey, what's going on? Is this normal, this kind of shaking? Or is something going on?"
He barely turns his head.
"Are you awake?
I squint.
"With what you've done to me, you'd better be glad I'm not going to smash your face in.
He gives me a dry look, like 'I don't have time for your bullshit'.
I cross my arms, in 'you'll listen to me or I'll spit on you' mode, but Gried goes on without calculating:
"The elves are retreating.
I frown, clearly surprised at this turn of events, because there are fewer of us than there are of them, or is this group of humans a group of experts?
"What? Since when do freaks like them retreat?"
"Since they realised we're not as weak as they thought.
So he confirms himself that they're stronger or weaker than most people, I feel like I've stumbled on a problem to escape from.
He spits blood on the ground and continues to stare into the darkness as if expecting a second wave.
I turn towards the battlefield and indeed, several elves are retreating, slowly, covering their escape with mechanical precision. No panic. No chaos. Just a cold, methodical, almost military retreat.
'They've lost too many people,' says Arla, reloading an arrow. 'And they're not supposed to leave any witnesses.'
Mike, still shaking with rage, swings a severed arm ten metres away. 'So much for their plan.'
I squint, and something bothers me.
"Wait... If they're retreating, why are some of them staying behind to cover the rear? It doesn't make sense."
Selina reappears behind me, daggers dripping.
'Or maybe... they're up to something.'
And then there's silence.
I swallow, my claws still out.
'I don't like this.'
But no one answers.
The elves retreat...
But not all of them.
A shiver runs up my spine. And I feel that the worst is yet to come.
And suddenly, everything changes.
A tremor, and this time not just a geological shudder like before, but a real cataclysm. The ground groans, the walls vibrate, and even the air seems to want to flee the Labyrinth.
'Oh for fuck's-'
I don't even have time to finish before I wallow against a wall. The earth ripples under my feet like a bloody angry sea.
Rocks come tumbling down in clusters. The echo is deafening, almost alive. Pieces of the ceiling collapse with a din like the end of the world.
I can see the group of humans falling. Arla is shouting something I don't understand, while Mike is clutching a pillar as if he wants to tell him to move.
Then I hear screams, but they're not ours.
Screams that must be coming from the elves. And not the kind you hear when you get hit in the foot by an arrow.
No, they're clearly cries of panic.
I turn my head, my heart beating like a war drum.
And what I see freezes me: the elves start to run, but not towards us to attack us.
'Are they running?'
And damn it, they're running straight for us.
'They're coming back?!'
"Fuck! Get back in position!" yells Gried, who, despite the jolts, still looks like a big lion on steroids.
But something disturbs me they don't even have their weapons in hand anymore. Just angry looks of terror, pupils dilated to the extreme, as if they had seen something... something that even they cannot understand.
One stumbles, gets up. The other has blood--not his own blood--on the breastplate.
But what really turns me on is what they repeat in a loop, in low, panting voices, eyes fixed in the void like beaten dogs.
"She... She's there..."
I get closer, by reflex, to try to understand, but Gried grabs me by the shoulder.
"Back off."
And his gaze is not focused on the elves. No. He stares at the darkness.
As if he felt something moving. Something we do not see yet.
But you can feel it.
A dull vibration. A kind of beating. Or steps? I can't find out. But it's heavy, deep, it resonates in my ribs like a fucking cosmic war drum.
And there the elf furthest from us continues to run but is less fast than the others and he eventually falls to the ground and turns to the shadow, eyes outstretched, mouth open as if he was going to scream...
And a black stake pierces his chest.
It's a kind of paw.
A fucking chitineous paw, as big as a dozen tree trunk, finished with glittering hooks, which comes out from the other side of his torso in a sheen of blood.
And it just killed an elf in one move.
The paw is removed and the body falls like a disjointed doll.
And in the shadow, I see the paw lifts the body and I hear a crack of bones screeching in the distance and blood flowing on the ground and another earthquake is heard as if something was moving.
Something very big.
"... Damn it."
It is surely not a monster that is clearly above.