Chương 539: Chapter 508: The Monster in the Dark

"What is this?!" the demon shrieked, looking down at his changing form. Within moments the demon was as pitch black as the grinning Eclipsari before him, who now was no longer pressured by the fire in the slightest.

"How the tables have turned." Thalion grinned before headbutting the demon, who was flung over ten meters away before catching himself. The demon shook his head and looked up at Thalion, his eyes full of confusion and fear.

"What is this feeling?" the demon asked in utter confusion. With the black flames he had also gained the full fear aura that was part of Thalion's form. Thalion could feel the fear inside the demon, who now was completely helpless against it. Not even the demon's mental defenses could help anymore. Thalion didn't feel like explaining right now and instead summoned his claws.

"Don't worry, this is just the beginning." Thalion grinned, launching himself downward. The demon shook his head and countered with a breath of fire that now burned jet black. Darkness was no longer something that could hurt Thalion. The impact was strong enough to blast him backward, but that was everything, while his skin greedily absorbed the flames. The elemental greedily consumed the darkness while also putting more mental pressure on the demon by empowering Thalion's aura even further.

In fact, Thalion couldn't remember ever possessing such an evil aura before. He felt thrilled, especially when sensing the demon's weakness.

"What is wrong? Where is your power?" Thalion teased the demon, though with his dark voice the words came out far more sinister than intended. Those words alone were enough to make doubt spread like wildfire through the demon's mind, and Thalion's aura rose once more. This time Thalion closed the distance with Shadow Step, grabbing the demon by the side and throwing him against the next wall.

With the change of affinity the demon had also lost all his resistance, and Thalion's claws could now penetrate him without issue. The demon began to fight back with slashes and bursts of fire, but nothing helped. The demon was made largely of fire, which in his current form meant darkness, and that was the worst possible thing to face an Eclipsari like Thalion. If they remained in contact for too long, Thalion's skin simply began to absorb particles of the demon's flesh.

After a failed uppercut, Thalion plunged his claw deep into the demon's chest and swung the being downward. Mid-flight he followed up with a punch that drove the demon deep into the ground below. Landing beside him, Thalion immediately began to slash into the demon, who still healed incredibly fast.

"Noooo!" the demon roared and unleashed a massive continuous stream of fire at Thalion, who simply pushed against it. The flames were powerful enough to force him backward, but they dealt no damage at all. In fact, both Thalion and the elemental enjoyed the fire quite a bit. The elemental greedily swallowed the devoured darkness while Thalion focused entirely on pushing forward. The demon panicked and continued to pour more and more power into the flames.

To avoid being blasted away, Thalion had to drastically increase his weight, and his muscles strained as he did everything possible to resist being pushed aside. The demon kept the stream going for over half an hour before it abruptly ended. Thalion looked down at the exhausted, heavily breathing creature, who was now completely filled with despair, panic, and fear.

"Already? That was faster than I thought, but don't worry. I'm still here." Thalion said in his dark, distorted voice.

"Oh no, not again." Ricarda stammered before quickly running toward the stairs. Thalion didn't understand what her issue was. The fun was only beginning now. This demon had so much fear in his heart and such an incredible recovery. The perfect victim. A claw came for his chest, but the demon's movements had become sluggish and far too slow. Thalion dodged, kicked against the knee and shattered it, then slammed an elbow covered in spikes straight into the demon's face.

He was still so happy that parts of the demon's head exploded from the impact. The creature roared in pain while Thalion continued carving it into smaller and smaller pieces, carefully making sure not to kill it by accident. A counterattack was still something Thalion didn't want to risk, which was why he ripped out both arms and cut off the legs below the knees. Thalion had to admit that the demon's recovery was far better than he had initially thought, and his flesh was delicious.

Organ after organ Thalion ripped out, but he couldn't eat the demon fast enough as the organs constantly regrew. Whenever the pain became too much, the demon unleashed another breath of fire from time to time, though it didn't help him at all and only gave Thalion even more darkness to consume. From time to time Thalion noticed Ricarda secretly peeking back through the entrance. Like he wouldn't know. Having four eyes was a big advantage in that regard.

The demon's screeches filled the chamber, only interrupted when Thalion ripped out its throat. The demon's pain only lasted for twelve hours and when it finally died there was even a great reward, as the rest of the body condensed into a single black crystal. It took all of Thalion's self-control not to eat it in the first few seconds. He had no idea how many points it would give, but he also didn't want to test it right now since you never knew who was watching the leaderboard.

Thalion needed a few moments to calm down before shifting back into his human form and storing the black crystal in one of his inner pockets. On the way up something else started to distract him. It was his title, which gave him a subtle feeling of danger. It felt like a massive monster slowly locking onto him. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Maybe I shouldn't have wasted so much time torturing the demon. He began to realize.

The gains simply weren't worth the lost time in general. Especially Ricarda made wide eyes when he joined them in the control room with the many gates and tablets.

"I suspect everything went well?" Pikar asked, probably out of courtesy. It was clear that he also wanted to move on quickly.

"Yes all good. Where do we go next?" Thalion asked, figuring that Pikar had enough time to come up with a better route.

"Excellent. Time is running out and we need to find more treasures. This time we will take the one on the left, which likely has something to do with light. I guess your Eclipsari form should also be a good matchup against light, right?" Pikar said. Thalion wasn't so sure. Was he really good against light as an Eclipsari? The issue was that he had never tested it before, but he doubted that his resistance against light would be anywhere close compared to darkness. This also wasn't the only issue he had.

The left gate was exactly where this subtle feeling of danger was coming from.

"I'm not sure. Is there another fifth floor we could get to from this room?" Thalion asked. Pikar and Ricarda were his allies, but no one knew for how long, and he preferred to keep his title a secret. The response clearly surprised Pikar.

"Ehhh... okay... there is one other, but if I'm not mistaken it is something related to corpses or rot. You sure you want to fight something like that instead of a light-based fighter? Against light Ricarda might be able to help with her plants." That was of course correct, but Thalion fully trusted his title and he really didn't want to encounter the source of this danger getting closer and closer with every second. Whoever it was, it had to be moving fast through the underground tunnels.

"It will be fine. Let's take the right one," Thalion said while half-lying through his teeth. He of course had no idea if it would be fine, but it had to be better than whatever was coming from the left tunnel. Thalion highly suspected that they were hunters, especially with how the feeling of danger was constantly growing. Whoever it was, they were moving very fast.

It also could have been very strong trial takers, but just to be on the safe side Thalion opened all gates except the right one and stepped through while walking backwards, just in case they had some weird tracking skill. To be fair he had no idea if it would help, but better safe than sorry. Pikar and Ricarda looked at him as if he had lost his mind, but said nothing and simply followed when Thalion stepped through the right gate, motioning for them to follow.

The tunnel was a bit larger and they could really use it to speed up drastically. While Thalion had his own thoughts, Pikar was sharing his freely.

"We are closing in on the last part of this system event. When the king and queen are in one group they might be quicker in killing those D grades than we are, but for them the problems will most likely start when it comes to distributing the loot. If they don't hand over everything like we do their chances of reaching first place are negligible. Most of the time isn't even spent fighting, but traveling between each fifth floor. So even when they are faster I don't think it will make much of a difference."

That was an interesting perspective. Definitely a side Thalion hadn't considered before. Still it did little to ease his mind. Even those arrogant elves would stick together when it came to defeating the human. At least those were Thalion's thoughts. The corridor became more and more twisted as they moved along, everyone using movement skills to travel as fast as possible. Those corridors were so long that traversing them sometimes took days.

Along the sides, twisted statues of screaming, misshapen Unari were integrated into the walls. They all looked as if they suffered from some horrific disease. The statues reminded Thalion a bit of a zombie apocalypse and he really wasn't looking forward to fighting the next D grade on the fifth floor. The last two had been utter nightmares and this one might be even worse because this time Thalion most likely wouldn't have a favorable matchup. There was also one other tiny problem.

"Humans... my location keeps getting shared. It's almost every minute," Ricarda said in an alarmed tone. That shook Thalion out of his stupor. He had been in the middle of checking whether there were any upgrades from reaching level 117 after the last fight. Yet now that she mentioned it, the feeling of approaching danger was still there. After they had chosen the gate on the right and sped up it had lessened, but now it was slowly catching up again.

"This isn't good. Do you think the hunters are already down here in the tunnel network?" Pikar asked. It was clear that he also didn't like the thought of being discovered by the Wild Hunt.

"How should I know? It's just that my location keeps getting shared so many times. Do you think I'm feeling good about this? Why isn't someone else taking the crystal?" she complained loudly. Her nerves were already fraying and it probably wouldn't take much longer before she had another breakdown.

"Not that it matters much since we are all together," Thalion commented, which didn't improve her mood in the slightest. While Pikar tried to calm Ricarda down, Thalion observed the ceiling and the walls. He hoped it might be possible to collapse the tunnel and cut their pursuers off for now. Thalion only felt the danger directly behind them, which meant that collapsing this tunnel should solve the problem, at least temporarily. For experimentation he stopped and launched four vines upward into the ceiling.

The vines brimmed with power and managed to burrow meters deep into the bedrock, but Thalion quickly reached his limit when pulling on them. He was simply too weak. He tried to move the vines closer together, but the small chunks he managed to tear free were nowhere near enough to collapse the tunnel. At this speed it would take days. Even with the Eclipsari he saw little hope.

The form would be faster at destroying the ceiling, but everything was so compact that only large-scale destruction would bring the tunnel down. No, we could really use a few of Lucan's mines or claymores right now, Thalion thought, not even sure if the smith possessed something like that.

"Everything alright, Thalion?" Pikar asked after noticing what he was doing. Thalion decided to go with the truth. Keeping the fact that someone was directly behind them a secret would only make things worse.

"No, not really. We are being followed and someone is right behind us." That of course didn't help Ricarda at all and she collapsed to the ground.

"Oh no. This is bad and we can't even leave this trial. What will my family say to this? I'm such an embarrassment."

"Are you sure they are really right behind us?" Pikar asked skeptically while helping up the whimpering Ricarda.

"God what will they say when they hear what happened? That I now stand under a human? Hopefully the other elves aren't killing them because they haven't made it back since we closed the teleportation hub after all," Ricarda stammered while tears streamed down her cheeks. Thalion was getting a bit annoyed. Why were all the other blessed such arrogant cunts while the one he ended up with was a complete mental wreck?

"Yes, you can trust me on that. It might be best to skip the next floor and focus on gaining distance," Thalion suggested and Pikar nodded. He released multiple tiny insects that looked a bit like elongated ants with too many legs. They quickly devoured the tears that had fallen onto the cold stone floor.

"Now they hopefully have nothing to track," Pikar said while jerking Ricarda back onto her feet.

"Quick thinking," Thalion complimented, and then both of them sped off into the distance.