Calm, Moros was calm. His initial strong feelings had disappeared the moment after he helped the Balla-Balla move on into the afterlife.
Looking at his broken finger, he had to admit…being a hero freaking hurt.
He swore he was no drama queen, but in the future he would use his pointy stick instead. An option a lot more effective than having to break a finger every time such a situation came.
For that, however, he first needed to find a way out of this pitch-black sea of darkness.
An option easier said than done, since the last time he checked, he could not exactly fly nor were there any stairs for him to take.
He did the next most logical thing and just walked into a random direction, hoping to find a wall, a light or anything that could indicate where he was.
A few uneventful minutes of walking passed. Nothing out of the ordinary was the result, his feet produced a more wet, mushy sound, but he thought none of that.
It has been wet the moment he fell into this place and apparently it still was wet, when he walked on for ages. The sensation upon his shoes being soaked in strange juices was not a pleasant one, but Moros was more concerned with his broken middle finger than being concerned about wet feet.
Moros wanted to blame the world, but he really hated himself the most this very moment. His own neglect had raised the Balla into a slightly bigger useless piece of garbage.
And said trash monster dared to throw him down this hole.
Worst of all, that darn thing swallowed so much money. Afterwards, it still had the gall to only spit out one, tiny monster core?
Moros was not good at math, but the ratio did not seem to make much sense to him.
All those many stones were eaten by one measly Balla? Moros could not believe that, despite that one Balla being that massive already.
Nobody would swallow his little money baby girls and get away with their life intact.
Well, he would just never do the same mistake again. He paid his lesson, the price was the death of his loved ones.
A change occurred, in the faint distance there was the soft glow of something. A faint shimmering object. Moros, however, thought the situation was a bit too good to be true.
He approached the spot in a slow and steady manner. Always ready to stab his middle finger forward, but nothing happened.
Stopping a few metres before it, the wounded teenager removed his left shoe and threw it at the source of the light.
He waited.
Nothing happened.
Moros took a breath of relief, one could never be too safe. Still, he did not dare to underestimate the potential danger of the situation. Approaching the small, flicking light step, by step he kept on looking at his visor in hopes of spotting any danger.
Another pause.
Nothing happened yet again.
Standing before the light, he saw a blurry thing before him, in the darkness it was hard to determine what this thing could be. Picking it up, he carefully held it closer to his face, so the magical visor could analyse it.
[Balla-Balla]
It said.
Before he could react, the black slime wrapped itself around the head of Moros, trying to suffocate its human enemy. The gelatinous mass pressed tightly, causing Moros' senses to run wild and his brain to easily lose focus.
The youth's hand madly grabbed at the membrane covering his head and tried to rip it off─to no avail.
Oxygen grew less and less.
Next, he tried to stab his middle finger into the mass, but it quickly grew clear, that he would perish long before he had killed the mutated beast.
He stumbled around, thrashing around, throwing his body into everything…just to be able to have another breath.
It was then that he heard a click, he had stepped onto something.
2 swords, rusted to their core, swiped across the floor leaving Moros' feet standing where he once stood, just his upper body fell to the floor with a sickening wet thud.
His blood trickled onto the floor in droves, consciousness began to slip.
A terrible scream left his mouth, a chance which the Balla-Balla did not miss. The slime rushed down into his mouth aiming to eat him from the inside out.
Moros writhed in agony as his body began to burn and dissolve from the inside out, it was then that his mana-devouring shackles fell to the floor.
For, but one moment in time the world seemed to stand still.
Next, the dungeon shook again. Mana oozed out from his wounds, causing the ground, the space, the dungeon, everything began to violently shake and twist.
It did not stop, more mana poured out causing tremors, which shook the whole unconquerable dungeon in itself.
Moros' consciousness was violently brought back to reality, as his body was threatening to collapse. If he did not stop his mana flow…a massive explosion would level the entire dungeon.
Moros grasping the last remnants of his strength, used the mana pouring out of his body and gathered the mass around his left arm.
"Terra Family, the first technique…monolith stab," the words of his brother echoed in the confines of his mind. Conjuring a large spike around his left hand, he saw no other choice than to stab himself.
Launching the gigantic needle, he rammed the stone right into his chin and ripped it right through his jaw to kill the Balla-Balla before it could enter his body fully.
Under even more pain, he saw the Balla he hit, its part flowing out of all the entry wounds he had just created.
[Balla-Balla (Evolution) has died. 15 XP awarded and a little monster core.]
But before he could celebrate his survival, the corpse of Balla-Balla exploded. Ripping away a few teeth and his entire left cheek.
Moros had won, but his thoughts were not clear, his head was feeling heavy. He just wanted to sleep here, take a break. But he knew, if his eyes closed right here, they would never open again.
The needle in his left arm shot into his thighs, to keep the consciousness from slipping away. In return, even more magic spilt out.
Causing the darkness to shake terribly, the flood of mana overpowered it and seemed hellbent on destroying it fully.
Yet, the darkness did not seem to clash with the tidal wave of mana, that ran out of Moros' body. No, it seemed to follow a different will, instead it enveloped the wounded body of Moros and propelled him upwards, launching him upwards towards the surface, where he came from.
Moros did not feel his legs, nor his upper body anymore…he did not realize what was happening.
He had closed his eyes, the next moment he opened them he found himself in the room he had been attacked in. There was a new floor, its appearance spotless, there were Ballas around, bouncing around without any care in the world.
But Moros could not care, his feet were missing and he had stab wounds all over the body.
There was only one choice. At the end of the Terra property, there was an old abandoned health pod, a thing that he had never used nor needed.
With no feelings in his body, he crawled forwards. Using his arms he made metre after metre. Long had he lost sight, he merely moved forward inch by inch, dyeing the whole floor in a long, red trail of his blood.
He crawled on. The sounds died down, his smell died down, his hands did not feel anymore.
The hard stone floor, he passed it by, his hands dragging the near-dead, lifeless body onto the patches of green grass.
"DEATH!"
He kept yelling in his mind…he pushed, he crawled. His fingernails broke as they dug into the mud, some were ripped out entirely, and yet he pushed on.
He crawled forward and arrived at the telephone cell that had been reworked into a healing station. The trail of blood following him, till death would do them apart.
"Welcome to the Asklepios healing station, please insert the valid payment before we continue with the treatment produced."
Moros did not hear, nor could he hear. On instinct alone, he took out the 2 monster cores he received from killing the 2 Balla-Ballas and held them up…
It was then that he fell unconscious, the injuries too severe to keep his brain active.
At this very moment, he was dying. A minute away from bleeding out on the floor.
"Payment received: Casting minor healing spell"
Yet, Moros' breath stopped…