July 22 — Wednesday
Deaths: 72
Day repetitions: 35
The monsters fell more easily now, not because Noah had become stronger than them, but because he had learned through his own body every attack pattern, every blind spot, and every exact millisecond when he needed to move to avoid losing a limb.
Four of the dark-furred bipedal creatures gathered in front of him, forming a clumsy defensive line.
Noah extended his hand.
“[Pressure Trap].”
Black, incorporeal snakes emerged from the shadows beneath the ground, coiling around all four creatures simultaneously and immobilizing them with suffocating force, leaving them completely rigid and unable to move even a single centimeter.
Noah calmly walked toward them, almost disinterested, and cut off their heads one by one.
“Useful,” he muttered, storing the dagger away. “Very useful.”
He continued forward, leaving behind a trail of corpses dissolving into black wisps, until he reached the stagnant swamp once again.
His eyes burned with that constant orange light, illuminating every corner of the darkness that had once blinded him.
The snake emerged, as always, with that deep hiss that made the very air tremble.
‘I need to tear off a piece of its flesh,’ he thought, tightening his grip on his dagger. ‘Otherwise, this is going to take forever.’
The battle began, and with it came destruction.
Every movement of the cobra brought down entire trees, sent columns of rotten water into the air, and cracked the ground beneath its massive coils.
Noah tried to block a direct attack, but his legs were dragged backward by the impact, unable to withstand the attack’s brute force. He was sent flying, crashing through three trees in a row before rolling across the ground and groaning between gasps.
He immediately stood up when he saw the jaws approaching.
The cobra destroyed the ground where he had been standing a second earlier, and Noah used the momentum of his jump to launch himself onto its back, landing desperate cuts along its scaled body.
None of them penetrated.
“Damn it!” he shouted in frustration, watching as his dagger only left shallow marks on its skin. “No matter how many times I cut it, it never bleeds!”
The snake caught him by the torso, closing its jaws with brutal pressure, and suddenly plunged into the depths of the swamp.
Noah screamed underwater, a muffled, bubbling sound escaping him as he felt his ribs crack beneath the pressure. He stabbed the creature’s head again and again in desperation, but the water absorbed the force of every strike, rendering them useless.
‘I have to get out of here or I’m going to drown.’
The snake remained completely still in the depths, without the slightest hurry, while Noah released the little oxygen he had left through a series of increasingly smaller bubbles.
Cursing his own weakness, he panicked, kicking wildly without direction until his body simply stopped responding.
[You Died.]
◇◆◇
For the next attempt, something inside Noah was no longer working properly.
His thoughts had become a chaotic swarm, unable to follow a coherent line for more than a few seconds.
He no longer thought of Lily with the anguished clarity of the first repetitions; now there was only the snake, its impossible-to-cut skin, and the failure repeating over and over until it became the only scenery remaining in his mind.
“CUT!” he screamed at the creature, swinging his dagger with a fury that could no longer distinguish between strategy and pure madness. “WHY WON’T YOU CUT?!”
He attacked without a pattern, without pause, laughing at times with a broken sound that he himself no longer recognized as his own, and crying at others without realizing he was doing it. Obsession had completely replaced any trace of the person who had entered that forest hours—maybe days—ago.
The snake overwhelmed him with almost mocking ease.
It opened its jaws and swallowed him in a single movement, tearing off both of his legs in the process with a wet crunch that echoed throughout the entire swamp.
Inside the gigantic mouth, Noah screamed with all the strength he had left, blood pouring from his severed legs while the acidic saliva began burning his exposed skin.
He stabbed the creature’s tongue again and again with the dagger, without any real effect, while the acid slowly devoured his flesh, layer by layer.
The throat contracted, swallowing him.
Inside that tunnel of muscle and mucus, Noah pressed the dagger against the inner wall, feeling the entire snake convulse from the pain.
“No…” he muttered, his jaw clenched so tightly that his teeth cracked, “I’m not leaving… without eating it…”
With his severed legs slowly bleeding him dry, with acid eating away at every inch of his exposed skin, Noah bit down on the soft flesh surrounding him.
“I’m sick of you!” he shouted, his mouth full and his voice distorted. “If I can’t kill you from the outside… I’ll kill you from the inside!”
His face steamed, his skin slowly melting beneath the acid, his blood mixing with the beast’s throat mucus. He clenched his jaw with all the strength he had left, feeling his own teeth protest against the resistance of the flesh.
‘I’m going to eat it,’ he thought, with a determination that was no longer rational. ‘I don’t care if I destroy my teeth in the process.’
“I’LL DEVOUR YOU!!”
Finally, with his teeth breaking, he tore off a piece.
He swallowed it whole without chewing, feeling it slide down his destroyed throat while the acid burned him from the inside.
The snake’s muscles contracted around him with tremendous force, crushing him completely.
[You Died.]
◇◆◇
When he woke up, the first thing he saw was his system message.
[Skill activated: Devourer’s Hunger.]
[All resistances acquired against: Floor 3 Guardian Cobra.]
He returned to the swamp with renewed calm, almost analytical, immediately noticing the difference in every strike he received: less force, less impact, and his hands no longer trembling with every collision.
‘This skill… is powerful,’ he thought, dodging a tail swing with greater precision than in any previous attempt.
The snake charged again. Noah confronted it with his dagger, and the impact released a burst of wind. The ground cracked beneath his feet from the force, yet he did not move.
‘Very powerful. Is this what a boss skill is capable of?’
The fight remained brutal and chaotic, every movement of the snake destroying the environment around it. And yet, even with his improved resistance, Noah still couldn’t create a single lethal wound in that impossible skin.
He looked toward the creature’s open jaws.
‘I could finish it from the inside,’ he thought, ‘but the acid would still destroy me, even if I killed it.’
Then, an idea crystallized in his mind with sudden clarity.
“[Pressure Trap].”
The shadow snakes emerged from the ground, this time wrapping around the colossal body of the cobra, restraining it and forcing its jaws open against its will.
The monster thrashed violently, raising columns of rotten water and destroying entire tree trunks around it in its desperate struggle to escape.
Noah positioned himself in front of its open jaws.
“Belle,” he murmured, tightening his grip on his crimson dagger. “Lend me your strength one more time. [Requiem].”
All the accumulated damage—every death, every broken bone, every acid burn—concentrated into a red glow that completely enveloped the blade of his weapon.
‘I have to reach its heart and destroy it,’ he thought, with a cold, calculated determination completely different from the madness of his previous attempts. ‘[Swift Step] to pierce through it. [Echo Thrust] combined with [Requiem] to repeat the strike. That has to be enough.’
He activated [Swift Step].
His body became a flash of light that plunged directly into the acid-filled open mouth, piercing through the throat and tearing through muscle after muscle with a speed the snake itself couldn’t process in time.
And then he saw it: a bright, pulsating stone deep within its body.
The heart.
Noah launched himself one final time, unleashing the most powerful slash he had ever performed as a Hunter. [Requiem] fired forward like a flash of light.
The blade pierced completely through the creature’s heart, emerging from the opposite side of its body in an explosion of blood and corrosive acid, covering every inch of Noah’s skin with deep burns.
The snake shrieked, an agonizing and tearing sound that shook the entire swamp, convulsing in one final violent spasm.
And finally, after releasing its last breath, it died.
[Level increased: 18.]
Noah, covered in blood, acid, and sweat, with his muscles exposed in some areas where his skin had melted away, raised his gaze toward the depths of the swamp, his eyes burning with that relentless orange light.
There, between the fog and twisted trees, stood a ruined stone castle, devastated by time, silently waiting for him.
The boss of Floor 3.