Clive's group entered the corridor with restrained steps.
Not as fast as Glenn's group before them.Not hesitant or slow either.
Their pace settled at a measured midpoint, as if every step had been calculated long before the gate closed.
The heavy sound of stone shifting echoed behind them.
The processing gate sealed shut.
A short reverberation bounced once, then died, swallowed by the thick, cold corridor walls. Usually, that sound always carried a pressure of its own. A marker that the point of return had been severed. A boundary that made breathing feel heavier from the very first second.
Today, that pressure was still there.
But it was mixed with something else.
A smell.
Clive sensed it even before the torchlight fully spread.
Not the scent of living monsters.Not the sweat of tense humans.Not the sharp odor of fresh blood from recent wounds.
This was the smell of death that had settled in.
Aged iron.Cooling flesh.Blood that no longer flowed, but had fused with stone.
The first corridor stretched out before them.
And they saw it.
Corpses.
Many.
Too many to count at a glance.
Monster bodies lay scattered throughout the corridor, overlapping one another, covering the stone floor until it was barely visible. Some were intact but collapsed in unnatural positions. Some had been split cleanly in two with straight, precise cuts. Heads lay far from their bodies, jaws still open as if trying to bite something that was no longer there.
Arms and legs were strewn everywhere.
Some still clawed at the air.
Blood pooled across the floor.
It filled the cracks between stones. In some places it had darkened, thick and sticky. In others it remained deep red, faintly gleaming beneath the flickering torchlight.
The corridor looked like a slaughterhouse.
Not a battlefield.
Not chaos.
A space that had been processed.
Ted stopped walking.
He had not intended to stop. His body simply halted on its own.
"This…" he said quietly. "This isn't the work of a small group."
Zorilla crouched without being asked.
She selected the nearest body part, nudged it slightly with the tip of her boot, then touched the cut mark on the monster's rib bone with her fingertip.
She froze.
Pulled her hand back.
"The cut is clean," she said. "Fast. No correction marks. No second pull."
She lifted her head.
"Whoever attacked knew exactly where to cut."
Dorde swallowed.
His gaze moved from one corpse to another. He tried to count. Not precisely.
Just enough to know the number was unreasonable.
"This…" he muttered. "This is Glenn's group's work."
Clive did not answer immediately.
He stood slightly apart from the others, his eyes not fixed on the corpses. He was not counting bodies. He was not studying wounds.
He was searching for something else.
Movement.
Sound.
Signs of life.
And he found them.
In several spots along the corridor, monsters that were still alive were crouched low together. Their bodies pressed close, heads lowered. Their jaws moved rapidly as they tore flesh from the carcasses of other monsters.
Blood dripped from their mouths.
Staining their chins. Running down their chests.
They fought each other.
Shoved.
Growled low.
There was no coordination.
No signals.
The roars they made were not commands, but primitive protests. Claims of territory. Raw instinct without direction.
Clive narrowed his eyes.
The sight was familiar.
He had seen it before.
Before packs learned.Before monsters became more than monsters.
"But…" Ted hesitated. "That small one… where is it?"
Clive knew what he meant.
The small creature that for the past week had turned every battle into a bloody puzzle. One that did not attack directly, but directed. One that made monsters wait, flank, retreat, and strike in layers.
He did not see it.
And more importantly, he did not feel it.
There was no pressure in the air.No sensation of being watched.No feeling of someone calculating distance, breath, and mistakes from within the darkness.
"Be careful," Clive said quietly. "Don't let your guard down."
They advanced.
The first monster noticed them and charged with a coarse roar.
Its movement was straight.
Without strategy. Without coordination.
Clive sidestepped half a step.
His sword moved.
The tip pierced the monster's throat just beneath the jaw. Blood sprayed hot, splashing across his arm. The massive body staggered, then collapsed without further resistance.
Ted cut down another monster from the side. His slash severed its neck, then he drove his sword into its head to be sure.
Dorde moved quickly. He cut the tendon of a third monster's leg, dropping it, then finished it from behind with a short thrust.
Zorilla struck the fourth monster with full force. The sound of bone breaking rang clearly before the body fell.
They stopped.
They waited.
There was no counterattack.
No follow up assault.
The other monsters merely glanced over briefly, then returned to tearing apart the corpses.
"…Easy," Dorde muttered.
Clive did not smile.
"Not easy," he said. "Different."
They continued.
The next battles unfolded with the same pattern.
The monsters did not attack in unison. There were no sudden surges. No layered pressure like in the days before. They advanced one by one, sometimes in pairs, as if each body moved on instinct alone rather than command.
The first charged straight ahead and died quickly.
The second arrived half a second too late and met the same end.
There was no flanking. No monster tried to hold the front while creating space for another to attack from the side. The wounded were not pulled back. They were left to fall, then trampled by the bodies behind them that moved on without care.
Clive registered all of it without effort.
This pattern was not a trap.
It was the absence of control.
The monsters were fighting again as they had before they learned.
As they had before something began directing them.
Ten minutes passed.
The corridor grew redder.
More bodies piled up, stacked without order. Some never even fully collapsed, cut down and then rolling aside, blocking the path of the next monsters.
Twenty minutes.
Their movements began to change.
Not because of planning.
Because of habit.
Ted no longer waited for a signal before advancing. He read distance with his eyes, anticipated the direction of an attack, then stepped half a second earlier than usual. His sword no longer merely blocked or cut after being struck, but met the monster's movement at its weakest point.
One thrust beneath the jaw.
One slash to the back of the knee.
He pushed farther forward, drawing closer to Clive, unknowingly abandoning the safe position he usually maintained.
Dorde changed as well.
He was no longer fixated on a defensive role. When a monster attacked Clive from the left, Dorde did not wait for an opening. He twisted his body, slipped into a rarely guarded angle, then severed the tendon with a short, precise cut.
His movements became more flexible.
More daring.
He began taking small risks he had always avoided before.
Zorilla was even more obvious.
She struck head on.
When two monsters charged at once, she did not retreat to break the pressure. She stepped forward, took the first impact with her shoulder, then twisted and smashed the second monster with full force.
The sound of bones breaking rang out.
The monster collapsed before it could even roar.
Zorilla did not pause.
She finished the first with a brutal slash, then continued moving as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Clive was at the front.
Always at the front.
He did not feel the need to look back to check the others' positions. He knew they were there. He could sense it from the rhythm of footsteps behind him, from the way attacks never came simultaneously from the same side.
He led without needing to give orders.
And he realized something that both unsettled and strengthened him.
His body felt light.
Not because the monsters were weaker.
But because he no longer hesitated.
For the past week, they had been forced to endure. Forced to read situations under pressure. Forced to move within narrow limits while knowing that a single mistake meant death.
They learned to recognize distance. Timing. Error.
Today, without a director.
All of those lessons were unleashed.
The monsters became prey again.
"Thirty," Ted said after a quick count, his voice steadier than he realized.
"Not enough," Clive replied without turning.
They did not stop.
They went deeper.
The corridor narrowed slightly. Torchlight reflected more harshly off the stone walls. Blood thickened. The stench grew heavier, clinging to throat and nose.
Thirty minutes passed.
They paused briefly.
Not from exhaustion.
But for evaluation.
Their breathing was heavy but steady. No one was gasping in panic. No hands were shaking. No serious wounds. Only light bruises and shallow cuts that did not hinder movement.
Zorilla wiped blood from her chin with the back of her hand.
"Seventy seven," she said.
Dorde let out a short laugh.
Not relief. Not mockery.
More like the sound of someone recognizing an opportunity, then weighing it quickly.
"At this rate, a hundred is possible," he said.
He was not boasting. He was calculating.
Clive nodded slightly.
He did not dismiss it, but he did not fully agree either.
"Don't get reckless," he said. "But we keep going."
There was no debate.
The decision was accepted without further comment.
They moved again.
Their steps were firmer now, not because of absolute confidence, but because their bodies had adapted to the rhythm of battle. Each of them knew when to advance, when to give space, and when to finish.
The monsters died quickly.
Too quickly.
Some did not even manage a full roar before their bodies fell. Some collapsed with swords still lodged in their throats. Others were split apart and lay still without ever fully hitting the ground.
There was no meaningful resistance.
No counter pressure.
And that was precisely what made Clive uneasy.
He slowed his pace by a fraction of a second.
His eyes no longer followed the living monsters ahead, but the dead bodies on the corridor floor. He studied them one by one, not with disgust, but with cold attention.
He knew.
Not a single one had a core.
Empty.
All of it was empty.
Old memories surfaced unbidden.
The first trial.
When he entered the first Nest.
The monkey monster.
The monster with the strongest physique, the most dangerous he had ever faced. Its movements were fast, its mind sharp, and its attacks came in layers. It did not charge blindly. It tested, withdrew, then attacked again from an unexpected angle.
If Roxanne had not saved him then, he knew he would have died.
That monkey monster had a core.
And it was different.
Smarter. More coordinated. More aware of the terrain and its opponent.
Clive stopped moving.
For a fraction of a second.
His sword remained raised.
"That small monster…" he muttered unconsciously.
The others immediately turned.
"What?" Ted asked.
His tone had changed. Alert.
Clive lifted his head.
He drew a breath once, then spoke.
Not at length.
But clearly.
About the first trial. About the monkey monster he had faced.
And finally, about the small figure that appeared.
The one that observed. The one that had turned their lives into hell for the past week.
"I'm certain," Clive said. "That small creature has a core."
Silence fell.
Not from shock.
But because everyone remembered the same thing.
Ted went quiet, brows furrowing.
Zorilla turned her face toward the dark corridor ahead, her jaw tightening.
Dorde let out a slow breath.
They had all felt it before.
Their gazes shifted.
Toward the darker corridor.
The corridor they had not entered for an entire week.
The corridor that was silent.
Too silent.