Misaki's heat sense swept through the darkness ahead, analyzing the thermal signatures of their immediate surroundings. The reading was unusual—not the cold stone of normal dungeon levels, but something warmer, almost body temperature. More importantly, there were no concentrated heat sources nearby that would indicate living creatures waiting to ambush them.
"We're clear for now," he reported, his voice barely above a whisper. Something about this place made him reluctant to speak loudly. "No hostile signatures within my range."
He extended his hand toward one of the wall-mounted torches, channeling his newly awakened fire control. The flame bloomed eagerly, catching on the pitch-wrapped wood and spreading warm orange light across their surroundings. The illumination revealed details that made his stomach clench with instinctive revulsion.
The walls were wrong.
Not stone, not crystal, not any material that should exist in a dungeon. The surface had a texture that looked disturbingly organic—ridged and slightly glistening, like muscle tissue stripped of its outer layer. When Misaki's light hit it directly, he could swear he saw it pulse, a rhythmic movement that matched the beating of a heart.
"Light more torches," Vellin ordered, her voice tight with controlled fear. "I need to see what we're dealing with."
They each took torches from the walls—ancient things that somehow remained functional after millennia—and spread out slightly to maximize illumination. As the light expanded, the true horror of Level Six revealed itself.
The floor beneath their feet wasn't stone. It was flesh.
Soft, yielding flesh that gave slightly under each step, warm to the touch even through their boots. The surface was covered in a network of raised veins that pulsed with sluggish movement, carrying something that looked disturbingly like blood through organic channels. The texture was ridged and uneven, and in places, Misaki could see what looked like muscle fibers exposed and glistening.
The walls were the same. Not built, not carved, but grown. They curved and undulated in ways that stone never would, their surface marked with the anatomical details of living tissue—striations that might have been muscle, membrane-like sections that seemed almost translucent, and worst of all, those constant subtle movements that suggested this place was breathing.
The stench hit them all at once as they moved further from the shore. It was the smell of a body opened up, of exposed organs and biological processes that should never be experienced directly. Decay mixed with the sweetly nauseating odor of flesh too long without air, underneath by something acidic that burned the nostrils.
"What is this place?" Riyeak whispered, his face pale even in the torchlight. The young warrior who'd faced down Vro'gath bears and dungeon beasts without flinching looked genuinely shaken.
"I don't know," Vellin admitted, which was somehow more terrifying than any answer she could have given. "I've never seen or heard of anything like this. Dungeons are supposed to be structures, ruins, architectural spaces. Not... not this."
They pressed forward because retreat wasn't an option, each step on the fleshy floor sending small ripples outward like disturbing a pond's surface. The walls curved inward as they walked, creating the impression of moving through a tunnel, or perhaps a throat.
Then they found the first remains.
Bones littered the floor ahead—not ancient and weathered, but relatively fresh, some still held together by scraps of dried tissue. Human bones, mostly, though Misaki spotted the larger skeletal structures of other races mixed in. Armor corroded beyond recognition, weapons reduced to rust, scattered personal effects that spoke of lives ended in terror.
But worse than the bones were the things that weren't quite dead yet.
Misaki's torch illuminated a section of wall, and he immediately wished he hadn't looked. A human form—or what had once been human—was partially merged with the fleshy surface. The body was sunken into the wall as if the organic material had grown around it, consuming it slowly over years or decades. The victim's arms and legs were completely absorbed, leaving only the torso and head visible.
The head turned toward their light.
The eyes—milky white and blind—fixed on nothing, but the mouth opened in a soundless scream. No voice emerged, just a dry rasping that suggested the vocal cords had long since failed. The expression was one of agony so profound it had transcended into something almost peaceful, as if the mind had simply given up trying to process its situation.
"Help," the thing that had been a person whispered, the word barely audible. "Please... help... us..."
"Us?" Deylos repeated, horror creeping into his normally controlled voice.
More torchlight revealed more victims. Dozens of them, hundreds perhaps, merged with the walls at various stages of absorption. Some were barely visible, just impressions of faces beneath the fleshy surface. Others were like the first, partially exposed and still clinging to some fragment of consciousness that refused to let them die completely.
They all begged. A chorus of broken voices, some barely whispers, others just movements of lips that no longer had the strength for sound. Help us. Please. Kill us. End it. Mercy.
Misaki felt his dinner rising in his throat. Riyeak turned and vomited against the wall—which pulsed in response to the contact, the flesh rippling outward from the impact point. Deylos had gone pale as death, and even Vellin looked shaken in a way Misaki had never seen.
"The Maw," Vellin said, reading text that had been carved—or perhaps grown—into the fleshy surface above them. The letters were formed from slightly darker tissue, as if whatever created this place had shaped the words from its own substance. "This level is called The Maw."
"It's alive," Misaki realized, the pieces clicking together in his mind with horrible clarity. "The entire level isn't just built of organic material—it IS organic material. We're inside something. A living thing."
As if responding to his words, the floor beneath them contracted slightly, a pulse of movement that traveled through the entire chamber. The walls rippled, the ceiling undulated, and for a moment Misaki could swear he felt the entire space constrict around them like a throat beginning to swallow.
"We need to keep moving," Vellin said, forcing authority back into her voice. "Standing still here is death. Forward, now."
They moved deeper into The Maw, trying not to look at the victims merged with the walls, trying not to hear their pleas, trying not to think about how many of them had been part of those three M'lod expeditions that never returned.
The chamber they were traversing was massive—easily the size of M'lod's entire village—but it was all one continuous space. No rooms, no corridors, no architectural divisions. Just one enormous cavity inside a living thing that had somehow become part of the dungeon structure. Or perhaps the dungeon had been built around it, or the Predecessors had created it for some incomprehensible purpose.
The darkness ahead seemed absolute, their torchlight unable to penetrate more than twenty meters into the gloom. The fleshy walls curved and twisted in ways that defied normal geometry, creating alcoves and protrusions that could hide threats or treasures or more horrors.
They passed through sections where the biological nature of The Maw became even more explicit. Misaki saw what looked like massive organs suspended from the ceiling by thick cords of tissue—things that might have been hearts or stomachs or structures with no earthly equivalent. They pulsed with slow rhythms, and fluids dripped from them in steady streams that collected in pools on the floor.
Then, impossibly, they found a library.
It stood in the center of The Maw like an island of sanity in an ocean of madness. Stone architecture—actual carved stone, not organic tissue—rising from the fleshy floor in clear defiance of the surrounding horror. The structure was small, perhaps twenty feet square, with pillars supporting a domed roof. Inside, visible through the open archway, Misaki could see shelves carved into the walls and what looked like preserved texts.
"How is that here?" Riyeak asked, voicing everyone's confusion. "Why would there be a library in the middle of... this?"
"The Predecessors," Deylos suggested. "This must have been here before The Maw grew around it. Or they built it here deliberately as some kind of archive."
They approached cautiously, weapons ready despite the library's apparent safety. As they crossed the threshold, the temperature dropped noticeably—the stone structure maintaining a barrier against The Maw's body heat. The floor was solid stone, blessedly solid, and Misaki could have wept with relief at not feeling flesh beneath his feet.
The texts were preserved in conditions that defied logic. Scrolls and bound volumes sat on shelves in perfect condition despite the humidity and organic decay surrounding the structure. The writing was in the angular Predecessor script, but as Misaki had discovered months ago, the dungeon's system automatically translated it for those who entered.
He pulled down a volume at random and began reading, desperate for any information that might help them survive.
The History of Kwal'chaa, Later Called Kel'shara
In the third age of our civilization, we built this temple complex as a monument to our mastery over life and death. The central chamber—what future generations may know as The Maw—was our greatest achievement and our gravest mistake.
We sought to create a guardian that would protect our sacred knowledge for eternity. We succeeded beyond our intentions. The organism we birthed consumed the lower temple levels and merged with the dungeon structure itself, becoming something we could no longer control. It feeds on those who enter, absorbing them slowly, keeping their consciousness alive within its flesh as a form of distributed neural network.
We cannot kill it. We tried. The Maw is now part of the planet itself, its root systems extending miles into the bedrock. To destroy it would be to destroy the very foundation of this region.
We can only seal it and pray that future generations are wiser than we were.
Misaki's hands shook as he read. The victims in the walls weren't just being absorbed—they were being kept alive, their minds harvested to serve as components of The Maw's consciousness. Death wasn't mercy here; it was impossible. The organism wanted them aware, wanted them processing, wanted them contributing to its collective intelligence.
He moved to another shelf, pulling down texts at random, desperate for something useful. His eyes fell on a volume about artifacts, and within it, a familiar image made him stop cold.
The ring on his finger stared back at him from an illustration.
Ring of Veryobtainium - Chakra Enhancement Device
Forged from veryobtainium, the rarest metal known to our civilization, this ring serves to amplify and refine chakra flow. Unlike crude enhancement artifacts that simply increase power output, this ring improves precision and control. The wearer experiences enhanced accuracy in chakra manipulation, reduced energy waste, and improved spiritual channel stability.
Veryobtainium's unique properties allow it to resonate with internal energy without interfering with its fundamental nature. The ring becomes an extension of the wearer's spiritual network, invisible to their conscious awareness but constantly optimizing their chakra utilization.
Only seventeen such rings were ever created. Their value is incalculable.
Misaki looked down at his hand where the ring sat, completely unnoticeable despite being clearly visible. A chakra enhancement device. Something that would make his limited abilities more effective, more precise, more powerful. No wonder it had felt so natural, so right.
He was about to share his discovery with the team when a sound echoed through The Maw.
Footsteps.
Not the soft, uncertain steps of prey. Heavy, deliberate, the footsteps of something that owned this space and knew exactly where its visitors were. The sound had a strange quality to it—not quite hoofbeats but something similar, multiple impacts with each step suggesting a creature with more than two legs.
The team immediately formed a defensive circle, weapons drawn, facing outward toward the darkness beyond the library's protective stone.
The footsteps grew louder, closer, each impact making the fleshy floor ripple outward in concentric waves. Through the darkness, Misaki's heat sense detected something approaching—a thermal signature unlike anything he'd encountered before. Not uniform like a normal creature, but concentrated in some areas and absent in others, as if parts of the thing simply didn't generate heat.
Then it stepped into the range of their torchlight, and Misaki understood why no expedition had ever returned from Level Six.
The creature was massive—easily twelve feet tall at what might have been its shoulder. Its lower body was equine, four powerful legs that ended in hooves that struck the fleshy floor with those heavy, echoing impacts. But it had no skin. Exposed muscle glistened wetly in the torchlight, every fiber and tendon visible in horrible anatomical detail. Bone showed through in places where even the muscle was absent, white and clean as if freshly stripped.
The upper body was humanoid but similarly skinless. The ribcage was completely exposed, each bone distinct, and through the gaps Misaki could see organs that still functioned—lungs that expanded and contracted, a heart that beat with slow, powerful rhythms. The arms were long and ended in hands with too many fingers, each tipped with bone that extended beyond where nails should be, forming natural weapons.
But the head was the worst.
No skin, no lips, just muscle pulled tight over a skull that grinned perpetually. The eyes—twin points of cold intelligence—sat in sockets without lids, unable to blink, forever staring. No nose, just the cavity where one should be. And when it opened its mouth to speak, Misaki saw that it had far too many teeth, arranged in rows like a shark.
"Null'kwe," Vellin whispered, reading text that appeared above the creature—dungeon system identification marking this as a named enemy, a guardian of significant power.
The Skinless Centaur.
The guardian of The Maw.
And it was looking directly at them with those unblinking, lidless eyes.
When it spoke, its voice was surprisingly cultured, almost gentle, completely at odds with its horrific appearance.
"Welcome," it said, the words emerging from a throat Misaki could see working behind exposed muscle, "to my domain. How kind of you to visit. It's been so long since I've had guests who could appreciate the collection."
One skeletal hand gestured toward the walls where the absorbed victims writhed in their eternal torment.
"Please," Null'kwe continued, taking a step forward that made the entire floor pulse, "do stay. Forever."
[WARNING: BOSS ENCOUNTER]
[ENEMY: NULL'KWE - THE SKINLESS CENTAUR]
[LEVEL: UNKNOWN]
[DANGER RATING: EXTREME]
[RECOMMENDED STRATEGY: FLEE]