Chapter 104: A Dangerous Claim
The kiss only lasted a short mont before Nyla pulled back slowly, her eyes finding his in the darkness around them. "I forgot about a goodnight kiss."
"You’re crazy..." he murmured in response.
"So?" Her smile widened, and she leaned toward his ear. "What are you going to do about it—?"
Before the girl could finish her teasing question, Damon’s hands found her waist, and he turned her over, moving on top of her.
A soft moan escaped her lips as she felt his hands on her. The mont he turned her over, she locked her ankles behind his back, promising not to let go.
He didn’t waste even a second before he leaned down and his lips found hers. This ti, there was a lot more hunger in their movents, the girl purred as she enjoyed every second of it, but before she could get her full—
She suddenly pushed him slightly off and spoke between ragged breaths. "Call
yours."
Damon blinked. "...What?"
"Say that I’m yours."
"..."
"No matter, you’re mine either way." Sothing dangerous ignited in the girl’s eyes as she said it, sothing Damon had never seen before.
Her arms wrapped around his neck like a pair of serpents, and she pulled him back toward her lips.
This ti, it wasn’t just the lips. Their tongues t too, with Damon taking the lead. But before their passionate mont could lead any further—
CRACK!
A deafening sound cut through the air, and as they pulled back from one another, the corpse of the slain monster they were in suddenly moved.
The bone platform beneath them lurched violently to one side.
Damon was on his feet before the second movent, pulling Nyla up with him. The interior of the hollow groaned, a deep, structural sound as the flood water that had been rising outside found new ways in, rushing through gaps in the carapace that hadn’t existed a mont ago.
"What’s happening—" Nyla started.
With a second crack, the whole corpse shifted again, rolling slightly, the massive bones around them grinding against each other.
"It’s moving with the flood," Damon said. "We need to get out."
Nyla pouted slightly, shooting him a sideways look that looked equally irritated and amused. "I’m not done with you."
Damon didn’t reply as he sent shards of black ice into a nearby wall of bone and skin and tore open a hole large enough for them to escape.
Within monts, they were already outside, standing on top of the moving corpse as the water rose far higher than they would’ve expected. The heavy rain persisted, and the flood looked at least a dozen ters high by now.
The corpse moved with the current like a ship.
Damon’s gaze moved along the path they were moving down, and a slight surprise settled on his face as he realised it was heading directly toward the rift core.
He opened his mouth to say sothing, but before he could get a chance, Nyla shifted beside him and wrapped her arms around his neck, pushing her lips onto his.
Damon, though caught off guard, returned the kiss until the girl pulled back.
"You really are crazy."
"Just wait for when we get out of here," her smile deepened. "I’ll show you crazy."
Nyla’s arms didn’t leave Damon’s neck for most of the journey. The two lingered at the top of the corpse, focusing on keeping balance while the flooding water did all the hard work for them.
Soon enough, the corpse ca to a halt against a shelf of broken rock, the current losing its force as the flood spread wide into a natural basin. They stepped off onto solid ground without a word, the rock steady beneath their feet after the motion of the journey.
Damon was the first to jump down from the corpse, landing onto solid ground with Nyla leaping down a mont after.
She landed right into his arms, by design, staying in his arms for a mont longer than necessary before he put her down.
His focus was entirely stolen by the sight in the corner of his vision.
The rift core, or what he believed to be the rift core, stood no more than thirty ters ahead of them.
Up close, it was incomprehensible in a way the distance hadn’t prepared them for. It wasn’t just its size, which was enormous, it looked wrong in every dinsion possible, resembling a tear in the fabric of reality more than it did every other rift core Damon had seen before.
They moved toward it.
The water here was shallow, barely reaching their ankles. The rain eased so abruptly that it looked almost chanical, as if soone had flipped a switch rather than it stopping on its own.
The only sound around them was their footsteps and the faint, pressurised silence the core seed to generate around itself.
Then, just as they were only ten ters out, Damon suddenly stopped.
Sothing had broken the surface of the water between them and the core. The shallow, barely ankle-deep water erupted upwards, and from it, a figure arose.
It was bipedal, with two arms, one that resembled sothing a human would have, but with webbing that was clearly made for swimming. The other arm was a complex tangle of interwoven tentacles, each moving independently. Its torso also looked eerily similar to a human, at least in proportions, but its black, scaled skin looked as far from human as one could.
The head was simply wrong. It was flat, wide and fish-like with lidless eyes on either side that caught no hint of light as it locked onto them.
Damon’s initial question about how it appeared out of the water, too shallow for a small fish to get by, was imdiately pushed aside by the feeling of dread that filled the entire clearing.
’Debuff ability?’ The thought had no ti to fully develop before the monster moved, covering ten ters in the blink of an eye.
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