The restaurant was falling apart.
Jaune's mind ran calculations as fast it would allow him. The patrons were ringed in by the pack of Beowolves. Their black hides glistened in the low light, their jaws slavering and teeth bared. They didn't advance yet—not fully. They were waiting and circling, hemming in their prey like sharks around a sinking ship.
His gaze flicked towards the main entrance. That massive flesh wall was still slick with the blood of the people it had impaled, wound around the doorway like so obscene root system. The growths on it pulsed faintly, as though alive, sealing the way out.
That left two other options.
Jaune's eyes darted to the far side of the dining room, where a stairwell curved upward to the second floor. He rembered from the hostess's greeting earlier that there was an upstairs dining area with windows and balconies. If there was an ergency exit anywhere in this place, it would be there. A fire escape, maybe. But even if there was, that route was compromised.
The fight upstairs had already begun. He could hear it—crashes, booms and the thunderclap hiss of elental magic. Weiss's voice rang out faintly, sharp and commanding, each word followed by the shriek of sothing inhuman. If he brought Jade and the panicking patrons up there, they'd be caught between the Beowolves below and the abomination above. Not an option.
That left the kitchen.
It was closer, though far from safe. Still, if there was a chance…
A chance at weapons and a chance at a back exit, then there was a chance at survival.
His jaw tightened.
The decision was made.
The sudden thunder of footsteps pulled him from his thoughts. Heads whipped around as a wave of patrons burst from the partitioned stairwell, rushing down in a blind panic. These weren't the people from the main floor—these were the guests from the dining space above.
Their faces were pale, drawn, and their expensive clothes were rumpled in their mad scramble. The first ones out of the stairwell froze at the sight of the Beowolves waiting below. The monsters lood, snarling, eyes glowing faintly red in the half-light.
The patrons faltered. Then, in the worst possible mont, the rush from behind pressed them forward. The ones at the front tried to backpedal, but the crowd behind didn't see what they saw. They pushed harder. The human tide collapsed in on itself.
Jaune's stomach dropped as bodies toppled forward, spilling like dominos down the last few steps. Screams filled the air—high, panicked, desperate. The sound only made the Beowolves' circling more fevered, their growls a chilling chorus of hunger.
This was it.
Panic had broken the crowd.
Beside him, the last two security guards who had been hovering nearby finally moved. The sa ones who had tried to tackle him earlier, still thinking he was just so troublemaker. Now, their batons snapped from their hips with tallic clicks.
Batons. Against this?
Jaune grimaced. It was useless. They didn't stand a chance. They couldn't possibly know what they were facing. Still, Jaune couldn't bla them for trying.
"Stay behind !" one barked, as if he was in control. His voice shook, betraying his own fear.
Jaune almost laughed. It was a bitter, humorless sound.
The truth hit him hard. If he had Crocea Mors or even the longsword that he had been given by LUCID, the one he had co to enjoy calling Lux Aeterna, he could have cut a path. He knew that, deep in his bones. His training assured him of this. But here, barehanded, with Jade trembling against his sleeve and dozens of panicked patrons clawing at each other for escape, he was just another target waiting to be torn apart.
His sister's grip tightened on his arm, her nails digging through his sleeve. She was shaking so hard he could feel it in his bones.
"J-Jaune," Jade whispered. "We… we're going to die, aren't we?"
"No." His voice ca out firm, more confident than he felt. He forced himself to et her terrified eyes. "Not if we move. Co on."
Before she could respond, he grabbed her wrist and pulled.
He didn't wait for permission nor did he waste another second watching the patrons crumple on the stairs or the guards try to play hero with sticks against monsters. Every instinct scread at him that hesitation would kill them. Weiss had already shouted the truth to him across the room: Rank 1. This wasn't a fight for Jade, or for the others. This was a fight for people like Weiss. For people like him.
They had to get out.
The kitchen doors lood just ahead, still swinging faintly from where Weiss had been hurled through earlier. That was his target.
He pulled Jade along, weaving through overturned chairs, broken plates, and abandoned handbags. Her breath ca in quick, panicked gasps, her heels scuffing against the carpet as she tried to keep up.
Behind them, a Beowolf snarled and lunged forwards to one of the guests, the sound cut into Jaune's heart with a deep feeling. However, Jaune didn't dare look back. If he did, he knew he would falter.
They crashed through the swinging doors into the kitchen.
The stench hit him first—burnt flesh, coppery blood, and sothing fouler, cloying, almost chemical. The aftermath of Weiss's elental assaults was obvious: scorch marks streaked the tiled walls, shards of ice glittered on the ground like broken glass, and counters had been cleaved in half by impacts. Above the scene of chaos, was a massive hole in the ceiling, where booming sounds of air being displaced rushed out.
But what froze him wasn't the scorch marks or the booms.
It was the scene unfolding before him.
Beyond the counters, the faint glow of an EXIT sign illuminated the steel door. His heart sank like a stone.
The way out was sealed.
Another flesh wall had grown across it—obscene and pulsating. Veins bulged across its surface like thick black cords. Tendrils snaked outward like parasitic roots, dragging bodies into the wall's quivering mass. The dead were vanishing into it, consud like fuel.
Two chefs grappled with writhing tendrils that had burst forward to spear into them, their pristine white jackets stained red and brown. One clutched a pan in both hands, desperately beating at the fleshy coil wrapped around his colleague's ankle. The other was grasping at the floor, teeth clenched and fingers attempting to rip away at the slick appendage tightening around his leg.
And then there was the dishboy—he couldn't have been more than seventeen. His apron hung crooked, sared with sauce and blood, his face pale with terror. Yet his hands moved with wild desperation, hacking again and again with a at cleaver at the tendril before him. It was trying to drag an unconscious body—one of the sous-chefs, from the looks of it—across the tiles toward the pulsing wall of flesh at the back.
Jaune's stomach lurched.
The wall was going to start spawning Grimm. Any mont now.
His pulse spiked. His brain scread at him to panic, to grab Jade and run, but there was no running.
Because not all hope was lost. Because the second thing he saw was salvation, gleaming under the harsh fluorescent lights.
The knife rack along the wall—long, slender knives in their steel slots, cleavers hanging from hooks, and, further down, a heavy cast-iron skillet that looked like it could cave in a Beowolf's skull if swung right.
Finally, sothing.
"Stay down and stay quiet," he ordered Jade, voice clipped with a commanding tone.
She stared at him with wide, terrified eyes, but she nodded quickly and ducked behind an overturned counter, hugging her knees tight to her chest.
Jaune turned back to the rack, muscles tightening, pulse hamring. He needed steel in his hands. Anything.
But first—his eyes flicked back to the chefs and the dish boy. The boy's cleaver hacked down again, but the blade bounced off the slick tendril, barely cutting shallow grooves that were papercuts, as if the thing's flesh resisted being carved. The tendril only tightened its grip, dragging the corpse closer to the wall. The struggling chef scread hoarsely, his voice cracking, as the tendril on his leg pulled him to the wall inch by inch.
Jaune clenched his fists.
He knew what was coming. If the Beowolves didn't get through first, if Weiss didn't win upstairs, this wall would birth more monsters into the real world. He didn't have ti to hesitate.
However, Jaune wasn't going to et them barehanded.
The world narrowed before his eyes into motion, instinct and steel.
Jaune didn't have ti to think, he simply moved. His instinct, sharpened through nights of brutal training in the dreamscape and his body, trained during the day, responded before his mind caught up. His hand shot out, fingers wrapping tight around the handle of a hanging at cleaver, the weight fitting perfectly into his palm. His other hand plucked a long chef's knife from the rack in the sa stride, his grip reversing the blade into a downward hold.
He was already running, shoes striking wet tile, the stench of blood and scorched fat clogging his nose. The busboy was flailing at a thick tendril with his own cleaver, hacking wildly, tal ringing against at with no effect. The boy's eyes were glassy with terror and his movents were sloppy.
"Move!" Jaune barked.
His arm snapped down forcefully in a clean, practiced arc. Steel bit flesh.
The tendril split nearly in half, Jaune's blade sinking deep with a wet, tearing crunch. Black ichor sprayed across the boy's uniform and across Jaune's hand, hot and foul like boiling tar. The appendage spasd once, violently, then slumped lifelessly to the ground, curling like a severed serpent.
The busboy staggered back, stunned. He hadn't even seen Jaune approach.
Jaune didn't pause. His body spun, his foot kicking back to push himself away. The cleaver ca up just in ti— clang!
A second tendril, thick as his arm, speared straight for his face. The force was monstrous. Sparks scread as the bone-hard edge t steel. His arm shuddered from the impact, his wrist nearly snapping from the torque. But Jaune's stance held—he absorbed the blow and redirected it to the side. The tendril slamd into the tiled wall with a aty thunk, shattering a row of hanging ladles.
Jaune bared his teeth and shouted without looking back, "Get him out of here! Now!"
The busboy snapped out of it, adrenaline flooding his features. He nodded, grabbing the limp, unconscious sous chef who had been half-dragged into the wall. Together, they hauled him away from the thrashing flesh.
The wall roared. It wasn't sound exactly—it was akin to a vibrational, raspy, subhuman bass that rattled through the air and into the marrow of his bones. Tendrils lashed in response, two more whipping forward. Jaune's arms blurred, cleaver in one hand, knife in the other, each strike parried with desperate precision. His shoulders scread and muscles burned, but his movents were faster and cleaner than they had ever been before.
Behind him, the busboy shouted, "Chef!"
One of the two chefs who had been locked in a desperate tug-of-war, the one with the heavy frying pan, looked up at the shout. He had been smashing again and again into the tendril coiled around another man's ankle. The pan was dented and bent, but the flesh refused to break. The trapped chef's screams were growing faint, his head lolling from fear..
The busboy didn't hesitate. He hurled the cleaver that he had to the chef, spinning end over end through the kitchen's smoke-choked air.
The pan-wielding chef's eyes flicked up. His arm threw the pan at the flesh-wall without hesitation, a final 'f*ck you'—it clattered against it uselessly. His free hand however, reached out and curled dexterously around the flying cleaver with the fluidity of soone who'd spent his life plucking knives from racks without looking.
His face split into a savage grin.
With a howl, he swung downward. The cleaver carved clean through tendon and sinew, severing the thick appendage in a single motion. Black ichor erupted in a geyser. The severed tendril writhed and spasd before collapsing into stillness.
The trapped chef fell free, gasping, clutching his bleeding ankle.
"Got you!" the other chef yelled, hauling him up by the shoulders.
Jaune, catching the mont, exhaled in relief. He back stepped, his blades blurring into defensive arcs as the tendrils struck faster, angrier. Sparks lit the air, steel shrieking. But then—sothing changed.
The wall's tendrils hesitated. They struck again, but the blows fell short. Jaune narrowed his eyes, adjusting his stance, testing. He stepped forward a pace. The tendrils lashed. He stepped back. They stilled.
A line. A range. They couldn't extend beyond a certain distance.
"Range-limited," Jaune muttered under his breath, relief flooding his veins. He shouted louder, his voice cutting across the chaos: "Get back! All of you, behind the prep counters! Now!"
The busboy and the chefs didn't argue. They dragged the injured man with them, Jade following close, her face pale, hands trembling but eyes locked on her brother. They slipped back beyond the tendrils' reach, knives and pans clattering in their hands.
Jaune kept his blades raised, stepping carefully, testing. Sure enough, the tendrils strained against the invisible boundary, spearing at him with rabid speed—but each ti they fell just short, striking the floor with useless force.
Finally, the pressure eased.
He let out a long breath. Sweat beaded his forehead, running down into the collar of his shirt. His grip ached from the force of the blows, but his hands did not shake. His body was holding, trained and hardened.
But then—he saw it.
His stomach dropped.
Thick, tar-like liquid began to ooze from the flesh wall, dripping in fat rivulets down its surface. The black sli pooled on the floor. It slled wrong—like rot and decay, and burned hair all at once.
Jaune's teeth clenched. He knew this sight. He'd seen it many tis.
The wall was birthing Grimm.
"Shit," Jaune hissed, stepping back quickly.
He turned to the others, eyes hard, voice sharp enough to cut glass. "Everyone—grab knives, pans, anything with an edge or weight. Get ready. We have to arm the dining hall."
The chefs nodded, grim-faced. The busboy scrambled to the rack, ripping down every blade within reach, tossing pans to Jade and the others. The rescued chef, pale and barely able to stand, still clutched a paring knife like it was a lifeline.
Jaune clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached. The ichor continued to drip. The sll thickened. Each second felt like a countdown.
"We don't have long," he muttered under his breath.
.
.
AN: Double chapters today.
Advanced chapters are available on patreon
Reviews
All reviews (0)