[Only one team is allowed to enter at a time]
We stared in horror at the floating message in the air.
Beyond it, only darkness was visible, even my soul and darkness visions couldn't pierce it.
Multiple theories formed in our minds.
"Was that why the boss didn't leave the mansion?'
Did they know that we would divide into teams from the start?
Were they changing the challenge depending on the situation?
Were they trying to make it harder on purpose?
Was all that just for fun for them?
*BOOM!*
All of a sudden, we heard a loud sound.
Long Wei punched the mansion's wall with all his strength, but it didn't even leave a scratch.
"I should have known it looked too easy to be true!" he gritted his teeth, voice filled with anger.
"Sooo… who wants to test it first?" Tkiee suddenly asked with a nervous smile.
We stared at each other, waiting for anyone to take the first step, but no one dared to try.
"Michael." A muscled demon with 4 arms suddenly called calmly. "Talk with the camp. Tell them all to come to us with that prisoner. I finally found a use for her."
"What?!"
"No!"
Braham and Celestina shouted in unison.
"Oh?" The demon frowned, then smirked. "So you want to go there first? Sure. I don't mind."
He moved to the left giving them space to enter the mansion — but they didn't move.
They just stared at the dark mansion for a moment before lowering their heads.
The demon's smirk widened. "Good choice."
For the following hours, we kept waiting for the people from the camp while doing some random stuff such as eating to restore our power, speaking and doing some tests.
We tried to throw all types of attacks, spells and throwing weapons inside the mansion, but the darkness would always devour them without any sound.
Feeling bored, some people started playing games like Long Wei and Zorath who played arm wrestling, but Zorath lost miserably despite being an orc.
I wanted to control the soul inside my core to spend time, but I wasn't that stupid to risk my life so I just trained normally.
Eventually, the people from the camp arrived, including Aurelia, Paul and… the prisoner.
For a moment, I felt some sympathy towards her.
She was a person that tried to kill us only for her to return, not caring about our feelings, struggles or lives.
But was sacrificing her really a good decision?
And if not — then what were we supposed to do? Enter the mansion blindly hoping that everything would end without troubles?
"She doesn't deserve your sympathy." Master Kai said suddenly, taking our attention. "If she was ready to kill us for her benefits, then it's only fair to do the same to her."
"But—!"
*BONK!*
"Don't hesitate or show pity towards your enemies." His voice suddenly turned firm. "Because they won't do the same. Trust me on this."
I stared silently at him before nodding.
He was right. I couldn't afford to be soft in this or any other world, because my enemies wouldn't be that kind.
From the teams around us, anyone could suddenly try to kill us like team 2.
Braham was strangely silent after hearing him, as if he just got reminded by the reality — the reality that he always hated.
"Please… please stop!"
We suddenly heard the voice of the prisoner.
She kept pleading, screaming and crying as they dragged her cage closer to the mansion.
In the end, they threw to her a sword and the cage key before throwing it inside.
We all held our breaths as the darkness started vanishing, showing the full details of the mansion slowly.
The more details we saw, the more confused we became.
The mansion was empty, completely empty!
No decorations. No rooms. No stairs. No furniture. Nothing!
The woman used the key to open the cage. She tried to leave the mansion, but there was a barrier stopping her from leaving.
Celestina tried to go through using her hand, but the barrier stopped her from entering.
[Only one team is allowed to enter at a time]
She tried to give her a buff at least to help, but the barrier still stopped her.
That woman was alone now.
The next moment, the darkness in the mansion vanished completely, revealing a horror beyond what we imagined.
"Are—ARE WE SUPPOSED TO FIGHT THIS!" Drax screamed, terror and fear visible in his voice.
At the end of the mansion, a huge brown spider stood on 4 pairs or sharp blade-like legs. Its body was covered with a shell that looked harder than steel and had 4 long sharp fangs on its armored face.
Until here it looked like a normal monster, but the terrifying part was its back.
Rising from its back was a huge, thick blood-red flower. Its petals were open wide, revealing a dark maw with rows and rows of bloody red teeth that was dripping a disgusting yellow liquid.
Connected to the flower were tens of red tentacles, moving in all directions as if they had their own lives.
Wait…
Using my soul eyes, I realized a horrifying fact.
"The tentacles…" my body was shaking, trying to gather the courage to complete my sentence.
I opened my mouth and shouted with a shaky voice: "The tentacles are alive! Each one has its own soul!"
They all stared blankly as they proceeded my words, but suddenly—
"Kwark!"
"ROAAAR!"
The flower part roared and the spider Kwarked as it noticed the elf woman.
The woman started shaking as the spider stood up and started moving towards her step by step.
*TakTakTakTakTak!*
The spider's steps started accelerating as it got closer and closer.
"GET AWAY!"
She screamed before striking the spider with red lightning — but it didn't leave a scratch.
She fixed her eyes at the flower and started casting lightning at it but the tentacles got covered by ice and started protecting it, sacrificing their own "lives" to make sure that nothing would reach the flower.
The woman's face turned into despair, tears flowinglike a waterfall from her eyes as the huge spider stood in front of her.
"H-hel—!" Before she could complete her talking, tens of tentacles grabbed her, raising her to the air.
The woman screamed, cried and pleaded for help, but all we could do was just staring.
The tentacles started squeezing the woman tightly, cutting off her breath and screams.
Then it used its tentacles to slowly, carefully and painfully skin her alive in front of us.
The next moment, it grabbed her arms and legs with more tentacles and started pulling them in different directions.
*SQUELCH!
Her arms and legs got ripped off instantly, but despite everything — she was still conscious, feeling all the pain without the power to resist.
For a moment, her teary eyes landed on me as if asking for help.
I still remember what master Kai said about not showing sympathy — but what was I supposed to do after seeing these eyes?
I felt terrible. Was that what I wanted— what we all wanted to see?
Then slowly, it started moving her with her severed parts to the flower's bloody mouth.
*SQUISH!SQUISH!*
The flower started chewing her for a minute before spitting her out.
What we saw wasn't the former beautiful woman but just a dough made of bones and flesh — surprisingly, her cores were fine.
Using the tentacles, the spider started forming the flesh dough into a humanoid figure.
"No way…"
The monster started carefully putting her skin on again until she returned to her earlier form.
My stomach started twitching.
Many people that were vomiting from the start of the torture started vomitting again.
Braham clenched his fists until they started bleeding as if regretting all his life decisions.
Celestina stopped looking since the skinning started.
One small tentacle suddenly left the flower and entered the woman's body through her eye socket.
The woman's body started shaking aggressively while taking slow steps towards us.
She grabbed the sword from the ground, enhanced it by lightning, left the mansion and lunged towards the closest orc.
*BOOM!*
The orc crushed her instantly using her great hammer, but there was no visible happiness or relief on her face.
As we stared at the darkness swallowing the mansion again — we understood how team 2 turned into monsters.
That was the fate of the team that lost against the boss formerly.
And if the next teams lost — then the same fate would wait them.