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CHAPTER 8 – "The Hunger That Watches"
The gate to Layer 8 didn't open like the others.
It peeled.
The door wasn't stone or metal.
It was skin — thick, veiny, stretched tight like stitched muscle. It pulsed with heat and moisture.
When it split open with a wet slap, the smell hit him first.
Michael stopped at the threshold.
His eye twitched once.
"So disgusting," Michael thought to himself with disgust, staring at the rotting corridor ahead.
"This place breathes… and it stinks of failure."
He stepped inside.
The Shrine of Rot welcomed him.
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IN THE SHRINE
The walls were slick and pulsing, made of meat instead of mortar.
Veins throbbed. The floor flexed underfoot like a stretched stomach.
Faces were melted into the walls — not screaming, not moving, just… present. Like failed demons left here to rot alive.
The ceiling oozed.
The air dripped.
Each step squelched beneath Michael's boots.
"Even the insects in the Hive Queen's layer weren't this foul," Michael thought to himself with cold revulsion.
Something deep moved.
The chamber widened into a grotesque cathedral — and there it sat.
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GATEKEEPER #8 – THE MOUTH OF DESTRUCTION
Height: 50 meters
Body: A legless, pulsating mass of dark gray flesh and fused limbs. Bones pierced through its skin at wrong angles. Its body seemed to shift and rebuild itself with each breath.
Eyes: Everywhere. On its arms, chest, back, even its tongue. All bloodshot. All blinking out of sync.
Mouth: A single, vertical gash running from the crown of its head to its belly — lined with jagged, cracked teeth, always oozing saliva and blood.
Aura: Hunger. Not for food. For existence itself.
---
The shrine was inside it. Or it was the shrine.
The flesh behind Michael sealed shut.
"Trapped," Michael thought to himself calmly, scanning the blob.
"But that doesn't change anything."
---
The creature shifted.
"Foooooooooood…" it hissed.
Its voice was thick. Gurgled. Not from a throat — from dozens of mouths speaking at once, overlapping like a corrupted choir.
"I'm not food," Michael said coldly, fire rising around him.
"I'm the fire that burns it all."
---
The Mouth convulsed — and fired a spray of bile toward him.
Michael blurred to the side. The bile melted the wall behind him, faces shrieking as they disintegrated.
"Even its spit devours," Michael thought to himself with rising disgust.
"Then I'll just make it swallow fire."
He dashed forward, flames erupting from his feet.
The blob lunged — teeth opening vertically as its body tilted to collapse on him.
Michael jumped straight over it, twisted in midair, and slammed a flaming kick into one of the largest eyes.
It burst with a pop.
The creature screamed.
Not from pain.
From hunger.
---
"It's not alive," Michael thought to himself with dark clarity.
"It's just an appetite. That's all."
---
The walls moved.
Flesh-tentacles burst from the floor.
Hands — stitched-together claws — reached for Michael from every direction.
One grabbed his ankle.
Another tried to choke him.
He flared his Infernal Will — and the limbs burned instantly, turning to black smoke.
---
The Mouth lunged again — this time faster.
Its entire body uncoiled like a boulder of meat and teeth.
It swallowed Michael whole.
---
Inside the beast
He didn't panic.
He stood inside a chamber of meat and bile.
The air burned his lungs.
Stomach acid sizzled against his boots.
"So you eat everything," Michael thought to himself with calm hatred.
"Then let me show you what happens when fire doesn't go out."
---
He held out his hand.
A small flame appeared.
It hovered.
Then imploded inward — before exploding outward like a sun.
[Infernal Will: Infernal Burst – Sovereign Flame]
The entire stomach detonated.
The Mouth screeched — the sound of a thousand children dying and being reborn in reverse.
It vomited Michael back out, steaming and furious.
---
Michael stood there, chest rising.
Covered in smoke. Blood on his coat.
Eyes unblinking.
"You'll starve here," he said with pure finality, stepping forward.
"Because I'm the only thing left…
…and I will not be consumed."
---
He dashed forward — one palm igniting with golden fire.
Jumped.
Mid-air spin.
And drove his fist into the vertical mouth.
The flame entered its gullet.
And kept burning.
The Mouth writhed, twisted, screamed.
Its eyes burst.
Its teeth cracked.
Its body split open.
And the shrine collapsed.
---
From the walls.
From the bile.
From the faces.
Souls emerged.
Covered in slime.
Eyes wide.
Silent.
Michael didn't move.
They looked at him.
One spoke.
"You made it stop."
Another whispered.
"You walked through the hunger."
A third said softly:
"Thank you, King."
Michael turned his back to them.
He raised one hand — not to wave. Just to finish it.
"Keep going," he thought to himself with steel behind his eyes.
And he walked out through the fire.