Overpowered Wizard-Chapter 310: B3: C100: The Dark Emperor Hunger Games 2

By the time he saw the monster, Manny used his Gilded Blood Dash +3 to his right, leaving a trail of shiny ruby droplets in the wake of his movement. Any slower, and he would’ve gotten trampled by a thick tendril that was wider than a human was tall while moving twice as fast as a bullet train.

The gold diggers behind Manny screamed out, and Manny couldn’t help but look back and see two of them caught in giant toothy mouths formed at the end of the tendril. The gold diggers screamed bloody murder as the tendril mouths and their jagged teeth snapped and crunched down on them without killing them.

The two fought for dear life to break free, ripping, burning, electrocuting the meat and gristle and bone off the tendrils. But the monstrous stuff regenerated so fast that all of their efforts seemed pointless. No matter how much they attacked, the mouths kept chewing and snapping, slowly, while making vaguely light humming sounds like a girl enjoying a few chewy treats.

Then the moment of mind-freezing horror moved past and Manny was dodging aside a giant paw that could flatten several men at once. Instincts took over, and Manny’s arms moved with a snap and speed that were supersonic.

His blood-layered daggers and floating blood blades moved in concert against the raised ankle joint, attacking with a roaring frenzy. With his speed and powers, he would’ve chewed through most adventurers in half a second.

After one full second, he was halfway through carving the monster’s damn foot off. But he stopped when he felt he was stepping into his own grave.

Manny dashed out, ruby droplets trailing after him. His eyes widened as spurs of bone grew out of the gaping wound in the ankle and nearly caught him.

The bone growths crisscrossed like teeth before flattening and crunching into place, covering the wound and making all the damage negligible.

Manny had nearly gotten eaten by a monster’s ankle.

What the fuck.

He skidded to a stop and looked around for his party mates. There were only three of them left, and they were already trying to run away.

Manny couldn’t believe it.

They were barely ten seconds into the fight and nine out of thirteen gold diggers were dead, which would’ve been mercy if that was true. But when he turned his attention upward, he heard nine distinct voices screaming and fighting for dear life.

They weren’t dead yet.

The monster was still chewing on them with the mouths formed at the ends of multiple tendrils.

Then the monster spoke with his horrifying male voice. “There is no leaving the game.”

“Meat!” shrilled the deranged female voice, sounding from behind the main body of the monster.

Before Manny could get a better look at the entire entity, the world darkened and became the stuff of greater nightmares.

The muggy jungle ground softened and hissed like acid. He saw countless eyes that beheld the end of all things in the skies of nothingness. He heard, felt, smelled, and tasted things that shouldn’t exist squirming and scuttling and shifting in non-Euclidean ways beyond the bulbous and fleshy trees that had assumed the place of the jungle trees around Manny.

Then, just as soon as it appeared, the horrible nightmare place disappeared. Manny found his remaining gold diggers dropped off right next to him.

There was no escape. There was no running. They all knew it now.

The monster had an inescapable domain ability.

“Fuck!” Manny shouted, scared and frustrated. He didn’t want to die here. He had too much value to die!

He had to try to escape somehow!

Before Manny could devise a real plan, he was already dashing away, leaving behind the slowpokes before a giant and monstrous hand came crashing down and snatching them up.

They tried to fight, and Manny could feel the immensity of three Master Rankers ripping and tearing apart the monster’s hand. But every time they tore it up, new growth of bones, muscles, and gristle replaced the damages and kept them trapped. Then the hand raised them up and tossed them into the air for the tail-like tendrils to snap out and catch them with their teeth.

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Manny ran for dear life to see if he could escape by going faster than the others. He was the fastest, and rarely anyone could keep up with his speed. He was already a few miles away, covered by scalding steam, ignoring the reaching claws from the jungle trees, and –

The air darkened. The ground became soft and awful. The surrounding trees became of flesh, and the eldritch things beyond the trees hounded him while the eyes of the end bore witness from above.

Then a twisted and wrong feeling came over him before he found his body jerked around like a puppet on evil strings.

His abilities failed him. His gold +12 failed him. Everything that he’d worked for, that he’d bled for, sacrificed for, and killed for, failed him.

Then the bad place disappeared, and he was back in front of the giant and unkillable monster. He was given a chance to see its entire visage as the steam cleared up further.

It was one hundred feet tall and dark crimson except for the glints of ivory bone spurs growing out of its humanoid and muscular body. It reminded Manny of a giant fox shifter, but the face was too stiff and wooden except for when the creature split its maw open, showing too many teeth. Then what would’ve been a mask turned into more of a living face. And behind its back, nine thick tendrils waved about like tails, eight of them with multiple mouths chewing on their human treats.

The caught gold diggers kept trying to fight and escape, but their efforts were to no avail.

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And only one tail remained without a treat to chew on.

“What the fuck are you?!” Manny screamed up at the giant monster.

“We are Isaiah and Starlight … the Fox Devils,” said the monstrous male voice, which came from the living mask with razor-sharp teeth. “It’s a good alias. Reliable. Maybe it will last … or maybe it won’t. I haven’t thought about it until just now. I’ve been … out of my mind for the past two weeks.”

The monster pointed at the floating crown in front of his chest. “I suppose that doesn’t matter to you. Now … let’s continue playing the game. If you win, you’ll get a big reward. And if you don’t…”

The tails spoke with a deranged female voice while still chewing on their living meals. “MEAT!”

The Fox Devils, which Manny imagined were two entities sharing one body, bent down with a giant hand tipped with claws that were longer than Manny was tall.

There was no escape, but that didn’t mean Manny had to stay on his ass and accept his fate as a chew toy. He dashed out of the way and sent two sharp crimson crescents into the wrist of the reaching hand, hacking into it deep, but not deep enough for a clean cut.

He dashed again as an ivory sickle the length of a bus sprouted from the male Fox Devil’s forearm and nearly cleaved Manny in two. But then another massive sickle sprouted behind the first, both crossing like a pair of scissors with Manny in the middle.

The Level 141 rogue had to jump into the air, but he wasn’t stupid enough to hang there. The male Fox Devil was already coming around with the other giant hand, but the creature grabbed nothing but a trail of ruby droplets Manny left behind after dashing out of the way.

With his eyes set on the only way to survive – the mythical crown hovering in front of the male Fox Devil’s chest – Manny went straight for it.

He was faster than the Fox Devils without using all of his speed boost. When he applied more power to his Agility, he cleared the distance far faster than he’d shown before.

He nearly had the crown, but the Fox Devils moved back with surprising speed and force before disappearing into a dark wrinkle in the air.

“Fuck!” Manny shouted, feeling an immense presence appearing behind him.

Out of pure desperation, Manny spun like a corkscrew and sent a hundred sharp crimson waves flying in all directions. That would’ve slaughtered a group of adventurers easily or carved up most large monsters, forcing them to back off.

Two claws from the thumb and index of the male Fox Devil grasped his leg and snapped the limb. Manny looked back, dumbfounded, pale in the face. He saw the Fox Devil had grabbed him with its remaining fingers on the end of a mangled arm and torso.

All of Manny’s attacks had cleaved deep, but the wounds quickly refilled with more meat and growths of razor-edged bone, making the Fox Devil look like a patch-work monster of fleshless muscle and snappy man-eating tails while standing a hundred feet tall. Then there was the half-wooden, half-living face that looked false until its maw split open wide to reveal rows and rows of teeth.

“Don’t worry … I don’t eat people directly. I only play games. It’s the other one who likes to eat,” said the male voice, the one controlling the main body.

“MEAT!” screeched the monstrous tails, drowning out the cries of her still living victims.

“Fuck you!” Manny shouted, swinging his daggers and sending out a cascade of flying crimson waves. He put all of his aura and power into the attacks to hack straight through the fingers to free himself.

To his great relief and joy, his bloody carnage magic and gold +12 gave him another out, another chance. His leg was screwed up, but he had high-quality potions in his bag of holding for a reason.

He just needed distance.

He needed to move at max speed.

The nightmare domain flickered in and out.

All the ground he covered returned him to the shadow of the Fox Devils. Manny screamed in frustration and slashed at the air, whipping out endless waves of attacks.

He carved up the Fox Devils as much as he could, attacking and attacking and attacking with so much carnage crescents, he would’ve slaughtered over ten thousand non-rankers this way. Before he hit his limit, he dashed straight for the crown again at max speed, but this time, he felt something was wrong.

He felt weaker. Far weaker than he should’ve been. He felt his skills were faltering, and that his vitality and aura were draining away. He felt sick and delirious and under a great strain.

He felt cursed. And not by just one curse. He was suffering multiple curses. One of which made him extremely hungry, as if he was suffering from horrible starvation, slowing him down even further.

His gold +12 and all that he stole and worked for stopped mattering.

Failing to reach the crown, Manny ended up caught in the fist of the Fox Devils, all prior damage gone. The grip was crushing. Manny’s bones creaked to their limit before some of them snapped, the ribs breaking first.

But none of it was enough to kill Manny.

He remained alive, if barely.

“This was fun,” Isaiah said. “It’s rare for anyone to last long enough for Starlight’s curses to affect them. Thank you for playing the game, and for being a decent meal.”

Manny screamed a bloody scream as he was passed to the last tail that didn’t have a living chew toy. He tried to surrender, but the Fox Devils didn’t take him up on the offer.

By the time Manny became a broken husk of his former self, he and the other twelve gold diggers ended up fully consumed.

***

With the latest game over, Zarian found himself in an interesting predicament. He was becoming less frenzied and more aware of what was going on from a humane standpoint. The difference between the violent monster who played games with contestants and the real him was the willingness to hesitate and care a little more.

“I think we might’ve gone too far into the red,” Zarian said, looking down at his monstrous body, grown and shapeshifted by Parasite Phantom +2.

It took a lot of meat to produce something like this. A lot, a lot of meat. And a lot of aura, which couldn’t come from any minor source.

Hence the warded nuclear cube buried in his giant monster chest. The playful chewing Para did with their victims had eked out as much aura out of them before finishing them off, too.

“Yeah, I didn’t know you could push it this far, Starlight,” Zarian said. “Holy hell. This is fucked up.”

“MEAT!” Para screeched.

Apparently, she needed more time to bring herself back from the red.

Granted, they had plenty more food on the floor to feed her. And all of them had legendary items, which strangely enough, Para had eaten from as well.

<Parasite Phantom +2 (Level 45): Para is now a predatory phantom. Through you and other fleshy targets, she can exist, feast, interact, enhance, shapeshift, conduct magic, and hold objects in her pocket dimension. Beware! She has an extreme appetite to match her growing power and high aura cost. Scales doubly with Willpower. Advancements: +1 scales with Wonder and Mysticism. +2 intensifies perfect synchrony benefits.>

Huh. Technically, Para’s extreme appetite didn’t mean she was strictly a meat consumer. It was just preferable for most of her uses.

Other than that, she could chew on legendary gear, breaking their enchantments with her curses, pulling their runic nature apart until they burst with a large release of aura and magic. It was frankly something nobody should ever do, especially with legendary items.

Yet Zarian wasn’t going to stop Para’s new snacking habit. Hell and heavens, he could follow her example while he was in this form.

He couldn’t chew through them as quickly as Para, but the monster teeth of his shifted face could work them down with time. And eating them could be great for learning about different runes and enchantments for his sorcery.

Besides, all the dead weren’t using their legendary gear at the moment. And he noticed Para had already separated the bag of holdings from the gold diggers she’d eaten. Those guys usually had a lot of nifty stuff.

So … bon appetit.