Nightmare Mythos

"Kree!"

It was shouting while it couldn't bring itself up due to the injuries it suffered coming from the man, who was currently staring at it a few meters away with his revolver pointed at its head.

Though the direction of the corrupted human's shout was at the front, imagining an unfamiliar figure that didn't look Cesar at all.

The man that the corrupted human was hallucinating was no other than the heretic who was draped in a priest's robe, smirking at it as if mocking its existence.

All the creature could do was shout in a pleading tone that probably only itself could understand whatever language it was screaming.

"Kree—!"

Cesar observed everything on the sidelines, not even aware of what was transpiring in the corrupted human's head. All he was thinking was that the delirium shell, a bullet he specifically used to put the creature down, worked perfectly well, and was receiving the end of the specialized bullet's gift.

"Hahh…"

Bringing out a tired sigh after that relentless hour of fighting the corrupted with no rest in between them, Cesar stood up from his place, his expression slightly contorting due to his already battered body becoming even more so.

His clothes, in particular, were so ragged one could mistake him for being a slum dweller. Thankfully, in their fight that took so much time, Cesar didn't suffer grave injuries unlike he did from the previous two.

It was ironic that those level zero corrupted who purely rely on their physical were able to make Cesar a run on his money while a level one corrupted, the one he just fought right now, was all about buying time without suffering major injuries.

All he did was expose it to the black tooth's odor and keep shooting it.

It would've been faster if his eyes weren't decapitated but Cesar knew crying over something that would never be back was pretty useless in this situation.

'I was still making some pretty dumb mistakes here and there but it's all because I only have an eye to rely on for my vision. I'll have to adjust this soon since I'm running out of specialized bullets to use,'

Now that both the delirium and piercing shells, and one of the sleeping shells were out of the question, Cesar was left with two sleeping shells left. Not prioritizing efficiency in this situation understanding every arsenal he had was important to be used, Cesar always brought his A game.

But all that was left of him were mundane bullets, one sleeping shell, and two artifacts which were the biggest weapons yet for now. Aside from his revolver which is pretty much useless without a bullet, there were his daggers that were starting to lose their value to prolonged uses.

"Anyhow, why I'm thinking about this? Right, I won. It doesn't matter what I lose within me, as long as I don't end up dead, that's all that matters,"

Already having to take a breather, Cesar stood from sitting at the staircase before taking a few steps forward and closing in towards the corrupted human that didn't stop screaming at whatever it was that appeared at its front.

For some reason, Cesar even took pity on it. It's probably because it was once a human and has been contaminated with corruption, but whatever it was seeing was probably Cesar wouldn't imagine watching when looking at their situation.

Slash—!

To end its suffering, Cesar sliced the head of the monster before cutting a few more, turning its head into bowdlerized head that fell in the cold staircases.

"I thought there would be more surprises,"

The only reason he was resting was because he had taken into account that the corrupted was probably faking its condition and was hiding a trump card that could turn things around.

Alas, he was disappointed but mostly satisfied that there was nothing else left for the creature to use.

Now, he was waiting once again.

After a few minutes, he checked the corpse of the corrupted human to see if it dropped any artifacts that the previous creatures had.

After a while, his face became disappointed since the hour he spent fighting the tall beast resulted in nothing but weariness and exhaustion.

Grumble—!

Feeling his tummy churning with hunger, Cesar couldn't help but rub it with discontent before he cut the helm of the tall corrupted human's cloth with the use of his dagger.

He'll have it to cover his eyes since it started to get itchy and ache due to him giving it zero care as it became pretty much useless to him now. Still, he didn't want to hinder his performance just because of some eye that started to affect his well-being.

After everything was done, Cesar started to go upward to reach his three thousand steps goal.

…

"Ugh!"

Determined to go up, Cesar found himself losing some breath while escaping the traps that he accidentally stepped into no matter in what manner the approach he did was.

The weird thing about these traps is that no matter how careful a person is, these traps had some sort of concealment in them that Cesar's heightened senses didn't matter at all.

On the way towards the top, he stepped at five traps that were working and didn't pull a prank on him. He experienced avoiding arrows coming at his chest, dodging huge falling stones, escaping loose staircases that seemed to have lost their function, and false walls that tried to suck him inside.

The last trap that he stepped into was forcing him to go up even further as sweltering water started to rise from below at an alarming rate that Cesar had no choice but to leap upwards.

"Hot! Hot! Hot!"

Eventually, having to desperately make his way top, feeling the heat of the boiling water creeping upon his skin, Cesar managed to spot the door by the end of his climb.

"Don't you dare need a key now!"

Cesar shouted urgently before twisting the knob and hastily entered inside.

Feeling the boiling water barely touching the tip of his toe, Cesar swiftly closed the door, not wanting a single thing to leave the

Sizzle—!

"I'm cooked… No, is it almost boiled? Fucking pathetic..."

Cesar could only slump on the ground, feeling his legs weakened.