Wonderful Insane World-Chapter 115: Swamp Beasts

There was no sound, no sudden movement, just a shift in the air, the faintest rupture of equilibrium. As if the swamp had exhaled. Or held its breath.

The heartbeat stopped abruptly.

A strange, dense silence fell over the trees. Even the insects, unheard until now, seemed to have gone quiet. The black water lay still. The lichen itself appeared frozen, suspended in a damp, sticky anticipation.

Maggie thrust her arm in front of Elisa and Dylan without a word, a silent barrier as she stared into the dark expanse below. Her breath caught.

Every instinct screamed at her not to take another step. As if she sensed advancing was unnecessary—because something was already coming for them.

The water suddenly bulged. As if pressured by breath from below. An enormous bubble formed on the surface, opaque, glistening, viscous. Then burst with a wet plop, releasing a jet of black vapor. The stench was horrific: a mix of damp flesh, rotted blood, and moldering roots. freewebnoveℓ.com

And the surface tore.

A limb emerged. Slow. Scaled. Thin and hooked like a giant amphibian’s, but covered in black scabs and glistening pustules. Then another. And finally, a head.

It resembled nothing known.

No snout, no visible eyes. Just a bony mass split vertically by an enormous mouth that opened with a wet rattle, as if it had never breathed air before. Nearly translucent gray membranes quivered around its throat. And beneath the surface, the rest of its body was visible: immense, serpentine, studded with bony spikes that twitched spasmodically.

The heartbeat returned, louder this time, and faster.

But it no longer came from the ground. It came from her. Or rather—from them.

Because already, other shapes were emerging from the muck. Smaller, but similar. Offshoots. Echoes. Perhaps fragments, yet each seemed a miniature version of that grotesque creature.

Dylan staggered back a step, unsteady. His scar vibrated violently, heating like tin. His eyes turned glassy. He could barely see. But he felt it. What emerged there... was calling to him. Recognizing a connection. That same sensation he’d felt in the presence of an awakened demonic beast, one that fed on negative energy to grow stronger.

Because of the demonic fragment within him, Dylan had become sensitive to negative energy—he could lose his mind just sensing its presence, and it had only worsened since awakening his stigma.

Elisa caught him just before he collapsed.

The great beast slowly turned its eyeless head toward him. Its maw gaped open—wide, vertical—filled not with teeth but black hooks. A sound emerged, not quite a scream. More like a summons. A deep, wet, visceral vibration.

It hadn’t come to kill. Otherwise it would have already attacked. It had come to claim Dylan, his demon-tainted scent irresistible. All of them—just like the She-Demon—would be drawn to his body.

Something Dylan might have appreciated, were the circumstances less twisted.

Maggie stepped back once, twice... her hand remained on her axe’s grip. Her face was frozen. Not from fear. But because she’d sensed it—this was no mere third-rank beast before them.

---

The silence following the creature’s emergence was heavier than the heartbeat. The very air seemed to solidify, crushing their lungs. Maggie felt her muscles lock—not from the raw fear she knew, but under the overwhelming weight of presence.

This wasn’t the She-Demon. Not that fourth-rank entity that took perverse pleasure in stalking them, that conscious, cruel horror that seemed to toy with them. Though of similar rank, the difference between them was palpable in their presence alone. This one... was subtler.

Less refined in its terror, perhaps less intelligent, but horrifying in its very essence—in the sheer monstrosity of its existence and the tangible pressure it exerted on the world. Its thick breath, laden with the stench of primordial swampland, weighed the air down until each inhalation was a struggle.

Run? The idea was absurd. Turning their backs meant instant suicide. They’d come to kill, or at least survive. The plan remained: eliminate the threat before the full moon rose. But icy hesitation gripped Maggie and Elisa, petrified by instinctive recognition of the danger.

Their minds raced, calculating angles of attack, weaknesses, while knowing deep down their chances were slim. Maggie’s axe suddenly weighed a ton, her arm refusing to lift it. Elisa stood frozen, her daggers feeling like useless pins against this armored mass.

Yet Dylan—Dylan wasn’t calculating. Or rather, he couldn’t anymore...

The scar on his chest had become white fire, a stuttering pulse beating in sync with the monster’s grotesque heart. The "bond" mentioned wasn’t metaphorical. It was a visceral pull, a magnet tugging at the demonic fragment lodged within him. The poison’s burn, the internal agony—all of it was swept away by a rising tide of dark energy, warm and cloying, drowning his consciousness.

His glassy eyes no longer saw Elisa or Maggie or the swamp. They saw only the vertical maw, gaping wide—that pit of shadows and hooks calling to him, demanding what he carried inside. It promised relief, fusion with this familiar horror. The negative energy, subtle yet omnipresent, acted like sweet poison on his already fractured mind, worsened by his awakened stigma and poisoned wound.

A guttural snarl, more animal than human, tore from his lips. Before Elisa could restrain him further, before Maggie could shout an order, he wrenched free with a violent jerk.

And charged.

Not with Maggie’s desperate strategy against the previous abomination. Not with Elisa’s lethal grace. He ran straight ahead like a blinded bull, driven by the demonic fragment’s primal need for its kin, drawn to the pure negative energy radiating from the swamp beast.

His feet sank into black muck, spraying fetid water. He didn’t even raise his machete; his hands stretched forward, nails elongating into twisted claws—to rend, or perhaps to embrace.

The great awakened beast slowly turned its eyeless head toward this prey hurling itself into its jaws. Its throat membranes fluttered, emitting that deep, wet, carnal vibration again—a perverse welcome. The smaller offspring, rising from the muck like giant larvae, twitched and emitted shrill clicks but didn’t move to intercept. They waited. The call was for the greater one, for the bearer of the same twisted essence, however fragmented.

Maggie found her voice in a ragged scream: "DYLAN, NO!" But it was too late. He was already halfway there, stumbling through the sludge, blinded by the demonic call and the negative energy saturating the air, his stigma burning like a brand.

Elisa watched in frozen horror as the beast’s vertical maw gaped wider, ready to swallow the man running—unconscious—toward a fate worse than death. The Hunt had taken a catastrophic turn, and the greatest monster, the one they’d tried to save, was sprinting straight into the enemy’s jaws. The dull thud of the beast’s heart resonated triumphantly through the swamp’s oppressive silence.

But Dylan wasn’t dead. Not yet.

There was an impact—a wet, meaty thud like flesh slamming against damp stone. The creature hadn’t swallowed him. It had caught him.

For a suspended moment, everything seemed to freeze.

The swamp stopped breathing. So did the beast. It held Dylan in its claws, suspended inches from its pulsating, ravenous maw—hesitant. This wasn’t a bite. It was an offering. It studied him, tasting him with something other than eyes. A membranous tongue, gray and translucent, slithered from beneath its jaws to brush the unconscious man’s chest.

And there, it shuddered.

Its entire body—that spined, serpentine mass of bone and sinew—vibrated as if recognizing what it touched. As if a connection had been sealed. Dylan’s stigma, still burning through his torn shirt, pulsed like a parasitic heart, emitting waves of raw, almost living energy.

The offspring writhed in the muck, agitated, impatient. Some circled aimlessly; others slapped the water’s surface with sharp cracks—yet none dared approach. They waited.

For a signal. A decision.

Then suddenly, Maggie moved.

She didn’t wait. She didn’t ask permission. She ran. Her scream split the silence like a rusted knife through rotten fruit:

"GIVE HIM BACK, YOU FUCK!"

She leaped, axe raised, muscles coiled—not attacking blindly, but striking at a flaw. She didn’t aim for the head. She knew she couldn’t kill this thing in one blow. She targeted the joint of its hooked limb, where the membrane glistened with unnatural dampness.

The impact came with a sickening crack. Black pus erupted, searing the air. The beast rasped, almost surprised. But it didn’t let go.

Elisa surged forward, her rune-carved daggers glinting through the mist. She didn’t scream. She slipped beneath the beast’s flank like a cutting shadow, blades finding the gap between two bony plates.

Greenish blood splashed her cheeks. She grimaced. It wasn’t blood. It was something else—viscous, ancient, clinging to her skin.

And at the same time, Dylan moaned.

Not in pain. A murmur. A deep, animalistic rasp. His left arm twitched, his clawed hand grasping at the creature’s scaled hide. He wasn’t truly present. His half-lidded eyes showed only void, streaked with red veins.

"Dylan!" Elisa shouted between strikes. "WAKE THE FUCK UP!"