Wonderful Insane World-Chapter 116: Darkness in Eyes

The beast still held him suspended, claws embedded in his jacket, mouth split wide, panting, almost tender. And Dylan, in its arms, no longer moved. His body was there — but his mind had already started slipping elsewhere.

Until he heard a voice.

Silken and cruel all at once. It poured into his skull like molten lead.

"There you are at last, my fragment. I missed you so much."

His eyes rolled back for a moment. He tried to move. To resist. But his muscles wouldn’t respond. He felt his mind being pulled toward something vast, ancient, and swamp-soaked. A foreign memory was burrowing into him. Visions. Wars. Screaming creatures, black flames, a city drowned in mist and madness.

"Let it happen. It’s time to come home."

He tried to scream, but his throat only issued a strangled rasp. Blood trickled from his lips. The pain in his arm mingled with a strangely sweet heat, numbing, like a lullaby for the dead.

And the thing... the swamp beast, cradled him gently, like a mother rocking her long-lost child.

But Maggie didn’t see an embrace. freёnovelkiss.com

She saw a theft, a kidnapping. A descent into the most deranged of damnations.

And she screamed.

A raw, primal cry. She lunged forward, axe raised so high her shoulder blades cracked under the strain.

"YOU DROP MY MUTT, YOU BASTARD!"

Elisa didn’t speak. She followed, her body moving before her thoughts caught up. A dagger in each hand, she tore through the reeds, leapt over a rock, and buried her first blade into the giant creature’s thigh.

It sank in a quarter-length. A jet of black fluid spurted out, but the creature didn’t scream. It merely turned its head slowly toward the new threat. Still expressionless — as if these insects were nothing more than a minor annoyance, barely worth its attention.

Maggie aimed higher. The joint at the shoulder, where the twisted bone sank into a membranous protrusion.

The axe struck. And this time, the beast growled.

A sound so low, so massive, it made the earth’s bowels vibrate. The swamp water rippled as if shaken by an invisible shockwave.

While Dylan dangled in the air, he convulsed violently.

His eyes flew open — but they weren’t his anymore.

Dark, swirling voids had replaced his gaze.

"They’re pulling you back, little fragment. How cute."

A figure appeared in his inner vision. A woman. Naked, pale as death, her eyes made of black liquid. She looked at him the way one looks at a broken promise. A flicker of sadness danced at the corners of her smile.

"But you’ll return to me. They’re nothing against what I am."

Then pain struck again. Real this time. Maggie had cut deep, and the joint gave way under her brute strength. The swamp creature staggered, a wet cry bursting from its throat. And in its fall, it released Dylan.

He hit the ground with a sickening thud, rolling in the muck, unmoving.

Maggie leapt, arms raised. But the beast reeled back suddenly, twisted upon itself like a giant serpent, its long body rippling through the swamp water. It was already retreating, its spawn circling protectively like bloodthirsty leeches.

The swamp closed over the fleeing horror like a wound sealing shut. Silence fell hard, heavier than before, broken only by Maggie’s ragged breaths and Elisa’s frantic scrambling toward Dylan’s limp form.

Maggie turned, axe dripping black slime, eyes locked on Dylan.

"Is he—?"

"Alive!" Elisa confirmed, rolling him onto his back. His chest rose in jagged, uneven breaths. But his skin was cold, like grave dirt, and his eyes... remained wide open, staring blankly at the bruised sky. The whites were laced with pulsing black veins. The purple scar on his chest glowed like a buried ember.

"He’s not here," Elisa whispered, her voice tight. She wiped at the greenish-black slime on her cheek — it burned like acid, and reeked of foul decay. "She’s got him. The demon fragment... it’s pulling him under."

Maggie spat into the muck. "Then we pull him back." She stomped toward them, scanning the water’s surface. No trace of the beast. Good. But the damage was done. Dylan’s spirit, awakened and poisoned, now pulsed like a beacon in the dark.

"We can’t linger. That thing might be gone, but its stench remains. And she made us lose too much damn time." Maggie’s eyes drifted eastward, where the light was harsher.

The Demoness. The one behind this whole mess. She’d feel the disturbance. This... invitation Dylan’s trapped soul was unknowingly broadcasting.

Elisa tried to lift Dylan. He was dead weight.

"Help me! We’ve got to move!"

Maggie grabbed his legs. He felt unnaturally heavy, like the mud itself didn’t want to let go. As they hoisted him up, his head lolled to one side. A thick drop of black fluid — not blood, but something fouler — leaked from the corner of his mouth, tracing a dark path down his jaw.

"Don’t you dare give in, you bastard," Maggie snarled, adjusting her grip, knuckles white around the axe she still refused to drop.

"You don’t die that easy — you’re a damn cockroach, you hear me!!"

They staggered away from the edge, dragging him through muck and roots. The swamp seemed to watch them go, silent, waiting. Dylan remained unresponsive, lost in an internal battlefield where a pale, dead woman smiled and whispered promises of oblivion.

The Hunt wasn’t just out there anymore. The true horror now writhed inside him — and time was running out: toward dusk, toward the full moon, toward the moment the Demoness would come to claim what the swamp beast had only tasted.

The forest thickened as they moved away from the swamp. The air clung to them — heavy, moist, like a second skin. The birds still didn’t sing. And the roots kept snagging their steps, as if the ground itself hesitated to let them pass.

But they pushed forward. Because they had to. Because there was no other choice.

Dylan grew heavier with each step. Not just physically. Something in him was solidifying. Fixing itself. An invisible anchor trying to drag him back. Downward. Toward the swamp. Toward her.

Elisa kept glancing at his face. Nothing changed. He still breathed — short, stuttering gasps, like a dying smoker. But his sun-kissed skin had turned ashen. His chest rose less and less. His throat vibrated sometimes, soundless. And the glow of the mark on his back... hadn’t dimmed. It had intensified. It throbbed in irregular pulses — as if answering to a second heart.

"We can’t keep this up," Maggie gasped, letting go of his legs for a moment, shaking out her arms before grabbing them again.

"We’re still half an hour from camp. He’ll die before that."

Elisa scanned the surroundings, senses sharp even now.

"Not here. We’re too exposed. His energy’s still clinging to everything around us. We’re bait for anything hungry."

She crouched, fingers brushing moss and dirt. She sniffed the air, then spotted a hollow between the roots of a fallen tree — a natural dip, half-covered with stones and wet foliage. Not enough to hold off a monster, but maybe enough to catch their breath. Maybe.

"We stop here. Twenty minutes. No more."

They dragged Dylan into the hollow, laid him on his back. He didn’t respond. Not a groan. Not a breath. But his chest now trembled. From the inside.

Elisa knelt beside him. She opened his jacket slowly, peeling back the cloth to reveal his chest. And there — spreading across his skin — were lines. Not scars. Not tattoos.

Veins. Living ones. A sheen of obsidian light, pulsing, reaching up toward his collarbone. Beating like an autonomous heart. And seeping a... corrupted essence.

Not Awakened.

Not human.

Maggie saw it. She said nothing. Just tightened her grip on the axe. As if something deep inside her still hesitated. Still needed convincing.

Then, without warning, Dylan convulsed. His entire body. Arms locking up. Neck straining. His mouth opened in a silent scream, his throat stretching until it bled. His eyes rolled back. And this time — it wasn’t her.

It wasn’t the Demoness.

It was him.

Something inside was screaming its way to the surface. Something fighting back. Something refusing to be erased.

"He’s fighting," Elisa whispered, leaning close, face grim.

"Against her."

Maggie didn’t answer right away. Then, under her breath, eyes fixed on the mark pulsing in Dylan’s skin, she muttered:

"He’s always been like that. Never listens to a damn thing."

Elisa didn’t smile. She didn’t speak. She just kept her hands near his chest, not touching, feeling the ripples in the air, the erratic pulse of that thing threading through his veins like it owned him.

Every few seconds, Dylan convulsed. Not violently—but deep. Like something shifting beneath the surface of a frozen lake. Like the cracking of old ice.

"Come on," Elisa whispered. "You stubborn bastard. You’re here. I know it."

The light of the corrupted vein throbbed once, twice—then flickered erratically, like a dying lantern. His fingers twitched. His eyelids fluttered.

And then he breathed in sharply.

A full breath. Sudden. Guttural. His back arched off the mossy ground, his mouth wide open, a soundless gasp torn from his lungs like a soul escaping.

But this time—it wasn’t darkness that stared from his eyes.

It was panic. Raw. Frantic.