(The time-stilled world, in a dark cave somewhere far beneath the surface world)
Leo had absolutely no idea how many days he'd been out cold, or how the hell he was still breathing— still alive.
All he knew was that when consciousness finally did return to him, it didn't come all at once….
It came in flickers, in fragments. Like broken pieces of a memory trying to reassemble themselves inside a body that wasn't ready to wake up.
As the first thing he felt wasn't pain, but rather the odd texture of straw beneath his fingers.
Dry. Prickly. Foreign.
Then the pain came crashing in.
Like a goddamn landslide.
A dull, thudding ache tore through his ribs.
His shoulders felt like they'd been shattered and glued back wrong.
And his lower body…
He wasn't even sure if it was still attached to him until he touched it with his fingers to make sure it was still there.
His eyelids twitched open next, only to be greeted by darkness.
Not pitch black—
But a deep, muted gloom that was only broken by the veins of dark-blue mana crystals embedded into the moist cave walls around him.
He blinked again.
Once.
Twice.
As the haze began to fade.
And that's when he noticed the size of the space around him.
High, cavernous ceilings.
Wet walls.
And a stench that hit him like rotting blood and burnt fur mixed together.
But none of that stopped his breathing.
What did—
Were the eggs.
Massive.
Oblong.
Five of them.
Each nearly as tall as a man and wide enough to crush him if they so much as rolled in his direction.
As he found them clustered around him in a perfect circle.
While he?
He lied in the center of an unknown beasts nest.
The nest was made of broken bones, dried sinew, strips of charred cloth, metal, and what looked disturbingly like the skin of some poor animal that once walked on four feet.
'What the fuck is this—'
Leo tried to move.
But it proved to be a mistake and a brutal one at that, as the moment he twitched slightly, fire immediately erupted in his chest.
His ribs screeched.
His spine contorted.
His lungs felt like they'd been dragged through barbed wire.
However, as if that was not bad enough already, his arms also did not respond to the commands of his mind, while he could not feel his legs at all.
Leo grit his teeth, he could feel the panic rising in his chest, however, he forced himself to steady his breath.
'Don't panic…. Just don't panic…' He told himself, as [Monarch's Indifference] kicked in to stabilize his mindset.
Everything hurt.
His entire body was wrecked.
From his collarbone to his hips to the soles of his goddamn feet—
He was broken in more ways than one.
And then—
The memory returned.
Karl.
The jump.
The betrayal.
The fall.
The water.
The pain.
The blacking out near the riverbank.
'But… this isn't the river…'
He froze, realizing that some beast had probably carried him from the river bank to its nest.
And unfortunately for him, as soon as he realized that, he began hearing a soft rhythmic thump of something walking in the distance.
*THUMP*
*THUMP*
It was getting louder with every passing second, as something massive was most likely approaching the nest.
'Well fuck,'
Leo's pulse began to spike, but his body refused to move.
He was paralyzed, surrounded by giant eggs and lying helplessly inside a monster's nest.
And this time—
He did not even have the strength to move or run.
As he could do nothing but pretend to be still asleep and unconscious, as he felt the beast finally approach the nest and hover right over him.
Leo instinctively slowed his breathing to the bare minimum, forcing his chest to rise and fall so subtly it could've passed for aftershock rather than life.
As he heard it first before he felt it—
A heavy, rasping breath that reeked of spoiled meat and decay.
Hot and wet, as it coated his face like a film of rot.
Then came the nudge.
A slick, leathery snout pressing gently against his shoulder, as the beast exhaled another wave of sour heat onto his skin, before a thick glob of drool slid off its jaw and landed squarely on his neck.
*Drip*
Leo's heart was hammering against his ribcage now—
So loud it felt like it would betray him before the monster could.
But he didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Didn't twitch.
The beast prodded him again—
Sniffing, testing, dragging its nose up from his chest to his face, as Leo felt another warm strand of saliva trail down the side of his cheek and into his ear canal.
He nearly gagged—
But suppressed it just in time.
As eventually, after what felt like an eternity of tension, the creature seemed satisfied that he posed no threat… as it turned its attention elsewhere.
*THUMP*
Leo listened as the footsteps shuffled sideways, accompanied by a faint rumble that almost sounded like a purr—
Not a soft or gentle purr like that of a cat, but a deep and powerful purr, the kind that echoed off the cavern walls like the growl of shifting stone.
The beast moved toward the eggs.
He couldn't see it clearly, but from the sound of its claws scraping against the ground, it was circling them—
Inspecting them.
Checking each one with slow, deliberate care.
Leo remained perfectly still, his breath barely escaping his nose as his ears strained to track every motion.
One egg.
Then another.
And another.
Until at last, after what felt like forever, the sound of the beast began to fade.
Its steps grew lighter.
Its breathing grew distant.
And eventually—
Its presence disappeared into the deeper tunnels of the cave.
Leo didn't move.
Not for ten whole minutes, out of precaution of the beast sensing his movement.
As he just lay there, heart pounding in his throat, lungs burning, body screaming… until he was finally sure that it was gone.
Only then did he let out a breath of relief, as he sounded like a man who had just had a close encounter with death.
'That thing was at least Transcendent tier…' Leo thought grimly, still feeling the concentrated mana it had radiated, as the air around him still felt thick with the invisible tar like mana that the beast had given off.
'I wouldn't be able to take it on even if I were at my best… much less now, with this broken body that won't even twitch.'
The idea of fighting it was laughable.
From what little he'd glimpsed through half-lidded eyes, it looked like some twisted version of a komodo dragon— scaled, four-legged, with a snake-like tongue that slithered slowly through the air.
But he hadn't dared open his eyes all the way, he couldn't risk it, and hence he wasn't sure what it really was?
However, it also didn't matter what the thing was.
Its name. Its species. Its classification. None of that mattered.
What mattered… was survival.
Because if he stayed here, lying motionless in this nest, waiting for the eggs around him to hatch…
Then sooner or later, he was going to end up on the birth meal menu.
And there wouldn't be a damn thing he could do to stop it.