The Tower of the Crimson Maw was the worst one yet.
Nate had found it in the northern industrial district, rising from the remains of what had once been a chemical plant. Unlike the black stone of his first tower, unlike the bone-white spiral or the corroded iron, this tower was made of something that looked disturbingly like flesh.
Red tissue stretched between ribs of dark cartilage, pulsing with a rhythm that reminded him of a heartbeat. Veins traced patterns across its surface, thick and dark, carrying something that might have been blood. The whole structure seemed to breathe—expanding and contracting in slow, steady cycles.
It smelled like meat left too long in the sun.
[Tower of the Crimson Maw]
[Status: Open]
[Warning: Tower deadline exceeded. All restrictions lifted.]
Two towers left after this. Then he'd be done. The monster waves would stop, the city could start rebuilding, and the survivors could finally have a chance.
He just had to get through whatever was waiting for him here.
The horde was different from the others.
They didn't wait outside the tower like the bone creatures and iron monsters had. Instead, they spilled out of the surrounding buildings, emerging from the chemical plant's rusted infrastructure like parasites crawling from a wound.
The first ones he saw were small—about the size of dogs, but wrong in every way that mattered. They moved on too many legs, their bodies glistening with moisture, their mouths filled with teeth that looked almost human. They made sounds that were halfway between screams and wet gurgles.
[Flesh Crawler — Level 16]
[Flesh Crawler — Level 15]
[Flesh Crawler — Level 17]
Dozens of them. Maybe a hundred, pouring out of pipes and doorways and holes in the ground.
Nate cracked his knuckles.
"Alright," he said. "Let's do this."
The Flesh Crawlers were fast.
Faster than the bone stalkers, faster than the rust creatures. They swarmed toward him in a chittering wave, climbing over each other in their eagerness to reach him.
He met them with [Bone Breaker].
The skill worked just as well on flesh as it had on bone and metal. His fist tore through the first crawler's body, the focused force ripping it apart from the inside. The second and third died to a sweeping kick that sent their broken forms tumbling across the ground.
But these things didn't die clean.
When he killed them, they burst—spraying acidic fluid in every direction. The first splash caught his arm, and he felt it burning through the Enforcer's Mantle, eating at his skin beneath.
He pulled back, shaking off the fluid, watching as it sizzled against the concrete.
Acid blood. Of course they had acid blood.
He adapted.
Instead of punching through them, he used [Pressure] and [Impact] from a distance—striking hard enough to kill without getting close enough to be splashed. The crawlers died just as fast, but now he was the one controlling the engagement.
Thirty dead. Fifty. The notifications scrolled past in a blur.
[Flesh Crawler] defeated.
[Flesh Crawler] defeated.
[Flesh Crawler] defeated.
The crawlers kept coming, but they were thinning now. He pushed forward, carving a path through the swarm, heading toward the tower's entrance.
That's when the bigger ones appeared.
They rose from the ground itself—massive shapes that had been lying dormant beneath the soil, waiting for prey to come close enough. Their bodies were amalgamations of flesh and bone and things that didn't have names, fused together into nightmares that towered over the crawlers.
[Maw Beast — Level 19]
[Maw Beast — Level 20]
[Maw Beast — Level 18]
Three of them. Each one was at least ten feet tall, with bodies that seemed to be nothing but mouths—dozens of them, covering every surface, each filled with teeth and tongues that writhed independently.
They didn't roar. They didn't screech. They just opened their mouths—all of their mouths—and began to feed.
The remaining crawlers fled. Not from Nate—from the Maw Beasts. The larger creatures didn't discriminate between prey. Anything that got too close was grabbed, bitten, swallowed.
Nate watched one of them consume a crawler in a single bite, teeth grinding through chitin and flesh with sickening ease.
Then all three turned toward him.
The first Maw Beast lunged.
It moved faster than something that size should be able to move—a mass of flesh and hunger hurtling toward him like a freight train. Mouths opened across its body, teeth snapping, tongues reaching.
Nate sidestepped and drove his fist into its flank.
[Bone Breaker].
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
The skill found the creature's skeleton—hidden beneath layers of meat and muscle—and shattered it. The Maw Beast's leg buckled, and it crashed to the ground, still trying to bite him even as it fell.
He stomped on its central mass, feeling bones crack beneath his heel, and kept moving.
The second beast was smarter. It circled, keeping its distance, its countless mouths drooling with anticipation. The third came from behind, trying to catch him between them.
Nate let it come.
At the last moment, he dropped to the ground, and the third beast's lunge carried it over his head—directly into the second beast. They collided in a tangle of flesh and teeth, each one biting the other in confused fury.
He was on them before they could separate.
[Impact] crushed the third beast's skull. [Pressure] caved in the second beast's chest. They died within seconds of each other, their bodies already beginning to dissolve.
[Maw Beast] defeated.
[Maw Beast] defeated.
[Maw Beast] defeated.
Three down. But he could see more shapes moving in the distance. Larger shapes.
This tower wasn't going to be easy.
The next wave was worse.
Creatures that looked like skinless humans, their muscles exposed and glistening, their faces frozen in permanent screams. They moved in packs, coordinating their attacks, trying to drag him down through sheer numbers.
[Flayed Hunter — Level 20]
[Flayed Hunter — Level 21]
[Flayed Hunter — Level 19]
They were faster than the Maw Beasts. Smarter. They used the terrain, hiding behind chemical tanks and rusted machinery, attacking from angles he couldn't predict.
One of them caught him across the back, claws tearing through the Mantle, drawing blood. He spun and killed it with a backhand that shattered its skull, but two more were already closing in.
[Killing Intent].
He let it blast outward, and the Flayed Hunters hesitated. Just for a moment—just long enough for him to close the distance and start killing.
His fists rose and fell in a brutal rhythm. Skulls cracked. Bodies flew. The Hunters tried to retreat, to regroup, but he didn't let them. He pressed the attack, giving them no time to coordinate, no time to think.
In less than a minute, a dozen Flayed Hunters lay dead around him.
He was breathing hard now. Not from exhaustion—from something else. Adrenaline. Excitement.
He was starting to enjoy this too much.
The path to the tower was littered with corpses.
Flesh Crawlers, Maw Beasts, Flayed Hunters—all of them dissolving into nothing, leaving behind only the faint residue of their existence. Nate walked through the carnage, his coat stained with fluids he didn't want to identify, his fists aching from the constant violence.
The tower loomed ahead, its flesh-walls pulsing with that same steady rhythm. The entrance was a massive wound in its side—a tear in the tissue that gaped open like a mouth waiting to swallow him.
He was about to step through when the ground shook.
Something was rising from the earth behind the tower.
It came up slowly, deliberately, pushing through the soil like a corpse clawing its way out of a grave. First a hand—if you could call it a hand. Five fingers, each one the size of a car, made of fused flesh and bone and something that looked like tumor growth.
Then an arm. Then a shoulder. Then a head.
The creature that emerged was easily fifty feet tall.
Its body was a nightmare of merged anatomies—dozens of different forms, fused together into a single horrific whole. He could see human shapes in there, twisted and absorbed. Animal shapes. Things that might have been other monsters, consumed and integrated into the mass.
At its center, where a heart might have been, something pulsed with red light. A core. The thing that held it all together.
[Apex Devourer — Level 27]
Level 27. Four levels above him. The highest he'd ever faced.
The Apex Devourer finished pulling itself from the ground and turned its many heads toward him. Dozens of eyes—human eyes, animal eyes, eyes that belonged to nothing he could name—all focused on the same target.
Him.
It opened its mouths. All of them. And the sound that came out was like a chorus of screams, layered on top of each other, building into something that made his bones vibrate.
Nate planted his feet.
He'd killed things bigger than this. Stronger than this. The Bone Colossus. The Iron Titan. They'd all fallen to his fists.
This would be no different.
The Apex Devourer took a step toward him. The ground shook with the impact.
Another step. Closer now. Close enough that he could smell it—rot and blood and something sickly sweet.
Nate raised his fists.
"Come on, then," he said. "Show me what you've got."
The Devourer charged.
It was fast.
Faster than the Titan. Faster than the Colossus. Fifty feet of fused flesh and hunger, moving with a speed that defied its size. Its many arms reached for him, each one ending in something different—claws, mouths, tendrils that whipped through the air.
Nate dove to the side.
An arm crashed down where he'd been standing, cratering the earth. Another swept sideways, and he jumped over it, feeling the displaced air ruffle his coat. A tendril lashed toward his head, and he caught it, yanked it, tried to use it to pull himself toward the creature's body.
The tendril dissolved in his grip.
Not dissolved—detached. The Devourer had shed the limb voluntarily, letting him stumble with the sudden lack of resistance. Another arm was already coming, and he barely got his guard up in time.
The impact sent him flying.
He hit a chemical tank, dented the metal, and dropped to the ground gasping. That had hurt. Even through [Iron Body], even through the Mantle, that had seriously hurt.
The Devourer didn't give him time to recover.
It was on him in seconds, arms hammering down, mouths snapping, the sheer mass of it threatening to crush him into paste. He rolled, dodged, scrambled to his feet just in time to avoid a blow that would have ended him.
[Killing Intent].
He blasted it at the creature, pouring everything he had into the pressure.
The Devourer hesitated. Just for a moment—just a flicker of uncertainty in those countless eyes.
Then it roared and kept coming.
Too high level. Too strong. [Killing Intent] could slow it, could make it hesitate, but it couldn't stop something like this.
He was going to have to do this the hard way.
The fight became a blur of violence and pain.
Nate couldn't match the Devourer's strength. Couldn't match its reach. Every time he tried to close the distance, another limb would force him back. Every time he landed a hit, the creature would regenerate—flesh knitting together, wounds closing before his eyes.
But he was faster.
Not by much. Not enough to dominate the fight. But enough to survive. Enough to keep dodging, keep moving, keep looking for an opening.
[Bone Breaker] worked when he could land a solid hit. He shattered one of the creature's arms at the elbow, watched it fall away, felt a moment of satisfaction—
And then another arm grew to replace it.
It could regenerate. Of course it could regenerate.
He needed to find its core. That pulsing red light at the center of its mass. Destroy that, and maybe the whole thing would fall apart.
But the core was buried deep. Protected by layers of flesh and bone and absorbed bodies. He'd have to go through all of it to reach the heart.
The Devourer's fist caught him across the chest.
He went flying again—farther this time, harder. He hit the ground and rolled, tasting blood in his mouth. Something was broken. Ribs, maybe. Something grinding when he breathed.
Get up.
He got up.
The Devourer was coming again, its mass blotting out the sky.
Nate spat blood and raised his fists.
This was going to take everything he had.
