Six hours earlier, a demon goblin rushed towards the huge throne made of rock and bones that stood in the center of the room. A gigantic cavernous hall with three entrances guarded by powerful guards. Two at each entrance.

  Sitting on it was King Ak-Crest. A dark green goblin of three meters, very muscular despite his huge belly. Although he wore only a simple loincloth, his dominance there was indisputable. At least that's how it felt to the nearly two-meter hobgoblin with whom he had an audience. An emissary from another faction inside the immense dungeon.

  The demon goblin ignored the audience and approached without permission. “My king! A female human has broken into your dwelling and is wreaking havoc! She has already killed over 100 goblins!”

  “Don't be ridiculous!”, said the hobgoblin, looking at him with disgust. “Don't bother us with such trifles! Sort it out yourself!”

  “But…”

  “Gather several of your people and corner her, damnit! Is it that hard, you stupid, brainless fool?”, the hobgoblin petulantly replied.

  “Enough! What's going on?” The king demanded, waking up from his boredom.

  “My king! A female human has...”

  “I've already heard that part! Describe her! Wait! Was... was her hair red and she was wearing black armor?”

  The demon goblin looked at him puzzled; he had not left his throne. How had he…? The emissary butted in again, unable to hide his curiosity. “What interest do you have in that human, Great Ak-Crest?”

  “Don't stick your nose into other people's business, messenger.” The king's tone bordered on menace. He only changed it to address his subordinate. “Gather all you need and bring her to me! Alive!”

  “You said... alive, my lord?” Even the guards, who always remained impassive, turned around.

  “Bring her to me, even if you have to gather the whole colony!” The king stood up and patted his huge belly. “If you return without her, you will take her place. Is that clear?”

  The goblin ran off like there was no tomorrow, shouting at every goblin he came across. “By order of the king, you're coming with me! And... and you too!” He shouted at two of the king's personal guards. They turned around and waited for Ak-Crest approval.

  The hobgoblin emissary watched the situation in utter bewilderment. “I was sure we shared the same taste for females! I didn't expect you would include them on your menu.”

  Ak-Crest sat on his great throne, fed up with the hobgoblin's chatter. “Scram!”

  “But… we haven't negotiated the division of territories yet!” The hobgoblin took a step back as a foul red miasma began to exude from the king's skin. “What are you doing?! You intend to break the truce?!”

  Ak-Crest’s look of indifference was inversely proportional to the speed with which the miasma was coming out of every pore of his body. The hobgoblin had no choice but to run for his life amidst the mockery of the demon goblins that formed the king's personal guard.

  When he was finally alone and the concentration of the miasma increased to such an extent that it would easily kill anyone who wasn't a demon, someone in front of him broke his invisibility. A hooded human who breathed the miasma like pure air.

  “Is it her?”, asked King Ak-Crest.

  The hooded man nodded and walked away. On his back, he carried a huge black greatsword.

  “Where are you heading?!”

  He laughed. His voice was manly. “What's wrong? You don't trust me?”

  “I just don't understand why you don't remove them yourself. That's all.”

  “Don't underestimate her, Ak-Crest. I know you’re powerful, but her tenacity is to be feared.”

  Ak-Crest raised his voice dismissively. “She's still just a mere human!”

  The hooded man turned his back on him and smiled. “I warned you!”

  ?????? ??????

  The whispers forcibly awakened Jean; she was in great danger. Something was dragging her down the hill by her right arm. However, she couldn't make a commotion. She was too close to the dungeon entrance again and surrounded by more than a dozen demon goblins. She had to flee, but how? He grabbed her arm so tightly that it now felt numb. Besides, she wasn't the only pack.

  With every step they took, the remains of the bandits fell to the ground one after another. A skinned arm, half a head, a crushed leg... The encounter with the bandits had been a massacre, but why wasn't she suffering the same fate? Just thinking about the possibilities almost made her despair.

  “How can I get rid of so many of these huge bastards?”

  With so many skewers, it took them a while to get to the entrance. There, several goblins were arguing about what to do with the remaining meat. The demon goblin carrying her wasted no time and dragged her inside. It was at that instant that Jean began to feel it. Corruption everywhere. It began to penetrate her and damage her. It was a different corruption than hers, but she managed to feed on it.

  The beast roared inside her again, as if it was eager for revenge. It couldn't be the demonic goblin blood. It had already fed on it. It had to be the miasma, but... “Where does it come from?”

  The darkness became total halfway through and the miasma began to get denser and denser. Cursed Manage was barely able to cope with it and Cursed Graveyard was about to overflow.

  She opened the map with her eyes still closed. She needed to know how many surrounded her before it was too late. Maybe if she generated enough chaos she could flee, but first she needed to know what she was up against.

  ?Elite Demon Goblin?

  Level ??

  Name: Strong Hands

  Marks: [Killer], [Sadist], [Torturer]

  Details:This creature alone represents an overwhelming challenge for you.

  Highest Attribute (Strength): 125

  “Holy cow!”

  The chains emerged from her arms for the first time in a long time. Always responsive to her desires, they bound by themselves to Strong Hands.

  “Where the hell are you going?”, shouted one of the demon goblins. “That's not the way, you idiot!”

  “Shut up, moron! I know exactly what I'm doing!”, replied Strong Hands as he walked away.

  “Do you intend to disobey the king?”, shouted another.

  Strong Hands stopped dead in his tracks and turned menacingly. The huge goblin and personal guard of the king, signaled the goblin to approach. He froze. However, another demon goblin stepped forward. One that spoke very fast and yelled non-stop during the ten meters that separated them.

  “The king was clear! Do you want to end up in his belly?”

  A punch in the face took the replicant by surprise. The goblin turned to a red and green mush splattered on the floor, like the snot of a sneeze. Jean couldn't help but flinch. He noticed.

  “Have you woken up, sweetie? Good! It'll be more fun that way! I want to hear you scream!”, he stated, maliciously smiling. He then looked at the others. “Is anyone else going to tell me when I have to bring her to Ak-Crest?”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  A heavy silence preceded several demon goblins approaching. “What the hell do you want?”, Strong Hands said, clenching his fist.

  “Can we watch?!!”, they blurted out before getting beaten up. He nodded and they all followed him while laughing.

  Jean nearly began to tremble. In the end, what she feared would happen. She couldn't let it happen. She was not going to allow it. If there was no way out, she would create one. “Yes! N-nothing can stop me! Nothing can defeat me!”

  Jean faked a few sobs as she forced the transfer of her curse to Strong Hands. Being such a resistant creature to it, she had to use all the mana she had available and 99% of Cursed Graveyard. Such a low level of curse led her to lose consciousness, but she trusted that Last Breath wouldn't fail her.

  The laughter around her broke that confidence a little. Would she wake up in time?

  ?????? ??????

  Strong Hands violently threw Jean against his bed of straw and animal skins. A disgusting, foul-smelling bed that would make even a pig vomit.

  The loud bump on the head against the rock did not wake Jean up despite the blood. It was as if she hadn't noticed it. Just as he did not notice how the corruption took root inside him, for his metabolism was practically immune to its harmful effects. However, that wouldn't save him from the side effects of Cursed Binding.

  It was something that had been bothering him since a little after he stepped into the dungeon. He didn't know what was wrong, as he only felt a little weak. Something he attributed to Ak-Crest's miasma. Well, it was different this time. Stronger and redder, probably to terminate the redhead if she managed to sneak back into the dungeon. However, that shouldn't be able to weaken him that much.

  With the temperamental King Ak-Crest, however, you never knew. His power was strange and ever-changing. Perhaps it was because of the cursed relic he always bragged about. A relic that had transformed them into demons and given them enough strength to fight back against the hobgoblins. They had even gained their respect in terms of power.

  Either way, he didn't want to show any signs of how the woman's weight had felt heavier and heavier all the way to his room. He would worry about that after he possessed her. Though he didn't want to finish quickly, he feared it would happen. She was so gorgeous he had a hard time concealing how turned on he was. He wasn't the only one. The eight demon goblins that followed him had the same problem; they couldn't stop drooling.

  Disguising his gasps, which were beginning to be very distinct from excitement, he tried to remove her armor. It was disconcerting to discover that there was no easy way to do it. Not only because of the lack of seams or buckles. The damned armor material was hard, but flexible. It had to be magic, for he knew of no material that could behave like that.

  He tried to rip it off her by force. His power should be more than enough to even skin her, but he didn't even scratch it. How could that be possible? He was a demi-demon. A superior race in every way.

  “Cough, cough!”

  At that moment, he knew something was wrong. He had never coughed in his life. His dark vision allowed him to perceive how his veins were turning black and he was getting dizzier and dizzier.

  “Look! She's not bleeding anymore!”

  “What the hell is this human? Does she have troll blood? How can she heal so fast without magic?”

  “Cough, cough, … cough, cough,cough! Shut up!” There was blood in his mouth and the others noticed it.

  “What's the matter, Strong Hands?! You can’t withstand the king's new miasma?!” Some of them laughed.

  Those petty taunts, along with how overwhelmed he was, were enough for him to raise his fist against them. However, when he went to gather the strength to strike, the fist felt heavy and clumsy.

  “Maybe Strong Hands is no longer strong!” He turned around to the others. “What do you think?!”

  One that wasn't exactly weak got too close to his face. “Heh, heh, heh! You're going to look just like Crazy Mouth! I'm going to beat you into a pulp.”

  “Yes, beat him! Crazy Mouth was my friend!”

  Strong Hands tried to deal with the situation, but fell to his knees as he yelled for them to get out of the way if they didn't want to die. As he shouted that he would kill them all if they touched him, Jean opened his eyes. He had been awake for some time now.

  Few heard the echoes of their cries in that isolated area of the dungeon. No room for spells with large area damage. No room to wield a large weapon. There was only room for Jean's unbridled violence.

  After only 45 seconds of chaos and death, Strong Hands trembled for the first time in his life. He had backed into a corner of his filthy room, where everything was covered in the blood of his fellows. Among the mangled demon goblins stood Jean. Surrounded by a strange halo that Cursed Binding created around her. A side effect of the massive overgrowth of her temporal attributes.

  “Don't kill me, please! Don’t hurt…”. His Willpower was as weak as that of a little mouse.

  “...me?!” Jean finished the sentence. “And what were you planning to do to me, huh?” She bent down and began to reduce the eight corpses to ashes. “This will be your fate, but first you will help me with a little issue.

  ?????? ??????

  “Stop! Identify yourselves!”

  At the defensive checkpoint nearly half a kilometer deep in the dungeon, six hobgoblin guards watched as fellow hobgoblins approached running. It took them a while to realize that they were a messenger and his two companions. It was thanks to their clothing that they noticed them. The most striking thing was that they couldn't stop coughing and rubbing their eyes.

  The taller one advanced a couple of steps when he recognized them. “Nutter? Is that you? What… What the hell are you doing here so soon? We weren't expecting you back until tomorrow…”

  The three hobgoblins had strange burns and pustules characteristic of the most corrosive miasma. Their eyes were severely bloodshot and it was difficult to understand them amidst all the coughing. “Did those demon goblins attack you?”

  “Cough, cough, ... Let me through and don't let anyone pass!”

  “What happened? Ak-Crest did not accept the conditions?”

  “He drove me out of there with a miasma so strong that... Cough, cough, ... it almost killed us!”

  “Warn the council! Tell them that Ak-Crest has broken the truce!”

  “No! That's not the problem now! ... Cough, cough, cough, ... It's worse! Gather the troops!”

  “You mean that damn goblins are attacking us?!”

  “Cough, cough, cough, ... I don't know for sure what was chasing us, but it killed everything in its path... Cough, cough, cough ... The screams... The screams behind us was what drove us to keep running!"

  “RAISE THE FUCKING ALARM, DAMMIT!!”, shouted one of the messenger's escorts.

  Two of them immediately rushed deeper. The others remained looking at them somewhat skeptically. Perhaps Ak-Crest had gone mad and started killing his own. It wouldn't be the first time he had decided to clean up. Whenever that happened, more powerful goblins emerged.

  No one knew how he strengthened his army, nor did they want to find out how. The only thing certain was that over time, the council had realized that it was best to have him on their side.

  They had not yet been able to give the messenger some help when something emerged in the distance.

  They gathered behind the barricade and prepared their bows. Their equipment was on another level compared to the demon goblins. However, that didn't give them the security they needed. Normally, hobgoblins of their level could fight on equal footing thanks to their equipment against poorly equipped elite goblins, but that was no goblin.

  “What the hell...?”, muttered the higher-rank hobgoblin. “It looks like a human, but… no human can survive the miasma.”

  “Stop!! Identify yourself or die!”

  The hooded human approached silently as the hobgoblins finally used Identify. “Holy shit!”, whispered one of them. “This is fucking insane! I can't see his level!”

  “Take aim!!” Everyone was shaking from head to toe.

  The human lifted his hood revealing a face covered in metallic armor that fit his body like a glove.

  “Don’t shoot!!”

  “Are you insane?! And what do you want us to do?!”

  “We need to make time for the rest to...”

  “I can hear you from here, Nar-Hot!” The man stated very calmly. “Prepare yourselves. Ak-Crest plans to invade.”

  “Are you his messenger?”

  The hooded man laughed as he unsheathed his huge black greatsword. “Either you run and warn the council, or you die!”