The End of the Loop… and the Beginning of the Burnt Feast

The End of the Loop… and the Beginning of the Burnt Feast

But… this was just the other side of the same pit!

Arion, the so-called genius of escape engineering, discovered this bitter truth way too late: he'd run in a perfect circle! The same pit he'd dug with his own hands minutes ago—he'd come back to it like a dog chasing its own tail.

He froze for a second as he crawled out of the rickety ventilation shaft. It felt like the world itself paused just to laugh at him. Even the fat rat he'd crowned as his throne guardian peeked out from behind a rotting bone, staring at him like, "Really? You're back?"

Arion gasped, then let out a half-laugh, half-sob.

"No problem… no problem, Arion… at least you're not dead yet."

But the iron-clad feet of the ghouls gave him no time to meditate. He stepped out of the shaft to find them right there—seven now, faces torn, breaths foul as if they'd swallowed a dictionary of insults and puked it all over the stones.

"Haaaah!" roared one, his face half wrapped in a crude bandage. "The rat-son has come back to be cooked!"

Arion shot back, hands up as if convincing himself: "Yes… I came back to cook YOU!"

He stepped backward toward the pit. There it was, his old plan… the Flame Trap Pit. It had never been fancy: just a hole two meters deep, half a meter wide, at the bottom weak flaming spikes—barely enough to scratch a knee or roast a half-dead ghoul's shin.

But now he had what made him a "professional cook": Temporary Pit Expansion.

He muttered to himself like he was trying to convince a pot of dry pasta to boil itself: "Come on, my sweet skill… don't fail me now."

The ghouls closed in, cursing his ancestors, his descendants, everything in between. One spat blood on the ground. Another swung his sword, his face half melted. A third held up a severed comrade's head like a lucky charm.

"Kill him!"

"Roast him!"

"Slice him into boots!"

Arion stood at the hidden pit's edge, raising his hand like a cheap circus magician.

"Oh, bravest scum of the earth! Take one more step!"

They laughed—a laugh dripping pus.

They stepped.

He screamed in his mind: "Activate Flame Trap!"

At their feet, the earth split open: a dark maw two meters deep, flickering red spikes weakly burning at the bottom.

One ghoul laughed: "Two meters? This is your trap? Pathetic!"

But Arion—his eyes sparkling with a mad glint—grinned the grin of a man selling death in gift bags.

His mind roared a second time: "Temporary Pit Expansion!"

> [Activating Skill: Temporary Pit Expansion]

Suddenly, what was two meters became four. What was half a meter wide became a full meter. The earth caved beneath them like the jaws of a beast.

And the flaming spikes at the bottom… bloomed like starving flowers. Seven ghouls screamed in surreal harmony:

"Kiiiiiiiiii!"

"Aaaahhh!"

"Z… saffron?!"

"Damn you!"

The screams turned to the hiss of flesh searing, the echo of bones smashing. The tunnel filled with gray smoke and a stench so vile it could curdle iron.

Arion stood at the pit's edge, catching his breath, watching ghoul-smoke rise like burnt sausages.

"Haah…" He blew on the cut on his cheek coolly. "Who needs a fancy restaurant when you've got a hot pit?"

He glanced at the fat rat, who popped out again from under a rotting shin bone.

"Tell everyone, oh mighty steward… tell them Arion doesn't get eaten. He does the eating… or at least, the cooking."

He waved at the pit like a cheap stage magician and laughed a trembling laugh.

Then he slumped down by the wall, panting like a soldier who'd survived a war of teeth and spoons.

"Ah… one pit… saved me from a thousand curses."

He muttered with his eyes closing: "I just hope the system logged all that XP… or I'm suing it."

Deep in the mine, a heavy silence settled… as if to declare that the curse-hunter had earned, this time, the right to curse the whole world himself—while sipping tea above a pit still swallowing the last bubbles of green flesh.