Extra To Protagonist
Chapter 107 - 107: Giant Trouble (1)

The monster was dead.

Probably.

It hadn't moved in twenty seconds. No last twitch. No cursed final breath. No dramatic explosion of acid. Which, in this place, basically counted as a miracle.

Merlin didn't look back.

Mostly because he didn't want to see Nathan's face. There was a certain brand of expression that said he was both deeply impressed and increasingly suspicious of him, and Merlin had hit his quota for that today.

Also, Elara's stare had weight.

He could feel it at the back of his head like she was trying to decide if he needed a conversation or an intervention.

'No, thank you,' he thought. 'Not taking feedback at this time.'

The corridor sloped deeper. The green light kept changing, duller now. It used to glow like algae. Now it just looked sick. Sick and judging them.

Dust shifted underfoot. The walls pulsed once.

Nathan coughed. "Uh. Is it just me, or is the ground… breathing?"

Merlin didn't answer.

Because yes.

It was.

Unfortunately.

"You'd think a cursed hole in the earth would at least pick one vibe," Nathan continued. "Spooky? Slimy? Corpse-chic? But no, we get all three."

"Quiet," Elara said.

It wasn't sharp. Just decisive.

He shut up.

Good choice.

The air tightened.

Merlin could feel it. A thick drag at the base of his neck. Like someone had looped invisible thread around his ribs and started pulling.

That wasn't metaphor.

That was spatial pressure.

'More domain distortion. Layers are folding. Which means—'

The floor cracked.

Just a little.

A seam opened across the next ten meters like the ground was splitting a grin.

"Please tell me that's cosmetic," Nathan muttered.

It wasn't.

A shape pulled itself up from the gap. Wet. Shining. It looked like something sculpted out of a migraine. Limbs in the wrong places. Too tall. Too flexible. Eyes where there shouldn't be eyes.

Merlin drew his blade again.

Nobody else moved.

He was already walking forward.

Seraphina exhaled behind him. "Are we just… letting him do this now?"

"Yes," Elara said.

Nathan nodded. "Yeah, no, this is his thing now. I'm not touching that. I've seen enough horror movies."

Merlin stepped into the ripple of pressure curling off the creature's skin.

It saw him.

It hissed, like steam escaping from a sentient sewer pipe.

He didn't flinch.

Didn't breathe.

He just let mana slide back through his spine and out through his hands were quiet, smooth, like oil on metal.

The creature moved.

Merlin did too.

He didn't wait.

No declarations. No stances.

Just momentum.

Wind pushed at his boots, nudging him faster than he should've gone. Not leaping, sliding. He ducked under the first swing, came up into its blind spot, and carved into its side.

It roared.

Or… tried to.

Sound didn't come out. Just pressure.

Space shifted sideways with the backlash.

He stepped through it.

A short jump forward, angled. The distortion helped. His blade bit in again, this time lower.

The thing reeled.

Then it fell.

Kind of.

It melted first. Bones folded. Muscles twisted back into the floor. The crack sealed shut around it like the labyrinth was cleaning up after itself.

Merlin didn't say anything.

He just kept walking.

Behind him, Nathan made a soft noise.

"…Okay. Seriously. How long have you been able to do that?"

"I got better," Merlin said.

"Better at what? Killing things by making reality sad?"

Elara didn't respond.

She didn't have to.

Because the air had just gone still again.

And still air never meant anything good down here.

—

The corridor didn't widen.

It just ended.

One step and they were no longer underground. They were inside something bigger.

The air shifted first. Pressure thinned. Cold drafted inward like they'd opened a gate into the spine of a mountain. The space ahead was black. Not shadowed, it was straight up black. Like light had given up trying.

Merlin stepped in anyway.

The others followed.

Nathan's voice was quiet. "This feels like the part of the video game where you walk into a room and music stops playing."

No one responded.

Mostly because he was right.

The path dropped off ahead, and then rose again into a slope of jagged stone. Merlin moved up it, boots hitting a crunch of old debris, bones maybe. Or coral. Hard to tell in the dark.

And then he saw it.

The ceiling broke open.

Or what passed for a ceiling. The rock above them arched hundreds of meters high. A dome. Ribbed. Etched with lines that glowed faintly between pulses of breath.

Because the thing in the center was breathing.

"…oh," Nathan said.

That was it.

Just oh.

Merlin stopped walking.

Not out of fear.

Out of basic logic.

You don't just walk into a chamber and stumble across a dragon the size of a cathedral without checking if your reality was still on the right patch of rails.

It slept.

Its body coiled like a mountain that had lost interest in being a mountain. Silver-black scales shimmered along its back. Claws that looked capable of re-writing geography. Wings furled in against its sides, broad enough to block the wind.

Its eyes were closed.

Which was the only reason they weren't dead.

Merlin's thoughts were fast. Tight. Clean.

'That shouldn't be here.'

'This domain isn't a dragon-type biome.'

'There are no quests involving a central wyrm at this level. Not in this arc.'

'So what the hell is that.'

Sovereign Chain pulsed quietly. Not as a system window. Just in his bones. His breathing matched the rhythm of the chamber. The muscles in his arms mapped the dragon's movements, slow, deep, natural.

He could see it.

Predict it.

The way the weight of its body shifted. The pause in its breath where its third lung contracted. The slight twitch in the hind leg closest to the column.

Every part of the dragon was still.

But not dormant.

If it opened its eyes, they'd have about three seconds to die creatively.

Nathan took a step closer.

Merlin's arm blocked him without looking.

"Don't."

"What?"

"You breathe louder when you're nervous. Stay still."

"I'm not—how do you even—"

"Now is not the time to develop a personality."

Nathan went still.

Elara shifted forward instead, gaze locked. Not fear. Not awe.

Just calculation.

Merlin didn't take his eyes off the dragon.

He let the Sovereign Chain sync tighter.

His perception filtered layers across the ground. Pressure points. Heat signatures. Stress marks in the stone where the creature's weight rested unevenly.

He didn't know what this place was.

But it was old.

And this dragon wasn't native.

It had come here.

And stayed.

'Is it trapped?'

'Guarding something?'

'Or worse… is it waiting for something to wake it up?'

The ground beneath them creaked.

Just a little.

The sound of dust shifting.

That was all it took.

The dragon's nostrils flared once.

Not open.

Not alarmed.

Just enough.

One eye opened.

A slit of gold cut the dark.

And the entire room changed.

Merlin whispered, flat as stone, "Run."

They ran.

There wasn't a debate. No vote. No questions asked.

Merlin said run.

So they did.

The dragon screamed behind them.

It wasn't a roar. Roars implied dignity. This thing screamed like someone had just stepped on the ancient physical embodiment of its patience.

The walls shook.

The ground buckled.

Merlin caught his balance mid-stride and immediately regretted existing.

'Alright. Good news. We're not dead yet. Bad news. That's probably going to change in the next thirty seconds.'

Wind snapped past his ears as Elara sprinted beside him. Fast. Efficient. She wasn't panicking, just prioritizing. Every step was angled toward whatever escape route her brain could fabricate on the fly.

Nathan was less graceful.

"I thought dragons were supposed to be rare!" he yelled, breathless, flailing slightly as the floor cracked under his boots.

"They are!" Merlin snapped back. "That one's rarer!"

"Oh, cool! So we're dying to a collectible!"

Another roar.

This one shook the ceiling.

Something massive hit the stone behind them. Merlin didn't look. The air told him everything he needed to know.

Too close.

Too loud.

Too pissed.

Sovereign Chain flared through his legs, mapping weight distribution, forward momentum, and slope angles faster than he could blink. He leaned right, planted his heel, and let the labyrinth take his inertia.

He dropped into a slide, wind peeling at his coat.

The claw behind him missed by a hand's length.

Stone shattered.

He didn't stop moving.

The corridor ahead narrowed, good. The dragon's body couldn't fit through without dislocating something important. He surged to his feet mid-run, grabbed Seraphina's arm, and yanked her forward.

"Left!"

She didn't argue.

They turned sharp. Hit the wall too hard. Momentum skidded.

Behind them, the dragon howled.

Not like a beast.

Like a storm with lungs.

Elara reached the next turn first. She didn't slow. She just pushed off the wall with one hand and launched herself down the next hallway.

Merlin followed.

Nathan followed with significantly more screaming.

Sovereign Chain filtered through Merlin's spine again, throwing up a ghost-map of pressure behind them. The dragon wasn't just moving. It was collapsing half the structure to do it.

The walls were bending.

Space shouldn't do that.

'Okay. Not ideal. Everything here is trying to eat us. Also, reality is like melting. Awesome.'

A gate loomed ahead.

Not locked. Not sealed.

Just wide.

Wide enough to mean something.

Merlin sprinted through first.

The moment his boots crossed the threshold, something shifted.

Space warped.

Not violently. Just wrong.

Elara landed next to him. Seraphina hit the floor beside her, one hand braced on her knee.

Nathan came in last and collapsed like a dying bird.

The dragon didn't follow.

It tried.

Merlin could hear the impact.

But something in the stone snapped.

The passage folded.

Twisted.

Closed.

They were alone again.

Just them.

And the sound of everything they left behind screaming like it wasn't finished.

Nathan lay on his back, panting. "So that's what actual, literal death smells like."

Elara looked at the sealed passage. "…What was that."

Merlin wiped blood from his brow. Not his. Probably.

"That," he said, "was a problem for later."