Chapter 6: Marien
As they stepped into the sacrificial chamber, even Zhou Ning—who had seen his share of horrors—found the sight before him utterly revolting.
It was eerie, dim, and filthy. The floor and walls were smeared with blood and streaked with purple membranes, making the place look like a slaughterhouse. The air reeked of a choking metallic stench.
At the center of the room loomed a massive, bloated female figure crouched atop the sacrificial altar, shrouded in an ominous black mist. Surrounding her stood four cultists from the Curse God Cult, each connected to her by a glowing red thread. It was clear they were in the middle of a sacrificial ritual.
From the waist up, the creature retained the vague features of a woman—the anatomical ones, at least. But her face had completely mutated into a monstrous form, covered in clusters of compound eyes and a mouth filled with razor-sharp mandibles. Her lower half was that of a gigantic spider.
As three cultists shoved Zhou Ning and the chubby Alan into the chamber, the monstrous woman raised her head, her many eyes locking onto Zhou Ning with an unmistakable look of hunger—no, more like ravenous craving.
As her mouth stretched open, revealing a gaping maw lined with jagged teeth, Zhou Ning's skin erupted in goosebumps. This had nothing to do with nerves; it was the innate pressure of a supernatural being suppressing an ordinary human.
He recognized the creature. He hadn't expected that the Curse God Cult had managed to summon her using the Book of Ethanweir...
Marien the Siren.
The first supernatural entity to appear in front of players in Apocalypse. A low-tier demon—and a tragic siren.
In the game's lore, Marien was once the beauty queen of a small nation on the eastern continent. Lured by the glittering lights of the big city, she came to Darklan, and there began her miserable fate.
Like so many tragic stories, she was a naive girl deceived by a scumbag who drained her of all her money and then abandoned her. Penniless and desperate, she was forced into becoming a siren.
Five years later, exhausted in body and soul, Marien found love again with a street thug in Darklan. She spent all her savings to buy him a house and even bore him a lovely child.
But that second love didn't last a decade. Marien, now aging and losing her beauty, could no longer hold on to her lover. As he spent more and more nights out and grew colder by the day, a panicked Marien turned to dark sorcerers, using forbidden magic in an attempt to reclaim her youth.
The magic backfired. The uncontrollable ritual destroyed her beauty, twisting her face into a hideous horror.
Then, on a rainy night, her lover threw her out of the house. He left her with just four cold words: "Get lost, freak."
Marien broke that night, vanishing into the storm. Half a year later, she resurfaced as a servant of the Old Gods—transformed into a spider-like abomination. She brutally devoured her former lover and child, and turned their old house into her lair. Now, whenever hunger gnawed at her, she would hunt humans—though it only made her more twisted, more evil.
In the early game, Marien was an infamous boss. Roaming the streets of Darklan, she slaughtered countless low-level players. For beginners under level 10, running into her was basically a death sentence.
Thanks to her "breathtaking" looks and those twin rows of fanged mandibles, some bold users on the game forums even joked, "I've got a special kind of appreciation for her." But seeing Marien in real life now, Zhou Ning could only offer his utmost respect to that brave soul.
He lowered his gaze, avoiding eye contact with Marien, and exhaled softly. If this really was Marien, then he might still have a sliver of a chance. He was quite familiar with her skillset, and newborn low-level demons often needed to devour vast amounts of flesh to restore their power. They were more insane than intelligent, and not that hard to deal with.
"Priest Nyam, the sacrifices have arrived."
"Sacrifice them to the Dark God. May the Dark God accept their souls. Ma-do-ra-mo-ra-di-na..." The man in a black hood and priestly robe intoned in a deep, solemn voice.
"Ma-do-ra-mo-ra-di-na..."
The lead cultist echoed the chant, then forcefully shoved Zhou Ning toward Marien.
Zhou Ning staggered forward. Any closer and he'd be dancing cheek-to-cheek with Marien. He could even smell the foul stench wafting from her gaping maw.
It was rank.
Zhou Ning silently drew in a breath—and the ropes binding his hands and feet slipped away unnoticed.
Without a sound, a finely crafted revolver materialized in his palm. He raised it toward Marien and pulled the trigger.
The trigger depressed, the hammer cocked back, the rotation arm engaged the cylinder, the chamber spun, the firing pin struck the primer, the gunpowder ignited—filling the barrel with the scent of burning powder. With a loud bang, a golden bullet spiraled out of the barrel at high speed!
-253!
Everyone in the room froze, eyes locked on the altar. The next instant, the bullet struck Marien's compound eyes, bursting them and spraying a string of green blood beads.
"Aaaah!"
Marien let out a furious screech. Her eight legs scrambled restlessly across the ground, and her twisted, scythe-like front limbs lunged straight at Zhou Ning.
"Kill him! I want him torn to shreds! Offer his flesh to the great true god, Nyastora!" the black-robed man—clearly a Tier-1 priest—howled in rage, utterly unhinged.
"Yes, Priest Nyam!"
Across the room, several black-robed cultists armed with greatswords thundered toward him. Meanwhile, Priest Nyam ended the sacrifice ritual and stepped back, beginning a new incantation.
The danger surged, but Zhou Ning stayed calm. After firing the first shot, he slapped the hammer with his left hand, spinning the cylinder and chambering the next round. At the same time, he kicked off the floor and dove diagonally to the right.
Bang! Bang!
Thanks to his Basic Marksmanship Mastery, his aim was precise even mid-dive—two more shots hit Marien's compound eyes dead-on, spraying greenish slime.
The fluid motion stunned the terrified Alan into gaping silence.
In his eyes, the dim, blood-soaked chamber was suffocatingly oppressive, and the familiar figure in the black academic robe was diving and firing, landing just in time to dodge Marien's slashing claw.
Boom! The floor cracked under the blow.
Shadows danced, figures flickered, and the black-clad figure kept moving, sprinting forward at full speed. Alan, who fancied himself a pretty decent warrior, knew very well the charge range was 25 yards—and this man clearly knew it too. Every move stayed just outside that danger zone. As he ran, his revolver flashed again—two more bullets whistled through the air. One struck a cultist clean in the throat, blood spurting in the sparks. The other broke Priest Nyam's chant mid-spell. The priest's right hand was still glowing with a half-formed fireball, which he hurled forward in desperation—only for it to miss Zhou Ning and strike Marien squarely instead.
The fireball exploded on Marien's body as Zhou Ning landed in a crouch, black robe billowing slightly.
"Damn, that was slick!" the wide-eyed Alan muttered, utterly starstruck. If they made it out alive, he had already decided—this guy wasn't just a big brother. No. From this day on, he was his dad.
But just then, having lost three of her eyes and eaten a fireball, Marien finally went berserk. She took a deep breath, and her belly began to bulge…
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