CHAPTER 256: CHAPTER 257: FOR A NAP.

"And everyone... everyone shows their true form... their sinful form."

She voiced it softly, like a confession she had rehearsed for centuries.

Atlas wasn’t unnerved. Not yet. Just what could possibly happen in the so-called night time of hell? He’d been told stories—most of them exaggerated.

The kind of tales people tell to frighten new arrivals or entertain themselves with visions of exaggerated horror.

He leaned back slightly, one hand resting on his knee, letting his breath slow as if preparing for a show he’d already paid for.

Then—

DOOM!

The door slammed open. The sound didn’t just hit the room, it cracked through the air like the world itself was kicking down its own hinges.

A cluster of bodies spilled inward, like sacks of wet meat. The smell came with them—fresh iron, copper, rot hidden underneath. They hit the floor in grotesque poses, necks bent too far back, eyes still half-open as if the last thing they’d seen had been too confusing to understand.

Behind them—

She appeared.

The bunny woman from earlier. The one who had been buying groceries at the market. Her dress, once pale cream, was now a tapestry of drying blood. Her eyes... red. Not glowing—no magic fire here—just the raw, engorged crimson of something that had burst inside her mind.

She was flanked by two others who were now lifeless props in her theater. A dead bear-man slumped at her feet—the same one who had been running the counter earlier—and a lizardling with a knife still clutched in stiff fingers, the blade black with blood.

Her curves, once just an idle note in the background of Atlas’s day, were suddenly obscene against the ruin she wore. She smiled, slow, as if savoring the feel of every drop still clinging to her skin.

Her hand moved—fingers trailing from her own chest down to her waist. A self-caress, deliberate, almost reverent.

{Oohhh...} her voice slid into the air, velvet wrapping something sharp. {Don’t you wanna fuck me... stranger? I felt your look earlier....}

The knife glinted in her other hand as if it were part of her seduction.

Atlas blinked. Not fear. Just surprise. She had looked soft earlier, harmless even. And now—now she was this.

Aurora shifted beside him, staff sliding into her grip without a sound. The night air beyond the window had a strange hum to it, calming and almost clean—a deceptive balance. In that hum, her mana coiled naturally, perfectly, ready to strike.

{Come on, handsome... try to fuck me now.}

The bunny woman’s voice hitched in a mock-plea as she lunged.

The leap was too fast for someone with her build, but the hunger in her eyes made the motion feel inevitable.

Boom!

Splash!

Aurora’s mana burst struck her mid-air. Condensed light and pressure collided with soft flesh.

The bunny girl didn’t fall. She came apart.

Blood, meat, bits of fur and skin splattered the walls, the floor, Atlas’s clothes. A single ear flopped against the bedpost, twitching once as if it hadn’t gotten the message.

"...well," Aurora said, lowering her staff, "even chaotic demons want to fuck you, Atlas. Congratulations."

Atlas sighed, slow and almost tired. Blood streaked down his cheek in a thin line. A chunk of something unidentifiable slid down the front of his shirt before hitting the floor with a quiet slap.

"...that was... an experience." His voice was flat.

He rose from the bed, his bare feet meeting the cold floor. He could feel where the wood was slick under his toes from the blood spray.

From outside—

Noise.

Not random noise. The kind that moves in waves, surges, and drops, like the rhythm of an animal’s heartbeat when it’s cornered and fighting. Screams, the heavy metallic ring of weapons, wet sounds that didn’t belong to any one weapon at all.

Atlas crossed to the window and pushed it open.

The sound hit him harder now—no filter between him and it. And with it came the smell.

Rot and sweat. Piss and blood. The scent of heat baking the worst of it into something that clung to the back of his throat.

He looked down into the street.

Now he understood why hell was called hell.

People—no, things now—were running at each other with nothing but murder in their eyes. Every swing of a weapon, every grab, every bite was done with the commitment of someone who thought they’d win a billion dollars for being the last one standing.

It wasn’t just killing. It was lust too—raw and ugly. Female demons and other races grabbed and pulled, fucking each other raw in public, as pain mixed with pleasure or were dragged themselves, skin tearing under desperate fingers. Dwarfs smashed skulls in with hammers and grinned as though they were tasting fine wine.

It was total madness.

"...now you know. Now you see."

Veil slipped into view from the corner, licking blood off his fingers like it was broth from a meal. He burped, unbothered.

"Damn... some of them are... bad. Some are good. Deliciously good."

Atlas smirked faintly. "Why don’t you eat them all? This much chaos is... actually unnerving me."

"I could," Veil said, licking one long fang, "but I’m a smart man. I know there’d be consequences."

Another DOOM! as Aurora crushed a rage-filled, lust-driven creature into a wall.

"So it’s like this always? Chaos... utter chaos?" Atlas asked without looking away from the scene.

"Yeah," Aurora said. "Every night. I wanted to tell you upfront, but I wanted you to experience it firsthand. When they start converting to murdering fucks." She shrugged. "But the dreaming stuff caught me off guard."

Atlas glanced over his shoulder. "...’want to experience firsthand’? That’s bullshit. You just wanted me to be freaked out and confused while you laugh at me for a bit."

Aurora smirked without guilt. "...yeah." She spun her staff once. "So now you know.... just kill or be killed until day comes."

Atlas rubbed the back of his neck. "What if I want to sleep? It’s been a while since I slept that good."

"You want to sleep in this chaos?.... Good luck."

Atlas’s eyes narrowed. Then, without another word, he stepped up onto the windowsill and let himself float upward, into the night air.

The moment his feet left the building’s edge, dozens of eyes—red, black, and yellow—snapped to him.

"...anything for a good sleep," he muttered, tasting the blood in the air like it was dust on his tongue.

He focused mana—not through his hands, but through his tongue.

{{{Hold}}}

The word was not just sound—it was a chain thrown around the entire district.

Everything froze.

Knives halted mid-swing. Fingers curled around throats stopped tightening. Screams cut off, leaving mouths open in eternal shapes of horror or pleasure. Even the blood mid-air hung like scattered jewels.

The silence was not peace. It was suffocating.

From the window, Veil whistled low. "That’s... Atlas for you."

Aurora stepped closer, her knuckles tightening on her staff. "...."

Atlas drifted back down, stepping through the window like a man returning from the garden instead of the middle of a massacre.

"Hell can lick my ass," he said simply. "I want some of that dream-filled deep sleep."

He walked back to the bed, blood still drying on his arms, and pulled the sheets over himself with the precision of someone ignoring the rest of the world.

"Aurora....can you clean before you go.....Good night."

Aurora stared. The magic he’d just used—law-laced, absolute—was something she had spent years trying to touch, and he had done it in seconds, as if he were just turning off a lamp.

Outside, the whole street remained frozen in its last gasp of violence.

Veil yawned and stretched. "...okay, I’m sleeping as well."

Aurora lingered at the window.

She looked out at the suspended carnage—the twisted faces, the unfinished murders, the obscene stillness. It was all wrong. Not just that it was possible, but that he had chosen to do it for something as small as a nap.

’...what are you, Atlas?’ she thought, half-amazed, half not sure if she should be afraid.