Creating A Succubus Army In A Fantasy World!-Chapter 141: Hidden Mechanism!

Lilith and Tierra stood amidst the swirling sands, staring at the traitorous arrow etched into the ground like it had just stabbed them in the back. Again.

The jagged line, once a symbol of logic and control, now pointed them in the exact wrong direction—as if mocking every ounce of effort they’d poured into navigating this desert from hell.

Their clothes were tattered and stained, their weapons scorched from overuse, and sweat clung to their skin like a second layer.

And still, that damned pyramid remained far off in the horizon like a black mirage, smug and silent.

Tierra squinted at it, then slowly turned to Lilith with the kind of expression you give someone right before suggesting a stupidly dangerous plan.

"There has to be another way," she said, lips curling into a wry smile. "Walking in this cursed desert isn’t working. We’re either being spun in circles or deliberately misled. We need to think differently."

Lilith raised a brow, wiping a bead of sweat from her brow as lightning crackled faintly across her collarbones. "Like what? Skipping there?"

Tierra chuckled. "No, genius. Think about it. This desert isn’t just sand. It’s one giant mechanism. Every time the mist rolls in, we lose direction, we fight something new, and the terrain shifts.

"It’s like a moving maze. A horizontal plane full of lies. So maybe..." she looked up at the colorless sky above them, then down at the cracked earth beneath their feet, "...we stop playing by the rules of this plane."

Lilith tilted her head, mind racing. "Wait... You’re saying we stop walking through the mist?"

"Exactly," Tierra said, pointing toward the pyramid far in the distance. "There’s a reason that mist keeps disorienting us. It’s not just hiding the terrain. It’s warping it.

"But the mist doesn’t reach the sky... and doesn’t seem to fill the craters. What if the way to the pyramid isn’t through the desert, but above it or beneath it?"

Lilith’s trusted navigation method had failed not because she carved it wrong, but because the mist kept shifting the world around her.

Like a house of mirrors. And no matter how carefully she walked straight, the floor was moving beneath her feet.

"But flying isn’t an option," Lilith replied, her brows furrowed. "You saw what happened the last time someone tried. The mist pulls you back like gravity on steroids. You’d be lucky to hover for five seconds before you’re face-first in the sand."

"Then that leaves us with one choice," Tierra said, her voice suddenly serious. "We go down."

Lilith’s expression twitched. "You mean... into the craters?"

Tierra nodded, her eyes drifting to the countless jagged pits dotting the desert like scars.

"I’ve been watching them. They never disappear with the mist. And the mist doesn’t go in. It just hangs above them. Which means the mechanisms of the desert may not affect what’s beneath it. It’s risky, yeah. But the surface isn’t working."

Lilith hesitated, her eyes flickering toward Creed, still unconscious but stable as he was carried on her back like a royal backpack.

"And if something’s waiting under there? We’ve already got a human to babysit."

Tierra gave her a dry look. "At this point, everything is dangerous. But at least this danger might take us somewhere."

The two girls bantered for a while, weighing the pros and cons like scholars preparing for an exam.

It didn’t take them long to come to the decision that they’d take the plunge. What else could they do? Die walking in circles?

Eventually, they made their way to the nearest crater—one of the larger ones, wide enough to swallow a person, its edges jagged and blackened as though something had exploded from within.

As they reached the lip of it, the girls peered down and instantly grimaced.

A thick red mist filled the crater like boiling soup. It swirled in slow, lazy currents, glowing faintly, ominously, with heatless light.

It smelled like rust and burnt hair. And it pulsed. Like it was breathing.

"I hate this already," Lilith muttered.

"We haven’t even gone in yet," Tierra replied, though her voice lacked its usual humor.

"Yeah. And I still hate it."

But before they could debate further, the worst possible sound in the universe thundered across the land once more—THUD.

Then another. And another. They both went pale.

Thud... Thud... Thud... Thud... Thud.

The fifth one dropped like a curse.

"Oh come on!" Tierra yelled, already reaching for her daggers.

And just like before, with horrifying precision, worms erupted from the hard ground right before them.

Giant, oily creatures with slimy, shimmering skin that reflected the sunlight in sickly rainbows.

They launched out of the crater like torpedoes, dozens at once, their mouths opening into a dozen slithering tongues and grotesque teeth.

Their bodies twisted mid-air before slamming into the desert sand like organic battering rams.

Lilith’s scythe was in her hand before she could even blink. "This crater sucks."

Purple lightning roared to life as she leapt into action, arcs of destruction slicing through the first wave of worm-beasts.

Bam! Bam! Boom!

Each strike was precise, but she had to angle it just right or else the energy would slide off their repelling skin.

Tierra danced across the battlefield, blinking in and out of existence as she used short-range spatial flickers to attack their underbellies and weak points.

It was a grimy, disgusting, gross battle. The worms squealed and writhed with every hit, spraying black goo in every direction.

Time passed like sludge. Their attacks grew more sluggish. Their limbs heavier. Even Lilith’s lightning began to spark irregularly, flickering in and out like a dying firefly.

They were getting tired.

Exhaustion had been building steadily across every trial, every wave of beasts, every freezing night. It wasn’t just their bodies breaking down—it was their minds.

Constant tension, no rest, no safety. Even someone as powerful as Lilith could only keep going for so long before her thoughts turned foggy and her nerves frayed.

She was drenched in sweat, muscles aching, heart pounding. Tierra was panting too, her cheek smeared with dirt and worm blood.

"This place is a lunatic’s playground," Lilith muttered between breaths.

"No kidding," Tierra said.

Finally, as if responding to their pleas, the worms began to retreat.

One by one, they slithered back into the crater and vanished beneath the red mist. The fifth thuds echoed again—this time signaling the end of the trial.

The battlefield fell quiet.

Lilith nearly dropped her scythe.

Tierra collapsed to her knees by the edge of the crater, coughing and wiping sweat from her brow.

And then... her eyes widened.

She leaned forward. Peered down into the mist.

"What... the hell..."

Lilith blinked. "What?"

Tierra pointed, her voice suddenly sharp and urgent. "Lilith!"

Lilith jumped, adrenaline shooting back into her system like a drug.

"Get in! Now!" Tierra yelled.

There was no hesitation. Not a flicker. Not a flinch. The moment Tierra shouted for Lilith to enter, she dove straight into the crater without even giving it a dramatic countdown or a cool action hero one-liner.

Just a blur of motion, twin daggers clutched in her hands, her small but strong frame disappearing into the crimson fog like a coin dropped into blood.

For a split second, Lilith stood there blinking, watching the mist ripple where Tierra had vanished, and let out the heaviest sigh a lightning witch could possibly exhale.

"She’s going to get herself killed one day," she muttered, shifting Creed’s unconscious body on her back, checking for the fifth time that the rope straps were still tight.

She tugged the knots, twisted them once more for good measure, then pulled her scythe to her front with a spark of lightning dancing along the blade.

"And I’ll be right there next to her when she does."

Without another word, she jumped in after Tierra.

Though the two girls argued like sisters, competed like sworn rivals, and occasionally tried to one-up each other so hard it bordered on violent comedy, there was one thing that stood strong through all their squabbles: trust.

When one leapt into danger, the other followed. No second-guessing. No checking the map. No ten-minute debate over logistics. Just pure, silent faith.

If Tierra jumped, it was because she saw something. If Lilith followed, it was because she knew Tierra wouldn’t abandon her.

Their bond was absolute.

The second Lilith entered the crater, the world changed.

The air was thick, like breathing through wet blankets. The red mist clung to their skin like slime and filled their noses with a sickly coppery scent.

The tunnel walls were jagged and narrow, made of cracked red rock that felt oddly warm, like it had been freshly cooked in a volcano.

And the smell—oh god, the smell—was so bad that even Lilith, who had once gutted a stage 5 bird beast with her bare hands and barely blinked at the gore, had to scrunch her nose in disgust.

"I swear," she gagged, "if I find even one more worm down here, I’m going to fry the whole underground system into ashes."

Tierra was already a few feet ahead, waving one hand in front of her nose like that would somehow purify the air.

"They smell worse down here. How do they live in this?"

"I don’t know. But if they lay eggs in here, I’m quitting life."

The tunnel sloped downward, spiraling gently like a twisted drill through the earth. The ceiling hung low, and sometimes they had to duck under sharp protrusions.

It was impossible to see more than a few meters ahead, but their instincts were sharp and their weapons even sharper.

The deeper they went, the more unnerving it became. Because the walls were too narrow. And the worms they had fought earlier?

Some were the size of buildings. How the hell were they fitting in a tunnel barely wide enough for two people to squeeze through?!

Lilith paused to look around, her sharp eyes scanning the grooves along the stone. "They have to be collapsing their bodies or something. Like squishing flat... but how?"

Tierra shrugged. "Either that or the tunnels change size depending on who’s inside. You know. Magic nonsense."

Lilith groaned. "I hate magic nonsense."

And then it happened.

Thud.

It was quiet. So soft, they almost missed it. Not like the usual god-of-doom-is-coming thuds that echoed across the desert.

No, this was barely a heartbeat. A whisper. Just enough sound to make the ground hum slightly under their boots.

Thud.

Again.

Then silence.

And before they could say anything, the walls began to move.

Not shake. Not rumble. Move.

Sections of the cave slid apart like puzzle pieces rearranging themselves, stone grinding against stone in a sound so bone-deep it made their teeth itch.

Pathways disconnected, ceiling chunks vanished and reappeared somewhere else, new tunnels opened up while others were swallowed whole.

And most terrifying of all—the ground above them shifted too.

The vibrations traveled upward, straight through the earth, like some massive invisible force was remodeling the desert with every soft thud.

It was like being inside the brain of a sleeping god that kept rolling over in its dreams.

Lilith’s eyes widened as she realized what was happening. "That’s... that’s how we kept ending up further from the pyramid! The desert keeps rearranging itself!"

Tierra’s grin was sharp. "Exactly. That’s why my marks didn’t work. The desert isn’t one big map—it’s a shifting maze. The moment we hear a thud, the layout changes. Which means every time we thought we were walking in a straight line... we weren’t."

"And that’s why the pyramid never neared," Lilith muttered, more to herself now. "The mechanism’s center must be beneath the mist, not above it."

Tierra nodded, her confidence growing. "I heard a thud earlier. That’s why I told you to jump. I knew something was happening down here.

"If we’d stayed on the surface, we’d have been rerouted again. Probably right back into another horde of worm-beasts or another ice-night death trap."

Lilith exhaled slowly, her thoughts aligning. "So what now?"

Tierra peered ahead into the new path that had just opened—still tight, still red, still awful. "We keep going. Follow the tunnel, trust that this is the only real direction that won’t rearrange on us."

Lilith looked down at Creed’s still-unconscious form on her back. "He better appreciate this when he wakes up."

"Oh, he will," Tierra grinned. "I’m going to tell him you almost cried because of the smell."

"I will electrocute you."

Tierra just laughed and marched forward, blades at the ready.