Harem Legion: Queens of the Apocalypse-Chapter 63 Only Monsters Swim in Blood

"Where... where am I?"

No telling how much time passed - could’ve been a second, or a year. Magnus pushed himself up off the ground.

Nothing but pitch-black all around. Not a sliver of light. It wasn’t just dark - it was complete, crushing black. 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

Even sound was gone. He yelled, screamed - nothing came back. Like standing frozen in a place where time had stopped, the void swallowing everything.

He touched his face, then his limbs. Still there. Tried walking. He could move - forward, back, anywhere - but it didn’t feel like movement. Could be standing still for all it mattered. With no light, no shape to guide, everything was meaningless.

The silence and darkness gnawed at his mind, made his skin crawl. The kind of emptiness that cracks a man’s soul, makes him feel insignificant, like a flicker of dust under the blazing sun.

Then... he noticed it. Breathing. No, the sound of it. He clapped his palms - yes, there it was. The slap echoed back, faint. Still black. But something had shifted.

He reached into his pocket out of habit. No cigarettes. That was strange. Instantly, his hand rushed to check for his handgun, his knife. Gone too. All missing. Only the same set of clothes he’d stripped off Oliver’s corpse. Helmet, gloves - all vanished.

This was wrong. Too wrong.

His chest tightened. Unease turned into raw fear - fear of the unknown.

Time passed. Could’ve been moments or hours. Then, like a curtain lifting, crisp air surged into his lungs - the kind you only found deep in unspoiled wilderness. It seeped into his pores, made his scalp tingle. He shivered. It wasn’t unpleasant. In fact, it felt maddeningly good - too good.

Is this... an island?

The thought came out of nowhere. No reason, no clue - but it landed like fact. Then a worse one: he couldn’t ignore a faint red glow filtering through his eyelids.

Had he even opened his eyes yet? Or were they closed this whole time? He couldn’t tell. They felt heavy, impossibly so. But inch by inch, they pried open.

The sight hit like a punch to the gut.

Sea... if you could still call it that. Crimson waves stretching out to the ends of the earth. A bloodsun hanging above, glowing like a demon gloating after a kill. Cold. Merciless.

His limbs jolted back to life. Panicking, he groped all over - arms, chest, forehead. All intact. Still alive.

Then screams - raw, terrified, human.

He swung his head around. He wasn’t alone.

All around him, every ten meters or so, stood others. Faces frozen, all staring blankly toward the crimson sea. Behind them, a green hill stood like a lifeline. From the base, blood-red waves surged upward, storming the slope. Tide rising. Relentless. Closer and closer.

The man standing to Magnus’s right had just regained control over his body but couldn’t handle it. He collapsed face-first. A crimson seawater wave splashed onto him. The moment it touched, the man screamed - a gut-wrenching, beast-like howl that froze everyone on the spot.

People instinctively retreated, panicking, trying to get as far from the crimson seawater as they could.

The man’s body looked like it got glued to the spot. He couldn’t even wriggle, stuck mid-fall like something had nailed him to the ground. He howled, twisting in pain, until another wave slapped into his face. Then - no more screaming. His body began to burn, inch by inch, like it was being sliced apart by a thousand blades made of fire.

Everyone watching was stunned. Some even peed themselves out of sheer terror. But then, something strange happened.

The crimson seawater suddenly froze - dead still. Not just the surface - even the crashing waves and airborne droplets froze mid-air, suspended unnaturally. Each droplet just hovered, disconnected from the sea below, like some twisted still-life painting.

Those who saw it felt like time had stopped for them too. They didn’t dare move, unwittingly becoming part of that eerie picture...

One second, two seconds... ten seconds.

Then the water surged back like a beast unleashed, flooding fast toward the green hill.

Magnus was the first to snap out of it. Without a thought, he turned and bolted uphill. The others quickly followed, racing toward higher ground behind him.

All around them, the hill was covered with unknown shrubs, and the grass underfoot was slick. One man slipped, tumbled all the way down the slope, and landed in the seawater. His scream echoed - just like the first victim’s. Once again, the crimson seawater paused its advance for ten seconds before roaring forward again, climbing the slope like it was hunting them.

The speed of the sea nearly matched the speed of their escape. Magnus charged upward with everything he had. Suddenly, a middle-aged man in a prison uniform appeared on his left. Magnus glanced at him - his scar ran from eye to cheek, his face brutal and fierce.

No time to check on him. Magnus looked forward and kept running.

But the man moved first. He slammed a heavy fist into Magnus’s right ribs. The strike landed hard.

With a grunt, Magnus staggered. His foot slipped.

Then - he fell.

Five meters...

Four...

Three...

He was rolling straight back down, toward the crimson death below.

His hands scrambled for anything to hold - useless. Down he went.

And just when he was bracing for the end - his heart crushed with despair - when a blood-red wave was right about to slam into his face... the seawater froze again.

A single gleaming drop stopped mid-air, barely three centimeters from his nose.

His entire body was soaked in cold sweat, but he had no time to panic.

Every nerve screamed the same word - Run!

With one roll, he threw himself aside. Eight seconds left.

He grabbed two fistfuls of grass, yanked with all his strength, and let it pull him upright. Then, without looking back, he charged uphill once again, racing for his life.