Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 161: Ch159. [World Quest] (19) - Divided

Chapter 161: Ch159. [World Quest] (19) - Divided

There was no sensation of falling.

No wind, no gravity, just the tearing of light into shadow, like a veil being drawn over the world.

One moment, they stood inside the strange chamber. The next...

Nothing.

No sound, no floor, no thought. And then, pain.

Sarissa hit the ground hard, her shoulder smashing into the stone with a grunt, the air being punched out from her lungs in a ragged gasp. Her senses reeled, struggling to catch up.

"Mara-?" She started, voice hoarse. "Di-"

"I’m here." The response came quickly.

Sarissa looked up.

They were in a corridor, narrower than before, the stone glistening like wet bone. The air was damp and cold, and the only light came from faint veins of bioluminescence threading through the walls like roots, like veins.

A familiar wrongness pulsed in the stone beneath them, but it was distant, muffled, as if something had changed.

"This... This isn’t the same floor." Mara said, already on her feet. She checked her weapons with quick, practiced movements after summoning them. "This isn’t the place we were before."

Sarissa pushed herself up, her arm throbbed from the impact, but nothing was broken. She looked around. No sign of Miles, no sign of Diego.

Only a growing certainty coiling in her gut.

"It split us." She muttered.

"Looks like it." Mara glanced down the corridor. "Question is, where are we now?"

Sarissa exhaled slowly, looking around, and with a resolute sigh as the memories of her last battle in there, she answered.

"We’re in the dungeon. I mean... The [Mouth of the Abyss]."

"That’s not possible." Mara said. "We already mapped this floor. We were at the exit to the next one."

"Then, I think we only have one choice..." Sarissa’s expression turned grim. "We gotta get to the end of this floor and check the next."

***

Miles landed differently.

There was no pain, no collision. Just sudden weightlessness giving way to a slow, dreamlike descent, like a leaf falling through water.

He drifted downward through a shaft of lightless space, stars flickering in the stone like distant memories, and then his feet touched solid ground.

The weight of gravity returned all at once, and he staggered, catching himself before he collapsed, his breath coming in sharp bursts, more from disorientation than exertion.

"Where...?"

He turned slowly, surveying the space around him.

It wasn’t a floor. Not in the way the dungeon had presented itself.

It was a cavern, vast and cathedral-like, walls rising so high above they disappeared into dark mist. The ground was made of circular, concentric patterns, like the rings of a tree trunk. Symbols moved across the stone like ink in water, alien, ancient.

And he was alone.

"Dee? Mara?" His voice echoed far too loudly in the stillness. "Sarissa?"

Nothing. Not even silence.

The dungeon didn’t just muffle sound here. It felt like it consumed it.

"That’s not good." Miles grimaced.

As he stepped forward, the ground beneath his feet glowed faintly, as if acknowledging his presence. A line of symbols lit up ahead, forming a path.

"Alright." He muttered. "Let’s see where you want me to go."

He didn’t know how long he had been walking.

Time felt strange here, elastic. It stretched and compressed, folded over itself like a dream. The corridor never ended, but it never felt like he wasn’t progressing.

He encountered no monsters, no puzzles like back where they were before, just memories.

But not his.

They were like fragments, torn visions flickering at the edges of the path. A man screaming in a language no longer spoken, a woman holding a broken crown, a child born in a bed of glass, crying without a sound.

The dungeon was watching him.

And he was watching it back.

Eventually, the corridor ended.

He stepped through an arch of pulsing stone and found himself in a chamber, smaller than the last, shaped like a heart, literally. The walls pulsed with rhythm, red and black, and in the center was a throne made of shattered obelisks.

And a figure sat on it.

Miles tensed as the figure raised its head and smiled.

"Hello, Miles."

Shinji.

No wings, no horns, no mask.

Just Shinji, smiling with that same lazy grin he always had, sharp eyes flickering with too much knowing.

And still, he was no different than a demon.

Miles didn’t summon his scythe.

"I thought you were somewhere else." Miles said. "Maybe trying to conquer the 100th floor... What are you doing here?"

"I’ve always been exactly where I needed to be. Same as you." Shinji tilted his head.

"So what is this? Another wraith?" Miles frowned.

"Nah. Not this time." Shinji stood, and the throne behind him vanished like smoke.

"This is where things get real." He said, stretching his arms. "No more wraiths, no more tricks. Just us."

"Why?" Miles asked. "What does the dungeon want?"

Shinji stepped forward.

"It wants what it always wanted." His grin faded, just slightly. "Blood."

"And you?" Miles’s fingers twitched.

"I want to see if you’re ready."

"For what?"

"For what comes after."

Then, Shinji lunged.

***

Diego hit the floor running.

His feet struck polished obsidian, and momentum carried him into a crouch. He didn’t think. He just moved.

Countless sessions of raw combat against Sarissa sharpened his instincts enough for him to know that something was not right.

He rolled, dodged instinctively, and felt heat flare behind him as something slammed into the spot he’d been.

The light was blinding.

He skidded to a stop, staring forward, and stopped breathing.

The final chamber lay in front of him.

It was a dark, vast chamber.

So much vaster than anything he could ever imagine, stretching far beyond the reach of his sight. The walls were lined with jagged formations of obsidian and stone, but it was what stood at the center that stole his breath.

Suspended in the air, held by thick chains of black iron, was... Something.

It was a mass of shifting darkness, vaguely humanoid in form, its limbs stretched unnaturally as it hung from its bindings. Its chest rose and fell in shallow, ragged breaths, as though it still clung to life despite being long forsaken.

Where its face should have been, there was only a void, a gaping maw of swirling darkness that seemed to pull at reality itself.

The Dungeon boss.

His mouth went dry.

"...Shit."