Mad Hatter's Guide to Clearing The Game
Chapter 162: Ch160. [World Quest] (20) - The real story

Chapter 162: Ch160. [World Quest] (20) - The real story

Light bled, thick, slow, alive.

Sarissa blinked. Once, twice.

She was still on the 52nd floor, and after what transpired on the 51st, everything was different.

The veins in the walls pulsed brighter now with that dark, eerie light, like the beat of a war drum. The cold had turned cruel, not just physical but personal, as if the dungeon hated her specifically. It pressed in from all sides.

And the stone... The stone was listening.

She felt it like a breath on the back of her neck.

"We’re being watched." Mara touched her shoulder.

Sarissa nodded. She didn’t need to say anything, because she knew it too.

Whatever that dungeon was, this was older. Deeper.

It felt like when they were at the first floor, when they found out that the entire floor was the boss.

The dungeon itself was awake.

It was almost like the dungeon was a monster in and of itself.

"I think it’s always been watching." Sarissa whispered.

"Not like this." Mara’s blade, [Trifle], shimmered into her hand.

The corridor ahead yawned open like a mouth, and shadows twitched where there should have been none. The air pulsed like lungs, shallow and rhythmic.

They walked in silence, never uttering a single word, but it wasn’t for lack of trying.

Every time they opened their mouths, no sound would come out. Almost like the dungeon was capable of stealing language here, swallowing it like it swallowed light.

Step by step, heartbeat by heartbeat, they descended deeper into what was no longer a mapped floor.

Corridors were too long and then too narrow. The symbols on the walls were unrecognizable, in that strange, alien language that hurt simply by looking at.

Sarissa reached out with her senses, and the system didn’t answer.

Her eyes widened slightly. Not a lack of signal, not a void like in the place they were before.

Just... Absence.

They had fallen outside the system again.

"Mara..." She murmured. "This is not the dungeon."

"It’s not the Abyss, either."

"Then where-?"

They froze.

There was a whisper, like wet silk scraping against glass, skittered along the corridor behind them. They turned slowly, and there was nothing.

Except for a small child.

No older than six, their eyes hollowed by absence, standing barefoot in the middle of the path.

Mara summoned her rifle.

The child opened its mouth and spoke a single word, not in any language either of them recognized, but they understood it.

Prisoners.

Then it crumbled to ash.

The floor didn’t react, the walls didn’t shift. But Sarissa shivered, and it was then that she understood.

This place was not a dungeon.

It was a memory.

And they were prisoners.

***

Somewhere deeper

Miles’ scythe sparked against stone.

Then, Shinji vanished, leaving him alone in the dark, with nothing but the echoes of voices he had not heard for a long while.

Miles?

Son?

The first time they spoke, he felt his heart lurch, the memories of that fateful night flooding his mind like nuclear waste in the ocean.

Son, where are you?

Why can’t we see?

Miles felt compelled to answer, to tell them he was there, that everything was fine, and he would get them out of... Wherever they were.

But...

"Aren’t you tired of these games, Shinji...?" His eyes shone with dark, crimson light. The obsidian rings around his irises glowing slightly brighter. "I thought you were here to put an end to it, once and for all, whatever it is that you’re planning."

[You have activated the inborn Skill – Eyes of Oblivion (Passive)]

The world changed ever so slightly around him. He scanned his surroundings, and it looked like a world overlapping another. Like looking at the negative of a photograph against the original landscape.

Miles turned and raised his scythe, blocking Shinji’s strike right before it was able to cut him open.

"You passed." Shinji said. "Even faster than I imagined, congratulations."

"What was that?" Miles jumped backwards, putting his scythe between him and Shinji.

"Just a test." Shinji shrugged nonchalantly. "I had to see if you really had become him."

"Him?" Miles narrowed his eyes.

"The Ender." Shinji’s grin widened.

***

Far below

Diego was still staring, and the Boss hadn’t moved. But it saw him.

With whatever that thing had for eyes.

The chains trembled, it breathed in, it twitched, and the maw where its face should be, just blackness, opened wider.

And then the words hit him. Not spoken, not heard.

Pressed into his mind, like a nail under the heavy head of a hammer, painful.

You’re not the one who was promised

Diego’s scream was silent. His knees hit the ground, his palms bled against the obsidian, the floor trembled with a frequency not built for human comprehension, and a chain snapped.

Just one.

The creature didn’t move, but something stepped out from its shadow.

A man, or the shape of one.

Diego forced himself to look up, blood leaking from his nose. The pop-up message system was on fire, notifications flickering and dying before they could render, one after another.

The man stood with no expression, with no face.

Black suit, white gloves, a single tear running down from a stitched-shut eye.

"You’re not supposed to be here." He said softly.

"Yeah... Story of my life." Diego coughed.

The stitched-eyed man crouched.

"Then let’s fix it." He whispered, reaching out.

Diego summoned his blades a second before contact, but he was a second too late.

He hit the far wall, ribs cracking, blood pooling in his mouth.

The stitched man didn’t advance, just watching with those horrible stitched-up eyes

He just watched.

"You’re not ready for the End."

Diego rose, trembling, and spat, glowing with a slight golden hue. His bleeding stopped as quickly as soon as he activated the skill, his ribs mended, and just a second later, he was as good as new.

"Then I’ll bite through it." He looked at the ring around his middle finger – silver, the delicate engraving of the [Skyborn Finch]’s feather in it, no glow whatsoever – the slightest smile curling his lips upward at the sight of it, and charged.

***

Far above

Sarissa and Mara were no longer sure they were walking.

The world around them twisted, stone into flesh, echoes into song, symbols into screams, but they kept moving.

Somewhere in the depths of their shared silence, Sarissa whispered:

"I think Miles is alive."

But Mara didn’t answer.

She did not need to, though.

They both felt it.

Like a second heartbeat underneath their feet.

Then a ripple tore through the walls.

"Did you feel that?" Mara flinched.

Sarissa nodded.

It felt like something sleeping beneath their feet had just awakened.

For good.

***

Miles stood across from Shinji.

"Are you ready?" Shinji’s lips curled up ever so slightly.

"For what?"

"To start the real story." Shinji tilted his head.

"You mean it wasn’t this whole time?" Miles raised an eyebrow.

"No. This was the tutorial." Shinji didn’t look surprised.

"Then, no." Miles rested his scythe on his shoulders, the obsidian circles around his honey-brown irises gleaming darkly. "I’m ready to end this."