Chapter 32: Into the darkness (3)
'Here I am... Welcome to the red room. Let's hope it doesn't kill me immediately...' Soren stated inwardly with a nervous expression, as he currently stood in front of a dark archway, which was guarded by multiple of the sludgy, humanoid creatures. Firstly, he tried walking between the creatures, but their movements were completely random, to the point where they would occasionally run into each other and just squeeze themselves into each other, until either of them changed directions. Next, he tried luring them with a noise, but the creatures completely ignored all of his noises, including his loud yells and instead, brought other roaming creatures to his area, which then joined the group in front of the archway, making it even larger than before.
"Seriously... How am I supposed to deal with these things anyways?" Soren muttered to himself, as he currently could not think of anything to drive them away and he wasn't sure if he would even be able to touch them, let alone kill them. Not only that, but he was also getting worried about the condition of the labyrinth, since the outer areas seemed to disappear and it would only be a matter of time before his area also disappeared and he had no intention of finding out what would happen afterwards. Seeing as he was unable to deal with the monsters currently, he decided to check on the last blue and hope it might be able to help him out, so he slowly made his towards the last blue room. Thankfully for him, the blue room wasn't very far, but he remembered how the rooms and hallways were slowly disappearing and was afraid that something might have happened to the room itself.
Once he arrived at the room itself, he saw the statue currently displaying the map, with no more blue rooms remaining and instead, most of the rooms were green, with the exception of the red room, which blocked his exit currently. Seeing as it had been cleared, this confirmed his theory of someone else solving the rooms as well, but it also begged the question of their disposition. In the end, the only thing he could do was to make his way back to the archway that led to the red room and hope he would come face to face with the other person, without any complications. Once he made his way back towards the red room, a figure was standing near the archway, beneath a pile of dismembered creatures and their hands, covered in black sludge.
"Hm... Finally took you long enough. Here I thought I'd die of boredom first, before dying from these creatures." A female voice came out of the figure itself and once Soren got closer to her, he got a good look at her appearance. The woman was standing at a height of 2 meters and 10 centimeters, had short and black hair, cold black eyes that gave him chills and a body defined with firm and hard muscles, capable of suppressing him with no effort whatsoever.
"Urgh... H-Hey there..." Soren greeted nervously, as her intimidating figure was making it hard for him to keep a calm and collected expression and could almost feel beads of sweat forming on his forehead.
"Hey. Did you get the remaining stuff from the rooms?" The woman greeted and asked nonchalantly, while attempting to clean the sludge out of her arms with her black jacket.
"S-Stuff? What stuff?" Soren asked, as he wondered if she was asking about the stone disk and tentacle statue he had obtained.
"Don't try to play dumb with me pipsqueak. I'm talking about the statue parts. If we don't have them all, we'll be both stuck for good."
"O-Oh... So that's what you meant... Yeah, I got two parts. Are those enough?" Soren then took out both the disk and statue from his inventory.
"Uhh... Yeah... Speaking of which... how did you do that?" The woman asked in a confused manner, as she just witnessed Soren pulling out the statue parts out of thin air.
"How did I do what? Pulling out the statue parts? I just used my inventory." Soren stated casually, before putting them back into his inventory.
"I... Nevermind... Let's just go assemble the statue and leave this place." Afterwards, the woman beckoned Soren to follow her past the archway and he followed her in response, as he wanted to quickly get out of this place. After walking a few meters, the two of them arrived in front of a closed stone gate, with a small hole on the ground in front of the gate, about the same size as his stone disk.
"Pull out the disk first and place it in the hole." The woman ordered, as she went to the corner of the room and picked a pillar of a small pile of objects near the stone gate, while Soren did as ordered and waited for the woman to place the pillar inside the disk's hole. Once the pillar was placed, she then grabbed a small podium and placed it on top of the pillar and then signaled Soren to place the statue on top. After placing the statue, the last thing she took out was the gem and placed it in the statue's indent, which then shone with a bright light in front of the stone gate, causing it to burn with a blinding white flame.
"Um... Is this supposed to happen?" Soren asked curiously, as he rubbed his eyes from the sudden blinding display.
"As a matter of fact, yes. Now follow." The woman stated nonchalantly, as she walked past the ashes of the gate, while Soren followed quickly after her. Beyond the gates, a massive staircase that led upwards, appeared at the end of the hall they were currently walking down in silence and they were doing so, Soren chose to break the deafening silence with his own question. "What's your name?"
"My name? You don't need to know." The woman shot his question down coldly, as the awkward silence became present once more.
"Alright... So what's your deal anyways? How'd you get here?" Soren asked once more, as he tried to break it again, but was only met with silence.
'What's her deal anyways? Is it that hard to strike a conversation? And here I thought I was a bit of a social butterfly, at least.' Soren thought to himself, as he wondered the reason for the silent treatment he was getting. His thoughts didn't last long though, since both of them had arrived at the stairs and after walking a few steps, a feeling of discomfort engulfed his body for a moment, before a cold wind started flowing past his body. After a few seconds of climbing up the stairs, the two of them arrived in front of a rotting wooden door and the woman opened it first and exited, while Soren quickly followed after her, as he didn't wish to be left behind.
The moment he went past the door, the scenery started becoming distorted, as the city scenery blended into the darkness and the woman slowly dissipated into smoke. Soren tried to ask about what was going on, but no voice came out of his mouth and a feeling of weightlessness engulfed him, before a falling sensation took over for a few seconds and ending with a wave crashing pain, as if his body experienced a crash on a stone wall.