Blackness, confusing blackness, oh my scattered mind, the ache persisting. I heard, gradually, the gentle earthly gurgle, the soft noise of flowing molten rock, too close, rumbling too close it was. The panic lingered, my lids unshut, there I was, lying on a petite isle amidst the river of boiling cavern's blood. "What" and "How" I asked myself, yet no answer, and yet no sense. My mind, my brains, my scrambled eggs.
I stood up, I balanced myself, and indeed, on a corpuscle of rock I was, standing, frighteningly dizzy, as to how I fucking get to black out in this shitpiece of a game. At least no wretched metallic abomination was beside me, hunting me down. Under the rocky basalt walls, which were to the sides, were an inch thin ledges protruding out of the rock. They continued along the length of the magma river, their footings at times and places lay collapsed, and their entire ordeal seemed brittle and oh-so vaguely practical.
— Scheisse…
The only way to rid this place of me was firstly gliding onto them from the isle, like a feather, then gently tread upon them, step by step, and occasionally jumping off of them onto the other occasional, scarce isles for a sanctuary, and then repeat everything antecedent until the miracle happens and I jump myself out of this molten gorge. Nothing except abiding with my wits, I was left with. I positioned myself at the edge of the isle in front of a ledge segment which seemed the widest of all. Deep breath in, and rabbit alike, I took off the ground, across molten death I flew a glimpse, and on the ledge I landed, the toes of mine just hypertensed for only they could on the ledge share space. Under the right foot, I sensed a shift, a crackle of rocks sifting down, a second ahead, the ledge crumbled. For a moment, no heartbeat I had there. My leg jerked up and positioned itself secure again. With my tremoring claws, I dug inside the cavern's walls, and step by step and tread by tread and thread by thread I began conquering this vile, fiery trial. Pebbles tumbled down under me, my stamina was getting drained dry, speck by speck, for if it runs out, I would be nothing better than a scorched pile of flesh. From behind a twist of the ravine, another isle emerged, in comparison, much more pitiful than the previous one, but nonetheless a sanctuary. Pushing myself off the ledge with only my toes and fingers on a minuscule piece of rock, the only thought of that made the addressed parts of me tremble even more, yet again, I wasn't given a choice. I shifted myself to the across of the isle, all of me shivering and tensing haphazardly, and with might and with distrust, I pushed myself off the ledge. And land I did, graciously, gracefully slipping on the land point, almost diving headfirst into the lava, thankfully, it came only to having my head bashed on the rocks again. Gradually, my stamina regenerated to the full, yet my health did not; only a gruesome, unnerving speck of red sat in there, in the bar. As I finally noticed it, I chugged down a few more glasses of the scarlet nectar, filling my health meter to slightly below its half.
After half an hour of this excruciating motion precision bedlam venture and a few isle stops, I at last encountered a vast cavity inside a wall, gracefully not a dead-end one, and entered it. Once again, it was a twisting tunnel ornamented with a myriad of capillary streams of lava. Wandering farther, I began noticing numerous splashes of some kind of somber secret, crusted at the edges and plastered all around the place. The further I went, the more abundant those splashes became. Merging, they began with one another, coating the tunnel from the inside, and from that crusted shell slithered the pungent, rotten reek. The sound of cracking putrid black caramel and champing of the viscous ooze that came from underneath the crust both followed my every tread. The passageway, now enshrouded in darkness, as all the lava rivulets ceased under the chitin, finally steered me to, at a first glance, a vast, pitch-black opening.
Amidst the dark haze, a sphere of mint light emerged, hovering and wobbling. Taking a closer look, it was bulb-shaped, connected to something with a long, curved straw. I entered the lodge, and the bulb immediately froze in place. The straw slowly contracted down, and the light shone upon what was beneath. My entire existence, already exhausted from this repeating pattern, drowned itself again in the sludge of chilling, nerve-twisting horror. A humongous head of presumably even larger monster ant glared me down with its fractal-ridden tar-black orbs, with two additional straws on its face ominously vibrating. Here it was, god-untouched abomination, begotten by the eldritch abyss, slowly and surely, creepily accelerating, crawling to me from a mound of unknown morbid mass. Suddenly, the dust and the gravel began falling down from the walls and from the ceiling behind my back. Something was chewing on the rock from the inside. In a few seconds, there were numerous holes about the tunnel, and the same light and the same horrid alien grimace were surfacing from each one of them.
The thoughts, the mind-numbing thoughts, the panicky swirl of depressing words were swallowing my brain and marinating it in the disgusting frozen slush of thirst for just giving up at this inescapable point. Yet, from out of nowhere, the surge of adrenal jolts rampaged throughout my body, from bottom to the top, enveloped I was in this muscle-tensing warmth of raw power. With my eyes open as wide as it was possible and my breathing becoming all so unnervingly rapid, I shouted at the top of my lungs, with the feeling they were to, at any moment, collapse into themselves, as collapse did the solemn rocks and pieces of black crust from the ceiling, from a soul-wrenching shriek I frenziedly discharged. I grappled my sword even tighter, and roaring continuously, I rushed at the ant monster in front.
As soon as I got closer, the morbid thing tried to jam me in between its slimy, grimy sideways jaws, and yet it missed, for I went under its gruesome torso and slashed and cut and pierced and bathed in its viscous, foul blood. The awful creature began vibrating and jerking haphazardly, I swiftly tried to get myself from under the thing, but it crashed its wounded carcass onto me, almost snapping my spine in two it felt like, and as I looked up, that ungodly insect was curling its butt down with a bright red few inches long sting at the end, heading right towards my face. Speck by speck, the spike was closing in, spacing nearer and nearer, scarlet gunk was dripping from its tip. I was crushed by the monster's weight, almost completely unable to move, but with awful jolts of self-preservation and a sound of cracking bones, I grabbed the red sting and tried to push it away from me. The thing resisted, pushing at me even harder, but at last, pouring in all of what was left of my stamina, I tugged and bent the poisoned spur up into the monster's vile, bleeding corpus. The ant giant utterly collapsed upon me, its muscles relaxed, and in a few moments, its entire being began smoldering away. Left, I was there painfully injured, but gracefully free.
I recuperated myself, my now sick and bloody composure, quickly opened my inventory and rushed, gulping down anything I had that could possibly restore my health, observing at the same time a looming horde of putrid giant ants through a throbbing overlay of bloodshot eyes. Healed somewhat, blinded by the darkness ahead, I flew into the abysmal opening and, panic-stricken, began searching for a way out. Numerous new light bulbs demonically appeared across the pitch-black and began closing in on me. Positioned, I was on the top of a steep mound in the center of a dome-like room, surrounded by god-awful foes. They were climbing closer and closer to me, clanking with their jaws and bobbing their headlights, as suddenly the ground began to vigorously shudder, as if something was furiously pushing it from beneath it felt like. The scalding air washed over my face. The surrounding black crust began fuming with foul-smelling smoke, steadily melting and dripping down the slope. The quakes, evenly spaced out in time, occurred each time sternly violent. The ants disheveled and addled, as was I, now stuck struggling inside the molten ooze of probably their own produce. The tip of the mound where I stood grew increasingly fervent, fluid, and foaming with an array of sooty bubbles coming from underneath. For a short period, the quakes ceased, and I tried to get myself out of this awful place again, as suddenly a shockwave of a might not felt by me ever before bashed me off the mound top. I flew and tumbled down, heels over my head, all the way to the basement of the dome, and in a glimpse I saw the white light atop the mound. The raging stream of boiling, bursting lava was tearing out of the black molten mound with the thundering roar of seismic fury.
Almost losing my consciousness again, I landed on the poor but still foul ant giant, crushing it with my weight, surely killing it. The poor bastard began smoldering right away. "Oh, all of you fuckers better run from here, it's getting hot". Pieces and chunks of molten and not-so rocks and splashes of white and red magma flew and dabbled throughout the dome room, hitting and scaring the shit out of numerous scumbags (scumbugs), me included. A splash of liquid, whatever landed right between my eyes, excruciatingly painfully scorching out a brand on my head and a slight portion of not-so-abundant health of mine along with it.
— Aaaah!!! Ficker ficker fickeeeeeeer!!! — I shouted whilst holding onto my aching forehead.
As I was lying down, pain incapacitated, and the magmatic chaos unfolded around, I opened my eyes at last and saw a now illuminated passage out of this hellhole. The molten rock was flooding the hall and approaching the perimeter where I found myself, incredibly fast. Panicky, my limbs began twirling around to grapple onto solid ground, and in a moment, like the ants, on all fours, I crawled into the passage in front.
I could not interpret nor comprehend the length of time I crept inside this narrow, hopelessly dark colon, but outcrept the gurgle of igneous rock and the row of monstrous horde I thankfully did. Suddenly, around another tunnel twist, a brilliant white shimmering light with utter grace deluged my eyes, the same way a godly scent of bread freshly baked would fill the nostrils of starving men. Closer I found myself to it, the more distinctly the light assumed its form, the form of chalk colored wall of fog, the form of an entrance to the lodgment of a boss. An inch from the fog wall, I limped as I heard dulled, drowned noises from beyond it. Human screams, beast roars, bangs and slams of rock and metal, with quite an effort, I did discern. Without the slightest second thought, I tapped the wall with a finger, jammed the appeared tab as quickly and as fast as it was humanly possible, and got magically drawn through, onto the other side of it.
The passage continued for a few more feet and led to the expanse, greatly lit. I crawled to the end of it and shoved my head out of that pressing rectum. In an incredibly fabulous position, I found myself. Worm-like, I was peeking out from a hole into a similar to the previous one, but unspeakably larger dome room, and not from the ground or a vertical wall, but all the way from a fucking ceiling. Swaying my head down to the bottom, horrid, chaotic things entered my sight. Almost everyone I entered this dungeon with was entangled in, evidently, from a first glance, a treacherously challenging battle, if not an unwinnable one. More than a dozen people, all differently equipped, lacking any sort of logical formation, surrounded a humongous, here I mean three-story house in height, and the average football field in length and width, humongous, fire-breathing, magma-spewing lizard, and hectically attacked it with everything they had in their disposition. Arrows, swords, and maces, sorceries and incantations, axes, spears, and even rocks, everything was put into this haphazard action. Only Baldwin, there, maintained something of a composure and attempted to cripple the beast by steadily and repeatedly smashing its rear extremities with his mace. Gruesomely, a matter of a few seconds it was for the beast to react to Baldwin's untamed spree of attacks, as he was banished away into the flight by a point-blank cannonball shot force of the wyrm's leg. The band's eyes oozed with chilling fluids of fright, greatly more so, so pronouncedly bulged out they were, I could grapple that from where I hanged from.
Regrettably, hanging from the ceiling was the only thing I could do for the time being, with an array of pitiful ideas of possible ways to lift myself down racing through my wits. Nothing beside me and a grove-worth of stalacti— An ominous clank ringed inside my skull, it clanked right there, but… no, no fucking way, no way, there wasn't even an atom-sized speck of possibility it could be performed, by any stretch of the most adrenaline addicted mind's imagination, I could not do it. But… fuck.
Grappling onto the walls, I fetched my torso out of the narrow confinements, opened my equipment menu, switched my trusty sword to the less trusty pickaxe, tore all of my armor off, leaving myself dressed only in a pair of linen pants, and after opening the inventory tab, stuffed my throat with a heap of vigorwort. With the might of a man almost hovering mid-air over a drop of approximately two Bundestags in height, I jammed the pick into the rock above me. Extract myself, now fully, I successfully did, holding onto the stuck instrument with my hands, using the wretched orifice's edge as a ground to stand on.
Seating myself onto the first and closest stalactite wasn't a huge deal, relatively speaking. First, I stretched and grappled onto the hanging rock with my hand, but frighteningly poorly for it being awkwardly smooth, then drew one of my legs closer to it, slightly hugging the spire and after it, taking a deep, deep breath, I sharply took off from the wall with two of my left there extremities, fully enveloping the stalactite with my bare body, leaving only the pickaxe behind, still stuck. Stamina squeezed out, I, micron per minute, drove my finger through the air again, opened the equipment tab and retrieved the pickaxe back to my inventory, from the wall it vanished.
Now, the hardest, virtually impossible, and exactly deadly part. The closest one and gracefully one of the largest stalactites was set away farther than I could ever reach to even if I were to survive a quartering. I felt a lump forming in my throat, my hands shivering, and my mind growing excruciatingly tired. Vigorwort did not defray expense of stamina in full, slowly and surely it was withering away. That was a moment of all or nothing, depressingly tritely, this was a moment of life and death. Deep breath again, and with all of force remaining inside my sinews and veins, I pushed myself into the thin nothing. Finger sway, menu, equipment, pickaxe, push, grab and JAM! My entire existence thirsted to contort and scream with all the joy and adrenaline it was flooded with. I was alive, hanging on a pickaxe stuck inside the sharp rock, suspended a hundred feet in the bloody air. Again, the roar of hopeful bliss was crawling up my throat, but the fright of diving into a freefall after this impeccable stunt and a sense of self-preservation for the sake of God our Lord congealed it. Shivering with ecstatic terror, I pulled myself up and, with a poor grip, I attached my undressed body to the cold hanging rock. As calculated (hoped for) right underneath me was the head of the giant drake, swaying with fury at puny figures around, steadily moving out of the frame, each holy second rendering me less precious chances to crash upon it crushing it. I wrapped myself around the stalactite, with every moment of it being a miracle, as for even the slightest force directed undesirably, I would slip off this slippery downward slope. Gently, I freed the pick from the calcite mass and began chipping at the base of the spike. Tiresome and slow, thus stamina frivolous, this pace proved itself to be, procuring only chirping of falling down chips and nothing more. I struck with might, alongside care and chunk, inspiring tore off of the shuddering rock. Choking on vigorwort's flesh over and over again, I progressively thinned the stalactite's root, with flow and precision I did not fathom I possessed. With an influx of all of my remaining stamina, a mighty swing of trembling pick shattered a massive piece of stratum, unexpectedly abruptly, tearing the now brutal weapon of a rock from a cavern's ceiling, with me coiled around it, launching it, like a thunderbolt, to wreck and ravage whatever lay beneath.
It felt like the previously steady stream of time succumbed to an ever-leaching, ever-frost, to a bringer spirit of temperature of Kelvin zero, brushing vicious twirls across the seconds to happen and to vanish in the past. Rigor mortis enveloped my flesh entirely, there I flew, a monolith of calcium rock, calcium bone, steaming flesh and boiling blood. Suddenly everything went black, with an orchestral accompaniment of flawlessly predictable cacophony of crushing rock, roaring wounded nephilim and weeping crowd thrown in and out of terror. Then came silence, oh so desired.
— Ah, Madonna! Are you alright!? Juni! Juni!? — mishmash of different voices came from somewhere above me, tearing through the ringing deafness.
"I'm hearing that, am I not dead?", a thought flashed upward from my brain stem, sending a violent, electrochemical jolt through my bones and nerves. By force innate, my eyes were opened wide, almost squishing my bloodshot orbs out of the orbits. Everything but the kitchen sink flooded my perceptions. Through the veil, through la jalousie of hair locks of crimson red and golden blond, I caught a glimpse of a moldering carcass of a scaly beast, anointed with an ocean of its own blood, its head exploded, burst and split apart and open by a spire of rock. Around me, people stood silent, bewildered, with their eyes bulging out at me as mine were bulging out at them. Over me hovered two heavenly images, two empyrean forms adorned with flocks of lustrous hair. Once again their voices rang in silence:
— Juni! Are you alright!? Someone heal him for fuck's sake!
Tremblingly, my sight shifted to my health bar, almost entirely hollow, only a rectangular red speck, micron thick, remained there. Profoundly, I was in dire, distressing need of healing art to be performed on me, a frail and disoriented almost-corpse. In a blur of a distance, a figure, furnished in a gown of color of wheat, drew a complex of various sigils in the air, pointed at me. In a second, visually warm light, with sparks of gold encrusted into it, enveloped, baptized in itself my wretched carcass. Feel less contused I did not, but being dragged away from the brink of death somewhat eased my nerves and wits.
— Good fucking hunch… — slowly I exhausted out of my throat.
***
The same twisting tunnels nauseatingly continued beyond the boss' lair, but now hollow, ridden off any form of life, besides us, thankfully. Remains of mining infrastructure also furnished the space, radiating déjà vu, as if we were still at the dungeon's entrance. Tears of water dropped down from overheads, gusts of fresh, crisp air whistled around, other than that, the silence abode, comforting silence.
At last, the shades of surrounding rock grew warmer, the light of passing day was baring itself before us and closer to it we crept, closer to the sunset gates.
Not a plateau, as it was predicted, but a lush, evergreen valley, cut in a middle with a one mastodonic stream of gleaming water, lay vast before us, its true extent skulked beyond the horizon line. Part lit with evening's fiery flare, part drowned in mountain's chilling haze. Tombstones, careening, there stood dispersed, alike seedlings newly sown. Something dwelt in betwixt them.
Next to Hen I resided, apart from a chattering, partially cheerful crowd. We gazed into the valley, silently, in it's fading palette of warming hues. Her vibrant crimson locks surfed on the waves of wind. Desperately, I rumbled through my dead-beat mind in a quest for something witty and fine to throw up in a moment of quite ambivalence such as this one, yet Hen beat me to it.
— Fucking hell… мы это блять сделали… — she said.
— Fucking hell, what? — I inquired the translation.
— We fucking did it, Juni! We fucking did it!!! — she wept on top of her lungs, with her arms spread wide, with her smile ever-stretching, with her eyes glistening with vigor.
— Can you stop fucking screaming my name out loud, Nina!!!
— Hey! Don't scream mine, you jerk! — she added, with her brows tense, with her index finger, of which the fingernail polished was in lustrous red, pointing at me.
— Hey!? You started this! — I recoiled.
She swept through space us separating and with hands of hers of gentle skin and warmth comforting, adorned my face.
— Shh! You're a fucking legend now, Juni… after that stunt you just pulled off, scream I your name or not, they're gonna get in your pants.
— Good luck, that place's reserved.
— For whom you jackal? — she gently murmured.
Not a muscle on her face twitched off her dreamy, smiling expression, yet her grip on me grew stronger, both physically and mentally.
— Nobody, nobody. — I swiftly retaliated.
— Grab me.
— Wha…?
— Grab me by the waist. — she repeated.
To the wishes of hers there wasn't a way not to comply, now her waist lay fell in the embrace of my arms. There we stood, gazing into each other's eyes through a thin film of nothing separating us.
— I need to ask you one thing. — she whispered.
— Mm?
— Don't touch greatswords this time.
— What? Why?
— I won't tolerate seeing you recreate whatever was back in WoY….
— And how not using greatswords would help that?
— I… I don't know, but… just don't, okay? There's fuck ton of everything else for you to play with, so…
— Okay, okay, I understand.
— Make love, Juni… not war.
— Understood, under…
Interrupted, I got by her soft, peachy lips being awkwardly hammered onto mine, with a tongue of hers, moist and warm, vigorously forcing itself inside my jaws, seething for the one of mine, the one to intertwine with. With the sound of steps trampling grass beneath, and a premeditated cough, the copulation of our mouths, now was mercifully cut short.
— Am I interrupting? — said the radiant figure, raised few feet away.
Baldwin it was, for only he of all could outshine the same radiance of gold and rose he and everything around bathed in. With his eyes gleaming with an adoring glare, with his face jeweled with a smiling flare, and with his hands crossed behind his rear.
— No, no, not at all. — I noted in a hurry, in a hurry peeling myself off the now grim grimace of the lady cuddled in my arms.
— You seem to be well acquainted with each other. — he noted in response.
— If you can call it that…
— So what I wanted to ask you… we, me and my guild, we rented a tavern for a celebration and we want you to join us.
— No, sor…
— Yeah, sure! We're glad to! — a cuddled girl, with a smile of mischief on her face, interrupted me once again.
— Great! We're just gonna go grab the closest waystone and I'll send you both the location. — he said and hurried back to his men.
— Scheisse… — I uttered, hanging my head.
With a sly but charmingly gentle grin, Hennessey whispered to me:
— C'mon, you need some socializing, you'll love it.
— Like I have a choice… — I laughed.
***
Rhythmically and passionately, the cast-iron chandelier dangled, hovering above the room drowned in joyful chatter, dispersing the light of its torches onto the visages of men, roaring lovingly, singing songs, telling tales of this world and of the other, drinking, feasting and living. The tabletop, stretched across the room, seating everyone at it, unfurled on itself the kaleidoscope of unnaturally, yet all so pleasingly, furnished, saturated in the colors, and shimmering in the films of juice and oil fruits, vegetables and meats. The sheer smell, the loud voices, the warm colors, the cheer, sent my electrochemistry to the realms of now blurry reminiscence, to the chasm of memories, cold and harrowing and yet so nurturingly warm ones. The ale dripped down everyone's mustache, I didn't drink. This place was not for me.
Swiftly and sneakily, attracting the gaze of only the red-haired girl, I silently escaped the tavern's premises. Chilling wind gently scraped the skin of my face and refreshed my olfaction with crisp of salty iodine air. Here and there the streetlights shone, here and there golden radiance came out of windows, yet in the silk of twilight, yet courteously translucent, I found myself standing in front of the tavern. Behind me, the door slowly creaked.
— Sorry, it's overwhelming in there, you know how I'm like… — I gusted out.
— No, actually I don't know how you're like. — not Hennessey, but the voice of lyre whose strings were cast of gold, answered me, tickling my eardrums.
I turned sharply and faced the figure standing with a wooden mug full of ale in its hand. Baldwin it was, once more, blessing me with his presence.
— Sorry, didn't mean…
— For what are you even apologizing again, man? You're too sorry all of a sudden, cut it, a guy like you shouldn't be sorry for anything, right now especially. — he narrated, articulating with his mug, treading closer to me and at last standing at my side.
— What you mean a guy like me?
— Juni… Juni? Can I call you that, or Leer's better?
— Sor… Juni, yes, call me Juni.
— Great! So what I mean, Juni… you know what level the boss was?
— Like thirty-three, thirty-five?
— Question marks. We lost two guys there, Airy aside, if not for you, it could've been more, it would've been more… anyway thank you, from me and from my guild.
— You're welcome, I guess?
A pause came after, not an awkward, but a peaceful one. The wind continued to roam the streets to the accompaniment of its almost inaudible whistle. The dull murmur of a spirit of mirthful communion kept whispering out of slits of surrounding buildings. Our heads, thrown back, immersed into the shimmering abyss of what was the night sky, jeweled with thousands of thorny opals.
— A month has passed already… — the golden man broke the silence.
— Yeah… how many more to come? That's a question. — I replied.
He sipped on his ale, heavily sighed and then uttered:
— An awful question indeed…
My sight shifted onto his blond visage, still sunk in the heaven's gloam. Neither fear nor despair I could read from it, yet something resembling a feeling of duty, of a sacred vow gleamed in those sapphire eyes.
— You still remember the first day? — he inquired.
— Not entirely, but yeah, I was probably entering the Murkshades or mining stout in some cave when the logout disappeared.
— I nearly died to a simple boar when I saw the button gone, and you at that time were already entering the Murkshades, madonna mia.
— It probably disappeared much earlier than I noticed it… and when I saw it gone, I just closed the menu and went on, no point there was in doing much else, it was just…
— Extremely despairing to think about.
— Yes.