"You can get up now, I don't feel any sort of danger lingering in this part of the dungeon." Aefia nagged Helio with a stick she found when she had first landed on the soft ground. Unusually, the door to this part of the dungeon had no solid ground and once they had entered, they fell all the way down. If Aefia hadn't kept her eyes open, both of them would have fractured their heads.
Helio started spreading his limbs from his conserved state and sat up. Aefia was already kneeling since her legs almost always refused to work the way she wanted to move them. As a support, she used her sword to move upright but the more she applied pressure to her sword, the more it went deeper into the dirt and it was much more harder to pull it out.
Luckily, only the entrance to the dungeon was soft dirt, the remaining of the way was marble and concrete. The only disadvantage was that the ground was slippery starting there. Helio stood up on the ground and noticed Aefia limping.
"Did you break your leg or twist your ankle?" He asked with a concerned face. "Not really, I just need to complete this stage and the next stage fast enough. That way, I can have her lady find the cure to this poison. Although, I don't know exactly how damaged neurons can be cured, but I am pretty sure she knows the answer to almost every illness." Aefia replied.
"Are you sure? You weren't limping while you were running. And that doesn't look like a paralysis to me, it could be that you have exhausted your power already."
"If that is the case, the system would have already popped up. But I am also curious, does having a few neurons damaged cause disrupt in flow of power? I don't seem to remember how to use multiple of my skills. I had just recently learned how to stealth, but now it is more than impossible. My system isn't responding either, my magic is near ending, and many unexplainable things has happened." Aefia remembered while scratching her head. "Do you remember how we fell into this dungeon?"
"My memory on how to enter this part of the dungeon is...pretty blurry, but I completely remember the force of a heavy rope pulling me into that dark void. I had my eyes shut the entire time so I don't remember what happened next. Why? Did you forget that already?" Helio asked with further concern in his face. She is the only one who knows about this dungeon as far as I have noticed, but her memories blurring out would only mean walking into an unwanted adventure. I am not sure if my system will work too because I had also inspected some of the poison.
"I didn't really forget it, but I did forget about how we entered the dungeon. I don't remember a hand pulling us in, but I did feel like plummeting fifty feet underground. Also, wasn't I carrying two weapons? I have only one with me, which is my extendable sword. I had another weapon, one more of a bolder red than this." She pointed to the lightning prints on the sword's dark blade. "And it was a different type of weapon."
"Yes, I have it with me. You had dropped it in the dungeon floor earlier." Helio handed the bow back and she hung it over her shoulder.
Noticing how little time she could stay upright without a support, Helio remembered he had an elemental skill which specialized in such cases. "If you want to know, I have a skill that can reverse any sort of illness. I have a feeling that the time required to move towards the next stage, is equivalent for the time required for you to fully paralize." He explained. "But the only fact is, it will only work once in a day. So-"
"Then use it on yourself." Aefia pointed out towards the dark stains in his fingers. "You did a dumb thing trying to investigate your surroundings. The only thing you knew was, you were confident that you could heal yourself afterrwards. And the only thing you didn't know was that only Diego can withstand that level of poisoning. You are paralizing faster than I am because I wiped off the residue the instant I made contact with it. You didn't even bother, and now it's dried up and crumpled." She scolded him.
"Aren't you supposed to be worried about yourself? You are the only one who knows more about this dungeon and we all depend on your knowledge to move along." Helio asked with a questioned face, while trying to wipe off the dried blood.
"I may have the knowledge, but it might as well be restored after her lady cures me. She is a alchemist more than a scientist, and her elemental animal, the Fox, is the animal of predatory and intelligence. And you will have to work with her lady's son in the third round, where the threat levels would be significantly higher than usual, while in that round, you will be the one with intelligence in how this mission works." Aefia explained while trying her best to walk properly and use the sword like a walking stick. "And I am not the only one who has knowledge about this dungeon area...this is a fallen world too."
"A fallen world...That means her lady has been to this dungeon before!" Helio answered while catching up with Aefia. "You once told me about how the rumors from different worlds said she had been travelling around destroyed worlds to collect different items and materials, do you think she had collected ingredients for her scientific researches from here?"
"I don't think, I know. She is a much of an adventurer who likes collecting souvenirs to everywhere she goes. She could have collected the blood of those creatures and created an antidote long before, and still has it. If we are able to reach in time-..." Aefia suddenly paused at the threshold of the marble floor. "Did you just see that?" She pointed at the distant void with wide eyes. Helio stared into what she was so shocked at.
"I don't see anything." Helio scratched his head. "Maybe you can describe what you saw?" Aefia shook her head from left to right. "I don't know, it was all in a split second. If I could describe it, I would say...it was a shadow the same shape of her lady and her son. It was as if, they were asking us to follow them." She looked down. "Wait...something just came into my memory."
Helio stayed silent because he couldn't see anything in that darkness, but he too knew what it could mean. "They are asking you to follow them. Didn't you say you could tell if someone was nearby? Weren't the shadows the things you saw that told you they were present in that area?" He asked.
"Yes! Exactly! But what are they doing down here? Was this dungeon supposed to be both sided? It isn't supposed to be so until at least the second round. Could it be that we are already in the second stage?" Aefia asked.
"But if this is the second stage, do you know what sort of battle this is?"
"Yes, something like an escape room." Aefia replied. "An escape room?...Shoot!" She ran towards the darkness realizing something. Helio intercepted the same thought a short while later, but when he did, he broke out in a run too.
***
Her lady opened her eyes and tried to speak, but her mouth was already tied up and her hands too, were locked in position behind her in chains. Her legs were in shackles and blood dropped from her forehead to her lap, but she couldn't wipe off the irritation. She looked up to see what was wrong.
Deep within the earth layed a forgotten subterranean vault, where the air was thick with the cloying scent of dampness and ancient decay. The chamber was a tomb of cold, grey stone, entirely surrendered to a parasitic network of twisted, pale roots and thick, pulsating vines that snake across every available surface like the veins of tree which was invisible in the darkness.
These organic growths didn't merely sit upon the walls, they seemed to actively consume the architecture, with silent, slow-motion violence. Every rocks and furnitures were choked with emerald moss and fungal blooms, creating a suffocating atmosphere where the line between the botanical and the skeletal became disturbingly blurred in the dim, greenish light.
Dominating the center of the room was a heavy stone altar, now nothing more than a part of the forest. Thick roots wrapped tightly around its base, hoisting a massive, twisted trunk toward the arched ceiling as if it were feeding on whatever remains were locked inside the stone. Scattered across the uneven, leaf-strewn floor were hundreds of dusty, long-forgotten wine bottles, many of them shattered or half-buried in the mire.
One couldn't help but wonder if the liquid inside had turned to vinegar or something far more sinister, perhaps acting as the very substance that allowed this unnatural vegetation to thrive in a place completely devoid of the sun's life giving rays.
The shadows of the dungeon revealed a disturbing collection of human skeletons overtaken by ruin. Tall, skeletal bookshelves leaned at awkward angles, their wooden frames rotting away to expose rows of leather bound books that had fused together into solid blocks of moldering pulp.
Nearby, run down vintage cabinets stood with their doors hanging open on rusted hinges, revealing interiors filled with tarnished silver, cracked porcelain, and unidentifiable trinkets that looked like they were abandoned in a moment of sheer terror.
Heavy iron locks, painted with orange rust and choked with grime, hang uselessly from heavy wooden doors that lead into even deeper, darker tunnels where the silence felt heavy and expectant.
In a jarring contrast to the medieval stone surroundings, the rusted carcass of a vintage style car sat partially submerged in the encroaching roots, its metal skin peeling away in large, jagged flakes. The headlights resemble the empty, milky sockets of a blind predator, staring blankly into the gloom, while the leather upholstery had been replaced by a carpet of thick, damp moss.
It was impossible to fathom how such a machine was brought into these depths, but its presence suggested a history of madness or a desperate attempt to flee a horror that ultimately caught up to its victims. The steering wheel was draped in thin, web like vines that looked remarkably like skeletal fingers gripping the wheel for eternity.
The overall ambience of the vault was one of profound, malevolent stillness, where every drip of water echoing off the stone felt like a ticking clock counting down to something inevitable. The creepiness of the scene was amplified by the way the roots seemed to mimic human shapes, sometimes appearing as reaching arms or twisted torsos frozen in a scream.
There was a sense that the dungeon itself was alive, a sentient entity that trapped the artifacts of the surface world and slowly digested them over centuries. As the pale light filtered down through cracks in the ceiling, it illuminated the floating dust motes and the shimmering slime trails of unseen creatures, making it clear that while humans may have built this place, something much older and hungrier now calls it home, and that creature, could be anywhere.
She stared a little further into the distant void to notice her son trapped the way she was tied to her own seat. If only the girl and the boy reaches in time, they will be able to free us. But there is no guarantee that they would find out about this dungeon, I have been here before and I have never come across this gate. I could try a different type of intelligence to contact them, but I have depleted all my power.
She hung her head low while tears and blood drops rolled down her eyes. While also dieing in frustration, she didn't fail to use her instincts to move continuously until the shackled and chains came loose and fell off. She abruptly looked up to the direction of multiple footsteps coming from both directions.
But the fastest and most sinister footsteps came from the passageway behind her, making her finalize the fact that the other ones are a few seconds or so, too late. She started twisting her wrist a bit faster to at least be able to move away if any attacks were placed, but instead, the metal shackles cut her own skin. Soon enough, she got tired and gave up just any hopes of survival.
I am already two hundred years old, and surviving at this age is already a miracle. Most people can't even make it through their eighties, I was lucky enough to be alive and if any use. My time in this universe is up...
She shut her eyes for the final time and waited for the monster to step out. "Just that you are two hundred, doesn't mean you really are the number of years you have existed. As soon as you leave your world, your age and body freezes in time." A much more familiar voice appeared, followed by another pair of footsteps.
Her lady looked at the face of the person speaking, but the darkness was too dark to stare at. The person broke the shackles with their weapon and untied the fabric in the mouth. "Aefia?" She finally asked.
"I don't even know my name anymore." The person stood up for her kneeling position and held out the sword tightly. "But I prefer you stay at your own son's place, I will be dealing with a bit of a mess here." Aefia replied while facing the passageway which had the sinister footsteps coming from, but they weren't actually footsteps, they were sluggish moving sounds. Her lady nodded and moved away from her usual area.
The creature, which had slippery grip, threw a furry and clawed arm towards Aefia at undodgeable speed. Aefia tightly cluntched the hilt of her sword and swung it at the same speed as the dungeon's monster while speaking into her mind.
System! Activate Flames of Eternity!
The sword moved across the limb with a blazing show of bright orange flames.