Mithril Cave – 800 Meters Deep (Layer 2: The Silent Void). Time: Unknown (Rianor's Mechanical Watch has stopped ticking).
KRESEK... ZZZTTT... KRESEK...
The hiss of static white noise emitted from the helmet speakers was the only thing preserving their sanity amidst the eternal silence. To human ears, the static was annoying, but here, it was a life-saving shield against the deadly song of the Sirens.
The expedition party moved deeper, descending through ancient corridors that grew increasingly narrow and steep. Their formation was tight, shoulder to shoulder. Crystal headlamps swept across the damp cave walls, casting long shadows that seemed to dance mockingly at the edges of their vision.
At a depth of eight hundred meters, the air was so thin that every breath felt like inhaling ice needles. Atmospheric pressure pressed against their eardrums, adding to a constant, throbbing dizziness.
Sir Riven led as the vanguard. His hand, gripping the Chain-Axe, was slick with cold sweat inside his steel gauntlet.
He felt... watched.
Not by one pair of eyes, but by thousands. The gaze felt sticky against the back of his neck, like an invisible spider web.
"Elara," Riven called over the radio, his voice heavy and tense. "Your sensors picking up anything? I've felt someone breathing down my neck for a while now."
"Negative, Brother," Elara's voice came through distorted by strong magical interference. "Radar is clear. Just dead rock. Maybe it's just a suggestion from hypoxia."
"Suggestion, my ass," Riven grunted, tightening his grip on the axe handle. His wild instincts were never wrong. Something was here. Something waiting for a moment of weakness.
Suddenly.
the headlamp of a soldier in the middle of the line flickered.
Flicker. Dark. Flicker.
"CAPTAIN!"
A panicked scream shattered their concentration. It was Borch's voice.
"ULRIC IS GONE!"
Captain Garrick spun around instantly, aiming his rifle toward the rear. "Stop joking, you fool! Ulric was right behind you!"
"I swear, Captain! He was walking right here, then when the light flickered for a second... he vanished! No sound of a fall, no scream! He was... just swallowed by the rock!"
Garrick shone his light behind Borch. Empty. Only footprints in the mud that abruptly stopped in the middle of the path.
Panic began to spread like a virus. Soldiers trained for physical warfare began to tremble. They were ready to die by the sword, but they weren't prepared to be swallowed by ghosts.
"Close in! Circle formation!" Sir Rianor shouted, raising his voice above the panic. "Protect the technical unit! Spears out!"
They immediately formed a tight defensive circle. Rianor, Elara, and Rumina were in the center. Spears and rifles pointed into the surrounding darkness.
Silence.
Only the sound of heavy breathing and radio static remained.
Then, Riven heard it.
The voice pierced through the white noise in his helmet. It didn't come through his ears but whispered directly into his cerebral cortex.
"Why are you still alive, Commander?"
Riven flinched. His eyes widened in horror.
In the darkness ahead, the cave walls seemed to melt like wax. From the molten rock, human figures emerged.
They weren't monsters.
It was Marbas, the traitorous youth he had killed back at the soap factory. His neck was still snapped, his head tilted at a grotesque angle.
And beside him, crawling out of the earth, were the twelve Red Lion soldiers who had died trampled by the monster yesterday. Their bodies were crushed, their armor fused with their flesh, black blood flowing from their hollow eyes.
"You..." Riven took a step back, his legs shaking violently. "You're dead... I buried you..."
"We died because you were weak," the phantom soldiers hissed. Their voices sounded like sandpaper grinding together. They stepped closer, dragging their shattered limbs.
"You promised to protect us, Sir Riven. You said we were family. But when that monster came... you survived because your armor was thick, while we became pulp."
"No! I tried to hold it back!" Riven shouted hysterically, swinging his axe at the empty air. "I did my best! I held that bridge alone!"
"Doing your best wasn't enough! You failed! You are no hero! You're just a lucky thug who's still breathing!"
The shadows lunged at Riven. Their cold hands gripped his neck, legs, and arms. Heavy. Suffocating.
On the other side of the formation, Lady Rhea also screamed.
"STAY BACK! GET AWAY!"
Rhea didn't see corpses. She saw a Giant Mirror appearing in the darkness.
In that mirror, she saw her reflection. But it wasn't the beautiful and dangerous Rhea.
She saw a shriveled, hunched, ugly old woman, alone in a dusty, silent room.
"Look at yourself," the reflection whispered. "You are strong. You are fast. You break the hand of every man who approaches you. And what is the result?"
"You will die alone, Rhea. No husband. No children. No one to hold you when you are old. Your brothers will have families, and you will just be the Old Aunt living in the castle, forgotten."
"SHUT UP!" Rhea covered her ears, dropping her daggers. She curled into a ball, weeping in terror. Her greatest fear wasn't death, but Loneliness.
"Sister! Brother!"
Rianor watched the chaos in horror.
The formation had crumbled. Riven was wrestling with thin air while choking his own neck. Rhea was sobbing on the ground. Other soldiers were firing at the stone walls while laughing madly.
"Elara! This isn't gas! It's a high-level Psionic attack!" Rianor shouted. "Where is the enemy?! Are your sensors still blind?!"
Elara closed her eyes, blood beginning to drip from her nose from the strain on her brain. She concentrated all her Mana into a single point, ignoring the pain that felt like hot needles.
"ABOVE!" Elara shrieked. "ON THE CEILING!"
Rianor snapped his head up, aiming his brightest helmet lamp.
There.
Clinging to the sharp stalactites fifteen meters above their heads.
Dozens of hideous creatures hung like bats.
They looked like giant, transparent, slimy jellyfish. Their long, delicate tentacles dangled downward, brushing against the soldiers' helmets unnoticed. Their bodies pulsed with a dim purple light, synchronized with the heartbeats of the victims they were terrorizing.
Mind Flayers.
Psychic-type monsters that didn't attack the body but sucked the sanity from their victims until their brains shattered, only then devouring the now-insane corpses.
"THAT'S THEM!" Rianor yelled. "FIRE UPWARDS!"
Garrick and the soldiers who were still conscious fired arrows and rifles blindly.
BANG! BANG! SWISH!
But the bullets and arrows passed through the Mind Flayers' transparent bodies without effect, as if piercing smoke.
"They are in a spectral phase, Sir! Physical weapons aren't working!" Garrick shouted in despair.
Riven's condition worsened. His face turned blue as he strangled himself. The phantom corpses weighed him down.
"Kill me... take my life if that's what you want..." Riven whispered in resignation. His eyes began to roll back.
Rianor knew he couldn't use logic against this foe. He needed something real. Something primal. Something that could pull his brother's soul back into his body.
Pain.
"Brother Riven!"
Rianor ran through the hallucinations. He leaped over Rhea's body, lunging toward Riven.
He reached into his pocket, pulling out a Stun Pen modified by Rumina.
"FORGIVE ME, BROTHER!"
Rianor pressed the pen against Riven's exposed neck.
CLICK.
ZZZTTT!
50,000 Volts of electricity surged directly into Riven's nerves.
The smell of singed flesh wafted out.
"ARGHHH!"
Riven screamed. His body convulsed violently.
The sheer physical pain burned away the illusions in his brain.
The images of Marbas and the dead soldiers flickered like a broken television, then vanished into smoke.
Riven fell to his knees, panting like a bull. He clutched his scorched neck. His eyes regained their focus.
He saw Rianor in front of him, holding the pen with a trembling hand.
"It hurts, doesn't it?!" Rianor barked, grabbing his brother's collar. "Pain is real! Ghosts are fake! Your pain is the proof that you're still alive, you idiot!"
"Don't waste your life on useless guilt! Get angry! Don't be sad, get ANGRY!"
Riven went silent. The pain in his neck radiated through his entire body, igniting his adrenaline.
He looked up.
He saw the damn jellyfish hanging up there. Creatures that dared to use the faces of his dead friends to torture him.
Rage exploded in Riven's chest. Not rage at himself. But pure, unadulterated rage at the enemy.
"You bastards..."
Riven stood up slowly. He retrieved his Chain-Axe from the ground.
The aura on his body began to glow. It was no longer Orange.
It was Blood Red.
Berserk Mode: Activated.
"How dare you use their faces..."
WUUNG!
The air pressure inside the cave turned heavy. Riven's aura was so dense it made the small stones on the ground vibrate.
"RHEA! WAKE UP!"
Riven's shout thundered, carrying a wave of Intimidation.
Rhea jolted awake from her nightmare. She saw her brother standing like a wrathful God of War.
"Rumina!" Riven called without looking back. "Start the axe. Full Power."
The trembling Rumina pressed a remote button in her hand frantically.
VROOOOM!
The engine in the handle of Riven's axe roared. The saw blades spun at maximum speed, creating a piercing screeching sound.
"I can't touch your ghost bodies?"
Riven leaped high.
Not toward the monsters.
But toward the massive Stalactite Pillar on the cave ceiling where the monsters were hanging.
"THEN I'LL JUST BRING YOUR HOUSE DOWN!"
Riven slammed his chain-axe into the stone pillar.
KRRAAAKKK!
The Adamantite saw sliced through two meters of stone in seconds.
The giant stalactite cracked, then snapped.
GRUMBLE...
The cave roof collapsed.
Tons of rock crashed down, bringing the Mind Flayers' nest with it.
CRASH!
Dust billowed. Dozens of the jellyfish monsters were slammed hard against the stone floor.
As they hit the ground and lost concentration due to the physical shock, their transparent bodies solidified—becoming lumps of soft, disgusting purple flesh.
"They're real now!" Rianor shouted. "ATTACK!"
Rhea blurred forward. The tears on her face were dry, replaced by a killer's gaze.
"How dare you give me a dream about being an old maid!"
SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!
Rhea moved like a storm of blades. She minced the monsters' soft bodies into pieces of purple sashimi.
Garrick and his men, now recovered, joined the rampage. They vented their terror by stabbing and stomping the now-helpless monsters into mush.
Five minutes of slaughter later.
The cave went silent once more.
The floor was covered in purple slime and chunks of flesh.
Riven stood in the middle of the mess, his breath heavy. His neck was still red from the shock. His aura slowly dimmed.
"Thanks, Nor," Riven turned to his brother, smirking tiredly. "Your slap... was effective. But it hurt like hell."
Rianor adjusted his tilted glasses and tucked his stun pen away.
"It's called Shock Therapy, Brother. Don't ask for it again. The battery is dead."
They had survived the Hallucination Zone.
However, ahead of them, behind the dust of the ruins Riven had created... a Massive Gateway was revealed.
The door was made of pure Adamantite that hadn't rusted despite thousands of years.
On its surface, etched in ancient language that glowed red, it read:
"LEGION LABORATORY – NO ENTRY. BIOLOGICAL HAZARD LEVEL 5."
They had arrived at the gates of a true hell.