The pair continued walking through the dark tunnel, their only guide being the faint silhouettes of the group ahead of them and the sound of their footsteps. One of the silhouettes began to grow larger as it came closer to them. It was Junyo.
"How're you guys holding up?" He forced an awkward smile.
The older gentleman cast a sidelong glance at the tall figure ahead before turning back. "Fine." His tone was stern. "But isn't it embarrassing having to continuously apologise for him?"
Junyo sighed. "It gets like that sometimes, and he means well, truly." He rolled his eyes. "He just isn't very people-smart, and I understand that."
"Hmph." Kompto's breath smoked in the cold. "Regardless, we should catch up with the rest of the group."
As they caught up to the party, a pebble fell from the darkness and landed squarely on the man's head.
"Creed, are you alright?"
"Ah—what the hell?" He pressed a hand to his aching forehead, then bent to retrieve the thing that had struck him. Hard. Cold. To the eye, it was only a rock. He turned it once in his hand, frowned, then passed it to Junyo.
"Wait, hold on." Concern drew Junyo's features taut. He summoned his Leere and ran a quick scan over the rock. "Just as I expected. This rock is an obsidian ore."
"Obsidian?"
"Yeah, you can tell from its glass-like features, it's also a little too dark to be just a random pebble."
His eyes dropped to the shard again, black as spilt ink, catching what little light there was and holding it in a dead kind of gleam. Not stone, not ordinary stone, not something that should have been here at all.
Ji-Soon stopped short and moved back toward them, closing the gap in a few quick strides. His fingers curled slowly at his sides.
"Wait," his voice came out thinner than he meant it to. "Did you just say that rock is obsidian?"
'Obsidian ores don't usually fall from the ceiling.'
Ji-Soon slowly lifted his head.
Above them sat what he had taken for a boulder. Only now, looking at it properly, it felt wrong. Too misshapen. Too still, in the way something living tried to be still. Its surface was dotted with dark pits, and around its body glowed two faint red rings.
His breath caught.
The ground beneath them gave a small tremor.
Pebbles skittered.
"Wait," Ji-Soon said again, sharper now. "Guys… what is that?"
Everyone turned.
The boulder shook.
Not shifted—shook, like something inside it had begun to wake. Dust spilled from its sides. The red rings brightened. A low rumble rolled through the cave again, deeper this time, close enough to feel in the ribs.
Then a red icon flashed above it.
"That's not a boulder! Everyone, get ready for combat!"
The thing's claws scraped against the cavern roof, its body pressed flat as it stalked from above. Tang-Ji barely had time to draw breath before Ji-Soon's hand shot out, gripping her shoulder and slinging her backward. She slammed against the far wall, gasping, just as the creature smashed into the spot where she had been standing.
Its landing sent up a huge cloud of dust, making visibility worse than it already was.
"Ah, shit! I can't see a goddamn thing here!" Decker charged straight into the dust cloud.
Junyo's voice tore through the din. "Wait, you moron! HEY!"
Too late.
The monster's body split apart.
Dozens of smaller mites scattered from it at once, swarming across the cave floor, crawling over the walls, slipping through the haze like pieces of the dark had broken loose and come alive.
"What the fuck!?" Decker jumped back, dodging several high-velocity rocks hurled at him. They tore past him in a blur and struck the cave walls with sharp, violent cracks. "These little shits are everywhere!"
He stepped out of the dust clad in deep-blue armour. A spine-shaped generator ran along his back, pulsing with crackling energy that spilled across the cave and painted the walls in an eerie glow.
"Alright, you shits! Time to die!"
He lunged forward in a mad dash straight into the swarm.
"
Ji-Soon called out his Leere. "Decker! I need you to buy me some time while the slots are running. Then I can support you!"
"Piss off! You'll just get in the way. Hell, you might even hit me! I am the big glowing target, after all!"
A rough jest—and then he dove deeper into the chaos, eager to show off.
"HAHAHAHA! Can't catch me!"
Ji-Soon clicked his tongue.
The mites were already closing in.
He started kicking them away, sending them flying back in the hopes that it would stall them for a little longer. Kompto joined in, unable to use explosives in an environment like this unless he wanted to bury the mites and all of them together.
"I've debuffed their defence severely!" Junyo called, fingers moving rapidly across his Leere. "You should be able to kill the mites now instead of just repelling them!"
Ji-Soon and Kompto stomped down hard, crushing the ones that climbed too close, reducing them to piles of ground-up dust. But more kept coming. From the rocky floor. From the cracks in the wall. From places that had looked empty only a second ago.
Tang-Ji summoned her Leere and moved to charge the cluster in front of her, but her foot caught on a rock hidden under the dust. She stumbled hard and dropped her shears.
The metal clattered once against the stone, then vanished somewhere into the haze.
Her breath snagged.
She looked ahead, but not even the light from Decker's armour could cut farther than a metre or two.
Then movement.
Several mites peeled away from the stone around her, their bodies blending so seamlessly with the cavern that it felt less like they had appeared and more like the ground itself had decided to crawl.
They noticed her.
"Watch out!" Ji-Soon moved to reach her, urgency breaking through instinct before thought could catch up.
But his legs jerked to a stop.
He looked down.
Mites had latched onto him in masses, crawling over his boots, his calves, halfway to his knees. He tried to wrench himself free, brushing them off in frantic handfuls, but more took their place. His balance snapped from under him and he hit the ground hard, panic rising sharp in his chest as more and more of them crawled onto his body.
'Damn it! If only I had a bit more time!' Reaching out to his slot machine through the crush of limbs and stone. 'If only I had a bit more time. I might have to use it now.'
Around him, the rest of the group was starting to buckle under the same pressure. Mineral Mites swarmed over Kompto's boots, their serrated claws gouging at his ankles until his legs felt like anchors sunk in quicksand. Junyo tore at the ones climbing his calves, only for more to wriggle higher toward his waist. Even Tang-Ji staggered backward as mites clung to the hem of her coat and the fur lining of her hood.
Decker, the lone island of defiance, hammered at the onslaught with brutal efficiency—but each swing sent new morsels of stone-shards and dust raining down, threatening to bury him in the debris.
Then, through the scrape of claws and the chittering press of bodies, a single, melodic—
'clink-clink.'
—rang out.
Ji-Soon's slot machine had finally stopped.
All three reels displayed a gleaming hammer.
"Oi, jackass!" Voice cracking. "Pull the lever! Give us something to smash our way out!"
Decker paused mid-swing, head cocked beneath his mask. On the next heartbeat, he strode over and yanked the lever free, lifting it like a conductor's baton.
A weapon dropped into his grasp.
Heavy. Iron-bound. The head of it broad and brutal, gleaming even in the dim blue haze.
"For me?" he teased, hefting the weight with ease. "You really shouldn't have!"
He planted the hammer's head into the rocky floor.
The impact cracked through the tunnel like a gunshot.
"Right," he rumbled, shoulders squared. "Everyone drop low. I need—" He paused, voice low, "—absolute stillness. One twitch and I'll test the steel in your kneecaps."
"Rush technique, deployment level 2, Midnight Rampage: Special," he exploded forward.
His hammer descended in titanic arcs.
Mites shattered under the blows.
Stone powder rose in thick spirals.
Then it settled.
The path ahead lay nearly clear.
The mechanical giant eased onto his weapon, the glow receding from his armour until only the hammer's runes pulsed faintly before vanishing altogether. He lifted one eyebrow beneath his mask.
"Not bad, right?" He rolled one shoulder. "What'd you think of my new move?"
From the edge of the clearing, Ji-Soon pushed himself up and crossed to Tang-Ji, offering her his hand.
She stared at it for half a second before taking it.
"Thanks," she said quietly, letting him pull her to her feet.
"You know, quiet girl," Decker said, his ego already swelling back into place, "you should really work on not being useless."
Tang-Ji said nothing.
'He's right.'
The thought came low and bitter.
'So far, I've had to be saved over and over, without doing any of the saving myself.'
"Leave her alone, dude. We appreciate your help, but it doesn't mean you get to be a dick." The words came quick, Ji-Soon's rebuke slicing clean through the moment.
"Listen cunt! If you keep pampering her like this and keep letting her do nothing, we'll all die when we have to rely on her. Something about the weakest link, right?"
Ji-Soon had only just drawn breath to speak when the ground beneath Tang-Ji split open.
Not cracked.
Opened.
One moment she was there, the next the earth had unstitched itself under her feet and swallowed her whole, quick as a mouth closing over prey. Ji-Soon lunged without thinking, hand shooting out for hers, desperate, almost there—
—but the ground sealed shut before their fingers could meet.
Nothing.
No gap. No trace. No sign that she had been standing there a second ago at all.
Silence fell so suddenly it felt wrong, like the cave itself had stopped breathing.
Ji-Soon stood frozen, arm still half-extended, his pulse slamming against his ribs. His mind refused it. Refused the smoothness of it, the impossible neatness. A person did not just vanish. Not like that. Not right in front of him.
Behind him, Decker took a slow step back, then another, his usual sharpness gone thin around the edges. For once, even he looked stripped of language, left only with the ugly shape of panic.
"Oh… shit."
Ji-Soon's hands rose to his head as if he could hold the moment together, force it to make sense if he pressed hard enough. His voice came out hollow, scraped raw.
"She's gone," he said, staring at the sealed earth. "Just like that…"
"DAMN IT!" He shouted, slamming his fist into the hard, rocky wall of the cave. Pain welled up in his hand, causing tears to form in his eyes.
Suddenly, a hand pressed against his back.
He flinched, but the weight of it grounded him. He looked up to find the older man in a trench coat standing there, his expression unreadable, eyes as sharp as the world around them.
"Don't worry," Kompto's voice was calm. "She'll turn up if we keep moving. She went below us, didn't she?"
Ji-Soon nodded, eyes clouded with pain. "Kaz is going to kill me when he finds out I lost her."
The older man's gaze softened just a fraction, but his voice remained steady, anchoring Ji-Soon to the present. "Then we find a way down. She will be fine. She's stronger than you think. Stronger than even she knows."
Ji-Soon didn't answer right away, his hands still shaking, the weight of his own doubts heavier than the bruises on his body. "I know... I have to believe in her," he whispered, almost to himself.
Kompto gave a small nod, his lips barely curling at the edges. "Then let's move. We'll find her."
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
As she fell, she once again felt the nauseating sensation of her stomach tying itself into a knot. Falling for what seemed to be an eternity, her senses became overwhelmed by the rushing wind, and her screams were lost amidst the darkness that enveloped her.
Tang-Ji's body tumbled uncontrollably, bouncing against the rough, rocky walls of the pit as she continued to plummet further into the abyss.
Blood spilt each time she made contact with the walls, filling the air with tiny shards as the blood evaporated into crystals of code. Each cut and scrape shot searing pain across her entire body.
Panic set in and her mind was consumed by a primal fear of the unknown. With a jolt, her descent stopped abruptly, and she landed roughly on the rocky, hard floor of the cavern.
She felt the impact in her bones and let out a cry as the shock knocked the breath from her lungs, leaving her struggling for air in the darkness.
Disoriented and dishevelled, she struggled to compose herself and push her body upright, her trembling hands searching fruitlessly for any semblance of familiarity.
In time, Tang-Ji rolled onto her back and attempted to steady her breathing, but the adrenaline pumping in her veins made it difficult to concentrate on anything other than the aching pain throughout her body from where she had been knocked, scraped and cut.
Looking from side to side, she stared into the blackness that surrounded her and took a sharp, ragged breath as she realised that she'd been completely separated from the others.
Dragging her eyes upwards towards the left side of her vision, she noticed that her health bar was dangerously far into the red zone.
'I'm alive, somehow,' she sighed.
Tipping her head back onto the cold floor, she was relieved that she hadn't been reduced to a bloody mess of flattened flesh and bone.
Now looking directly upwards into where she had fallen from, she could see dim light filtering down from above, contrary to how the hole had sealed up when she had first fallen in.
It was clear to her now that the tunnel she had fallen into was adorned with small, colourful crystals, each shining beautifully, albeit faintly.
Droplets of blood hung suspended in the air, casting crimson shadows against the walls of the shaft as the faint light of the crystals shone through them. It was a morbidly beautiful sight, that something so pretty could be created by the suffering of another.
Now having the strength and composure to sit up, Tang-Ji gently pushed herself from the ground, the cuts on her hands sending jolts of pain throughout her body as she pushed on a dull, raised groove.
Properly upright, she opened up her inventory with a subtle, yet painful, wave of her hand and reached for a healing potion. As she drank the sweet, deep-red liquid, she heard the whispering of a small voice, no louder than the rustling of a tree's leaves.
"Hm?" she scanned the room.
Besides herself, there was nothing but the multitude of illuminated crystals keeping her company. "Maybe I'm still shaken up by the fall…" she mused, brushing the sound off.
"...t's… ou…" a wispy voice called. She shuddered, her eyes darting around the room once more. As she looked behind herself, her eyes met a pair of bright yellow ones.
"Eek!" She cried, jumping backwards, away from the glowing eyes.
"It's you," the voice called calmly. Tang-Ji slowly opened her eyes. The voice seemed to come from a shadowy figure sitting on a rock ahead of her.
The shadow's form wavered but seemed to resemble the silhouette of a cat. Its unnerving, bright yellow eyes pierced the darkness and seemed to look right through her.
Behind its shadowy body appeared to be two dimly coloured lights, one a deep purple, and the other a faint yellow. The lights moved hypnotically, almost like they were swaying gently in the breeze, despite there not being any breeze so far underground.
'What's a cat doing down here? Is it an enemy?' She pondered. "Umm… Hello, kitty. Do you know the exit to this place?" She smiled awkwardly.
The shadow did not respond; instead, it tilted its head slightly. Tang-Ji put a hand over her face. "Of course that wouldn't work... It's a cat." She shook her head. "I need to find a way out of here, so I can get back to-"
"Kazami," the shadow whispered.
Her stomach dropped as her eyes widened.
'Did that cat just talk to me?'
"Indeed," the 'cat' replied bluntly, it knew her very thoughts. Again, she froze, shocked that she had not only discovered a talking cat but also one that could read her mind.
"Tang-Ji… I bring a message of utmost importance." The shadow cat's eyes did not blink. "A calamity approaches. Be wary."
"How do you know my name? And what do you mean, a calamity?"
"You will see for yourself when the time comes. I look forward to what you wish for this time, Tang-Ji," the shadow whispered.
"Until then, I will watch over you." The cat's shadowy form began to waver more than it had before, eventually beginning to dissipate and blend into the rest of the darkness.
"Wait! Who are you?! I don't even know your name!" She asked the dissolving shadow.
"Divi," the voice called. Its body had almost evaporated, leaving nothing of what it had once been.
Before she could even begin to process what had just happened, a larger shadow began to take shape where the previous one had been.
However, this shadow did not waver and had loud, heavy footsteps accompanying its arrival.
She looked up, awe-struck.
The thing that stood before her was a man, and a very tall, burly man at that. The man was dressed in very futuristic gear, well past the time in which she herself lived.
It seemed that he had cybernetic implants, as his left arm and right leg appeared to have a silvery, metallic glint barely visible underneath the fabric of his clothing. The man stopped marching and stood directly in front of her, his gaze aimed downward towards her.
She broke into a cold sweat and stared up at him awkwardly, wondering if he was a player or an in game mob.
"Have you seen a girl with blue hair and a white dress?" the man asked robotically.
"Blue hair, white dress? I'm not sure who you're talking about…" She answered honestly.
"No." His voice was adamant. "I am sure you know something! You were brought here for that very reason!"
Tang-Ji shook her head profusely. "I don't know what you're talking about!"
"Don't lie to me!" the man charged towards her.
It seemed that conflict was unavoidable now, and she had only herself to rely on.
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"Come forth!" She cried, summoning her Leere. A bright flash of light enveloped them both, blinding the armoured adversary as she brandished her Leere. Now brandishing her shears, sparks flew as their blades collided with the man's hulking frame.
She took a step forward, preparing to attack "Level 6 deployment, rush tech—" Tang-Ji began, however, her command was interrupted by a heavy hand on her shoulder, locking her in a vice grip.
Before she was given the chance to activate her skill, she was forcefully thrown across the room, her back landing squarely against the wall of the cave.
The force of the impact created a loud bang, causing several crystals and pebbles to fall to the floor. She winced as she felt a burning pain in her back.
"Agh!" She groaned in pain. The strength in her body began to leave her.
She began to slide down the wall, but before she could collapse, a single mechanical hand clamped down around her neck, hoisting her back up to eye level as if she weighed less than nothing.
"Where. Is. The girl?" The gruff voice demanded again as he choked her.
A mechanical sound hissed into her ears, and her gaze locked onto the spiralling neon light that emanated from his mechanical arm. Fear washed over her face as she realised that she was losing her grip on her Leere.
"I-I don't know what you're talking about." She managed to croak out the words, her voice trembling.
The hands that had been tightly gripping her neck released their hold slightly, offering a brief respite. Tang-Ji heard a loud, resounding bang before everything became black. It was as though a massive town bell had fit in her head and then begun ringing.
When she finally regained consciousness, she found herself sprawled on the ground, her head throbbing with pain. Virtual blood oozed from a gash on her forehead, forming a dark trail down to the ground. The mechanical titan grabbed her by the neck once again and hoisted her up, his grip unrelenting.
"I won't ask again; where is she? The girl with blue hair in a white dress."
'White dress? Blue hair?' Despite the excruciating pain in her head, she knew. 'Those descriptions only match one person… Ukiyo? But why? What does this man want with her?'
Tang-Ji remained resolute, refusing to utter another word. It was painfully clear that he was after Ukiyo. No other girl met his description but her.
The man smiled vilely and continued his work. Loud, thundering bangs echoed from the cave for roughly ten minutes, until they weakened and ultimately stopped.
The iron titan couldn't help but chuckle, seemingly impressed by her unwavering resolve. With a swift motion, he lifted his right leg and forcefully stomped it down upon her hand, which clung tightly to his leg.
This time, the cracking sound was even more pronounced than before, resonating through the walls of the dark cave like the sharp popping of corn kernels.
Tang-Ji, had endured the torture thus far, was at her limit, as her health crept slowly back into the red zone. Her five fingers were mangled beyond recognition, and her wrist had been twisted at an unnatural angle. She lay in a small pool of her own blood and tears, a result of the cyborg's unrelenting dedication to his work.
A powerful kick to the head sent her limp body hurtling towards the wall like a discarded rag doll. Her ears were ringing, and her body was numb, unable to do anything.
"You must be really dedicated to her, huh, girlie?" The man crouched over her.
She could only watch as his cybernetic implant transformed itself into a cannon. Neon light spiralled throughout its barrel, as he stood up and pointed it down at her.
"It's been fun, but you're of no use to me if you keep your mouth shut." The cannon began charging with a violent electric hum.
"Sayonara kiddo."