With a burst of energy, Vera drove her boots against the rusted iron.
Bang!
Bang!
On the third kick, the grate gave way, plunging downward to hit the stone floor with a deafening clang.
She crawled out of the cramped vent, dusting off her knees, only to freeze as she stood up.
The scale of the cavern was staggering. Ahead lay an absolute, suffocating blackness, broken only by the feeble amber ring of the lantern at her hip and a distant, ghostly neon-blue glow bleeding out from behind massive silhouettes, which looked like mini skyscrapers.
'What kind of absurd tutorial dungeon is this?' Vera thought, her heart hammering against her ribs. 'In any other game, a map like this is reserved for a late-stage raid boss. It shouldn't be sitting right outside the beginner zone.'
She looked up, squinting into the void. 'And the scale is completely wrong. We're deep underground, but I can't even see the ceiling. Are those actually residential buildings? A buried city?'
The soft scritch-scratch of shifting dirt broke the silence, drawing her attention to a crumbling ledge nearby.
She exhaled a long, heavy breath, trying to steady her nerves.
'Right, Gavrilo's ghost warned me about this,' She swallowed hard, staring at the looming structures. 'The ruins of a super-civilisation. Lost millennia before he was even born.'
She adjusted the lantern, its flickering light doing little to calm the knot tightening in her stomach.
'I really wish Adrien were here. This place is way too spooky to clear solo.'
As Vera took her first tentative step into the ruins, a sudden prickle of dread washed over her. The surrounding darkness felt less like an absence of light and more like a living abyss—watching her, and waiting.
Vera's knuckles turned white around the grip of her shotgun. She crept deeper into the ruins, every muscle in her body wound tight. The complete lack of enemies was worse than an ambush. The silence here wasn't peaceful; it was deafening, pressing against her ears until she could hear her own pulse.
'I hate this,' she thought, her eyes darting between the shadows.
'Just give me something to shoot. I don't care if it's a high-level boss, just end the suspense.'
She instinctively reached for her interface, desperate to message Adrien and find out where he was located. But the UI offered no way to reach him, and while the game allowed real-time text alerts through their linked phones, it lacked an in-game messaging system between active players. To send a text, one of them would actually have to log out first.
'Stupid oversight,' Vera muttered to herself.
Logging out to check her phone wasn't an option right now. Leaving her avatar completely vulnerable and motionless in a pitch-black, unknown zone was a death sentence.A sharp clatter of shifting rubble cut through the silence.Vera whipped around, her lantern light catching a nightmare. A gaunt, humanoid silhouette stood in the darkness. Its limbs were unnaturally elongated, ending in grotesque, blade-like fingers that scraped against the stone. The thing twitched erratically, its torso snapping side to side accompanied by a wet, clicking growl. Long, leathery ears flicked, tracking her movement.The creature unleashed a mournful, skin-crawling howl and charged.
Vera raised the shotgun, lining up the sights, but just as her finger tightened on the trigger, the thing violently jerked sideways. It dissolved into a chaotic, zig-zag blur, erratic leaps defying normal physics. Every time she tried to lock onto its chest, it violently shifted momentum.
'Damn it! Where is Adrien when I actually need a tank?'
Realising she couldn't track it, panic took over.
'Screw aiming!'
She pulled the trigger blindly, relying on the weapon's wide pellet spread.
Boom!
The muzzle flash lit the cavern for a split second, but to her horror, the creature wasn't there. It had already ducked beneath the blast radius. Before the smoke could clear, the twitching horror lunged directly out of the dark, aiming straight for her throat.
Vera instinctively raised her weapon to block the strike, bracing for impact. Instead, the creature swerved. It swung a massive arm right over her head, shoving her backwards with unexpected force.What is going on? Her mind ground to a halt.
Right before her eyes, the monstrous silhouette fizzled, twisted, and melted away into a recognisable form. It was Adrien.
'How did the creature just turn into Adrien?'
"Move, Vera, move!" Adrien's scream shattered her daze.
She snapped out of it, only to freeze at the sight of what he was actually protecting her from.
An arachnid monstrosity the size of a small bus loomed over them. Its body was a sickening mosaic of fused humanoid parts sewn together like a butcher's tapestry. The twitching legs were constructed from dozens of human limbs bound together and weeping pus. Its head was a nightmare of melted human faces—young, old, male, female—all twisted into a single, grotesque lump of flesh. A dense, oily black smoke draped around its frame like a funeral shroud.
The beast screeched, a sound like metal scraping against bone. Adrien had already sliced off part of its mandible. Without missing a beat, he hurled a Molotov cocktail straight into its centre mass.
"What are you waiting for? Run for the neon light!"
Adrien grabbed her arm, yanking her forward. As they tore down the dark ruins, the shadows around them began to writhe. More screeches echoed from the dark as a dozen more silhouettes started converging on their position.
"Run, Vera! Run!"
Adrien's voice cut through the darkness. He vaulted over a collapsed stone pillar with a fluid, infuriating grace, navigating the fractured ruins as easily as a fish darting through water.
"Shut up! I'm doing my best!" Vera snapped back. Her boot caught the jagged edge of a shattered flagstone, sending her stumbling forward. She barely recovered her footing, her arms flailing wildly as she struggled to keep up with his blistering pace.
Behind them, the skittering horde closed the distance. Adrien twisted in mid-air, catching the lip of a broken archway, and hurled another Molotov cocktail over his shoulder. The bottle shattered against the skull of a twitching silhouette that had been inches from Vera's armour, exploding into a wall of defensive fire.
"We're almost there!" Adrien shouted, his heavy boots slamming into the dirt as he landed. "Just a bit more! Pick up the pace, Vera!"
Vera's lungs burned with the sharp scent of ozone and smoke. Her thigh muscles screamed in protest, but she forced her eyes open, staring straight at their only hope of survival. Ahead, a vibrant, ghostly neon-blue light pierced the gloom. The glare was so intense it made her eyes water, casting harsh, jarring shadows across the dead city.The light bled from the base of a massive, monolithic tower. Unlike the crumbling ruins around it, this structure stood entirely unblemished, soaring upward until its apex was swallowed by the overhead void. Right at its foundation, framed by the pulsing neon aura, was a heavy, reinforced doorway.
'Just a bit more. Please, please,' Vera desperately prayed, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs.She could feel the cold, unnatural draft of the closest creature snapping at her heels. But the moment she reached a certain distance, the harsh neon glare and the pursuing shadows abruptly vanished.
Vera slammed hard against the tower wall. Her lungs burned as she desperately tried to drag air through the narrow filters of her gas mask, her legs shaking like a newborn calf.When she finally forced herself to look back out into the gloom, her stomach dropped. Dozens, maybe hundreds, of the pale, twitching creatures wriggled in the darkness just beyond the neon boundary. They paced back and forth, their jaws snapping hungrily, their eyes fixed right on them, yet none dared to step into the light.
"The light," Adrien gasped, leaning heavily against the masonry next to her as he fought for breath. "They're deathly afraid of it. It kills them."
Vera turned to look at him, the relief of making it to safety instantly evaporating.His backpack was entirely gone. His armour looked like it had been put through a meat grinder—the breastplate was gouged open, his helmet was cracked down the middle, and dark, pixelated blood was soaking rapidly through his clothes.
"What the hell happened to you?" Vera cried out.Panic seized her. Since the beginning of this game, Adrien was the undisputed carry. He was the best fighter she knew, who rarely took a scratch, but seeing him like this, looking as if he might collapse and log out for good at any second, was terrifying.A dark crimson pool was already spreading under his boots.
"They happened," Adrien muttered, his voice dropping an octave as his stance wavered. "Look, my HP is in the red, and I've got a massive bleeding debuff. Hand over some health potions before my avatar drops dead. Trust me, neither of us wants to find out where the respawn point is in a zone like this."
Vera's hands scrambled frantically for her inventory pouch, her fingers slipping against the straps. But just as her hand wrapped around the cool glass of a potion, a raspy, ancient voice drifted down from above them.
"Oh my. Visitors. I don't remember the last time we had those here."