He was falling through the air, then finally crashed with a violent thud. As he scrambled through the pitch-black air and found his hands against the ground, small glass prickled into his skin with every struggle.
'Where—the hell am I?!"
This place certainly wasn't cold. He first prepared to be confronted by the freezing snowstorm of Hailfen, yet the only thing he could discern was the complete darkness in his eyes and the reeking smell of metal.
Jace had no light source, no Skill to produce flame or to see through the dark, and could only desperately sprawl his arms and legs. His thoughts even tried to formulate a response to the pitch-black in his eyes.
The Soul flickered into his eyes, scaring him half to death, but at least the transparent blue screen was visible.
[HP: 108/130]
He figured some spots on his body definitely bruised but that terrifying fall didn't kill him. If he would die, it would be from the prickling pain in his hands by the shards of glass.
In a desperate attempt to level his ground, he pushed his hands harder, embedding the sharp pain deeper in his arms, and shakingly stood. His balance was still disoriented by the fall and was much worse through the blinding darkness.
'Where—where is the…'
He patted what felt like his pockets, over and over, searching for the Port Crystal. Until he realized it was stuffed under his leather cuirass.
Gritting his teeth, he reached through his armor and fished around. His eyes must have been staring deeply at the darkness and he would have never known. It was damn near impossible to figure out where he was.
His best option was to use the Port Crystal.
As he pulled the crystal out of his cuirass, it had emitted a faint blue glow, sparing him enough light to see himself through the tenebrous shadows.
His arm was punctured in a layer of needles, which the rocky ground had mainly consisted of, and dripped in blood since his effort to stand.
But with his first instinct to scan the surroundings, he was able to deduce an obvious thought.
'This…is not Hailfen.'
He stood in a vast cavern of darkness, stretching endlessly as his glowing crystal could illuminate, with tall stalactites pointing down at him, raining drops of needles that flooded the jagged and uneven ground. There were no walls, but only rocky and hewn column-like structures that connected to the ceiling.
The columns were at least eight stories high, depicting the real scale of the cursed cavern that he was in.
Without showing too much shock and the feeling of being miniscule, he turned his attention back to his prickled arms and brushed off the needles. Some of them had stuck to his face due to the heavy fall.
He wanted to crush the Port Crystal immediately and escape from this hell.
But, a part of him wanted to explore. If there truly was a great evil lurking among the constant darkness, then it should have eaten him when he entered its domain.
'I guess I am really that crazy.'
He took his first step into madness, hearing the crunch of glass beneath his boots echo through the cavern. Any monster living inside this darkness would have known his presence by now.
Especially after that fall and awkward, loud yelp.
He walked deeper, holding his Port Crystal tightly in any need of an immediate escape. Though, the Soul would have to process his body before he would leave.
Jace hoped it wouldn't have to come to that situation.
The cavern was unsettlingly quiet, with only the audible sounds coming from his breaths and limping steps. He would assume his thoughts were even louder in the deafening silence. But with the urge to utter his voice, he felt any words that came out of his mouth were fatal.
He needed to respect the silence. After all, he was treading in the unknown.
Then a sound of a beating drum revered through the air. Jace had first assumed it came from his own fear but the source came from afar.
With nothing to lose, he traced the sound.
More dancing shadows from the rough columns etched on the glassy ground, as if an active flame had been ignited amidst the darkness. Though, a possible chance to see another human being didn't relieve Jace from his fear.
It was making it worse.
Jace crept behind one of the columns, gripping his Port Crystal closely for dire measures. He leaned his head over and narrowed his brow.
In one of the clearings, devoid of any glassed needles, was a pulsing sludge of crimson goo. Its movements were sluggish, only covering a total distance of a few inches in a minute.
He studied the eerie blob, unsure if this was the real danger of the strange Floor.
'That's…not the monster, right?'
The slime pulsated further, emitting another wave of crimson glow through the empty darkness. The sound it made was a muffled roar as if the voice was in pain, imprisoned inside the mysterious organism.
Jace couldn't take his eyes from it. He never thought he would empathize with monsters. But before he could break his thoughts away from the mass of goo, the organism was already heading towards him.
He would be startled if that thing didn't move two inches every minute.
It gurgled. Even if the monster had no eyes, it was staring at the infiltrating human.
He sighed, coming from the column, and stood before the blob.
'How do I kill you?'
Without the silver sword, he tried to figure out a way to slay the slime without troubling his hands. He was supposed to purchase a new weapon with the Tower funds but the Soul happened to force him into a detour here.
'I should have enough STR to stomp away a dying slime. Experience is experience.'
Jace slowly walked over, closer to the bubbling crimson mass, and crouched a few feet apart from it.
The slime continued to slowly inch towards him, stubborn and unrelenting despite its fragility.
'We're the same, huh?'
The muffled roars coming from the pulsating goo were disembodied, but they sounded saturated with rage of a monster.
One that wanted to destroy everything in its path.
He stared at the blob for a few seconds, wondering if his boots would just pass through the malleable monster.
'Could I even slay it?'
Then the slime suddenly jumped from the ground, launching its entire body to the crouched human.
Jace widened his eyes and instinctively raised his arms, shielding himself before the the slime's attack.
But nothing had came, or with any assumptions for how slime consumed its prey.
Instead, it was being absorbed into his arm.
Jace immediately sprung into action, pulling the slime apart before the organism could fully burrow into his skin. He began to panic, dropping the Port Crystal as he stumbled to the ground.
The slime wasn't coming off, rather, it was being sucked into his skin in a seamless way.
Almost as if it was entering into his Soul.
He cried out, clutching the last of its membrane before it sucked into his arm. But that was the last coherent thought he could muster, because a few seconds after, Jace began to enter a world of pain.
His muscles tensed to the extreme, his body convulsed, and his eyes rolled back as his senses only became prime receptors of the torture. His cries couldn't be heard, begging and praying for the muscles in his arm to stop ripping apart.
It felt like each nerve was being plucked from the inside, then to be mended anew by the Soul, just to repeat the same sensation again. A continuous cycle of suffering that he couldn't comprehend.
His breath stuttered in gasps, clinging onto the oxygen through the darkness as the unbearable agony continued to surge through his body.
Until, finally, the Soul echoed into his ears.
[Curse Obtained: Unbridled]
Jace refused to move in his own soaked clothes of sweat, catching his hoarse breaths as his body trembled from the lingering pain.
Looking at the transparent window with his barely fluttering eyes, there was a good enough reason to assume that he was still alive. Tears dripped from his eyes from the twitching muscles in his arms and legs, terrified that torture might arrive again.
But as he laid along the darkness, everything was just as terribly silent.
'I'm—in the Void…'
After a few minutes of gathering his remaining thoughts, he summoned enough courage to rest his trembling hands down on the cold stone.
He wasn't in the Void. He wasn't dead.
'Soul…'
The Soul flickered in his eyes.
[HP: 109/130]
His eyes tried to widen as a reaction. After that trial of torturous ordeal, he had not lost a single digit of health. He had actually regenerated one point from the Soul since then.
'What…the hell just happened to me?'
He forced his body to turn over and vomited. Somehow, that had relieved him so much more than he imagined.
A minute later of maneuvering his body around the mess, he weakly crawled towards the Port Crystal, not minding the amount of dripping sweat for such a trivial task.
Once he reached the luminescent crystal, he held the small item in his trembling hands.
He couldn't crush it.
'Come on…just break—and get me out of here!'
No matter how much strength he closed onto the crystal, his contained promise of freedom wouldn't shatter.
He tiredly exhaled, dropping his shoulders. He couldn't even remember when was the last time he was ever this exhausted.
'Don't tell me I'm stuck on the Floor, too. I guess the Tower and Soul isn't done wringing me out for their jokes.'
He snapped a turn into the empty darkness.
There was nothing. Was his eyes playing tricks on him again?
But he resumed his efforts at shattering the Port Crystal, hammering it against the ground over and over. He wanted to leave. He wanted to leave as soon as possible.
There was something there. He was sure of it, no matter if he was begging his mind otherwise. After being left in silence for the while, his ears were able to detect something other than quiet.
In other words, he wasn't alone anymore.
Jace slammed the crystal again, scraping it along the stone floor in a more desperate manner. He felt like a hundred eyes were staring at him, curious to find out the glow of his Port Crystal.
None of them assumed to be friendly either.
He snapped another turn behind him, only to be greeted with darkness again.
They were starting to surround the lone Climber.
In a last ditch effort, he shoved the Port Crystal into his mouth and strained his voice, summoning the fear and adrenaline left in his body to clench down.
His molars chipped, and some broke completely from the canal, but he was already numb to any pain to care.
The crystal shattered into his mouth as the air began to hum to life.
[Soul detected.]
[Beginning descent.]
He slumped back to the ground, pushing his body back in any direction that felt safe.
'Come on, come on! Hurry up, Soul! Do your job!'
Without the graceful glow of the destroyed Port Crystal, the darkness seemed to rush even faster.
Jace raised his arms again, bracing for what the worst could possibly inflict on him.
[Process successful.]
[ClimberJace has descended into the 11th Floor, Willow Valley.]