your inventory has been sold

for 0 points.>

137 075 points.>

I paint the lobby. I stare at the RED. I wonder where it all went wrong.

I didn’t die.

I lived.

I killed so that I could live again.

…I miss Simel.

Gritting my teeth, I shake my head. I let my eyes fall to the floor. There’s a spot between my toes that’s still WHITE. It bores inside my skull like a drill, leaving a trail of horrible WHITE in its wake. It’s only a tiny spot, but it’s all I can see, burrowing deep inside me, filling me up, replacing my blood and flesh and bones with nothing but empty WHITE.

I want to meet Simel again. I don’t know what I would say. Would I even say anything? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not.

I should ask Moleman about it once we meet again. He’ll know what to do, like he always does. How does he do it? How can he keep being right, keep doing the right thing, effortlessly?

Why can’t I be like that?

While the hole in my head yawns open and engulfs me like a massive beast, a little glowing box shines through the darkness.

Do you want to enter?>

My hand reaches out and mechanically presses the ‘yes’ button and then the floor beneath me shifts from the single everpresent WHITE to a gritty, textured dark gray. I stare at it numbly. My feet shift a little. Rock. Cold, slightly wet rock. I hear a drop of water fall somewhere, the echoes of it plinking to the floor cascading through wherever I am without stop.

My neck pulls my eyes away from the rocky floor towards whatever’s ahead of me, but I can’t see it because my eyes get stuck on the status box explaining the floor.

Hell Difficulty Seventeenth Floor:

The Murky Depths.>

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

<[Clear Condition]

Bring enough purses to the Beast of Fraud

to gain access to the abyss.>

After a second or so, the semi-translucent status box fades away, to reveal the creature behind it. I meet its eyes.

I glance at my own status.

Human Level 74

Agility: 211

Strength: 138

Stamina: 242

Magic Power: 82>

It’s doable.

I step closer to it. It mostly looks like a wolf, though It’s about the size of a brown bear. Gray fur. Long, fish-like tail. It’s got a crown clasped tightly around its neck almost like a collar, with chains connecting it to a not-comfortable-looking saddle on its back. It looks down at me with eyes that gleam of intelligence. When I scowl at it, it doesn’t scowl back.

than I had expected.>

My eye twitches. I twist my hand into a fist.

“And why…” I croak, “is that?”

to be beaten with me dead.>

“Oh? Is that so?” I suppress the urge to laugh in its canine face. “Do you think that’s stopped me before?”

It shoots a single, meaningless glance behind it.

this time may be different.>

I arch my neck to follow its gaze. “Is that the abyss? That murky little puddle?”

It doesn’t answer me. Typical.

Keeping one eye on the beast, I trace a wide circle around it to bring me to the puddle itself. The room as a whole is simply a single, dome-shaped cavern. There are no exits or entrances. The only source of light are the cliched glowing crystals embedded here and there in the seamless stone wall. Nothing else. Just me, this wolf, and a puddle on the floor. The beast doesn’t move an inch or react to my movement in any other way. It seems content to sit there, with its back to the puddle, like a dog guarding an empty house.

I look down into the puddle. It’s as black as tar. Experimentally, I lean down, bringing my face close to the surface. I can’t see a single thing down there. Not one. It’s just darkness, my own reflection, and a pair of gleaming eyes.

…Wait a second—

Before I have time to react, a bloated head flies out of the water, a pair of soggy jaws closing around my neck, soon dragging me down into the ice-cold water, giving me no time to so much as realize what’s happening. I can’t see anything, but I can feel the jaws biting down around my neck, another pair of jaws soon clamping down on my arms, and then my legs. The water is infinitely dark, but the status screen still shines through.

Whichever way I turn my head, another status message pops up, not to mention the additional pair of jaws grabbing onto me, dead-set on dragging me down further, and further, the waters around me as cold as dead flesh. My mind shifts into gear without any need for thought and I plunge my one free hand into the neck mere inches from my head, tearing out a soft, mushy throat as I do. But the jaws crunching into my neck only clamp down harder, gnawing, making my spine creak and my throat crackle. Soggy. Necrotic flesh. Dead flesh.

Zombies.

I grab hold of the jaw itself and tear it out, the tendons that would otherwise hold such a thing in place easily snapping off, the jaw easily loosening. Going by where I can feel the other jaws, I begin carefully crushing skulls and tearing off jaws, succeeding in escaping, but not in killing a single one of them.

With enough of the hounds removed, I begin doggy-paddling towards what I assume is the surface. My lungs are burning. How long have I been underwater? My limbs burn coldly. I swim only reacting by pure instincts to kick away the dogs snapping their jaws at me, the sounds echoing endlessly in the deafening water.

My head spins. I can’t tell which way is up or down.

Darkness. All around me. Jaws snapping shut, snap snap snap. Bones cracking, crack crack crack. Head spinning, lungs aching. Cold embrace of the abyss. Can’t see, can’t feel.

I see the abyss. The abyss sees me.

And then I see no more.