A part of me was rather amused at the realisation that a nice, dark alley in the middle of the night, a place anyone should normally avoid, was a lot more comfortable than the building I had called home. Granted, that was mostly due to that building, along with everything else, being on fire and yet, thinking of a stereotypical dark alley as the safest spot felt weird.

Or maybe my mind was just latching on to random thoughts, trying to cling to small bits of sanity, in a world that had gone completely off the rails. It wasn’t just the burning buildings, the blue flames getting increasingly replaced with ordinary, yellow-orange fire, or the cars that seemed to randomly explode, worst of all were the people, or what was left of them. Just on the short dash between the backdoor and the dark alley I had retreated into, I had seen more of those monsters, mostly on balconies far above but some were in the process of reaching the ground. In one case, that process demonstrated just how insanely sturdy those things were, when it jumped off its balcony on the third floor, crumbling into a heap on impact, only to stand back up, as if nothing had happened.

And then there was the noise. Not just the screeching, snarling and generally monstrous sounds of the changed humans, but the screams of fear and pain, the sounds of destruction and chaos. It was enough to hasten my steps, even if haste could easily ruin my stealth. I just wanted to get away from it all, somewhere I might be able to close my eyes for a second and catch my breath, both figuratively and literally.

My considerations were interrupted by movement, as a burly shape stepped into the alleyway, blocking my way. The flames in its eyes gave away that it wasn’t human any longer and knowing that the space was simply too narrow to avoid it, I readied myself for battle.

For once, I wasn’t just bumbling into it, my stealth and Darkness magic enough to avoid immediate detection, but that just gave me extra time. It took me a second to draw one blade from beneath my cloak, keeping the other hand free to use my magic. With practised ease, I managed to draw the runic formation with just a few, rapid swipes of my hand, the sizeable hailstone smashing into the creature's head, with me following just a few steps behind.

I idly noticed that the magical impact seemed to be causing quite a bit of damage, especially when I controlled the hailstone with Ice Magic, smashing it into its head again, the distraction enough to let me get within striking range. It had either ignored me, not recognised me as a threat or something else entirely, but whatever the reason, it only started to react after I jammed my blade into its chest, hoping that basic anatomy would hold true and getting an arm’s length of steel into the chest was a bad thing, even if your eyes were burning pits and there was very little human about you.

Ripping the blade back out, I backed up, just in time to dodge a brutal swipe that would have caved my head in. Thanks to my dodge, the attack only managed to hit a metal trash container, caving in the side and reminding me that these creatures were stronger than they had any right to be. But with their increased strength, there came a massive decrease in intelligence, as it demonstrated when it lunged forward, putting itself on a nicely predictable path and giving me all the momentum I could ever wish to exploit. The result was another clang and the trash container was further deformed when I guided the lunge into the metal, the creature bleeding heavily by now. But not heavily enough and in the brief moment it was stunned after the crash, I stabbed down once again, this time aiming for the neck.

For a moment, my blade caught on the spine before it continued to move with a rasping sound that made me cringe in disgust. It was only thanks to the experience of Mundus, hardening me against the horror of violence and the sensation of killing, that I managed to keep a grip on my blade as I watched the monster still, the light fading from its eyes.

In death, it looked so remarkably like the man it had been in life, I had to fight to keep my breakfast from making a push for freedom. My hand started to shake as reality crashed into me and I stumbled back.

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This was no game, there was no capsule, this had been a person. One I likely had seen before, passed by on the street. Who was now lying dead, killed by a stab to the chest, blunt trauma to the head and a second stab to the neck. Killed by my hands.

There was a flash in the corner of my eyes and I realised it was a tiny, blue disturbance, one that had been there for a while.

Pushing the disturbance away, I kept going, needing to get somewhere safe before I dealt with it all. And there was a lot to deal with, even if most of my mind was busy with my immediate surroundings, trying to remain as quiet as possible while keeping an eye out for monsters and flames, a small part of me was analysing the overall situation.

And unless I was completely insane, in the grip of a massive, large-scale hallucination or some sort of lucid dream, the entire area, probably the entire world, was undergoing a fundamental change, with profound consequences I couldn’t even begin to imagine. Road to Purgatory, the name flickered through my mind for a moment and I had to forcibly suppress a harsh laugh. What came at the end of the Road? Purgatory, the flames that cleansed the deceased from their sins by virtue of burning them away.

Looking around, it was such a fitting name and about as subtle as a punch to the face. Only, nobody would have imagined it being that fitting, or maybe somebody had but decided that it was laughable. Who would imagine that a company would set up a game to warn or prepare for the end of the world, or whatever they wanted to accomplish with it.

Another piece of the puzzle tumbled through my distracted mind, as I made my way across the road, making sure to stay as far from the burning cars as possible, sticking in the deepest shadows I could find. Sticking where my magic could conceal me.

Pantheon Entertainment, and the Gods bestowing the Legacy of Morgana on me?

But what did that mean for Mundus? Had it all been real all along? An almost forgotten memory sprang to my mind, from long ago. Sigmir had shown me a system message, right after we had cleared out the Barrow Den, all those many months ago. It had spoken of a group of visiting Travellers, needing to be taught by the natives.

Needing to be taught, taught for what? Taught for the coming apocalypse?

Shaking off the questions, I focused on my immediate surroundings, trying to figure out just how deep the rabbit hole went could come later For now, I needed to reach a safe location, to figure out the next steps to ensure my own safety and survival. I had no doubt that the current situation was bad but I was just as certain that it would get worse. How much worse, I wasn’t sure, but from what I had seen, I would think a lot worse.

As I moved, I could see a few humans, those without burning eye-pits, but I could see many more creatures with them and that was ignoring the ever-spreading flames and the way anything electric seemed to be either exploding or not working outright.

Pushing past the dread and uncertainty, I pushed myself to keep going, focused on the immediate future. The park was looming ahead of me, a nicely dark place, with only a few, sparse blue flames and no real fires. The street lights were already gone but with the distant fires, there was enough light for me to navigate, or maybe my night vision was getting better. Darkness-Affinity had always improved my senses in the dark, so maybe…

For a moment, I considered just sitting down on a park bench, but after a second of consideration, I decided against it and pushed into a gap between some shrubs, trying to conceal myself as much as possible.

There, I finally could take a deep breath, my mind uncoiling from the tension of a prolonged flight-or-fight situation and beginning to unpack things in a rational manner. When a scream threatened to rip out of my throat, I hurriedly stuffed a fist into my mouth, biting down and tasting a familiar, coppery taste on my tongue.

With my fist still in my mouth, I finally focused on the small, blurry blue notification in the corner of my vision, willing it to open up, just as I had done in Road to Purgatory. Or was that on the Road to this Purgatory?