'Darkness...'

'Endless darkness...'

'How long have I been...' "Wait, haven't I done this before?" "Soren stated, as he was witnessing the materialization of the dark city he had once accidentally visited before, before being forcefully ejected from it. Once the dark city was fully materialized, Soren could once again feel the ground and stepped hard on the ground a few times, to make sure that it wouldn't collapse and cause him to fall to his death.

"So... The city was real after all... Honestly, can't say I'm really surprised... But still, it doesn't make my situation better now..." Soren commented in an annoyed manner, as he knew that he was in some really serious trouble, since for all intents and purposes, this city wasn't a part of the actual game since it was common knowledge that BCO took place in a medieval setting, with magic being the primary force that ran the entire world around, so the existence of a modern, metropolitan city covered in an endless darkness, with only a faint amount of light to illuminate the dark alleys, was completely unheard of.

'I wonder if they actually knew... Even if they knew, what difference does it make now...? Focus on finding a way out of here.' Soren wondered, before trying pull up menu in front of him.

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"Well... Crap..." Soren commented nervously, as he tried using every tab in the menu, but to no avail. Soren couldn't help but curse inwardly, after realizing his game menu was completely broken and useless in this situation, before closing it and trying to examine the immediate area. The alley itself was rather bizarre, since it didn't have any windows and there were no other objects around. In fact, aside from the concrete walls and floor, there absolutely nothing else of interest and if it wasn't for the dark and towering buildings in the distance, he wouldn't have thought that he was in a modern city.

'Where in Sam's hell am I? Is this even a city?' Soren wondered, as he spent a bit more time examining the walls and floor, before stopping completely, since this was just a fruitless endeavor. Since he had obtained a bit of information, he tried to plan his next course, but was immediately interrupted by a wet and slimy sound, coming slowly towards him. Hearing that sound, Soren couldn't help but shiver in fear, before dashing away from the slimy noise and taking the first left turn in front of him, in an attempt to hide from the source of the noise. As the source of the slimy noise was getting closer to him, Soren also moved deeper into the alley he was currently hiding in, while also being close enough the intersection to see the source of the noise.

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Soon, the source of the noise made itself apparent and it was some kind of a sludgy and black humanoid entity, with piercing and glowing white eyes that slowly scanned the alleys, before moving away from Soren and deeper into another alley. The moment the slimy noises disappeared, Soren's entire body collapsed from the tension, as he broke into a cold sweat and thanked his lucky stars that the slimy creature didn't find him. While doing so, he was curious of the kind of creature it was, but not curious enough to get close to one to try and find out. Instead, he was more focused on finding some sort of exit or haven, so he could rest and think calmly, without having to worry about some random creature trying to tear his head off.

Once he managed to recover, he decided to make his way towards a random direction and hoped to find a safe zone of some kind, all the while he was constantly encountering the sludgy, humanoid creatures. During his encounters with them, he realized that although these things were slow, they also had extremely acute hearing and almost no sense of sight, despite having multiple of the creature crawling right in front of him and even point their eyes at him at times, only to completely ignore him. After figuring that out, he made sure he was walking as silently as possible and after an unknown amount of time, he finally managed to find a point of interest, a door with light illuminating through it.

Once he entered it, a warm and relieving feeling enveloped his body, as if it was telling him he was completely safe and nothing would get him now. Although he wanted to bask in this feeling, he also knew that it wasn't the time for that and had to find a way out, as soon as possible. With that in mind, he started examining the room in full detail and started immediately with the walls and floor, hoping for some sort of secret exit that would take him away from this mess, but his search yielded no results. Next was the source of the light, which was a pale green lamp, which was deeply inserted on the roof, leaving only a small part of the light to protrude out of it. Lastly, he started examining the bizarre statue in the middle of the room, which was mounted over an empty basin. The statue itself was bizarrely shaped with tentacles on top tentacles, but its silhouette almost made it look like some sort of angel, watching over the empty basin. On its side, Soren found an round and deep indent, the same size as his fist and through a closer examination of the indent itself, a weird handle was found in its deepest point.

Seeing the handle deep inside the indent, Soren was initially hesitant for putting his hand inside the indent, as he was afraid it might chop of his arm or a trap might be triggered, once he pulled it, but he didn't have anything else he could examine in the room and he also wished to avoid being in the dark alleys with the slimy creatures. Seeing as he didn't have any other choices, aside from either pulling it or not pulling, Soren eventually opted for pulling the lever, as the room itself was a safe zone and felt it was more likely to be something beneficial, rather than something detrimental. Once he pulled it off, the tentacles statue started moving its tentacles away from the center and beneath them, a round white crystal appeared and started emitting light towards one of the walls. Soren then turned his attention towards the wall where the light shone and on the wall, a map had suddenly appeared.

The map itself was a labyrinth with a seemingly endless amount of hallways and a few rooms as well, some of which were either red, green or blue. Realizing that the map displayed a labyrinth, probably being the labyrinth he was currently located in, Soren decided to focus on finding the exit and the shortest path towards it. Eventually, Soren did manage to formulate a path from the room he was currently in, which was colored green with a yellow dot in the middle, towards the only exit of the labyrinth, which was the absolute top of the labyrinth, but his path required him to go through a four rooms, one of which was colored with a dark crimson hue, while the other three were colored in an deep azure hue. Seeing as he had quite a bit of distance left, Soren slowly and quietly made his way towards his first check point, one of the three blue room.