The mushroom village was surrounded by large fields of moss. Those fields were surrounded by tall grass.

This ‘wall’ of grass functioned opposite to a wall. Enemies were encouraged to enter its kingdom, then lose themselves in the endless maze of green.

To leave, one could try two options: either follow the pattern marked invisible in the mud or perform something ‘unthinkable’.

Unfortunately, Sunny and his team didn’t know about that when entering the grass.

“That rock! That sharp rock, pointing outside of the mud! Master, you can see it, right? That rock with the white color! I think… no… I’m sure we’ve passed by that rock at least four times now!”

Luna’s yelled with frustration. She was right though. They’ve passed that rock much more than she realized.

Following her came Sunny. He was shorter than Luna, though much thicker because of the stones building up his body.

He wore a backpack full of necessary items for survival. Attached to it were a pan, a knife, and a small notebook he crafted from various rags and clothes.

“That stone?”

“Yes, Master!”

“Curious…”

“Should I kick it? Beat it up? Do rocks feel pain? I hope they do!”

Sunny used a handmade pen to draw the stone in his notebook. His movements were rough and heavy, and the finished picture looked like a child’s drawing. Still that was enough for now.

“Master, please! This is important! Do rocks feel pain?”

“How the hell should I know? Go and kick it!”

“Alright!”

She charged the rock.

“Fuck you, dumb rock!”

She kicked the rock and it didn’t move, but her leg made a cracking sound.

“UGEEH!”

She fell to the ground and rolled around in pain.

“Did it feel any pain?” Sunny scribbled in his notebook.

“No, but I did!”

“I see. Must be the user of some sort of mental projection, causing lesser lifeforms to act like total dumbasses around itself.”

Luna puffed her face in an upset embarrassment.

“That was uncalled for…”

Their conversation was interrupted by loud shouting, followed by a green slime falling between the two.

Boing!

Seidon’s body vibrated like jelly. It stopped only when Luna crouched beside him and grabbed his tiny face from both sides.

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“Servant Seidon, what did I tell you?”

“I’m sorry, Luna-gonyo! I’m so sorry! I just wanted to check it for myself…”

“And? Did you see it? The endless waves of green, blooming where the eye can see?”

“Yes! I saw many grass!”

Sunny’s excitement was through the roof. He wrote so much so fast, the pen almost caught on fire.

“Fascinating… truly fascinating… tell me, did you see any spores from up there?”

“No, Sunny-gonyo. Just grass.”

“Curious! Truly curious!” He reattached the notebook to his backpack. “There is no light source, yet we’re able to see each other. What’s even more curious, we don’t have a shadow.”

“Huh?” Luna looked under herself. There really wasn’t anything.

To test this further, she put her fists together and formed a small ball. She put that to her eye and looked into it. The inside of this ball wasn’t dark. She could see her palms.

“What magic is this?!” She recoiled.

“If I had to guess, we’re trapped inside a pocket dimension. That would explain the endless grass field and the many anomalies. But why… why are we going in circles?”

“Maybe the world keeps repeating itself?”

“That’s impossible. I had this suspicion for a while now, so I carved an X mark into the mud.”

“And?”

Sunny took a step back, revealing an X where he was standing.

Seeing this, Luna’s eyes became crazed from fear. She opened her mouth, but couldn’t speak. Her spiral into madness has begun.

Or it would have, were it not for Sunny picking up the sharp rock and throwing it with all the power he could muster.

“If my calculations are correct, that rock should land in about three… two… one…”

Thump!

Luna was hit in the head by the rock.

“UGEEH!”

“Yes!” Sunny rejoiced. “This dimension is round-shaped! All we have to do is walk around with a slight tilt and we’ll find the exit in no time!”

“More walking. Sounds fun.” Luna scraped his head where she got hit. “This stupid rock… I don’t want to look at rocks anymore.”

She gripped the rock tightly and equipped the posture of a pro baseball pitcher. Then, with all the force she could muster, she threw the rock into thick grass.

“Bullseye!” She shouted jokingly.

But to her surprise, the rock actually hit something.

It made a loud thump as if hitting someone’s skull. Then it fell and rolled straight back to Luna.

“M-Master!” She screamed, stepping away from the grass.

“Yeah? What’s wrong?”

“There’s someone in the tall—“

A hand grabbed her from behind and pulled her into the thick grass.

“Luna!”

Sunny and Seidon rushed after her, but she disappeared between the tall blades. Her fighting could be heard for some time, before being muffled by someone else.

“Assholes!” Sunny turned to Seidon. “Quick! Cut the grass with your water attack!”

“I can’t! I need to touch water before I can—“

“Fucking hell!” He rushed into the thick flora.

The grass repeated endlessly. He ran as fast as his stone legs allowed, but it felt like he wasn’t going anywhere. With every passing blade came grass, grass and more grass.

He heard something in the distance and ran after the noise. He tried to keep up with it, but his heavy body made it impossible. He was too slow.

“What is this, some kind of weird running competition? Tsh, I was always better with ball sports.” He took the gemstone from his head and threw it after the noise. “Let me show you!”

Fwoosh!

The gemstone flew through the sky like a baseball ball, going high above the ground. There he could see where the noise was coming from and catch a glimpse of his friend.

Luna was trapped inside a yellow sack which the attacker pulled after itself. The sticky substance slowly choked her to death.

A fit of immense anger came over Sunny’s mind.

As he approached the ground, the grass bent to his will. It formed into a wave, which he used to surf towards the attacker much faster than it could run.

When he was finally close enough, he tore off the nearby grass and formed it into a sharp lance, which he shot straight at the attacker!

Thwonk!

The lance pierced the attacker with a wet noise. It stumbled around in pain, before falling over and rolling away, detaching Luna from its body.

She crawled out of the sticky slime and coughed.

“Luna!” Sunny rolled next to her. “Are you alright?”

Still coughing, she grabbed the gem and ran in the opposite direction than where their attacker landed.

“Hey, hey! Where are you going? Luna? Answer me!”

“I can’t! W-We need to run as far away as possible!”

“What? Why?!”

But she didn’t need to answer. As Sunny looked over her shoulder, he was quickly left speechless by the eldritch horror that followed them.

A large centipede, its body made out of a hundred screaming faces and its legs being a thousand skinny arms of humans.

And while it crawled towards them much faster than they could run, the painful moans of the deceased echoed from the many mouths of the being.

It was a hymn of the deceased, inviting them to their fatal choir.