"..."
"......"
"Mn..."
"...Oh." He noticed her peeking around the corner, "You came back, good on you."
"Sorry for getting scared and running off like I did." She bashfully apologized.
"It's okay, not everyone's born to survive." He chuckled.
The man seemed friendly, though his appearance was rather unnerving, to put it lightly. Though his body had no external gilded parts, much like for Vastoria's case, his brain was made of complete gold. Not only that, but unlike Vastoria, he could undo the golden suture scars and freely show it to the world. This made her finally realize another key difference in his appearance when compared to the other male Heavenly Beings she's seen.
"You're bald!" She pointed at his shiny noggin.
"Hair don't really work well with my situation." He replied grumpily, "Besides, who needs it? All hair's good for is getting stuck in bad places and to give your opponents another thing to grab you by."
"That's... true." She finally lifted him up, helping him balance by placing his arm over her shoulder, "Energy, you said your name was?"
"Yep, yours?" He asked, "I can understand if you want to keep it a secret."
"A-Ah, no. I'm Vastoria." She hastily replied.
"That your real name?"
"Does anyone here know their real name?" She chuckled, "No, it's just an alias, I guess. Gotta call me something."
"Cheh, ain't that the truth." He laughed as well.
Once they got moving, it was a bit of a slow burner for a while before they got used to balancing on each other, but they eventually got used to it. Behind them Energy constantly left a trail of blood from his missing foot. It was terrifying for Vastoria to even look over her shoulder, and yet despite this he was as talkative as ever.
"What brings you to this fine establishment?" He asked.
"The Shrine? I... I heard of a rumor regarding this place." She quietly replied.
"You'd like to revive as well?" He raised an Eyebrow, "It's okay, you don't have to look so surprised. Everyone that's aiming for the Shrine believes that's what awaits us at the bottom."
"Rumors spread quick..." She noted.
"It makes sense. There's at least a trillion of us in Heaven now, so statistically, at least someone's gonna get bored eventually and wanna leave." He explained, "Not me, though."
"Eh? You don't wanna go back?" She furrowed her brows.
"You're crazy if you think I'm going back." He shook his head, "Scavenging for food and water, hopping from one shelter to the next, fighting off hordes of rotted... Nah, in comparison to that hellhole, this is way better."
Verily, not everyone's experiences in the Living World were the same. Some were born in an era of technology, others in a more steampunk setting, and then there are the medieval times of course. Vastoria understood this all too well, and she obviously had no reason to judge him for this decision. After all, she herself only wanted to figure out the secret to revival so that she could help Migu and her friends.
"Rotted... You keep mentioning that word in passing, but what are they exactly?" She gulped.
"It's what we call sick folks." He explained, "Poor bastards that got struck with a curse."
"You mean down there or up here?"
"Where do you think?" He groaned, "You ever heard of the Black Eye myth?"
"That's... No way." She found it hard to believe, "So, were you...?"
"Course not." He shook his head, "When someone's born with black colored Pupils, they say a cataclysm occurs for as long as that kid lives. I don't remember my time in the Living World, but I do know how life was back while I was there."
Each time a black Eyed child was born into the world, it was said to have cursed the entire next few generations that came after it. That being the case, there hasn't ever been any recorded witnesses throughout history of such a person existing. In other words, it was just superstition—A myth used to demystify the horrible events that would take place throughout the ages. Massive floods, famine, wars, and even more unexplainable things would befall the world. Energy, as it so happened, was born during one of these disastrous eras...
"A plague befell the world, made people lose themselves." He explained, "They would start to feast on the healthy humans, and given a couple more years, barely a third of the human population remained."
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"Geez, a plague that turned people into cannibals?" Vastoria shivered, "Scary..."
"That ain't even the worst of it." He continued, much to her dismay, "Their appearance grew disgusting over time. Their bodies began to rot off the longer they starved for, yet they would continue to attack relentlessly. They had human flesh on their minds and nothing else. Honestly, they didn't even look like humans anymore..."
"...."
A terrifying dystopian reality. The world he lived in was the most accurate depiction of pure, unadulterated nightmare fuel she had ever heard of. In comparison, the White Monsters truly did seem like child's play. Rotting cannibals that infected the world... And the worst part is that Energy lived through that. The fact that this is how he remembered the World of the Living means he's never seen a "normal" world, or at least he's forgotten about it. Of course, it all made sense now—No wonder he didn't want to ressurect back into such a world.
"So then, your brain being golden...?" She reasoned.
"Don't ask me." He shrugged, "Not like I'd remember."
Of course, the story behind an angel's golden parts was a mystery to everyone including the angel themself. For all he knew, he might've been eaten by the rotted, and he might've gotten that done by something else. He won't ever find out the truth, but given the disturbing nature of the wound... He probably won't ever want to.
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"And then?" She looked down, "What happened to that?"
"My foot? Heh, that wound's recent, I'm afraid." He shook his head with a pained expression, "Stepped on a trap, got it lopped clean off during my descent down the Shrine."
"That happened before I found you, then?"
"Well it couldn't have happened after, sunshine."
The Shrine's most noticeable effect—The swapping of the gilded and the White parts of a Heavenly Being's body. Vastoria first witnessed this through Throne's broken hand once he tried smacking the barrier just outside. In other words, these two were mostly reduced to their original human forms, in the sense that they could potentially get hurt like normal. Get hurt, or in this case, lose a body part. The only question that remained now was whether or not these wounds were permanent. What will happen to them once they leave the barrier? Once the reset happens, will the wounds carry over, or heal? Only time could tell.
"H-Hey, watch it!" He stumbled a bit once she stopped dead in her tracks, "W-Whoa..."
"You said this place was riddled with traps?" She pointed to the pressure plate just a few millimeters away from where she placed her foot, "This... wouldn't happen to be one of them, would it?"
"It would." He grit his teeth, "And coincidentally enough, it's the same one that took my foot from me. Nice catch."
Vastoria was petrified, this could have very easily ended her whole spelunking adventure just like that. Four centimeters, that's how close she was to stepping on it. Energy explained how the trap would have worked—Once she stepped on the pressure plate, it would drop down just enough to make her foot sink to around ankle depth. After that, the surrounding floor tiles would've snapped together like a mouth, gobbling up her foot in one gruesome chomp. This would also explain why she never found any traces left of Energy's foot when she found him lying up against the wall the first time.
"This Shrine, it's mighty clean despite the showy deathtraps it displays." He laughed once he realized this, "Maybe that's the kind of thing we're up against, maybe the Shrine's endgoal is to eat us whole. I have to wonder, just how many of our brethren are trapped within these walls."
"...Come on, not like we can turn back now." She scurried around the pressure plate before continuing down the stairs.
"I know." He followed suit.
Very soon, they had entered the next layer of the Shrine. Unlike the first floor, which didn't seem to have any traps and mostly resembled a regular stone brick interior, and the second floor which seemed to be going for the crystal cavern feel and a tiny bit of traps—The third floor was ruthless from the start."
"Jungle?" Vastoria looked around.
"Gah, something's coming! Look out!" Energy pushed her away.
A giant bat. It was human size, yet it's face most resembled that of a cockroach's. A horrifying mixture, and one you definitely wouldn't want to see lung at you full force. Vastoria got lucky with Energy shoving her to safety, but it did come at a mighty cost.
"AAHHHH!" Vastoria screamed her lungs out as the ungodly creation feasted upon Energy's body, "AAAAAHHH, NO! OH GODS!"
He was dead. The beast went for the face first, almost as if it knew that would cause him the most disgust and fear. It also had the effect of not killing him immediately, meaning for a grueling 10 or so seconds, the rest of his body shook wildly to try and salvage its owner's life. After a while, the mad flailing was reduced to mere reflexive twitches. After it was done, the headless body fell daintily splayed out on the floor in front of Vastoria.
"Y-YAAAAAHHHH!" She screamed, for she soon realized she was next.
As the bug bat craned its head slowly to its next victim, she feared even gazing upon its beady soulless Eyes. Shutting her own Eyes like never before, she felt liquid build up in her clenched fists. She was petrified, only able to squeeze the one thing she had on her—The fork. Her palm was bleeding wildly, but that remained the least of her problems. Hearing the loud, earblasting sounds of the insect wings flapping ever closer towards her, everything around her had seemingly stopped.
"...A-Am I dead?" She peeked her Eyes open to see a wild sight, "Eh? I'm back in the crystal caves... W-Wha-!? Energy!?"
"Vastoria." He looked directly at her with a bloodshot, wide open Eye, "What just happened?"
They were alive, and Energy's head was still attached to his body. They had somehow turned back the clock to just before the entrance to the third floor, and there was no crazy cockroach bat attacking them.
"...Heh, hahaha!" Vastoria began to laugh at the absurd situation presented to them, "So that's how it's gonna be, huh!?"
"Lady, what do we do?" He noticed her bloody palm, "V-Vastoria?"
Regretably, she was still shaken up from the encounter. Even after she had returned to safety, she still tightly clenched the fork in her hand to the point where she bled. The bug monster was there, waiting to pounce on them and deliver the gruesome, horrifying death once more. They had no other choice but to go deeper, and it appeared that they had infinite retries, with each new floor reached serving as a sort of checkpoint. To make matters worse...
"Don't you get it, Energy?" She turned to him with a crazed smile, "Even if we killed that thing, this is only the very entrance."
"...In other words, we're only getting started." He sighed, only having the strength to accept their fate, "Meaning if we wanna reach the bottom, we better get used to seeing some real fucked up shit."
"How many more deaths do you reckon we have left?" She asked.
"Let's try and avoid having to find out." He sat down before the staircase, opting to think up a proper plan to combat the monsters that lurked further below, "Not everyone's born to survive."
"But we are." She decidedly agreed, choosing to sit down with him and do things properly, "We are absolutely not gonna die a second time."