Amidst the comforting haze of incense and the muted rustle of aged tomes, a timid knock rippled through my chamber's solitude. I opened the door to find a a woman from the village, Mira, her eyes awash with unshed tears.

"May I come in, Miss Aeona?" she hesitated.

"Of course," I answered, all warmth on the surface, as I invited her into my private sanctum. "What seems to be ailing you?"

"My brother… he turned into something unimaginable before he died two nights ago," she faltered, looking vulnerable. "He hid something valuable years ago, and I want to find it."

Aeona was aware of her deceased brother. He was the first victim who turned into a monster by an unknown mean and has cause an uproar in the village. "A valuable object?" I pressed, my eyes narrowing slightly. "Can you describe it?"

"It's a family heirloom," she whispered, "part of our mother."

"Ah, heirlooms always carry their own burdens, don't they?" Smiling softly, I fetched a brazier from my shelf and centered it between us. "We'll use a trance to delve into your subconscious. Ready?"

Mira nodded, desperation clouding her gaze. I lit the ritual herbs, their scent wafting in plumes of aromatic smoke.

"Close your eyes. Breathe. Focus," I instructed.

Her body slackened, face losing tension. I inhaled the herbs too, keeping myself lucid enough to wander her mental labyrinth.

Unaware of the questions I will now ask inside her subconscious, I lead with another question first. "Now, think back. Had your brother mentioned seeing anyone unfamiliar recently? Any mysterious acquaintances?" I inquired, directly targeting her subconscious.

An image flitted across her inner landscape, murky but noticeable, a stranger shrouded in shadow.

"Intriguing," I mused, exploring the vague edges of her subconscious thoughts. "Did he ever mention why he was meeting this person?"

Her mental landscape shimmered with uncertainty, tinged with a flicker of suspicion.

"Can you recall any detail about this individual? A name, a face, anything?" I pressed on, diving deeper into her subconscious.

A confusing swirl of vague images and sounds appeared in response, but nothing concrete.

"Did your brother exhibit any odd behavior lately that you noticed? Anything out of character before this meeting?" I continued to probe.

Her mental echoes reverberated with more uncertainty and a gradual dimming of any informative light.

"It seems like you genuinely don't know more. Would that be accurate?" I asked one final question, feeling the limitations of her subconscious reach.

The misty expanse of her inner world felt barren at this point, signaling her ignorance on the subject.

"Enough to build on," I whispered to myself, but before I draw us both back into full awareness, I ask her the question that she wanted to know.

After getting the answer, I and Mira became sober once more. "The heirloom you seek is buried near an old sycamore tree. You know the place?"

Her eyes fluttered open, wide with a mix of relief and latent sorrow. "Yes, I remember now. Thank you, Miss Aeona."

As Mira exited, Targon burst in, flushed and frantic. "Aeona, I couldn't find Aldrich anywhere. I tried—"

"Wait," I interrupted. "You're searching for Aldrich? Why?"

"I wanted to apologize for earlier after you vetted for him but he's vanished," Targon said, words tumbling out.

"Let Aldrich be. He can fend for himself," I dismissed, already contemplating our next dark and winding path.

***

I plummeted through the gaping hole, my stomach lurching with each second of freefall. The sensation was disorienting, as if gravity itself had betrayed me. When I finally landed, I was greeted by an unfathomable horror. Blood, viscera, and unidentifiable organs were strewn across the floor. It was a sea of gore, but something was eerily missing, bones. No skeletons, no traces of structure. As if the bones were either meticulously removed or had never existed at all.

The air was rancid, an overwhelming stench of decay that instantly clawed its way into my nostrils. My eyes widened at the incomprehensible sight. For a moment, I was paralyzed, overtaken by an emotional concoction of revulsion and dread. I'd never seen something so vile, so aberrantly gruesome.

Then, an unsettling laugh escaped my lips. A laugh of realization. This was all part of the game, wasn't it? Just an incredibly detailed, unnerving level I had yet to experience. I took a deep, quivering breath to steady my racing heart, consciously forcing myself to ignore the splattered remains squelching under my shoes.

Each step was a calculated risk, my shoes squelching into the organic muck below. The stench of decay was overpowering, but I fought back the urge to gag. As I ventured deeper into the abyss, the twisted landscape started to tug at a memory. I had seen this place before, but not with my own eyes, instead, with the cold detachment of a gaming headset.

Back in the game, it had been high quality pixels and polygons. But here, everything was distressingly tangible—the coppery scent of blood, the muffled sound of my own labored breathing. I almost missed the sterility of the screen, the separation between this horror and my reality.

"The Hidden Abyss, The Eternal Passion" I muttered, finally piecing it together. This hellscape had been a zone in the game, a place so controversial that it sparked outrage. Players raged about its gruesome visuals, its lack of morality. Eventually, the developers had caved, pulling the area out of the game, but not before some found a way to glitch back in until that was even patched.

Of course, I played the game offline, version 0.9 release, the version before it went out of beta. I and many other hardcore players thought that it was intended it to be played. Even some of the developers agrees that version 0.9 was the best, but unfortunately it was hard to access it if one didn't join the beta.

The version after 0.9 were more balance changes to make the game easier and hardly any bugs were fix because surprisingly there were few until more changes were made and bugs were introduce.

I shook my head, clearing the unneeded thoughts. I couldn't afford to lose my focus. It was a nightmare made flesh, sure, but it was also a level I had beaten more than once. The parameters might have changed, but the objective remained the same, survive and defeat the boss.

I couldn't go back; the portal I'd come through had vanished like smoke in the wind. So I kept on, nudging aside pieces of organic matter, each slip on the wet, fleshy floor sending shivers up my spine.

I walked towards the end of the area. Trapped. That's what I was, hemmed in by jutting rocks on all sides. Above me was an expanse devoid of ceiling with dimly lit flame occasionally lighting up, begging for someone to escape through. Climbing out was the obvious way out, but I had something crucial to find first. Something now buried beneath a mire of flesh and organs.

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The moist tissues squelched underfoot as I scoured the area. The overwhelming stench of decay clawed its way up my nose, threatening to turn my stomach inside out. It's just a game, I reminded myself, steeling my nerves. But then, the system pinged me.

[Bearer of Maddening Fortitude... prevent from sanity from going any lower...]

[Bearer of Maddening Fortitude... prevent from sanity from going any lower...]

I was immune for now, courtesy of a temporary buff, but time was ticking away.

As I sifted through the grotesque debris scattered around the cavern, my eyes scanned for the elusive item that could make completing this hellish landscape possible. However I couldn't find it, it was not here, I moved the filth faster and faster, ignoring the gunk getting stuff under my nail, but nothing. It wasn't there like it was in the game, and without it, my death will come before I even see the boss. Just when I was about to lose hope, a sickening, fleshy thud reverberated through the air, wrenching my attention away from my search.

Turning my gaze toward the noise, I spotted the fallen monster sprawled on the cavern floor. Intermittent flickers of flame from above sporadically illuminated its form, casting ominous shadows and revealing features that haunted the imagination.

The monster was an abomination, a tapestry of grotesque elements woven together in the most unsettling way. Its tentacle-like appendages writhed, damaged but still seeking, as if in a perpetual state of torment. Broken limbs extended at bizarre angles, looking like shards of obsidian, and ended in razor-sharp claws—claws that promised pain. The sight of it amplified the mounting tension I was feeling, layering onto an already surging well of frustration.

This cavern, a hellscape of slush, slop, and unnatural noises—felt like it was alive, inhaling and exhaling its grotesque essence with each reverberating slurp. The sounds scraped against my fraying nerves, each one like a splinter being wedged deeper into my psyche.

For what felt like an eternity, I'd scoured this abyss without finding what I so desperately sought. I could feel the thin strands of my sanity unraveling, each minute stretching them taut until they began to snap, one by one. My thoughts started to swirl with an unsettling blend of madness and desperation. The line between rationality and lunacy was blurring, and this monstrosity—this affront to all that was sane and logical—became the perfect focal point for my disintegrating mental state.

Seemingly aware of my intent, the beast unleashed a scream—a chaotic dissonance that rattled the very core of my being. As it charged, its multitude of tentacles whipping through the air, something within me snapped. My Madness Insight was fully utilized, sharpening my perception until the world around me started to blur at the edges, skewing reality in a haze of borderline insanity.

Time seemed to elongate, and I dodged. The monster's tentacles grazed past me, close enough to stir the fine hairs on my neck. The proximity was needlessly risky, but I didn't care. A reckless grin stretched across my face as I danced on the knife-edge of danger and madness. The very imprudence of my action, the high-risk maneuver with no rational reward, seemed to further fuel my crumbling sanity.

It wasn't about being safe or wise; it was about indulging that unhinged part of me, even if for a second. And in that moment, defying sense and logic, I felt inexplicably alive—embracing the chaos as my grip on reason continued to fray.

I reached out and snatched one of the monster's flailing tentacles, pulling its hideous form closer for a gruesome face-to-face.

Ah, there it was—a vile visage I'd seen before but conveniently avoided on most of my in-game runs. Even in this nightmarish corner of the game world, this beast was a rare find. Having it this close was both sickening and fascinating, a dichotomy that tickled the edges of my fraying sanity.

I had avoided this area like the plague during my gameplay, not just for its difficulty but for the unease it instilled. Now, face to hideous face with its resident monstrosity, I felt a strange mix of revulsion and nostalgic dread. A part of me relished this perilous intimacy, a high-stakes dance that was both danger and sport. Even in this hellish setting, a warped version of the game I thought I knew, my excitement was genuine. And that realization made me question my sanity even more.

I channelled the Harbinger's Fury, my fist took on an ominous shade of blackish-red and I lunged forward and slammed it into the monster's form, sending it sprawling against the frigid, stone wall. The impact reverberated through my arm, a kinetic thrill that felt like striking a sandbag yet infinitely more visceral. This wasn't just some abstract damage figure flashing on a screen; I felt the actual, satisfying crunch of my knuckles connecting.

In that moment, I sensed a rift between my past self and the powerful being I'd become. I was not the same player who had merely navigated this world through clicks and key presses; I was a force within it.

The monster was still twitching—alive but barely. My earlier attack lacked the devastating effectiveness of the heroic sword I'd used on the grinning monster. Still, it was incapacitated enough for me to approach and deal the final blow. With a swift movement, I splattered its inky form across the rock, uncovering something utterly unexpected within its gut.

Then my eyes fell upon something half-buried in the gory mess. A strange artifact, crafted from what looked disturbingly like human flesh. I'd never laid eyes on such an item before, but I had scrolled through forum posts of a lucky few who claimed it was the key to escaping this accursed hidden abyss.

As I clenched the grotesque, flesh-like artifact, a surge of unsettling energy coursed through me, offering a glimmer of hope amid the despair. Although not the object of my feverish search, it presented an alternative route through this cave of horror, a grim, yet strangely comforting revelation.

That's when I decided to speak the mysterious chant: "Atash-Na N'gha Ya N'ghft." The words reverberated through the murky abyss, binding to the fabric of this twisted reality. Activating Ethereal Emancipation, I felt the metaphysical chains around my sanity shatter. A tide of clarity engulfed me, dissipating the madness that had enveloped my thoughts like a thick, suffocating fog.

Grasping the artifact tightly in my restored clarity, regret washed over me for not invoking the skill earlier. My previous actions, confronting peril for mere thrills, suddenly seemed a frivolous gamble—recklessness bordering on insanity.

The skill had done more than illuminate the physical dark; it pierced the murkiness clouding my judgment. The unnecessary risks I'd taken were laid bare, a foolish dance with death that could've been sidestepped. Ethereal Emancipation hadn't just freed me from this nightmarish realm; it liberated me from my own misguided bravado, for now.