"I want to go home... I want to go home... I want to go home..." Noah kept whispering to himself, crouched, with his injured back facing the cave wall.

The yellowish eyes of the monster were aimed directly at Noah. There was... hunger and rage expressed in its horrific gaze. Since it was too large in order to squeeze in through the cave's opening, the bestial monster kept reaching in with its clawed arm, at the cowering Noah's direction. The creature was biting the air again and again. Saliva was sipping in between its sharp teeth, wetting the matted gray fur underneath.

The monster looked like a werewolf from the virtual fantasy games that Noah enjoyed playing, only far more horrifying and animalistic.

Seemingly frustrated at having its prey so close, yet out of reach, the bestial monster began to growl and ram against the cave's opening.

'...I have to do something.' A shaking Noah realized.

He lifted a heavy rock and hurled it at the raging creature's head. However, it appeared to only succeed in further enraging the monster, as the rock bounced off its grotesque head and landed on the cave floor. The infuriated horror began ramming into the narrow opening with much greater intensity.

'Brilliant move...'

Noah looked at the omni device on his wrist and the holographic display popped up in the darkness of the cave. Turning on the flashlight feature, Noah scanned the cave's interior, before finally noticing a narrow passage at the back of the cave.

Looking at the dark path and then at the furious monster, Noah decided to take his chances heading deeper into the cave.

'Sure, with my luck, something else will try to kill me there, as well, but it's only a matter of time before that monster is breaking its way inside.'

With a pained grunt, Noah knelt and started to squeeze into the opening, crawling through it as he heard the monster's growls persistently reverberating from the cave's entrance. Despite the pain that he was in, Noah found the growls motivating, pushing him to continue forward.

After a few minutes of crawling, the passage widened enough for Noah to walk, while slightly crouching.

Noah made a conscious effort to steer clear of dwelling on the hopelessness of his situation. Dwelling only served to demoralize and overwhelm him. Instead, he steeled himself and concentrated on taking the next step forward and then the next one.

After walking for a few more minutes, Noah began to notice blue luminescent mushrooms and moss growing on the cave walls.

While looking at the otherworldly flora, Noah noticed something moving up ahead. Immediately, he turned off his omni device's flashlight and hid behind a large boulder.

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He couldn't tell exactly what it was aside from the fact that the creature was long and had way too many legs, clicking on the rocky floor, as it squeezed into a narrow crevice in the cave.

Noah held his breath in fear, remaining concealed even after the creature had moved on. In that moment of silence, Noah became painfully aware of just how unwell he was feeling. Some of it was to be expected, considering what he went through: his stomach churned with... discomfort, he endured a brutal beating from a deranged Touched, suffered a nasty gash on his back, and tumbled down a rocky hill.

It was more than that, however. Noah's head was throbbing, and it felt as though every single muscle in his body was cramping.

With no other choice, Noah got up and kept walking. As he pushed on ahead, the path began sloping downward, still illuminated by the otherworldly flora.

Eventually the passage opened up into a massive, open cavern, with the flora providing some degree of visibility.

Hiding behind a rock, Noah took in his surroundings. The path he was on continued into the grotto, but to its right, was a massive chasm.

Noah gulped as his eyes adjusted better to the darkness. On the cave's ceiling were hundreds of monsters, hanging upside down. Worse yet, on the canyon's floor there must have been thousands of massive insectoids like creatures, moving about on top of each other in a way that made Noah feel sick to his stomach. Well, sicker.

What Noah beheld was the main reason as to why humanity had lost control over the majority of the planet.

When the two worlds had suddenly merged during The Great Fall, some changes were also made to Earth's own topography. This was disastrous enough on its own, as entire cities and towns had instantly found themselves at the bottom of the sea, buried under mountains, or midair, before crashing down.

Then there were the endless waves of monsters and abominations. Some nations, reeling from the merge of worlds, had employed a scorched earth policy. Even nuclear weapons were used.

It was then that humanity realized exactly how dire its situation was. After entire swaths of land had been decimated so as to no longer being worthy of sustaining human life, endless swarms of monsters would continue to emerge out of the depths of the earth itself. This new, merged world had deep, sprawling cave systems, teeming with monsters.

Worse yet, the noise and vibrations of the intense bombardments had awoken slumbering existences out of the depths of the earth, that should not have been disturbed.

During this hopeless era, as entire countries were being devoured by hordes of monsters, a military officer by the name of Arcturus Valke, had proposed the megacities strategy. Truly, the greatest project that had ever been undertaken by humanity.

This was common knowledge for the denizens of The Arc, something which Noah had learned in school. Now being in the subterranean cave system known as the Hollowed Depths, Noah knew that there had to have been other exits, back to the surface.

Again, Noah forced himself up on his feet, despite the pain that he was in, and continued advancing as slowly as he possibly could along the path, in order to avoid drawing unwanted attention.

It was at that moment that one of the creatures hanging upside down, on the cave's ceiling, must have lost its grip and begun to fall. The monster spread its large wings, but it was too late, as it crashed on the chasm's floor. Immediately swarms of insectoid monsters flocked to the fallen creature, devouring it in mere seconds.

The clattering noises of the insectoid monsters horrified Noah, but just as he turned his gaze away, something odd happened. Sickly green mist emerged from under the pile of monsters, as though it was ethereal and unhindered by physical barriers.

To Noah's dismay, the green mist was moving right at him.