When Nar and Tuk woke up the others, their rest hadn’t been as restful as it had looked.

They woke up sluggish and groggy. Almost more tired now than they had been before they had slept.

“Ah!”

Nar whipped his head around, towards the source of the scream.

Tuk stood over Viy, with his hands raised in a placating gesture. “It-It's just me, Tuk! We-We have to go.”

Viy had a demented look to her. Like she had been pulled straight out of her worst nightmare, and didn’t know in which reality she stood.

“Viy? Tuk asked again, in a hushed, gentle voice. “Are you okay?”

Viy licked her cracked lips and nodded, her eyes still seeing something none of them could.

“I-I’m fine… I’m fine.”

She ignored Tuk’s proffered hand and stood, grabbing tightly onto her spear for support. She gave her back to the questioning stares of the party, and no one pressed her.

It can’t be nice sleeping in this, Nar thought, casting his eyes about the corridor, despite not being able to see the Pressure.

“Are you guys okay to keep going?” Kur asked, rubbing his eyes again. He seemed to be struggling to come fully awake.

“I’m good,” Nar said. “But, I'm down almost to half.”

“I’m a bit under half,” Tuk said, pulling his eyes away from Viy. He looked shaken from what had just happened.

Jul just nodded.

Kur covered a yawn with a fist. “Alright, we’ll keep going for another while. I don’t think we’ll go far though. Not unless we get out of this.”

Nar helped him to his feet.

“Tuk, if you get tired, I can carry you,” Kur said.

Tuk offered him a sliver of a smile. “Thanks, boss. Though I think Nar should be the one doing the carrying.”

“Ouch,” Kur said, and stared down at Nar.

For all intents and purposes, Kur ought to be the stronger of the two. He was an altei after all. Not only was he a full head taller than Nar, altei were also much more muscular than humans. And yet, there they were.

“Attributes, eh?” Kur said, shaking his head. “I still can’t fully wrap my head around it. It’s… kinda crazy.”

Nar nodded. Mul himself was probably stronger than Kur by now. Such was their new, strange and wondrous reality under the System.

“Alright, let’s get going,” Kur said.

Once again, they dragged themselves forward, after the yellow arrows that guided them to their freedom.

Nar felt as though he was still right where he had started. He knew that a month had passed. It was a full 58 shifts, an entire third of a season. But encased in those walls, ceiling and floor, everything continuously melded into one. It was like he was going nowhere.

There were no signs of anything. An end, a reason, nothing. All there was, were the yellow arrows and the endless corridor. They would get out only when the Crystal allowed it. Whenever that may be.

The Pressure suddenly tripled on top of him.

Nar stumbled to one knee, and his sight went blurry.

His teeth rattled against each other, and he clenched his jaw to keep them from shattering against one another.

His body vibrated in an all-encompassing hum that climbed up his feet, up his legs, his torso, and liquefied his insides.

He thought he heard screams from far away.

Something choked him, and cut his sight. In his blindness, he trashed and panicked, but soon, he was gone.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself laying on his side.

Around him, the Pressure was back to its annoying state, its low buzz scratching him deeply within his mind.

Nar made a face and pulled himself to his knees.

The floor moved under him, and on it, a dark puddle of something glistened in the low light.

Oh, isn’t that nice?

He thought he had left the days of puking scarlet behind him, but there was nothing else that it could be.

He touched his ears and nose and was not disappointed at the crimson stained fingers.

And you thought it was finished, didn’t you? You idiot....

He did a quick take of his HP, to check the damage incurred.

103? Only 7 points of damage?

He considered the blood on the floor.

How was that such a low damage?

He felt raw inside. Like something had been shoved down his throat and used to scrub his insides. His head was heavy and his limbs numb, however, the damage seemed to have been focused on his chest.

He raised a hand to the middle of his chest and grimaced. It felt so devastated inside him. Not really in a painful way, or a damaged way either. He couldn’t really put it into words.

Around him, the others stirred, one by one, in the usual order.

“Are you guys alright?” he asked them in a rough rasp.

Cen ignored him, and so did Mul. The brawler was staring at his sister in shock and concern, as she, in turn, stared at the blood at her feet with a pale gray expression.

“This is not good,” Tuk muttered, staring at his own puddle.

“Just check your HP for now. It didn’t do a lot of damage to me,” Nar said. “And Kur will be up soon. He’ll tell us what to do. Jul? Jul?”

Nar stumbled to his feet and swayed towards the scout, a fresh wave of sweat covering him. The girl hadn’t moved yet.

“Jul?” he tried again.

Nar’s stomach dropped further with every step he took towards her motionless figure.

It can’t be…

“Jul!” he shouted, dropping down heavily next to her.

Jul startled and hid her face.

“W-What?” she stammered.

Nar heaved a sigh. “Damn it… I thought you were hurt.”

He collapsed against the wall, vertigo tugging at him, and covered his eyes.

Ah, I moved too fast.

A few seconds later, he heard Jul drag herself towards his side, quietly.

Blood puking. Nausea. Ravaged chest. It was like he was back at the machine.

What had been the point of leaving if he was just going to feel as bad as before? Unless this was just the Crystal’s sick way of getting back at…

No. No! Forgive me. I didn’t mean to.

Or had he? Under the strain, he found that his old self was slowly coming unbound. Released from the forced yolk of a piety that deep down he thought was underserved.

The sound of soft sobs brought him back.

Oh, damn it…

Jul was quietly shaking, her face buried in her arms.

“Jul?” he asked softly.

The scout did not reply.

“It will be okay. Don’t worry. We’ll get through it.”

The quam lifted her face to him, and Nar faltered under the intense stare of her large, green and blue teary eyes. They drew him in, as though into an endless pit. At the same time, they felt so sharp. So penetrating. Like they could see right through him, and all the truth he kept hidden within.

His next words died in his throat. Before eyes such as those, how could one lie, even if done in consolation?

“What happened…”

Nar turned to the distraction with guilty relief washing over him.

“Kur?” he asked. “You alright?”

Kur massaged his chest. “No… I don’t think I am.”

“Check your HP. I don’t think that did a lot of damage,” Nar said.

Next to the party leader, Gad frowned. “How? We’ve puked blood.”

“I think the bigger question is why we didn’t have any warning about it?” Mul asked, glaring at Jul.

The scout looked away, shriveling into a small ball, trying to hide behind Nar. There was the real Mul.

“I-I didn’t hear anything!”

“We just puked blood, for Crystal’s sake! What good are…”

Nar leaned forward, blocking her from Mul’s baleful stare.

“Even if you knew it was coming, what would you do, uh?” Nar shouted at him. “Nothing! You can do nothing! We will suffer here until we have suffered enough! And we haven’t suffered enough yet!”

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

Nar regretted raising his voice almost immediately. It left his already ravaged chest feeling worse. But at least it seemed to shut up the brawler. In fact, his words seemed to have shut up everyone.

Nar looked away from Mul’s shocked expression, and an awkward silence covered the party. Nar feared having let out too much of his real feelings and thoughts.

“We need to keep moving,” Gad said, eventually. “We could be hit again. Probably will.”

“Yes,” Kur said with a sigh. “Jul, was there really no warning?”

“No… There was nothing. Nothing at all, I swear! It just happened!”

“It’s alright, I believe you,” Kur said.

Nar listened to the words as though they were a conversation that did not concern him. He felt ill, disgusted at himself, and he didn’t even know why.

“We’ve barely moved today,” Tuk said. “Are we… Stuck here?”

Kur shook his head. “I don’t think so. This is just the next obstacle we need to surpass. And we will surpass it. Simple as that.”

The party leader looked up, staring at the ceiling above him. Or perhaps, at what might lay beyond it.

“We might be under this for a while. We can rest and we can recover stamina by sleeping, so I think we can assume that we can recover our HP as well. We’ll just have to power through it.”

He groaned and stood up. “Right. Come on, everyone up. We’ll walk a bit further before we stop to rest again.”

One by one, they hauled themselves back up. Looking to the side, Nar noticed that Mul was staring at his feet, lost.

With an internal sigh, Nar bent down, swallowing the groan from the soreness he felt, and thrust his hand in Mul’s field of vision.

The brawler, startled, looked up.

“Come on,” Nar said.

Mul frowned at him, and for a moment, Nar thought he had screwed up.

Then, Mul took his hand and Nar pulled him to his feet.

The brawler stared at him for a moment longer, then gave him a silent nod.

Nar left him to care for his sister, who still hadn’t spoken a word.

I should have kept my mouth shut, he thought. What was the point of that?

On his other side, he caught Jul staring at him.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Are you okay?”

Nar was taken aback by the question.

“Come on, people, let’s go. We can do this,” Kur said.

Nar waited for the party to walk past him, and then took his usual spot behind them.

Are you okay?

In truth, he did not know.

********

Five days passed.

Five absolutely miserable, ravaging, destroying days.

The Pressure never let up. And the harsher waves came at them again and again, at any time, without any pattern or reason they could discern.

It came while they walked, while they ate, while they slept. There was no respite.

Nar walked as though he was only half awake.

The stamina recovered.

The HP recovered.

But his mind was in tatters, frayed nearly to snapping.

He couldn’t remember the last time he had had a proper sleep.

Or a full string of coherent thoughts.

Conversation, too, had died days ago. Not that he ever really joined in on it.

The only real words he heard now were Kur’s, ever driving them forward. It was impressive, really. Kur was proving himself a true leader, and Nar, in his most lucid moments, thanked his dad for his repeated advice, and the Crystal, for leading him to Kur.

Mul muttered constantly, probably cursing everyone and everything under his breath.

Surprisingly, so did Viy. She walked and swatted away at things only she saw, the spear tip dragging across the floor behind her.

During his watch, he had started seeing her trashing and mumbling about more and more, gripped by nightmares. Now, it happened every night. Her nightmares never let up, chasing her with the horror of whatever had happened to her in the cubeplant.

However, neither he, nor anyone else for that matter, said or did anything.

What little energy he had, he used to keep walking, and to look after his own sanity.

The endless, featureless, yellow lit corridor stretched on and on, and there were times where Nar almost believed that they truly weren't moving at all. That the floor under them was just a conveyor belt, rolling, and tricking them. Deceiving them.

Yes, you are being deceived…

He shook his head. He wasn’t so far gone as to let himself suffer voices in his head. Not yet, at least.

He knew they were just tricks of the Pressure and of his tiredness. However, for how much longer would he know that? His grip on his sanity was tenuous now. And it kept sliding…

He pushed the thought away with another aggressive head shake.

Just then, he felt the weight increasing.

Here it comes… What will it be this time? My eyes? My hands? My legs?

The first time he had been hit, his chest had been left raw and scrapped. But on the second time, it was his back. On the third, his ears. On the fourth… He had forgotten.

The Pressure wave came for them multiple times a day. Sometimes ten, sometimes, fifteen. And it always seemed to aim to inflict the most pain it could on a specific part of his body.

Of course, by now, his entire self-had been targeted. There was not an inch of him that did not feel scrapped raw, broken, or damaged in some way.

It was like the Pressure was carving him up from the inside, slowly, inch by inch.

It was hard to pray. Or praise. Or feel grateful and faithful under such strain.

But he had to. He needed to earn his future. His right to be free.

Oh, Crystal Almighty… he intoned, feeling his grip on reality slipping into darkness.

He always passed out from these attacks.

Sometimes he woke up right away, sometimes he was under for longer periods of time. One time he had woken up to find that a whole hour had gone by. That had been the worst hit so far. He had woken up to a slurry of thoughts that had taken forever to piece together into who he was. He had never felt such an intense pain in his head. It was like someone had shoved his head full of broken aetherium and shook him till his brain had come leaking out of his eyes, ears and nose.

Even in the factory, bleeding out of his eyes was rare, and that day they had been unable to go on.

Nar had just barely managed to keep watch that day. He kept imagining that his dad called to him from the darkness. Asking where he was, and why Nar had abandoned him, alone, in their dark home. Nar was sure he had cried. Most likely, he hadn’t been the only one, but his memory of that day was hazy.

Now, as he came to, he felt every inch of his legs. All of it, from toe to hip. Even his toe nails.

Crystal… Damn it.

He croaked, raspy, parched, and forced himself to sit up.

Yes. He was going nowhere today either. Or maybe he was. Kur would probably push them to keep going.

A small part of his mind told him that he was fine, that he could walk. But he was tired. He didn’t want to.

Enough is enough, no? He thought.

How much more would they languish in that endless corridor?

The others woke up, one by one, but Nar ignored them.

Maybe if he pretended to be asleep, Kur would relent and let them rest. And maybe Nar wouldn’t have to take that dreaded first watch either.

He had come to hate it. First watch was when he was at his most broken and ragged, and it was when his flayed mind had the most difficulty keeping hold of itself.

“We’ll rest for a few minutes,” Kur said, dashing his hopes. “Then we need to keep going. If I can go, so can you all. I’m the weakest here.”

Nar pursed his lips.

The party leader had a way with words, didn’t he?

It wasn’t fair of Kur to put it like that. Not when he didn’t have first watch to look forward to.

And Nar, for his part, shouldn’t be harboring those thoughts either. The Crystal and the System were always watching, and he had already been punished on his previous level up by gaining nothing but more [Aura]. He had to be careful.

I’ll pray later… he told himself. Right then and there, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it in any semblance of earnestness.

“I hear something!” Jul suddenly said, her voice sounding just as wretched as Nar’s throat felt.

Oh, for Crystal’s sake! Now? Nar thought, wiping his head towards the front.

“You gotta be kidding me!” Mul snapped.

“Get up! Get up!” Kur shouted.

Driven by fear and panic, Nar crawled onto his hands and knees, then pushed himself up, lifting the heavy sword up as he went.

His legs shook under him, threatening to fail him at any moment.

Shit! Can Gad tank like this?

He looked at her, and his mind filled with dread at what he saw. She was even more unsteady than he was, having trouble even lifting her shield.

“Gad!” he shouted.

It was too late however.

The guardian rolled mercilessly towards the unprepared party.

Nar ran forward, knowing he was going to be too late. The Pressure weighed him down, forcing him to fight for every step.

The guardian smashed into Gad, and their tank went flying backwards.

Viy screamed and backed away from the flurry of blades that came her way.

No, Nar! Don’t do it! shouted a small voice inside of him.

His steps faltered, hesitating in the face of the guardian. Its limbs spread out around it, like a halo of horror, blades gleaming yellow.

He did not have a shield. What was he trying to do?

And in that split second of hesitation, the guardian seemed to burst. It wrapped onto Viy and Mul, crushing them against the walls on either side.

Limbs pressed against throats, and the two melee DPS were silenced.

“Mul!” Cen shouted.

Nar hadn’t heard her talk in days, and her shrill cry pierced through the murkiness that weighed upon his mind and the static of the Pressure.

There were people dying right in front of him. He had to do something!

He jumped towards Viy, who was closest.

“I’ll get Mul!” Kur shouted from behind him.

Nar raised his sword and brought it down on the coiled limbs.

The guardian tried to stab him, and he had nothing except his other hand and shoulder to keep him from doing so. As it was, he felt the blades scoring burning lines across his flesh, but Viy was his sole focus.

Her face was taking on a tinge of blue, and her hands grew weaker over the limbs that deprived her of air.

Nar slammed his sword down with his left hand, again and again, using it like a hammer.

The blade bounced against the guardian's tendrils, looking as though it did no damage at all.

[Strong Attack]! [Strong Attack]!

Nar unleashed his skill in a bout of panic.

Viy’s eyelids were dropping.

A crack appeared on one of the arms, a glimmer of hope, and Nar threw everything at it.

[Strong Attack]!

The limb came apart with a loud crunch, splattering him and Viy both in a hot, brown sludge.

The guardian recoiled, as if in pain, and Viy crumbled down the wall, coughing violently.

Out of balance, Nar felt a blade go through his left shoulder, from behind, and a blow to his hip lifted him into the air, spinning wildly.

He crashed in a tangle of limbs and the sword flew from his grip.

“I got it!” he heard Gad shouting, muffled through the sudden daze that took him.

Nar blinked slowly, the fighting unfolding beyond his blurry sight.

A symbol flashed under his stamina bar, but he couldn’t make out what it was.

His head cleared slowly, and when he came fully to, the battle was still in full swing, and the symbol was gone.

Gad had taken control of the guardian.

Viy, next to her, seemed to have recovered. She was screaming at the guardian, unleashing attack after devastating attack.

Mul, on the other side of the corridor, didn’t seem to have been so lucky.

Cen bawled, holding his limp form.

Nar felt dread rising. The brawler had seemed to have made it his life’s mission to grind on everyone’s gears, but Nar hadn’t wanted him dead.

“Can you stand?” Kur shouted, noticing him moving.

Next to him, Tuk tossed his rings with everything he got, but Jul… Jul was nowhere.

“Where’s Jul?” Nar shouted.

“She’s fine!” Kur replied. “She ran away to hide behind us. Can you stand? We need you!”

Nar glimpsed at the darkness behind them. It didn’t look any safer than the fight unfolding in their midst, but if she was safe, that was all that mattered.

He threw his good arm up and Kur pulled him to his feet.

His hip was busted, and he limped on the spot, searching for his sword.

“Here!”

Kur thrust the weapon into Nar’s chest and pushed him towards the fight.

“We need that thing dead!” he shouted. “Now!”

Nar didn’t bother to reply.

He dragged himself forward on legs that were even shakier now. He limped, towards the deadly guardian, favoring his left leg. His left arm hung at his side, useless and bleeding, and the stab wound on his left shoulder screamed at him with every step.

There was no way he could tank like that. In fact, he could barely believe he was still moving. He had just been stabbed, for Crystal’s sake! How was he still moving?

And yet, he limped forward. He needed to do some damage.

Luckily, it looked as though someone had managed to score a few crippling hits on the guardian itself. Other than the stump that Nar had smashed through, there were other visible injuries across it. Cracks had formed across its body, and they too bleed brown goo. Nar didn’t remember any of the other guardians bleeding before. Was this yet another model? Viy shrieked, pulling his attention, and he watched as another devastating spear blow hammered into the guardian. The spear woman must have blown through her stamina, and it looked like the guardian was already at the edge of destruction.

Nar checked his own stamina as he approached.

Worn by the Pressure, and after bursting his skills onto the guardian’s limbs, he was left with only 27 points of stamina.

He swallowed his fear.

He had to fight, but he couldn’t use his skills, and his attributes would still deplete him.

He steeled his resolve and stepped into range of the guardian’s limbs, swinging his sword at it.

That guardian needed to come down, or he was dead anyways.

Together, the three of them fought with despair fueling them.

Tuk’s rings clinked loudly against the enemy’s limbs and body, slowly but surely, helping deplete its HP. Viy thrust and thrust, stabbing in mad rage and fear. Nar, on the other side from her, did as much as he could. And in the middle, holding it all together, was Gad.

“I’m losing it!” she shouted. “What do we do?”

“Keep going!” Kur replied. “It has to be almost dead!”

His voice came from much closer than Nar had expected, and suddenly, Kur wedged himself in between Gad and Nar, and attacked the guardian with his scepter, his buckler held high to cover his head.

He probably did even less damage than Nar, in his injured state. A whole lot less, but his presence bolstered Nar somehow. He felt a sliver of hope, a rallying of the last dredges of strength and fighting still left in him.

Suddenly, Gad jumped onto the guardian, pushing it down with her shield in a move that surprised both their enemy and the rest of them.

“Gad!” Kur shouted.

“Get him! Get him!” she cried, as the tendrils slammed against her body from under and around her shield.

The two DPS and Kur fell on the guardian, stabbing, hacking, slashing and smashing with abandon. Bloody spit flew and hands and fingers were hurt and smashed in the chaos.

Nar’s sight tunneled until all he could see was the section of the guardian’s body that he hammered again and again, watching the cracks widen.

DING!

A window popped up, blocking his sight.

Nar delivered his final blow, his sword dripping with goo.

The guardian lay broken, destroyed, at their feet.

The sound of their gasping, and of Cen’s desperate weeping, reached his ears, muffled as they were by the Pressure still weighing down on them without mercy.

He flicked away the window, not reading it, and collapsed backwards against the wall, his shoulder protesting loudly with the hit.

His legs were like jell-o, and he sat onto the guardians' outstretched limbs.

Around him, the party crumbled, spent.