<~> CHAPTER 65 - HELENA

I continued to walk through the empty hallways for a while and so far I haven't seen anything yet. It was odd, I had been told that this floor definitely had monsters even though they weren't very powerful. Instead, I was walking alone down these creepy halls. I started opening all of the doors and peeking inside as I passed by, all of the rooms were empty and the hallways had formed a maze not too dissimilar from the other ones in this dungeon. The only difference is that all of the hallways have windows looking out into the city I came from.

One of the steel door handles suddenly reflected some light and I spun just in time to see a dog pounce at me. I swiped at it with my free hand and the monster exploded into a cloud of smoke when my claws tore through it. I jumped backward and dropped my axe so that I could have both of my clawed hands free for the next attack... but none came.

Eventually, the smoke cleared and there was nothing left, just me, alone again in the empty hallway. I looked around, unsure where it had come from at first before spotting one of the doors I had passed by was cracked open. I picked up my axe and cautiously walked inside but there was nothing there. I scanned the room and froze when I saw the blackboard.

"HELENA MILLER IS A FATASS!!!" was scrawled across the giant blackboard. Crude drawings of me that I remembered from my time in high school were drawn around the words in chalk. I forced myself to look away from it and grit my teeth. I wasn't even that fat in high school, the girls were just picking on me. The event this was related to was a time I had been bullied in class, it was so embarrassing that my mom let me skip school for a week. The school waived my attendance but decided the best course of action was to collectively punish everyone in that class which only made everyone dislike me even more... The whole thing was a shit show.

I shook my head and refocused on the situation. I didn't see where that dog could have come from. The only reason I had seen it was because its eyes glowed and reflected against the metal door handle. It was like a small umber hound, more similar to a misty wolf in size. It wasn't even sized properly to the environment, why would these enemies be in a place like this anyway?

As I had that thought my surroundings shuddered in a way I frankly can't explain. If I had to liken it to anything, it was like the walls turned to static for a moment but much more intense and disorienting. The place still looked like a school but now everything was more... warped. Like the shapes of the doors, desks, and lockers melted. I tied my axe under my shield with the sling I had made for it so that I could keep my hands free. If I was fighting more of those wolves it would be easier to fight them with my claws.

When I stepped back into the hallway things looked... weird. Oddly the first thing I noticed was that the flooring had changed. Rather than the tiled floor I was used to seeing at school, it now looked like a larger uniform style of flooring with random school tiles melted in. Outside, the false scene through the windows changed as well. Now it looked like the entire school was on top of a mountain with other buildings randomly in dips and valleys off in the distance. The vague skyline that I was used to seeing looked like it was mixed with my memories of when I was being chased by the umber hound creating a new scene that made no sense.

The world rumbled and shook as the walls once again shuddered. I reached out and steadied myself with the wall and struggled to stay standing while everything rocked around me. When it finally stopped it didn't look like anything had changed from what I could see here, the only difference was that I suddenly could smell a strong scent of lemon cleaner. It was as if someone had dumped a highly condensed bottle of the stuff all over the floor. I had no idea what was happening or why. This place wasn't nearly as difficult as everyone had made it out to be, but everything was just so... weird.

I started moving again. I should probably make more of an effort to get through this place faster. I could light one of the guiding rods but my whiskers had been pointing me in the right direction before... I better not risk it. If I light one I can at least confirm if my whiskers are sending me generally in the right direction. I paused to look around before carefully unwrapping one of the guiding rods and taking it into my hand. The moment it made contact with the rod it sparked to life and started pointing me down the hallway.

As I followed the path of sparks down the hall I came to the first junction that I had come across since the last time everything shuddered. At the T-intersection, there was a long rounded desk that looked really familiar, but I couldn't place it right away. I looked around for any monsters before walking behind the desk and examining everything. One of the papers on top of the desk caught my attention immediately. I picked it up and took a closer look, the writing was still gibberish but on the top of the letterhead was the logo of the hospital my dad died in. My heart sank at the implication.

I scanned my surroundings with more interest than I had before and now that I knew what I was looking for, I could recognize some of the things around me better. It was as if someone merged my high school with this hospital. I dropped the paper and tried to shove down some of the anxiety that was threatening to rise in my chest. I could handle the dungeon throwing my unfortunate high school memories at me but this... this was just mean.

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When I walked around the desk two more mini umber wolves leapt out at me from nowhere but since my hands were free this time I was able to cleave through them in a split second. These two also erupted into smoke and filled the entirety of the hallway. The thick lemon scent in the air overrode anything else I was smelling, even the smoke didn't register over it, leaving me blind and unable to smell anything else. I took some distance and backed up to a wall while I let the air clear. Eventually the smoke faded and the enemies were gone again.

I turned in the direction the sparks were flowing and noted that my whiskers agreed on the direction to go. I hoped this meant that I wouldn't need to waste any more of the guiding rods. I followed the path further down the hallway. Now that I was looking for it, it was obvious that this place was partially a hospital. I say partially, because I could still see classrooms and lockers mixed in with the gurneys and random medical machinery lying around. None of the machines seemed to be on weirdly enough and now that I'm thinking about it, the lights aren't on in here either, making the hospital seem abandoned. I hadn't even noticed at first because the 'school' that I was walking through was already dark.

After I turned the next corner four shadowy wolves darted out at me. They lasted only half a second longer than the previous group had but the pattern that was starting to emerge was already worrying. All I could do though was shake my head and keep moving forward. After following two more turns and walking for a bit longer I stopped. For the first time since I lit it, the guiding rod was telling me to go in a different direction than my whiskers. Its sparks were leading to a door that looked like it belonged to the hospital and my whiskers suggested I should continue down the hallway.

Feeling a bit tense I rested my hand on the door handle. My whiskers seemed to be pretty accurate so far but the guiding rod was known to be reliable. This unfortunately meant that I would have to walk through this door after I had started to completely ignore the weird mixture of doctors' offices and classrooms in this giant place that made no sense. I licked my lips in anticipation before throwing open the door. Immediately eight shadowy wolves surrounded me and I began to tear through them. They were still not difficult but I really really didn't like where this was going now that I had caught on to the pattern. The one and a half seconds of the previous fight had now turned into twenty seconds of fighting. It wasn't long, but because I had to work harder at not getting surrounded and flanked, it was difficult to kill them as quickly. It was also substantially longer than the previous four and that didn't bode well for when the next group of sixteen, if I was right, caught up with me.

I walked through the room, it looked like another doctor's office but it had an odd door that looked like the kind of swinging doors you would see in a kitchen. I pushed through one and on the other side was... a mixture of a basketball court and a soccer field? The floor was the shiny reflective surface of an indoor gym with tape on the ground marking the zone lines of a basketball court but instead of basketball nets, it had gigantic and partially melted soccer goal frames. There were also immense bleachers on either side of the court but behind the bleachers, where no one would be able to look through them properly, were those windows that had been everywhere so far. This place made so little sense it was unnerving.

The sparks were still flowing forward through the... soccer slash basketball court so I started to walk through the place. I looked around expecting another group of wolves to jump out at any moment but nothing ever did and I made it to the other side. I took one more glance behind me at the odd sight before opening the door and going through it. The sparks started moving in the opposite direction I was headed on the other side of the door and now my whiskers agreed with me, making me think that the guiding rod had essentially taken me through a shortcut.

I continued to follow the sparks again for a while before I noticed that some of the hospital machinery was starting to flicker like it was getting partial power. As I kept walking the number of things that were glowing started to grow. Now quiet beeps, hissing noises, and pumps were making sounds as I kept going. As more things were dimly lit and made noises, the hospital began to look dingier and less clean, yet the overpowering scent of lemon cleaner still remained.

Ahead of me in the hallway, there were two open doors. Or rather, the doors were off the hinges and there were two open gaps ahead of me. I wasn't sure of what I would find this time, would I be attacked by wolves again or would the doors just be empty rooms, not a threat like the gym I had walked through? My heart rate picked up as I walked forward and the moment I peeked around one of the corners, two groups of the small umber hounds bolted at me through the doors.

I slashed my way through them. Each individual didn't take much effort to kill, but I was forced to fight the large group in the smoke with only my sense of hearing to guide me. It wasn't a clean fight this time, there were too many of them to properly guard myself but their teeth and claws were nothing compared to the many things I had fought thus far. Soon all sixteen of them were dead and the minor scratches and bruises were fading from my body. While it wasn't becoming unmanageable yet, I didn't look forward to the numbers doubling a few more times.

The walls and floors started to look more and more dilapidated as I continued to make my way through this faux hospital. The odd blend of school and hospital was now getting worse, some of the hospital machinery was now hanging out of the giant lockers, the doors were melted or missing entirely and there was dirt and grime everywhere with black mold growing all over the ceiling. The hospital machinery was becoming more distracting too, now all I could hear from every direction were heart rate monitors going faster and faster despite being connected to no one. I was only glad the noise wasn't quite as all-encompassing as the clockwork sounds had been yet.

I grimaced as I continued down the halls of this strange place.