Mithril Caves – Depth: 800 Meters (Layer 2: The Silent Void). Time: Unknown.
STATIC... ZZZTTT... STATIC...
The constant hiss of the white noise emanating from the helmet speakers was the only safety net keeping their sanity intact in the face of the eternal silence. To an ordinary ear, the static would be an irritant; here, it served as a sacred shield against the Siren's song that threatened to tear their souls apart.
The expedition party ventured deeper, descending through ancient corridors that grew increasingly narrow and treacherous. Their formation tightened, shoulder to shoulder. Crystal headlamps swept across the damp cave walls, casting long shadows that seemed to dance mockingly in the periphery of their vision every time they turned a corner.
At eight hundred meters deep, the air was so thin that every breath felt like inhaling thousands of shards of ice. Atmospheric pressure pressed against their eardrums with a constant, nauseating thrum.
Sir Riven led the vanguard. His hands, gripping the haft of his Chain-Axe, were slick with cold sweat inside his gauntlets. Creak... creak... the sound of leather against metal echoed as his grip tightened. He felt... watched. Not by a single pair of eyes, but by thousands. The gaze felt sticky against the nape of his neck, like an invisible, spectral cobweb.
"Elara," Riven called over the comms. His voice was heavy, taut with tension. "Is your sensor picking anything up? I've felt something breathing down my neck for the last ten minutes."
"Negative, Riven," Elara's voice crackled through the heavy magical interference. "Radar is clear. Just dead rock. It might just be a suggestive effect from the hypoxia."
"Hypoxia my foot," Riven grumbled under his breath. His battle instincts were never wrong. Something was here. Something was waiting for the exact moment they let their guard down.
Suddenly, the headlamp of a soldier in the middle of the line flickered. Flicker. Dark. Flicker.
"CAPTAIN!"
A panicked scream shattered the team's concentration. It was Borch.
"ULRIC IS GONE!"
Captain Garrick spun around instantly, leveling his musket toward the rear. "Don't joke around, you idiot! Ulric was right behind you!"
"I swear, Captain! He was right there, then the light flickered for a second... and he vanished! No sound of a fall, no scream! He's just... gone! Swallowed by the dark!"
Garrick swept his light over the area behind Borch. It was empty. Only footprints in the mud remained, stopping abruptly in the middle of the path as if the person had simply evaporated into thin air. Panic began to spread like a virus. Even these veteran soldiers began to tremble. They were prepared to die by a blade, but they weren't ready to vanish like ghosts.
"Tighten up! Circle formation!" Rianor roared. "Protect the tech units! Spears out!"
They quickly formed a human fortress. Rianor, Elara, and Rumina were positioned at the center, surrounded by a thicket of spears pointed into the darkness. Silence returned. Only the sound of ragged breath held behind masks remained.
Then, Riven heard it. The voice bypassed the white noise in his helmet. It didn't enter through his ears; it whispered directly into the center of his brain.
"Why are you still alive, Commander?"
Riven flinched, his eyes widening in horror. In the darkness ahead, the cave walls seemed to melt like hot wax. From behind the dripping stone, human figures emerged. They weren't monsters. It was Marbas, the traitor youth he had killed at the factory. His neck was still snapped, his head tilted at a sickening angle.
Beside him, crawling out from the earth, were the twelve Red Lions who had fallen to the monster days ago. Their bodies were flattened, their armor fused with their flesh, black blood weeping from empty eye sockets.
"You..." Riven recoiled, his legs trembling. "You're dead... I buried you with honor!"
"We died because you were weak," the spectral soldier hissed. The voice sounded like coarse sandpaper. They trudged closer, dragging their shattered limbs. "You promised to protect us, Sir Riven. You said we were family. But when the monster came... you survived because your plate was thick, while we were ground into meat."
"No! I tried to hold it back!" Riven screamed hysterically, swinging his axe at the empty air. "I held that bridge alone!"
"Trying wasn't enough! You failed! You're no hero; you're just a lucky thug who's still breathing!"
The shadows lunged. Cold, spectral hands clamped around Riven's neck and legs. They were heavy, suffocating.
On the other side of the formation, Rhea shrieked. "STAY BACK! GET AWAY FROM ME!"
Rhea didn't see corpses. She saw a gargantuan mirror emerging from the dark. In it, she saw her reflection. But it wasn't the beautiful, fierce Rhea; it was a shriveled, hunchbacked old woman, alone in a dusty, silent room.
"Look at yourself," the reflection whispered. "You're strong. You break the hand of every man who approaches you. and what is the result? You will die alone, Rhea. Your brothers will have families, and you will be nothing but a burdensome aunt, eventually forgotten."
"SHUT UP!" Rhea covered her ears, her daggers clattering to the floor. She curled into a ball, sobbing. Her greatest fear wasn't death; it was an eternal, hollow loneliness.
"Rhea! Riven!"
Rianor watched the chaos in horror. The formation had disintegrated. Riven was wrestling with thin air while choking himself. Rhea was weeping on the ground. Other soldiers were firing at the stone walls while laughing maniacally.
"Elara! This isn't gas! It's a high-level psionic assault!" Rianor yelled. "Where's the source?!"
Elara squeezed her eyes shut, blood beginning to trickle from her nose as she pushed her brain to the limit. "ABOVE!" she screamed. "ON THE CEILING!"
Rianor snapped his head up. There, clinging amongst the jagged stalactites, dozens of translucent creatures hung like bats. They resembled gargantuan, gelatinous jellyfish. Long tentacles dangled down, subtly touching the soldiers' helmets. Their bodies pulsed with a dim, sickly violet light.
Mind Flayers. Psychic parasites that drained sanity until their victims' brains liquefied.
"THERE THEY ARE! AIM UP!" Rianor commanded.
Garrick and the few soldiers still conscious unleashed a blind volley. BANG! BANG! But the lead balls and arrows passed through the translucent bodies of the Mind Flayers without effect, as if striking smoke.
Riven was worsening. His face was turning blue from his own hands gripping his throat. "Kill me... take my life if that's what you want..." he whispered, resigned.
Rianor knew he couldn't use logic against these things. He needed something primal. Something undeniable.
"Riven!"
Rianor lunged forward, vaulting over Rhea's curled form. He reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved the Stun Pen. "FORGIVE ME, BROTHER!"
Rianor jammed the pen against Riven's exposed neck. Click.
ZZZTTT!
A high-voltage surge scorched Riven's nerves. The faint scent of burnt flesh wafted through the air.
"ARGHHH!"
Riven let out an agonizing cry. His body convulsed violently. The sheer intensity of the physical pain instantly burned through the illusions in his mind. The spectral corpses dissolved into smoke. Riven dropped to his knees, gasping for air. His eyes snapped back into focus. He saw Rianor standing over him, hand trembling.
"Hurts, doesn't it?!" Rianor barked, grabbing his brother's collar. "Pain is real! Ghosts are fake! Your pain is the proof that you're still kicking!"
Riven went still. The searing sting in his neck radiated through his entire body, triggering a massive adrenaline spike. He looked up, glaring at the damn jellyfish on the ceiling that dared to use the faces of his friends to torture him. A pure, unadulterated rage exploded in Riven's chest.
"You bastards..."
Riven rose slowly. He snatched up his Chain-Axe. The aura around his body began to pulse—no longer orange, but a deep, bloody crimson.
Berserk Mode: Activated.
"How dare you use their faces..."
WUNG!
The atmospheric pressure in the cave grew incredibly heavy. "RHEA! WAKE UP!" Riven's roar contained an intimidatory shockwave that snapped Rhea back to reality.
"Rumina! Crank the axe. Full power!"
VROOOOM!
The saw-blade on Riven's axe spun with insane velocity. Riven leaped high, but not at the monsters. He aimed for the massive stalactite pillar they were clinging to.
"I'M BRINGING YOUR DAMN HOUSE DOWN!"
The chain-axe slammed into the two-meter-thick stone. KRAAAKKK! The gargantuan stalactite fractured and snapped. The ceiling of the cave began to collapse.
CRASH!
Tons of rock plummeted, dragging the entire colony of Mind Flayers to the stone floor. As they were slammed down and lost their concentration, their translucent bodies solidified into masses of revolting, violet flesh.
"Now they're real!" Rianor yelled. "ATTACK!"
Rhea blurred forward. "How dare you give me nightmares like that!" SLASH! SLASH! Rhea moved like a whirlwind of blades, dicing the soft bodies into tiny fragments.
Five minutes later, silence returned to the cave. The floor was slick with violet slime and monster offal. Riven stood amidst the carnage, his breathing heavy.
"Thanks, Rianor," Riven smirked wearily. "Your shock... was effective. But damn, it hurt like hell."
Rianor adjusted his crooked glasses. "It's called Shock Therapy, brother. Don't ask for a second dose; the battery is dead."
They had survived, but behind the dust of the debris Riven had created, a gargantuan gate was revealed. It was forged from pure, glowing red Adamantite, etched with ancient script:
LEGION LABORATORY – NO ENTRY. BIOLOGICAL HAZARD LEVEL 5.
They had arrived at the gateway to a true nightmare.