Athelei walked through a tunnel in space. The world around him blurred as it was warped and squished. A great distance was shortened. What might have been days of travel was brought into walking distance.
At the same time, Athelei felt the feather he was walking towards growing weaker with every step he made.
But he continued forward.
The experience was a new one for him, and thus he relished his first taste of it. The shapes and colours of different objects darted in and out of his field of vision, appearing distorted and soft. Like bubbles and lenses, curving the light that passed through them.
An hour went by just like this.
When Athelei finally stopped, a familiar feather was lying on the cold stone floor right in front of him. It seemed even duller than it had been when he plucked it from his own wings. It looked as if it could crumble at any moment, turning to dust at the slightest touch.
But, his feather's degradation was not meaningless.
When Athelei looked around, the scenery around him was one he found similar to his feather on the floor.
It was a familiar sight.
"I'm in the labyrinth..." muttered the angel.
And at such words, wisps of grey fog began drifting out of his body. Each little grey patch of smoke then phased through solid rock to spread out and map the area.
Soon, Athelei figured out where he was and pursed his lips.
'I have no idea where I am,' he thought.
The corridors here were all unfamiliar to him. The stone bricks were all uncounted, the rooms were unmapped, and the empty halls were unexplored.
However, there were traces of a battle. Cave Spider blood and a freshly dusted trail of footsteps were speaking to him. Inspect spoke of how old the trail was, down to the second.
Thus, these curious things beckoned him to follow, to see what lay at the end of the path.
'This should have been where those marked humans had been in an hour ago...' Athelei thought as he walked forward.
He turned several corners and stepped over a few still-twitching arachnids. Several Cave Spider carcasses littered the pathway, bringing about discomfort to Athelei's nostrils.
The stench of their swiftly rotting bodies was truly unpleasant.
But Athelei did not mind such discomforts. His curiosity kept nullifying his distate for the environment. His curiosity was being fed by his numerous analyses of the wounds on the corpses he passed by.
Wounds from swords, axes, and arrows were common. There were also a few clear signs of chemical burns and corrosion.
"H...help..." A whisper suddenly rang along with the stale labyrinth breeze, "Someone... please..."
Athelei ears perked up at the faint plea.
"...Any...one..."
With eyes that could peer through the darkness, the angel kicked off the stone-brick floor and broke into a run.
It wasn't long before he came across a waning torch and a dying human.
Athelei stepped into the light of the human's torch. His eyes scanned the many wounds that littered the human's body and his feet stepped into the pool of their blood.
"Your wounds are horrid," he spoke as he crouched down.
Athelei's youthful voice was a stark contrast to the grunts and moans of the dying man.
"Please..."
Eyes filled with dread and desperation met Athelei's own as a bloody hand reached out to him.
But before the hand could reach him, the eyes that gazed at him lost their light.
The man was dead.
The residues of the man's consciousness leaked out, with splotches of black among its faint, dull grey.
Athelei's eyes glistened as he watched the man's hand fall in slow motion. He reached out with a whisper.
"A Stain of Existence... from a single life...?"
It was a new discovery.
The end of the man before him was unique.
'Or at least it should be unique...' he thought.
When Athelei devoured the residues and subsequently brought the Stain of Existence within him, images rushed forth.
He saw a small party of Adventurers delving into the labyrinth's depths in search of treasure. They mapped the corridors they walked through, disarming what traps they could and desperately fleeing from those they could not. Even the smallest arrow was a threat to their lives.
They were unlike Irene, who could waltz through wherever she pleased with a shining armour of gold Tangible Will.
A Rank 1 Dictator's breeze-like Tangible Will could only slightly divert those deadly projectiles. Lonely Mystic Patterns were much too weak. Only the Rank 1 Evolvers among them could reliably dodge.
To these Adventurers, the goblins had been a grand challenge because of the monsters' many rusty barbed daggers and their relentless natures.
The party had to resort to risky strategies as they slew each goblin one by one. Every action of theirs came with a risk of injury, and at worst, their lives.
And then of course, when it was all over, they would help themselves to the spoils.
Athelei witnessed them grab hold of a machine, just big enough to be held in an adult human's hand. There was a barrel and a blade, clearly designed to kill.
A gunblade.
But all that it did was give them a mark. It was chilling, but they decided to ignore it.
The trial Hall that Athelei was expecting to come next did not come. These Adventurers took one look at the darkness and listened to the growls within before turning away.
The Adventurers went back the way they came and exited through those large double doors.
Because of that, what they came across was a horde of spiders instead of abominable works of art. And instead of the set amount of foes inside the trial Hall, this horde seemed endless.
Thus, the party of Adventurers fought.
But it was all futile as they ran for their lives, forced apart by the many twists and turns of the labyrinth. Traps were triggered, bringing about many wanton deaths.
This specific human was lucky. Nilead was his name, and the images began to focus on his rush to survive. He ran, and ran, and ran. He did not know how long his escape had gone for, but the sound of pursuing spider legs had never ceased to ring in his ears.
Nilead's wounds grew in both number and depth, and eventually, he heard the sound of human breaths in the distance.
Athelei watched as Nilead seized a strand of hope, madly rushing towards the presence of others... But the Adventurer was only met with disappointment...
...And then fear right after.
The next image was fleeting.
There was a figure, far more injured than Nilead was, standing at the centre of a vast underground coliseum.
Cave Spiders were shifting like one collective being all around it. They screeched and hissed at this figure, as a sword that Athelei found familiar yet again was being swung around.
"What a surprise..."
Athelei gasped when he finished watching the images of Nilead's eventual end. After that single fleeting image, he no longer payed attention to the Adventurer's dying breath.
He was focused on that sword.
"Another face I know."
.
.
.
Lying in a pool of spider blood mixed with his own, Jack's mind phased in and out of unconsciousness. One second he was wide awake, and the next, he found himself using an arachnid's carcass as his pillow.
Memories flashed in and out of sight.
One moment he had numerous limbs piercing into his flesh, and then in another, he was slashing through arachnid bodies with his dull sword.
There were multiple instances where he found himself in varying life and death situations.
The only emotion in his heart had been desperation.
And now, his clothes were worn, tattered, and stained by the many disgusting liquids that came with a slaughter.
The future was bleak.
"Haaaaah," A long sigh.
Jack realised how unresponsive his body was. Yet, he felt both warm and cold at the same time.
The blood that flowed out of his wounds was the warmth... and it was slowly leaving him. The chilly grasp of death was slowly creeping over.
The flashing memories faded away, replaced by a dark ceiling of stone.
"Sir Jack?"
A whisper sounded in Jack's ears. It made him flinch, and the grasp of death was seemingly hindered at the same moment.
"Excuse me, but—"
Jack realised that he found the voice behind this whisper familiar.
"It seems like you're no longer human... Thus,"
Without a chance to react, Jack found a warm, viscous liquid flowing into his mouth. Drops of blue were flung into his eyes.
Jack gulped down the blue liquid he now realised was blood.
He coughed in revulsion. Yet, drinking such a beverage had seemingly revitalized his body. The taste of Cave Spider blood was acidic, like lemons and vomit.
"GAH!"
Jack spat out a bundle of blood-dyed saliva as the smell of labyrinth air filled his lungs.
He directed an annoyed gaze at the person who poured blood down his throat.
"You—"
He swallowed back his words in shock.
The visage of a young boy, with silky hair of black, obsidian irises, and snow-like skin appeared before him.
"Ori...en?"