Things did not get easier for Merrick once he made it to the basement. The lights hardly worked and there was a low steady hum that came from the few fluorescent tubes that still clung to life. It was a straight path from the bottom of the stairs to the service elevator. One direct path, a single hall to walk down, and yet something started to tug at Merrick's mind as soon as he entered the basement.
As Merrick moved down that pathway, the lights kept taking his attention from the path at his feet. Fluorescent tube lighting had always been his least favorite. The dull shine, the annoying sound, and the fact that they were broken more frequently than they were working were just a few of his reasons. Yet, as he walked through the basement, Merrick found them bothersome for a new reason.
The Hilltop Gallery had been closed for decades. Abandoned with no one using the building on paper. His boss, Horace Abernathy was the owner, but even he did not seem to use it for anything on the surface level. Despite that, there were working lights in the basement that were too new to have been installed in the original build. Fluorescent tube lighting just had not been around for that long.
It was halfway down the hall when Merrick gave in to the distraction of the overhead lighting. If he had just continued onward, he could have gotten out of the basement and back to his current task. In the end it was just too much of a mystery for him to walk away from.
A hall branched off from his path, one consecutive run of working tube lights. When Merrick turned from his path to investigate the basement, he found that there was another noise. Just above the steady hum of the fluorescent lights was a soft click.
It sounded like someone tapping a fingernail against a metal pipe. It repeated every so often and then the more Merrick walked forward he could hear that the click was followed by a sickly sweet whistle. Together they made the kind of sound that would be annoying on their own, but nearly hidden above the hum of the lights, it sounded melodic.
At the end of the hall, Merrick stood in front of a door and realized that the hum of the lights was nearly overshadowed by the strange melody. He could not directly recall the last several paces of the hall but when he looked back, he knew that he had walked them. The door was not locked but for whatever reason when Merrick reached for the handle he thought it would be.
On the other side of the door, Merrick found himself walking into a nearly empty room. Despite the spaciousness of the room, he knew it was a prison cell as soon as he stepped into it. To his left there was a bookshelf, mostly empty except for a few scattered and torn pages. To his right was a dining seat; complete with a table, chairs, and a kitchenette. On the far end of the room was a ruined bed and dresser.
The real danger was in the center of the room. As Merrick's eyes settled on it, he realized that it had been the source of the click and the whistle but now both of those sounds had stopped as the monster leered at him with hungry eyes. It looked human at first, but the small details shone through the longer that Merrick looked. Even lurched forward toward Merrick, the monster was still at least a foot taller than him.
The strangest thing was that it wore a blue mechanic's jumpsuit. The company logo had been torn off but the name BOB was still legible on the chest. From the torn shoulders of the jumpsuit two long fur-covered arms stretched out until they ended in horrendous claws. A twisted face ended in a snarling fang-filled mouth beneath a set of piercing green eyes that radiated like magic. It looked like it was about halfway through a special effects transition in a monster movie.
It was a monster that Merrick knew the name for if this were a game, but in reality it just seemed like a horror pulled from the depths of his nightmares. This was the source of the sound, this thing had lured him into its prison cell. The door was still open behind him but the monster's eyes warned him that if he looked away, it would pounce.
Despite the danger, Merrick's feet kept moving forward. He realized that if nothing changed, he would be within the monster's reach in just a few moments. It would all be over shortly and he would never have the answers that he came searching for. As soon as he realized that, Merrick forced his feet to stop moving and he opened his mouth to speak. The monster seemed intelligent.
It must have been smart enough to realize that he was going to take a risk to try and get away. As soon as Merrick stopped, it lunged forward fangs first. The mechanic-turned-monster's attack sparked Merrick into motion. The fear of death shifted his feet backward and his hand to the hilt of Spell Stealer.
Fangs clashed together just in front of his face. A new spark of fear jolted him back again, this time Merrick nearly tripped over his feet. He was not an adventurer in a game, he was a bookstore attendant in an abandoned basement about to get killed by some kind of misfit lycanthrope. As he stumbled backward, the monster lunged forth again. This time the fangs sunk into the meat of Merrick's left shoulder and he screamed out in pain.
Real fear, real pain.
Merrick's mind went blank for too long. The first new thought was that he was an idiot. There were so many signs that he was wrong, that he should have stopped, that he did not belong here. He kept going at the time because there was no way that this was real. The gas leak, the strange realm, and now the monster latched onto his shoulder.
Pain soared through his body again as the monster tore a chunk of his shoulder. White-hot pain cleared his mind again. This time rather than self-deprecating thoughts, Merrick only had thoughts for his own survival. Monsters were real but so was magic. That woman from Mouseion had accused him of being a mage in reality, not just in the game. If Spell Stealer was real, maybe that way.
The strange feeling that magic was radiating from the monster in front of him was now internalized. Merrick realized there was energy flowing through his own body, just like how his avatar in Dungeons Below was charged.
As little sense as it made outside of that moment, it made perfect sense to Merrick now. The monster swallowed the chunk of his shoulder and looked hungrily at Merrick's blood-soaked shirt, ready for more. His left arm hung limp at his side but Spell Stealer was sturdy in his right hand. Merrick finally understood that he might really die here, but he was not some helpless shopkeeper's assistant. These were his new skills.