Although this was a rather pressing situation, Mia still felt quite distrustful of Jack, who she didn't recognize.
"How do we know that your pet behind you won't attack us?"
Jack let out a giggle.
"Seedy only wants to have fun! He only attacked someone accidentally one time!"
Mia's eyelids twitched after hearing that while Seedy himself waved around his vines encouragingly, as though proud of what Jack said. Mia took a deep breath.
"Whatever, I guess if it wasn't for you, both of us would be dead anyway... but don't think we're your slaves now because of it!"
Jack nodded several times.
"Ok! But can we still be friends?"
Mia blinked a few times.
"Well... that's fine."
While they were talking, a metal screeching sound from the distance got awfully close. Upon seeing a blurry humanoid figure in the distance, Jack waved.
"Ah! Is it another friend?"
The wave looked a little strange, as he was using the hand that was previously cut off. Though by now, most of it had regrown, he was just missing the top halves of his fingers. Jessica on the other hand, was a bit distressed.
"They're already here? We can't stall any longer!"
She looked around and saw a nearby doorway in the extensively long hall.
"Let's go this way!"
After declaring that, she rushed into it while Mia followed right after her. Jack also went, but at a bit of a slower pace. As for Seedy, it dragged itself forth but wasn't able to go too fast. Realizing this fact about itself, Seedy let out a sad whine.
Jack went over to pat it on the head, or perhaps more accurately the petals.
"Don't worry, I'll just bring you along with me!"
With that, he opened up his black deck, and the entirety of Seedy disappeared into a flash of light, turning into a card within the deck. With that, Jack followed after the others, who had run away.
He turned to look over his shoulder and called out.
"Sorry, maybe we can still be friends later!"
The room they entered now seemed unreasonably large compared to the other ones that they were in. As such, Jessica was just running about but slowed down when she realized she had no idea where she was going.
"Should I use the flashlight to find my way around?"
Mia sucked in a cold breath.
"That doesn't seem like a bad idea, but from what that creepy doll said, it looks like we can use the flashlights to get rid of whatever monsters try to creep up on us."
In total, Jessica had 20 seconds on her flashlight, Mia had 14, and Jack had 53. Unlike the others, he had quite a decent amount of time, so he could afford to be a little wasteful here and there.
Though while the other two were hesitating, he simply went past them and continued on.
"Why don't we go this way?"
Mia narrowed her eyes and looked around.
"Are you pointing somewhere? I can't tell what you're doing."
Jack turned on the flashlight and used it to light up the room. The light itself was rather bright, though it only lit up in a certain direction. There was visible dust falling from the air within the beam.
Using the flashlight, Jack pointed it toward one of the exits.
"Let's go that way!"
As he was talking, the metal scraping sound from behind them grew louder and louder. Mia let out a scream.
"Shit! There's something there!"
Jack let out a gasp.
"Where?"
He pointed his flashlight over towards the figure, yet when the light shined on where it should've been, there was nothing at all. In fact, even the sounds that it was making disappeared as well, as though it never even existed. Jack scratched the side of his head.
"I don't see anything there!"
Mia took a deep breath.
"Yeah, yeah... thanks for that. But turn the flashlight off, even if you have a lot of time we should still save it. Let's quickly get out of this room."
Jack was a little confused about what she was talking about, but decided to shut off the flashlight anyway. He used about 5 seconds, but that still left him with 47 more. He then took off in the original direction that he was pointing in, while Jessica and Mia followed closely behind him.
With him leading the way, the group made it through several rooms of varying size, some large, some small, some spacious, and some narrow. For the most part, it was fine. However, there would occasionally be strange screeching sounds coming from the distance.
When Jessica heard them come close, she turned on the flashlight, and they disappeared entirely. She was able to keep the monsters at bay, but it came at the cost of 5 seconds of flashlight, leaving her with only 15 more.
Although there wasn't an exit in sight, they had already covered good ground. Mia let out a small sigh as they were running.
"This isn't actually too bad. If we spread out our use of the flashlight, then we should last a long time."
Yet, as she said that, metal walls suddenly raised up in the middle of the room, separating all three of them. Jack turned around and called out.
"Eh? Where did you guys go?"
Jessica called out in a panic.
"W-We were separated!"
Mia banged on the wall a few times.
"Shit, it looks like they didn't like us grouping together. If possible, we should try to get back together, but the highest priority is just escaping!"
With that, Jack scratched the back of his head before deciding to head off as well.
Still, he didn't feel like he was in any real danger. He just continued running through the rooms, as strange sounds continued to echo around him. Jack let out a soft hum as he went around.
"I hope I can still find some friends..."
There was a sound of a scream in the distance. It was faint, but not in the sense that it was muffled, but rather that it appeared to be coming from a distance, like it was in a cave and coming from quite far away. It was rather discordant, considering he was currently in a cramped room.
However, Jack didn't realize that this situation was strange in any way.
Thinking that there might've been a person where that scream was, he ran over there, hoping to find them. Although infrequent, there were cries of pain, but they were not so much screams, and more of someone writhing in agony.
After going through various rooms, some with three walls, and others with seven, he finally found the source of the cries of pain. All Jack could see was a black figure on the ground despite the fact he was able to vaguely see everything around it.
Out of curiosity, he turned on the flashlight once more.
When he shined the light, he saw Blake. However, it was a little different from before. Unlike when he originally just had a few broken ribs, right now all of his ribs were missing. In fact, so were all of his organs.
Although there was blood splattered all over the place, the actual scene itself wasn't all that gory, since there was only an empty shell. But despite this fact, Blake still seemed to be alive, still spasming and looking around.
He was opening and closing his mouth like he was trying to speak, but he was only able to get out incoherent sounds of pain. Upon seeing this, Jack let out a laugh, crouching down next to him.
"Wow! You got to have so much fun! I'm so jealous, I can't do something like that. Dad always said that I wouldn't have any more fun if I did something like this. How did you do it?"
Blake's eyes were glazed over, but he still turned to look at Jack. With one hand he reached out towards him. But before he made it far, he lost his strength and his arm fell to his side. Jack tilted his head to the side while putting a finger on his chin.
"Mm... that's no fair, you're keeping secrets? But I'm still going to find out the secrets!"
He was only met with silence, as Blake was no longer moving. Jack still had his flashlight shining on him, and despite the fact he was looking directly at him, Blake's body disappeared entirely, right in front of his eyes. Even the blood was gone, somehow vanishing into thin air.
Jack let out a gasp when he saw this.
"Ah! You took the secrets with you! That's no fair..."
He turned off the flashlight, though he used about 7 seconds, leaving him with just about 41 seconds. Jack stood up once more and continued running through the various doorways.
"Hehe, I'm going to find the secret! Just you wait!"
Jack continued to run through all of the rooms, one after another. As he continued further, the elevations of the rooms began changing as well. Sometimes it was a gradual ramp that went upwards, and sometimes there was a sudden steep increase that made it as easy to cross as scaling a mountain.
However, Jack was able to scale up as easily as a spider somehow, despite the fact the surface itself was completely smooth. As he continued for a long while, the sound of scraping happened once more.
Though it was a bit louder than normal.
Jack turned and shined his flashlight.
"Hey, do you know the secret?"
Though, when he shined the light, there was something more than just an empty room.