Al entered what was now Cesar's unit, deciding to stay there and forgo switching again. He descended the stairs and entered the brightly lit room. Placing his scratched sword in a corner, he approached the water trough to fill his canteen and quenched his thirst.
His gaze fell upon the dream catcher, noticing that the top resembled a small, pointed knife. "I suppose I didn't need this armor after all," he murmured. Al removed the remaining armor pieces, leaving only his blessed medical robe.
"I can't move forward until I confront this fear of mine," he affirmed, closing his eyes and repeating the words like a mantra. Inhaling deeply, he exhaled slowly, summoning his courage.
Al gradually opened his eyes and steeled himself. He began walking towards the dark room that seemed to be the focal point of his nightmares. With each step, his heart pounded harder, prompting him to move cautiously to calm his nerves. Passing the stairs, Al sensed the air growing colder and more rigid.
Standing before the entrance, he stared into a profound darkness that seemed to stretch on infinitely. Regulating his breathing and steadying his heart rate, he entered the abyss-like room.
The warmth in his feet dissipated as they felt the cool dirt while the darkness expelled any trace of light. Al struggled to rein in his racing thoughts, which multiplied uncontrollably and threatened to overwhelm him. Nausea surged within him, overpowering his resolve.
Just as he was about to succumb to the terrifying fear, a distant voice reached his ears. Al's body tensed, every hair standing on end. Instinctively, he turned toward the exit, but to his dismay, he saw nothing but darkness.
Panic gripped him as his surroundings remained shrouded in obscurity. As the voice drew nearer, his heart pounded like a fire alarm until he could feel someone's breath tickling the back of his neck.
Despite every fiber of his being urging him to flee, surprisingly, Al defied his instincts. He took a deep breath, exhaling slowly, and assumed a seated, cross-legged position. Ignoring the persistent voice echoing behind him, he recalled Romann's instructions.
After falling through with the step, Al's thoughts and consciousness merged seamlessly with the room's all-encompassing darkness. There was no distinction between his closed and open eyes; both yielded an abyss devoid of light.
The relentless void swallowed him. After what seemed like an eternity, Al traversed the darkness, his steps guided solely by intuition. His mind held no tangible thoughts, relying exclusively on instinct.
A compelling force beckoned him to continue moving forward, its pull growing stronger with each step. Suddenly, Al's next step faltered, and he braced himself for impact, but no ground met his fall. Instead, he perpetually fell trapped in an eternal plummet.
The passage of time became hazy, and Al questioned whether he was genuinely falling, ascending, or suspended within a vast expanse of black.
Within the encompassing darkness, faint outlines of undulating, crop-like structures materialized before Al's eyes. His vision adapted to the surroundings, and his thoughts adapted as well.
He was compelled to limit his thinking to the sporadic thoughts that surfaced unattached from emotion. As he continued to fall, he passed an unfathomable number of swaying crops, witnessing their intricate movements.
The walls Al was falling in between bore countless tunnels, each exhibiting unique sizes and characteristics. On closer inspection, he discerned that these were not crops but whip-like tentacles emanating from a central base.
They were plant-like and swayed in response to the movements of the colossal root base. It was like watching a grand dancing play. As Al's descent gradually slowed, he heard a familiar voice from a 25-meter tunnel on his side.
When he thought of approaching that tunnel, the world around him rotated in response. The entire environment shifted 90 degrees to his right, causing Al to enter the now-horizontal tunnel, which measured 25 meters in length.
As Al tumbled into the tunnel, he collided with its sidewall and continued to fall. Amidst the chaos, he managed to clutch onto one of the tentacles emanating from a nearby crop. The voice that had beckoned him earlier grew clearer, originating from a couple hundred feet below him.
"Please, don't come closer," the voice pleaded, resounding with urgency. It emanated from the depths, captivating Al's attention. Prepared to swing towards the source, Al's grip tightened on the tentacle he held. Yet, suddenly, the tentacle convulsed in a frantic attempt to dislodge him.
Al was forcefully thrown off and propelled to the other side of the tunnel, where he collided with a swaying crop. He was momentarily dazed before resuming his descent.
As he continued his fall, he swiftly passed by the source of the voice, which now resounded in agonizing wails. Recovering from the impacts, Al instinctively seized hold of the closest crop's tentacle, bringing his fall to a halt once more.
He moved on to the next crop without hesitation, nimbly climbing upward. The voice's lamentations transformed into cryptic and distorted utterances.
Al maintained a resolute silence, adhering to the unspoken laws of the enigmatic realm, which forbade self-produced and complex thoughts.
Despite lacking any conscious memory of this place, the surroundings grew increasingly familiar as Al climbed across the black crops. An instinctive familiarity pulsed through his veins.
Al's gaze fixed on the crop that emanated the distorted, violent screams, its stillness in stark contrast to the swaying black crops around it.
With only a few swings separating him from the source, the incomprehensible voice melded into howling wind. Determined, Al landed on the rigid crop, exerting all his strength as he attempted to pull it free. Yet, despite his relentless efforts, the crop remained firmly rooted, refusing to yield even an inch.
Wasting no time, Al redirected his focus to the base of the immovable crop. While it provided enough space for Al to stand upright near its base, he remained crouched, fiercely digging into the dirt-like wall with his bare hands.
Time slipped away, marked only by Al's relentless carving. With each passing moment, the base of the crop grew thinner, encouraging him to continue his tireless excavation.
Around ten feet into the wall, Al settled inside the space he had carved. The root of the tentacled crop had diminished to the size of a small water bottle, yet Al persisted, driven by a primal instinct.
Finally, when it was down to the thickness of a pencil, Al sank his teeth into the rooted base of the crop. In an instant, a resounding rumble and violent tremors reverberated through the surroundings, breaking the spell animating Al.
A flood of thoughts inundated his mind, causing excruciating pain and an overwhelming sense of expulsion. Gasping for breath, Al fought to clear his mind, expelling all forms of complex thought. The small cave he had excavated started to shift, slowly closing in.
Al noticed his hand sinking into the closing wall. The dirt was starting to consume him. He swiftly withdrew his arm and crawled out of the hole. However, the crop continued to be pushed from the wall, and the two were about to begin falling.
Al turned towards the closest swaying crop, leaping towards it just as the base of the crop he had been standing on was forcefully ejected from the wall. To his surprise, the crop remained suspended in mid-air. Instead of falling, it collapsed on itself and shrank until it resembled a small stone.
It morphed into the shape of a ring. However, as soon as the ring took form, it plummeted, eliciting a sense of urgency within Al. Reacting instinctually, he threw himself downward, effortlessly catching the small ring and swiftly sliding it onto his right pinky finger.
A sensation of fulfillment washed over him. "I can form thoughts now." Al pondered as he continued hurling down through the tunnel.
The moment the ring adorned his finger, a surge of information flooded Al's mind, revealing the nature of the realm he found himself in. "These crops, they aren't crops at all. They serve as Etheric Shells for individual Wills. This is the etheric realm of the material plane. Individuals paralyze their respective etheric shells upon entering this realm. Once harvested, the freed etheric shell and the individual are forcibly expelled. So why am I still falling!?"
As Al grappled with his puzzlement, a sound akin to nails on a chalkboard resonated throughout the material plane, reverberating with a disturbing intensity.
As the piercing sound reverberated through the realm, even the dancing etheric shells momentarily froze in response. Al's eyes darted around, straining to perceive any trace of the source, but the encompassing darkness offered no clues.
Unease gripped his stomach, growing more pronounced with each passing moment. Fewer and fewer etheric shells were appearing while Al continued his fall. A dreadful thought crept into his mind—what if he was about to find out how deep the bottom actually was?
Al scanned the surroundings, but his vision could not see an end to the darkness. The etheric shells had vanished entirely, leaving him alone in the abyss, descending without a clear direction.
Uncertain whether he was still falling, time stretched on endlessly until an oddity emerged—a circular outline resembling the end of a tunnel.
As the outline became more defined, the end of the tunnel was even darker than the tunnel he was falling through. "How could things grow even darker?" Al exclaimed inwardly.
The circular opening rapidly expanded as Al shot out of it into the air with astonishing force. He soared upwards, ascending to an infinite sky darker than anything he had ever seen.
Al's ascent carried him approximately 30 meters above the ground before he fell again. With an abrupt impact, he collided face-first with actual ground.
Groaning in pain, Al slowly rose from the ground, assessing his body for any signs of injury. Surprisingly, he discovered that he was completely unharmed. Al surveyed the unfamiliar landscape that stretched before him.
The sky above was a profound black, darker than anything he could ever imagine. A black hole sun loomed in the middle, casting a darkness that made the sky appear luminescent in comparison.
Turning his attention to his surroundings, Al observed mountains in the distance to his right, while on his left, an expansive expanse of tall, dark grass stretched out endlessly. Behind him, a massive cliff led to a waterfall, its blackened water cascading from approximately five stories into a small, inky black pond. Al realized that this pond was the very opening from which he had been propelled.
"So those infinite tunnels I fell through were contained within that small pond?" Al contemplated, attempting to piece together the sequence of events in his mind. His gaze shifted to the ring formed by his etheric shell, unsure of its significance.
He looked at the ring his etheric shell had formed into. "In the grass, careful." Al almost jumped back as the ring talked to him straight into his mind.
"You can speak? What do you mean, be careful? What's in the grass?" Al shouted at the ring, but there was no response. It was silent.
After thinking over how the etheric shell kept trying to keep him from harvesting it, he chose to ignore it. He began walking towards the tall grass, stopping right before it. He paused, thinking about what the ring had said.
Approaching the tall grass, he paused momentarily, considering the ring's words. Curiosity getting the better of him, he cautiously extended his hand to touch a blade of the dark vegetation.
To his surprise, upon contact, the blade transformed into a billowing cloud of pitch-black smoke as dark as the sky above.
Al forged ahead, dissipating each blade of grass he encountered, dispersing them into swirling trails of smoke, carving an open passage through the mysterious landscape.