The wide room was the same as in the game, a destroyed hall. Many doors and paths were blocked by furniture, or outright collapsed, as it was the stairs leading to an upper floor and the elevator.
The only path was ahead. Ellianor narrowed his eyes on the path ahead. "Hey, VOICE, do you know where I need to go to escape this hell?" It was no longer a nightmare, thus it must be hell.
Ellianor refused to stand one minute longer inside that hellish landscape. Since the voice seemed too eager to guide him, he would try to exploit it as much as he could.
[OH, ASKING ME FOR HELP~ SO CUTE. BUT YES. YOU CAN PROCEED FORWARD, OR GO THROUGH ONE OF THE BLOCKED DOORS, THE ONE WITH MANY FURNITURE BLOCKING ITS PATH.
IN SPECIFIC, THE ONE WITH THE BIG SOFA]
A quick scan through the room revealed the "door" to which it referred. many pieces of furniture and a golden sofa with red cushions blocked a passage on the left.
It was not a door but a corridor… "What are the benefits of going that way? And the way forward?"
Ellianor did not trust it, and he couldn't trust something so shady, but with the options at hand, he had no choice but to accept its help, otherwise, he would go blind in that land.
[ALRIGHT. THE FORWARD PATH IS SAFE-ISH I THINK, YOU WON'T FACE MONSTERS, BUT THE BLOCKED PATH HAS SOME MONSTERS IN IT. YOU CAN GAIN EXP. ALRIGHT, LEMME DO SOMETHING]
[QUEST! THE START: FINISH THE START OF YOUR START!
REWARDS: 1200 EXP]
"Seriously? The start of my start?" Ellianor bit his lip, was he dealing with a child or someone without naming sense? 'Whatever, it is not as if it matters.' That voice still had power.
Enough power to drag his soul, or mind there. 'The more I think about how I ended here, the worse it gets.'
Ellianor had no recollection of how he ended there, much less a memory beyond the dark void enwrapping him in its violating embrace.
[MEH, MY FIRST TIME DOING THAT TYPE OF THING. ANYHOW, EITHER WAY, I SUGGEST KILLING MONSTERS, THEY MAY GIVE MORE EXP]
"They may?" Ellianor raised his sword, pondering if it was worth cutting open the passage or just going on to the easier path. The voice seemed more and more unreliable by the minute.
[YEAH, AS I SAID, IT IS MY FIRST TIME DOING THAT, AND EVERYTHING SEEMS OUTDATED BECAUSE… THEY KINDA ARE. WELL, WE BANTERED ENOUGH, MAKE A CHOICE, IF YOU NEED MOTIVATION… LOOK BEHIND YOU]
The moment Ellianor moved, he could see the corruption creeping towards the room, and a mangled corpsed patched up by the strange substance exiting the room, he was in as more corruption exited from that room.
He was in the middle of a pinch attack of whatever was assailing that place. 'And it can bring back the dead…' Ellianor looked forward and ran towards the passage.
The sword shone red, and with a swing the blockage was cut open, opening it with surprising ease.
'Wait, you can do that?' Orange eyes fell on the blade, but Ellianor had little time to dwell on it.
He stormed off in the corridor, a minimap appeared all of a sudden.
[HELL YEAH BABY! I MADE IT WORK! FOLLOW THE DAMNED ARROW TOWARDS WHERE YOU NEED TO BE!]
Ellianor groaned at the voice. Sure it was helpful, but he had the sentiment that it was learning about whatever the system was simultaneously him.
'That doesn't give me trust in your abilities.'
That was a big problem since the voice was supposed to be the stronger and wiser one between the two since it pulled him from his home to that mess of a place.
Ellianor saw more creatures, but they were nothing like the mangled mutant he had met two rooms ago.
They were but blackened corpses covered in cook, stumbling and slow. It was a good thing.
With a swift movement of the stone-like blade, their bodies were cut in half and their heads beheaded, a path opened quickly. "Hey, voice! If I met a stronger mutant like the one I have seen previously, can I kill it that easily?"
[WHAT? OH, THAT THING! IT SURPRISES ME YOU EVEN TOOK DAMAGE TO IT! I GAVE YOU A DAMN CLASS, USE IT! LIKE, HADN'T THE COMBAT INFORMATION IMPLANTED IN YOUR BRAIN OR SOMETHING?]
Ellianor resisted the urge to facepalm. That voice was infuriating. His orange gaze was fixated on the map for a solid second, analyzing where he should go next. 'Take a turn to the right.'
A turn to the right could lead him to the main corridor. He stopped at where he should move to the right, and a door blocked his path. Ellianor disposed of it quickly with the blade.
'That thing is quite handy.' With the path open, he continued to the direction appointed by the map, until he entered a strange room.
Stranger than all others. It had many human-sized test tubes, all broken and violated, as well as tools and machines Ellianor couldn't make the heads or tails off.
"That is where I need to be?"
Ellianor questioned the voice that silently hummed in his head.
[YEAH, SHE IS WAITING AHEAD. FREE HER, AND THEN FOLLOW THE MAP. I WILL HAVE TO… GET OUT AND TOUCH SOME STARS. KEEP SAFE, AND KEEP HER SAFE. OTHERWISE, YOU WILL GODDAMM PAY FOR IT]
The voice vanished from his head. Ellianor blinked as if a metaphorical weight had been lifted from his mind, the voice's overwhelming presence no longer inside of his mind.
With the freedom of his mind, came a nauseating wave of dizziness and pain. Ellianor stumbled to the side, resting his back against a wall to not fall.
Ellianor's eyes closed and opened at strange paces, an overflow of information crashing inside his brain. "Shit. That is worse than when my teacher taught me algorithms." His head started to pound painfully.
'So this is what that voice meant that information was crampled in my brain?' Maybe its presence unwillingly halted the information flow, or another factor was at play.
All Ellianor knew was that maybe his aunt and job were not that bad.
Not when compared to this.