Chapter 11: Chest Trap!
Zen stopped the group, not allowing them to take a single step forward.
"What's the trap?" Alexander, who was right behind Zen, asked.
"It's the chest; if we open it, we're dead." He replied.
Gasps were heard behind him.
"Damn it, even chests can be traps? How do they want us to live?" Melissa cursed.
"They don't; they don't want us to live." Changus, who was silent until now, said his words, hitting the group deeply.
"We have to move forward; there's nothing we can do." Speed, with his unbroken confidence, spoke.
"You're right, let's continue." Zen turned backwards, leaving the path leading to the chest and led the group safely to their next destination.
The path forward was chill after that.
The group was first met with a large room that had a huge rock blocking the way forward that Changus easily got out of the way, gaining him a few praises that lightened his mood.
Later on down the line, after a few hours of traversing the maze that brought out the last breath of every single group member, they finally came upon a puzzle door.
The group didn't move forward; they all sat on the floor as they couldn't walk anymore.
"Anybody has an idea about this door." Zen asked, huffing and puffing with sweat falling down his cheeks. The temperature here was quite neutral, however, the nerve-wracking they had to go through, especially for him, who led the way, was unhuman.
Every single step was laced with traps, one single mistake, and they would all die.
Thankfully, it went well, and now they have their much-deserved rest.
"Pua!" Max, who was chugging down a water jug, expressed his satisfaction, his blue light shining for a second.
"Nah, man, I got absolutely no idea." He replied, drunk on pure bliss.
"Then don't speak." Alexander expressed his annoyance, getting a few not-so-happy glances from the group that made him click his tongue and shut up.
"Do you, Zen?" Sabrina asked.
"I have experience with puzzles, but let's rest first." He said, resting his head on the wall.
"Talking about experience, what did you guys do to end up here?" Melissa, who was most curious about this subject, asked, getting another round of glances; this time they were different.
"You already know my case; it was a bunch of bastards ruling the world and doing whatever they wanted without getting bashed, so someone had to do the job, and that's us, whose daughter was unjustly tortured by those monsters." Sabrina replied, anger visible on her face.
"By the way, Miss Sabrina. Were you serious when you said you unleashed a virus on the world?" Dali asked, curious if his previous theory was right.
"Yeah..." Sabrina replied, putting a jerky on her mouth.
"Me and my beloved made sure every single one of them was dead before we died, including every monkey called a human on Demoris." she added.
"Demoris?" Alex asked, curious at the new word.
"Yeah? Our planet?" Sabrina, confused, asked.
"Our world was called Madola." he said.
"Different languages?" Max asked.
"More like different worlds." Zen spoke, gaining the attention of the group.
"Yeah, that's what I was thinking." Dali said, his eyes on the ground, before he raised his head to look at the group.
"Any of you guys had any superpowers or supernatural energy on your planets?" he looked around as he asked.
"Not in my case, no. We had multiple fantasy stories, though." Zen replied, his eyes on the ceiling, jerky in mouth.
"Not here." Sabrina said so too.
"Nop." Max spoke.
The group looked at each other.
"It seems... we all came from similar yet different worlds." Lisa, who was sitting next to Sabrina, added.
"Yeah, that's so strange, yet cool." Dali said.
"What was your world, Zen." he then looked at Zen and asked, his question diverting everybody's attention to Zen, who was the unofficial party leader.
"Ah, me? It was called Earth. Though all I can remember is a body pillow I once called Karina, other than that, I wasn't the type to go out a lot, you see." He said, scratching his head.
"If so, then how did you end up in hell." Alexander asked, not believing.
"The internet." Zen said, his hands clasped together as his gaze, which was roaming randomly, locked on the floor.
"Ah." The group was convinced, as they all looked somewhere randomly. The air around the room is still.
"Life is unfair, huh... Not in my case, though; I was a hitman." Alex sighed up and spoke, his tone heavy, showing his regrets.
"You? A hitman? Damn, you look kind, man." Max was surprised by Alex's words; the middle-aged man he spent so much time with was a professional killer.
"Why didn't you..." Lisa, who just heard this thought back on the previous event that happened, asked, her tone heart wrenching.
"I changed my ways; I don't want to be the cause of another death, no matter the cause." Alex replied, his eyes and heart heavy.
"That's..." She wanted to say that it was selfish, that he shouldn't have let her die, but, not a single one here would risk his life for another. She knew, because she herself was a bad person.
"From the looks of it, killing is wrong, no matter the victim." Speed said, addressing Alex.
"You seem to know a bit." Alex turned his attention to speed and asked.
"You could say so. I was a Yakuza boss." he replied, a smile on his face.
Melissa's eyes were lit with an 'I knew it' light; her ability to sniff out gang bastards didn't fail her.
Having achieved her purpose of knowing the background of a few here, Melissa's attention drifted away slowly as she and the group slept, one by one.
This conversation might be revived another day or not, but what remained true was that this was the present, and everybody's past was dead... Unless they didn't let go of their past selves.
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