"Are y'all ready ?!"
A powerful voice resonates through the air.
The man screaming is standing on a podium. Facing him are 15 men and women decked in full combat armor, not leaving a single millimeter of skin show.
"Have y'all checked your helmets ?" asks the man, "Remember, without it you'll breathe Dungeon Fumes and you'll die, so take it seriously."
The team proceeds on their final adjustments, checking one last time that everything is okay.
"Good," says the man as he gets down from the podium. "The Awakened should be here soon enough."
The Awakened are people with supernatural abilities who can breathe without any equipment in the Dungeon. However, even if the term "Awakened" is their official name, the ones that challenge the Dungeon are known under a different name.
"Look, look !" exclaims one of the armor-clad men. "It's the Dungeonauts !"
A group of three men and two women approaches the group.
"Hey, so you're the Mercenaries for this expedition ?" asks one of the Dungeonauts.
"Yes, that is right," answers the man who was standing on the podium. "I'm Captain Martin."
Martin and the Dungeonauts shake hands.
"Ok, I'm Jack. Behind me are Armando, Ron, Julie, and Amanda. All D ranked."
A murmur starts to spread among the Mercenaries.
"Only D rank ? Ain't this mission a C- rank ?"
"I mean, it's only an upper layer exped' so that should be fine."
Martin stomps the ground, silencing the group.
"Now boys and girls, go get your weapons; we're descending."
The mercenaries all grab an assault rifle and a combat knife before regrouping. It was finally time to start the descent.
***
The Dungeon takes the form of an immense inverted tower, going so deep that, in the 60 years since its existence and millions of explorers, nobody had discovered its bottom, not even by scanning its exterior.
60 years ago, an unknown and unmarked meteorite struck the Earth on Point Nemo, the geographical point furthest away from any land. The collision created, somehow, the place now known as the Dungeon, the most dangerous place on Earth.
***
The descent was going smoothly, the group only having to fight against some insect-looking monsters. The Mercenaries had almost nothing to do, the Dungeonauts slaying the monsters with relative ease.
After a little over 3 hours, they finally arrive at the stairs to take them to the location of the mission.
As they start marching towards them Ron, one of the Dungeonauts who was marching in the frontline, stops them.
"Hey, how about we take a break ? C'mon, it's been 3 hours."
"The faster we're done here, the faster we can go back," responds Julie. "I don't want to spend the whole day here."
"Oh, c'mon, let's just take a break, and besides, I'm sure the Mercenaires are tired too. They're not like us, able to go all day without rest." retorts Ron.
The Mercenaries were in fact starting to get a bit tired: the armor and weapons were pretty heavy, and combined with the fact that they had to breathe through a filter on their masks, it made the whole thing pretty exhausting.
"You're right, Ron." said Jack "Let's take a small break. Can't harm us, right ?"
"Finally," exclaimed Ron. "My feet were killing m-"
He could not finish his phrase as he felt a sharp pain in his chest. He looked down to see a blade was planted through his chest.
Blood started pouring through his mouth.
"Fuck."
It was the last thing he could say before the blade twisted and cut through his chest, cutting his right arm as it got out.
As his corpse fell heavily on the group, the group saw what caused this: a creature standing on all four, covered in short black fur and a rat-like face. Its tail was what cut Ron with an S shaped blade at the end of it.
"Holy shit ! Combat posit-"
Captain Martin was literally cut in his sentence by another blade slicing through his head in diagonal.
If they didn't start to panic, then now was the right time. The Mercenaries took their weapons and started firing on the monsters, but then a third and a fourth creature appeared.
The group's number was dwindling by the instant, the Mercenaries trying as much as possible to survive.
"What the fuck are those ?! "screamed one of the Mercenaries while evading a blade that ultimately ended in one of his comrades' stomachs.
"Bladed Gnawers, but they shouldn't appear on the upper layers ! They're C+ rank. Damnit, what's going on ?" answered Jack.
"You know what ? Fuck this shit, I'm out."
As she said that, Julie started sprinting with the energy of desperation towards the direction they came from.
"No ! Julie ! We need everyo-"
BOOM !
An insanely loud sound echoed around them before Julie was sent flying towards the group. She hit the floor extremely violently, ragdolling towards Jack's feet. His heart sank as he took a look at her: her chest was completely caved in.
He looks up only to see his vision completely obscured by a giant greenish thing. Shocked, he cannot react as he is hit on his side. The violence of the impact sent him flying multiple meters and completely shattered his right arm and his ribcage.
On the ground, he can finally see what hit him: a giant with green skin, three eyes and three horns on its forehead. A Horned Triclop, a B- rank monster.
Jack can only watch in horror as a Mercenary sprints towards the monster, only to be met by a backfist, ripping his head from his body.
Another one gets cut in half. Amanda, one of the Dungeonauts, finally kills one of the Bladed Gnawers before getting stabbed repeatedly by the three others.
At this point Jack is the only one alive, and barely.
But where is Armando, he starts to think ? Probably gone, searching for help; he is the fastest of the group after all.
And with those thoughts Jack dies, without even being able to say his witty one-liner he had prepared especially for this situation.
The monsters stop for a moment, admiring their bloody massacre before walking away, every Bladed Gnawer with a corpse in their mouths.
***
After a few minutes, one of the Mercenaries gets back up and starts puking blood—so much blood that it should kill him.
After a few moments, he starts to raise his head and look around him; the scene is a gory mess. He tries to get up but can't muster the strength to. He tries to call for help, but it feels like his voice refuses to come out.
As he touches his throat to see if something's amiss, he realizes something: he doesn't have his helmet. Quick, he needs one or he's gonna die ! And it would kind suck to have somehow survived all of that to die because he can't breathe.
As he scrambles around him, he sees it: a helmet. And it's even his personal one; he recognizes it thanks to a sticker he put on it. How lucky.
He musters his strength to crawl towards it, ignoring the blood and gore he has to crawl through.
He finally reaches his helmet and pulls it toward him. Closer to him, he can finally take it with two hands, but that's where he sees it: only one half is ok, the other is completely smashed. Shit.
He lifts it from the ground only to hear a wet thud. He looks down to see a blob of gore that just fell from the helmet. But how? It's his helmet; he's sure of it. Then he sees something that catches his eye.
He pulls on it to reveal hair still attached to some skin. But something's wrong: those hairs—they're his hairs !
Gray, straight and shoulder length—yeah, it's his. He starts patting his head but he still has everything there.
Curious, he starts to search through the mess to find something else: an eye with a deep blue iris, just like his.
So he just found something with his hair AND eye that was in his helmet ? There was only one explanation for it, but it's so crazy that he struggles to articulate it.
Finally, he says out loud with what might just be a brand new mouth:
"Is that my fucking head ?"