Levels' of Five Arc
Level Two:
The sign stood by the maze entrance. Everyone stood there and discussed how this level could resemble the sin of greed, going off what the sign said about it being "The Maze of Desire." After much bickering from everyone in the party about what sin this level is related to and what they should anticipate, something suddenly started to happen to Royal.
He grabs the party's attention with a slightly muffled yell, "Hey guys, I don't feel so good." his body slowly starts to become transparent, starting with his lower torso, then his upper body, and finally his head with his eyes filled with horror as he watches himself slowly and helplessly fade from the existence of this level. Terror ensnares everyone as a realization hits them that this second level isn't just the sin of greed but, without a doubt, the sin of sloth.
Without a moment's hesitation, they all run into the maze, knowing that they cannot stand still or they could meet the same fate as their comrade Royal. They remember how he stood there in the spot for a long time before he started to disappear without a trace of him left. While running through the maze, they all discuss what happened to their compadre—concluding that this is, in fact, two sins as one, but the party finds it weird that they haven't had anything happen with the second sin of this level.
With that in mind, they kept their guards up and their eyes aware of anything that might be considered a desire to them. However, Goon heard a woman behind him saying, "I love you, be with me." Then he felt two hands on both shoulders and the words, "Turn around and look at me; be with me." Goon resists the urge to turn around even though he is lonely. He approaches Xraycrazy and taps him on the shoulder. "Hey, could you look behind us for a second? I think there's something there," he asked, knowing that Xraycrazy was the only one with any weapons on them at the time.
Then, at that moment, Xraycrazy heard a kind of old voice and exclaimed, "It's me, Oda. Turn around, and I'll tell you the ending of One Piece." replying to the voice, he said, "I'm not turning around for a spoiler of a masterpiece." Goon suddenly turns Xraycrazy around, and before he has time to react, he sees a hideous woman more like a monster, wearing a tattered white dress shredded in pieces here and there, skin paler than even that of a vampire, and soulless black eyes.
Upon seeing it, his body freezes. He is unable to move and is stuck in a daze. The ugly creature changes before his eyes and turns into something frozen. Xraycrazy cries. Hayden and Goon see that their companion is stuck in a daze and panic and try to get him out of it before he's in one place for too long.
First, they try to make him budge from his spot by force, but they're stiff, and it's almost like their feet are stuck to the ground like glue, specifically gorilla glue. Goon decides to slap him in the face, but nothing happens; not even the head bobbles to the impact of the slap. Desperate and feeling like they were running out of time, they took Xraycrazy's taser to try and zap him back to reality.
To no avail, when they shocked him, nothing happened again. Hayden decides to stand before him and block whatever he sees to see if that would bring them back as a last-ditch effort. To his surprise, their friend, stiff and unmovable with blank, sorrow-filled eyes, started to have life in them again. "What just happened?" the now unfrozen party member asks the other two.
They filled him in on the whole being turned around to look at the direction of the voice and how what he saw made him become frozen, with soulless eyes. Even how they physically abused him in a defenseless state to try and make him snap out of it. Xraycrazy immediately takes back his taser from the Goon and ponders on tazing him for a 5th time. Then Hayden explains how blocking the eyesight was the only way they could get him back, and it was a lucky last-ditch effort at best.
Goon chimes in, saying, "We should probably get moving before we end up like Royal." Everyone agreed with the statement, even when some were still thinking about tazing a specific individual in the group. While moving, an idea comes into the mind of Xraycrazy: "You know, what if the sign that said the Maze of Desire was there to make us desire this area to be a maze."
Goon and Hayden speak over each other, believing that their fellow adventurer came up with could potentially be the key to getting out of the place. "So what if we desired an exit, then one would appear?" Hayden asked curiously. "That sums up what I'm thinking, but as far as we know, we're still in hell, so it could be a deception." The rag-tag team decides to try and desire an exit with all their might, and as they thought, a door appeared with the words exit written in a bright glowing red above it.
"Well, that was too easy," Xraycrazy says with suspension in his voice. "Yeah, this working is too convenient," said Goon with a possibly fried brain because they were tazed four times the day before. "Well, they could connect my phone to the computer camera and slide it under the door to see what's on the other side, just in case." Xraycrazy agreed with the idea, but Goon wanted to try and see if they could break through the bushy maze that seemed only to go straight to a new path that could possibly be made.
He got down and put his hands and legs on the ground in a football-tackling running position, looking at the brush with a serious expression. Then Goon full bolts at the bush, making contact with it. It looks like he made a hole in it until the others realized it was stretching out like it was made of rubber. Goon stretched it out enough to launch him back into the other bush across from the one he tackled, landing with a loud crash and the push he was launched into violently rustling.
"What the hell! Do these bushes have the fucking gum-gum fruit?" Goon yelled, his serious eyes replaced by eyes filled with irritated anger. He gets back up, looks at Hayden, and asks, "Can you try to cut this stupid bush with your pocket knife?" Hayden nods in agreement, reaches into his pockets, takes out his knife, and starts to cut through the bush.
The knife cuts through the thickets of the bush like slightly melted butter. "Well, I think this might work, guys!" Hayden said with enthusiasm, looking at the party while they were looking behind him, watching the bush that he had just cut grow back at a rapidly fast speed. "Oh, of course, it fucking grows back!" Goon screams in frustration. "Well, we can always try the phone thing Hayden said he could do," suggested Xraycrazy. Hayden and Goon nod in agreement with the statement since that is all there is to try now.
Hayden brings out his laptop, presses the button on the side, boots it up, pulls up a coding system, and starts making a program that will allow him to connect his phone camera to his laptop wirelessly. "Alright, that should do the trick. Now, let us see what's on the other side of this door," he says with curiosity. Then he starts the program he made on his computer; sure enough, everyone can see the phone camera through his laptop.
Everyone watches as Hayden slides his phone under the door and looks at his laptop camera, seeing the phone evaporate like water in sunny weather. "You know, maybe we shouldn't go through that door," they all say in perfect unison. "Let's ignore this door and just keep walking through this place," Xraycrazy said awkwardly, terrified by the door. They continue to walk past the door and keep going straight on the path that they are on.
"How long is this path going to go straight for? I thought this was a maze. Shouldn't there be a fork in the road at some point?" questioned Hayden. At that exact moment, they came across a fork in the road. Well, now that there is a fork in the road, I don't know which way we should go anymore," exclaimed Hayden. We need to decide what path we should follow. I'm thinking the right one," stated Goon.
"Well, which path do we desire more so we can choose the opposite direction from that since this place seems pretty deceptive," Xraycrazy said. "Wouldn't we just be desiring the opposite path, though?" questioned the Goon. "That is a fair point." Hayden chimed in. "We could always just not care where we are going here and just talk about whatever random topic we are going on instead of thinking about where to go and what to do," exclaimed Xraycrazy. "Yeah, let's try that. Something might happen if we don't think about what we desire," Hayden says agreeingly. Goon also agrees, and they continue to walk through the maze, talking about random topics that range from anime to video games.
While they continued walking, Goon tripped on something that felt almost metallic and fell to the ground, getting a decently deep cut from a little branch hanging out of the maze's walls. After he wiped the dust off his clothes, Goon pointed at what he tripped over. "Hey guys, I believe I found some sort of hatch." Everyone gazed at the hatch; they had been quite skeptical of it since the door entrance; however, no one desired any hatch while walking. "Should they open it?" Hayden asked the gang, which was anxiously observing the hatch.
"After the door incident, I don't trust this at all," Goon blurted out in fear of possibly being vaporized. We didn't desire it, so I believe we will be fine," Hayden tried to assure Goon. "If you want to investigate, that's fine, but I will stand behind it just in case." Goon skeptically stated.
Hayden and Xraycrazy twisted the wheel on top of the hatch that sealed it and opened it to see if they could see anything inside. After a few manual twists, the hatch wheel spun wildly, and the hatch spat open. "Do you see anything in there, Hayden?" Xraycrazy questioned. "No, it looks like a pitch-black fall; there aren't even any stairs or a ladder," Hayden replied. "So, do you think we should jump down it?" Xraycrazy questioned again. "There is no way I am trusting that hatch," Goon said aggressively.
In that instance, the maze seemed to get smaller and smaller, but not just the maze; the surrounding walls seemed to get closed, and the roof seemed the same. "Guys, is it me, or is the room getting smaller?" Xraycrazy inquired. "Oh shit, the rooms closing in on us! Forget what I said about it down the hatch!" Goon yelled while rushing to jump down the area he was suspicious of with no hesitation. He vanished out of the eyesight of Hayden and Xraycrazy going in the tunnel. "Well, we should follow suit," Hayden said, and Xraycrazy agreed.
First, Hayden went down the tunnel and disappeared from eyesight upon entering the tunnel. Xraycrazy's turn to go in was next to the area where the maze was ever so small now that not even a mouse couldn't even call it spacious. Xraycrazy leaped into the entrance of the hatch.
He immediately noticed that it had been pitch black for a long while; as he fell, Xraycrazy started to see what looked like purple smoke below him. Then, all of a sudden, he heard a splash and a sploosh, finally reaching the purple smoke. Xraycrazy fell through the mist and felt his back hit by something liquid, followed by a loud crashing that seemed like water.