The Worst First Encounter (1)
A freezing floor, and walls every bit as raw and biting. A jet-black darkness that swallowed everything an inch past my nose, and a space so vast it bordered on absurd. All of it composed the stage on which I existed.
Not even the familiar green of weeds lived here, nor the chirp of insects to soften the desolation. I had long since been forced to accept the truth: hope that someone would come and save me was nothing more than a rotten rope to clutch at in vain.
"Uuuuaaagh..."
Inside the cold, damp cavern, a listless moan echoed off the walls. Yes — my moan. What followed was a convulsive scream that beat mercilessly against the sealed walls.
"UAAAAAAAAAGH!!!"
BAM! BAM! BAM!
I raged as I hammered down on the enormous gate, which showed not the faintest sign of ever opening. Anyone who saw me would have taken me for nine-tenths out of my mind.
Sadly, I knew all too well that no such witness existed. If anyone did show up — jabbing a finger at me and cursing me out — I would sooner seize them by the sleeves and bawl my eyes out.
Because the place I was trapped in — or rather, summoned to — was the Great Cavern, beyond the reach of any living eye.
"Somebody, please let me ouuuuut!!!"
I raged on and on, throwing the wildest tantrum my body could deliver. Every time some part of me slammed into something, a staggering boom rolled through the dark — the work of monstrous, inhuman strength.
But the Great Cavern stood firmer still; not a single seam gave way, not even enough to scare the piss out of me.
"UAAAAAGH!"
This was the customary ritual rampage I threw whenever my mind snapped sharply awake — a deliberate attempt to vent my murderous aura at full blast and keep my sanity from grinding away inside these sealed walls. Whether it actually worked, I couldn't say; at the very least, I hadn't gone mad yet. That was my self-diagnosis, anyway.
"Why do I have to go through this? How many years has it even been? One? Two? I don't know — I'm telling you, I don't know. My sense of time is gone completely. Will I wake up one day having forgotten how to talk?"
I had made a habit of muttering to myself every waking hour. If I didn't, it felt like more than half of my working vocabulary would rot away. I wasn't joking, either — there were moments when I genuinely couldn't summon a single word fit to describe how wretched my situation was.
"Please, somebody come find me. I'll do anything — just find the Easter egg... So there really are no players after all? Is this real? How on earth did I end up..."
I sank to the floor, sifting through the past, and wept in earnest. I'd sobbed so much by then that my tears barely came at all.
How I'd come to this came down to one goddamn game. A sequel to Eldchain — the series I'd loved — had led me here.
To a diehard fan like me, the newest entry in the notoriously brutal Eldchain series was like rain after a long drought. An action swashbuckler set in a fantasy world, Eldchain commanded a substantial fandom — and of course, I was part of it.
Call it the mileage from years spent on every previous entry: I cleared the game in a time no one else could come close to touching.
A truly astonishing clear speed, my acquaintances said, clicking their tongues.
Fresh off blitzing the new Eldchain, I moved on to hunting down its hidden content. Every game in the series had buried heaps of secret material, and gamers routinely poured hours into unearthing it all.
On the third day of that hunt, I finally uncovered the hidden map. It was the product of impossible coincidences aligning perfectly — so perfectly that even I, its first explorer, had no idea which conditions I'd fulfilled to get in.
Heart pounding, I entered the map — and a notification window appeared on my screen.
You are being offered the chance to become a part of Eldchain.
[Accept] [Decline]
I didn't know it then. The fateful fork that would flip my life upside down was hiding in that one short line. If only I could go back, I'd break my own fingers if that was what it took to stop myself.
"Whoa, this is actually insane."
Foolishly, that was the exclamation I let slip.
Back then, I took it for something monumental and harmless — having my handle immortalized as the first discoverer, that sort of thing. Anyone would have assumed the same.
Click!
As a passionate gamer, I accepted without a moment's hesitation. That was the seed of my ruin. The instant I pressed Accept, my vision flared blinding white — and my consciousness sank beneath the surface.
When awareness returned some time later, I had no choice but to doubt my own eyes. Spread out before me was a place identical to the map I'd discovered in Eldchain.
A dim, vast, cold, hollow somewhere — the very Great Cavern I was trapped in now.
"Being stuck in a place like this was shocking enough — but who would ever clear some cryptic conditions and come here?!"
The Great Cavern I was sealed in was, in effect, an Easter egg. Under normal play, no one had any reason to ever lay eyes on it — hidden content that opened only if you met specific conditions and then performed a specific action nearby.
And the content of this hollow Great Cavern was... me. Or, to be precise, this body I now possessed — the Founding Noble Netionpis.
I didn't know Netionpis's exact lore either. If not for the diary this body had been carrying, I would never have come to terms with my situation — my mind would have simply collapsed.
This body — Netionpis — had, so the diary said, been the single greatest contributor to the founding of the Eld Empire, the world that formed the backdrop of the Eldchain series. As his reward, he wielded the most formidable power in the empire's history — but he, too, was human. Before death, Founding Noble and slave stood equal.
To hide himself from Death's scythe, he had driven forward every manner of research. But experiments that defied the natural order, contrary to his hopes, were slow to bear fruit. Enraged, the man chose the worst possible path: in the end, he did not shrink even from experiments that trampled the dignity of life itself.
The record falls silent after that — but in the end, he reaped the fruit of immortality.
Perhaps because he had drawn down the wrath of heaven, his prize came with a curse attached: along with Demonic Qi, he was said to have gained a side effect beyond all control — fits of raging madness.
On the pretext of his inhuman experiments and his madness, Netionpis was subjugated and sealed away in the Great Cavern — and the ones who pulled off that feat were none other than the original protagonist and heroine of the Eldchain series.
Given that even I had never known this lore, my best guess was that it had been slated for some future installment to reveal... but at this point, what did any of it matter.
"I want out. I want out. I want out. I want out. I want... out......."
I'm begging you.
Founding Noble or whatever — if someone would only pull me out, I was confident I could lick the grime off their boots. What was washing them head to toe with my tongue, anyway? I would gladly have crawled like a dog and run like a horse.
"Haha... it really is hopeless, isn't it. This much time has passed. However optimistic I might be, this one's beyond even..."
That was when it happened.
Wooong—
A sound I had heard somewhere before. Deeply familiar — and long awaited.
"What's that?"
Wooong— Wooong—
There was no mistaking it.
However much time had passed, I had always replayed this sound in my head. It was identical to the sound effect that played when entering Netionpis's Great Cavern in the game.
"That's the seal coming undone, no doubt about it... Now, of all times? Why this exact moment? No — what does the timing matter!"
Grrrrrumble...
The dull, ponderous scrape of a massive gate dragging along the ground. At the same time, dust began to drift through the Great Cavern's interior.
GRRRUMBLE!
At last, the colossal gate of dark iron visibly began to move. To my eyes, it looked like a giant smoothly spreading both arms wide — a merciful angel of a giant, come to deliver me.
"Sniff... sniff..."
The moment I confirmed that light was trickling in, tears spilled out before I knew it. No doubt my eyes had gone weak from enduring the suffocating dark for so long.
"Hck, hnngh... Finally, I'm getting out. I'm getting out! Thank god I stayed alive!"
Before long, the great gate stood open just wide enough for four or five people to pass through. I ran straight for it without a moment's hesitation. If it shut again, I would sooner kill myself — I couldn't hold on any longer.
For someone who has once known hope, falling back into the abyss hurts far more than falling from floor to floor.
I was right at the gate, at the very instant light struck my eyes head-on—
—when a stranger's voice rang out, a woman's, crisp and hard.
"What evil aura is this! If the Founding Noble yet lives, then face my blade at onc—?"
She never got to finish.
"Thank you so, so much, my benefactor!"
Shhhraaak!
The instant I heard the woman's voice, my body dropped to its knees on pure reflex, bowing with scrupulous courtesy to present her the crown of my head.
A full prostration in flawless form.
The momentum from my sprint was nothing to sneeze at, so I went skidding across the ground in that exact prostrate pose, all the way to the woman's feet.
"Ohhhh! Outside. I'm outside, I'm outside... How could I ever repay this kindness, hnngh."
"...Evil... evil...? an... aura...? Is that... what this is...?"
Watching me drag myself along at her feet, the woman could only stand there, utterly bewildered.