Online In Another World

After sitting there for a minute, trying to outlast the taunts from the walls that suddenly grew mouths, he found the annoyance not to dull, bringing him to sit up again.

…It's not real. Of course. Walls don't talk and laugh! Obviously! He told himself.

With that in mind, he drew in a large breath of air into his lungs before slapping his own cheeks in an attempt to correct his diluted perception.

"Gya-ha-ha!"

"Foolish, boy! Foolish, boy!"

–It did not help; in fact, the taunts from the walls only seemed to grow worse as a result of his failure to drag himself out of these delusions.

Merely accepting the fact that what surrounded him with belittling laughter were illusions forged of whatever substance he had touched didn't much help to dwindle how incredibly gnawing it was.

Worse, it only amplified as he crawled through the narrow, claustrophobic corridor, forced to continue touching the mysterious substance.

Just keep going, he told himself, push past it.

No amount of straightforwardness and logical thinking could overcome the fact that his senses were still haywire; even crawling on his hands-and-knees was challenging; the swirling of the walls made him nauseous to his stomach.

Still, to the young man that had traversed the embodiment of nightmares and dread itself, he found such feelings only to be hindrances and nothing more. The exit of the troublesome corridor was finally in sight now, prompting him to pick up his pace.

"...Try harder next time," he groggily said.

Managing to pick himself up, despite a bit of wobbliness, those words that left his lips were a direct callout to the malicious ways of the labyrinth.

The door at the end of the twisted path was kept sealed by a star-shaped handle; the exit itself was made out of a blood-red, steel door covered in scratches and bolts. There were also burn marks, but this didn't stop the young Dragonheart from reaching towards the handle without any hesitation.

One last look back, he found the mouths that appeared all over the walls to now be eerily shut; they were sewn closed, silent yet still existing.

"Freaky," he muttered under his breath.

It led him to be more wary of the door he was about to go through, finding himself somewhat hesitant as he wrapped his fingers around the star-shaped handle. There was nothing that could be heard; not behind him, and not beyond the blood-red entryway.

Well, nothing is worse than having to turn back. I imagine that big hunk of metal would just be waiting for me if I did, he thought.

He had to grip the handle quite tightly, using more strength than the norm in order to spin that which kept the door shut; there were multiple clicks as he turned it, finally unlocking the door as it popped open.

"--" He stayed ready, waiting by the threshold to see what lay beyond the area that was quite the struggle to traverse.

There was no way to be certain of what he'd find; perhaps a graveyard of skeletons, a chamber of the labyrinth filled with obscure, half-built buildings, or War itself, waiting for him beyond the door.

Uncertainty was the very essence of it all; that truth among untruths made him wary.

"...Huh?"

With his hand readied by his sword and his body more than ready to invoke the power of the Dragonheart System, he was surprised to find a rather unnatural atmosphere to the next chamber of the deathly maze:

The stone walls were caked in dirt, of which there was a luscious mixture of moss and grass that had sprouted from the soil; it was an unnatural spring of life in the realm which housed death.

It wasn't just that; there was also a mess of resources laying across the ground: chunks of stone, dirt, wood, and even unknown powders.

The room itself was somewhat spacious, yet felt cramped because of its dirty nature.

What's all of this? He questioned.

Compared to the rest of the labyrinth, it was messy beyond compare and chaotic in its components; chimes hung from a ceiling forged of a net of intertwined threads, releasing noise as he walked in.

–Just then, with the very first set of steps taken into the odd room, a tile "clicked" beneath his step. It was a familiar, stomach-sinking sensation, one that he had grown adjusted to.

A trap–? He realized.

Knowing something was coming from the accidentally set-off booby trap, he readied himself without knowing what was coming and where, instead summoning the innate abilities of his System: ["Greater Scales"]

Holding his arms in front of him like a barrier, he manifested incredibly sturdy, azure scales that armored his limbs.

FWOOSH

Swinging down from the ceiling, crashing through a portion of the net above, a giant log of stone came in with swiftness and lethal velocity. It slammed directly against the young Dragonheart's forearms.

"--Ghh!"

He slid back from the weight of the heavy pillar of stone, though his armor of scales came through, completely blocking the damage of the blow.

"Phew…" He breathed out, putting his hand forward to keep the trapped pillar still.

It was his first time truly testing the capabilities of [Greater Scales], considering it was an ability he unlocked just before his fall against Dread, though he was pleasantly surprised by the defensive benefits of the new-and-improved scale armor.

Who the hell is laying traps?...I doubt War is the kind to do meticulous, crafty work like this, he thought, could it be it's not just War living in this labyrinth? I really don't want any more on my plate as is.

There was a new objective for the time being, in addition to locating the final key: find whoever was responsible for laying the traps. With the possible existence of another figure in the dark, ominous maze-like structure, the unorderly nature of the room he was in made more sense.

Oddly enough, he found there to be a painting sitting on the wall to his left. In the grimy, decayed labyrinth, it was a surprising touch–one too human for a place inhabited by the murderous entity of War.

It depicted a man falling through the sky; a shadowy figure, lonely amidst an azure sea. Even more weird to him was the fact the painting was kept clean; there wasn't a speck of dust or wear on it.

Leaning closer for a better look, he pressed his hand against the wall, only for the portion he touched to slide in to release another "click".

"Give me a break," he breathed out.

This time, he hardly reacted to the fact he had, once again, fallen for a dormant booby trap. As a log of wood dropped down from the ceiling, suspended by ropes, it descended upon his head. Before it could crash into his skull, the young Dragonheart summoned the draconic force that generated in the depths of his soul, focusing it into his fist as he threw his fist upward.

The [Dragon Strike] slammed against the falling log, causing it to burst into countless scraps of natural wood that rained down above him.

I'm really sick of traps. Maybe it's my father's blood in me, but…Is it so hard to just fight head-on? He thought.

Residual steam exuded from his knuckles after manifesting the draconic power straight through his fist, leaving him to breathe out directly onto his hand to cool it down.

After having turned the log into wood chips with a single blow, a noise met his ears from behind, like a heavy, stone tile being dragged across the ground.

As he turned around, he looked to find one of the tiles in the floor for the odd chamber had been removed, and crawling out of it, was an unknown figure.

Huh? He thought.

There wasn't much time to react; without any warning or callout, the figure that had come out of the false floor was pointing something at him: by the way it was held, it was a crossbow or a ranged weapon of sorts.

In that split-second, he didn't even register who or what was about to attack him, instead flexing his body to invoke the [Greater Scales] as armor just as the ambiguous weapon wielded by the figure "clicked" with a trigger being pulled.

BOOM

A flash of sparks and a breath of smoke came out of the barrel of the weapon, releasing orange, burning chunks of stone that shot in a wide-ranged blast.

The bright-orange projectiles pelted his scale armor that protected his arms and chest, though burned and pierced through his cloak without any stop.

A gun–? These aren't bullets though–I feel a mana signature from them, he thought.

Though he was able to successfully endure the blast of burning pellets, it did leave a slight-and-brief glimpse of pain, like momentarily touching a hot coal.

This only served to set ablaze the anger in the on-edge young man as he invoked another skill he had acquired just before his untimely journey to the realm of death: ["Draconic Might"]

Even though he had never activated it before, the essence of it was imprinted onto his mind and soul, allowing him to trigger it like the twitch of a muscle. It wasn't known what the effects were until that moment, though it activated in response to what it is he wished to do in that moment: "seize the enemy."