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Chapter 181: From Pressure Comes the Spark
🕑 Added 2023-05-03 17:36:00 +0000 UTCNauja stumbled into a wall. Still reeling from the aftereffects of teleportation, she leaned on it and looked around.
Deep inside, she was excited. It was finally time to explore alone. To venture on her own power. To prove she was worthy. A primal urge rose inside her, the urge to—
“Oh, hey. Fancy seeing you here.”
Nauja’s excitement deflated.
“What?” Gan Salin asked again, standing behind her. “Are you not happy to see me?”
“Do you want the honest answer?”
“No. The good one.”
“...”
Jack’s friend, the Sage, had mentioned they would probably be split up. This was a split. But it was the most annoying one possible.
Nauja sighed. “Let’s set some ground rules,” she said. “If you speak nonsense, I will cut your tongue off. Okay?”
Salin wasn’t even fazed. “Oh, come on. That’s clearly a bluff.”
“Wanna try me?”
“Sure.”
She glared at him. He smiled back radiantly. Eventually, Nauja clicked her tongue and turned around. “Just keep the crazy to a minimum.”
“As always.”
Finally done with the annoying canine, Nauja turned to the front and inspected the place they were in. Crampy corridors of brown stone. Torches on the walls. No sound besides theirs.
“I think we’re alone,” she said. It finally occurred that she should keep her voice low. She groaned inwardly. If Father heard her shouting in hostile territory…
No. Mistakes happen. This is why I am here. To learn and train alone.
“How big do you think this place is?” she asked.
“At least two.”
“Two what?”
“Two bigs. Square bigs, to be precise. Wait—that’s called wides!” He slapped his forehead. “I’m a genius!”
Nauja shut her eyes and took a deep, trembling breath. This was going to feel like an eternity.
***
Brock found himself in a place of crampy brown corridors. The bends at his front and back were waiting, yawning maws of death just out of sight.
The very first thing he noticed was that he was alone. Everyone was gone. Even Big Bro.
Brock felt a pit in his stomach. He thought he was falling. Next thing he knew, he was leaning on a wall.
Big Bro was gone.
He always knew this day would come. But not now. It couldn’t be now. He was trapped in a place where he really shouldn’t be. Everything here could kill him instantly. Big Bro protected him. With Big Bro gone…
What would happen to Brock?
The little brorilla gathered himself. He felt the panic rising and extinguished it. He then raised his head and took a long, deep breath, flexing his lung muscles to draw in as much air as possible. It was stuffy and smelled stale—like bad bread.
Then, he forced a massive exhale, relaxing at the same time. His fear remained, but his mind was back.
The wise bro had said Brock and Big Bro would go together. Clearly, that was a mistake. Therefore, Brock had to make do with what he had.
He was trapped and alone. There was no way back. He had to find Big Bro before whatever prowled these corridors found him. What was the best way to go about it?
As a young brorilla, barely a few months old, Brock wasn’t the brightest. However, the brain was a muscle. By flexing his Big Thought, he forced himself to think strong, going beyond his natural limits for a moment.
When he stopped, the plan was made.
They had agreed to meet at a place called the guardian’s gates. To get there, they had to follow the darkest walls. Brock would head over stealthily. Making noise might draw Big Bro, but monsters were far more likely to be near. After all, if this place was small, it wouldn’t be a labyrinth.
If he ran into other people in the meantime, he would join them to protect himself. That was his best shot at staying alive.
Brock opened his eyes and nodded. He had a plan.
Would it succeed? Probably not. Chances were, he would die very quickly. Nobody would ever find his corpse, Big Bro would be very sad, and Father would be disappointed.
But if that happened, so be it. Brock would just do his best.
On the bright side, he had food and water. Since he felt useless, he had volunteered to carry everything. Dog bro and girl bro had taken their shares before entering the labyrinth, but Brock still had Big Bro’s share.
The labyrinth was about to face its greatest adversary: a small brorilla wearing red pants, carrying two bags of food and an Ancient artifact called the Staff of Stone.
Squaring his jaw, Brock started walking. Slowly, silently, and ever carefully. He could not afford to relax.
***
Nauja peered behind a corner. Nothing.
She walked around, motioning for Salin to follow. He did. Silently. The only sounds reaching her ears were their muffled footsteps and the occasional crack as Gan Salin broke off a chunk of bread to gather the crumbs. He was spreading those on the ground behind him.
“Can you stop?” she asked, gritting her teeth.
“I told you, I’m a genius,” he whispered back. “Some good people on Jack’s planet taught me this. If you are lost, just leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind you.”
“How is that helping?”
“I’m not sure, to be honest.” He cupped his chin. “Perhaps Jack will get the clue and follow us? It’s supposed to help us find our way back, but ah, I don’t think we want that.”
For the tenth time in half an hour, Nauja resisted the urge to smack him.
“Just break the bread more softly. I almost jump every time.”
“Just hear more softly.”
She whirled around. “Listen here, you—”
She froze. At the end of the corridor behind Gan Salin stood a white creature of terror. Bleached, entwined bones, the skeleton of a human twisted ten times around itself by a forest giant.
The sense of wrongness brought her to full alert even before the System’s screen did.
Bone Sentinel, Level 124
A creature made to endlessly wander the Labyrinth Ring’s corridors and fight intruders. It possesses low Mental and Will attributes, as well as low speed, but outstanding durability. When a Bone Sentinel slays an enemy, it either absorbs their skeleton into its own, or raises the skeleton as a new Bone Sentinel. Therefore, their numbers are self-replenishing.
The creature was staring at them. Not moving. Just staring.
“Salin,” she said quietly, “I want you to turn around slowly. Don’t panic.”
He obliged. Seeing the high-level terror before them, he said, “Holy shit, is this guy ugly.”
Perhaps the thing had ears. Perhaps it was just luck. Whatever the case, the monster chose that exact moment to charge at them, jaws hanging open in a silent roar and bone-tipped claws rending the air.
“RUN!” Nauja shouted, bounding away from the creature. The two of them just weren’t equipped to fight it in such narrow space. They had no one to block its assault. Gan Salin was too low in level, and she was built as a ranged fighter.
At least, the monster was slow.
Nauja found herself sprinting through the corridors, making one blind turn after the other. It reminded her of the time in Forbidden Cave, when she and Jack escaped the minotaur.
Her bare feet stomped against the stone floor, and the wind blew on her back, pushing her forward. It did the same to Salin, helping him keep up. The canine was fast, thankfully, though he lacked endurance.
The monster behind them made no sound. Only its stomps were any indication it was still chasing. Nauja braved a glance back. With a body like that, all turned and twisted, it was a wonder it could even run. Being slow was natural.
Her glance also revealed Gan Salin breaking the bread and throwing its crumbs on the ground at an accelerated pace.
“What the hell are you doing?” she thundered.
“Marking our way back!”
“Back to what!?”
“I don’t know yet. To be honest, I didn’t even expect to reach this—”
They stomped into an intersection of four corridors. Another bone monster spotted them from one of the corridors and charged after them. Nauja grabbed Gan Salin’s collar and darted sideways, cutting off his words as they rushed into a different corridor and kept running.
“Keep your mouth shut,” she hissed through gritted teeth. “There are more of them.”
This time, Salin complied without a word.
Outrunning one monster would not be a problem. They were significantly faster. But if there were more at every corner… Well, then they would die.
And the walls were slowly, slowly getting darker.
***
Despite his best efforts, Brock was troubled.
He was being stealthy. When approaching a corner, he always peeked out before proceeding. At intersections, he stretched his ears at every possible path before deciding. He didn’t make a sound, always keeping an ear out for footsteps.
He’d heard a few, occasionally. But when he hid near an intersection to watch who produced them, he only saw a horror of twisted bones, like a rose that was all thorns.
He ran away.
These creatures were easy to avoid. Their footsteps were audible, if one paid close attention, and they weren’t too common in these corridors.
But there were more.
Brock spotted blue crabs that reached his waist, just roaming the corridors and eating small pieces of stone off the walls. They kept the walls perfectly straight, only taking care of tiny outcroppings or puking liquid stone to fill in little dents on the ground.
These creatures didn’t feel like monsters. However, they still attacked Brock on sight. Since they were vastly stronger than him, he had to run away. At least, they were slow, their movements rough and stony.
He managed to outrun the first crab that chased him but lost a bag of food in the process. He also lost his way—though that didn’t matter too much. He remained equally lost.
However, he knew that this could not continue. The crabs were too many. Every few minutes, he would discover one of them and have to backtrack. If he was chased and forced to run blindly again, he might end up sandwiched by another crab or, even worse, a bone monster.
He did not want to be caught by those. He had witnessed one eating a blue crab. The sight was brutal, invasive, and gruesome. When the bone monster was done, not even the crab’s shell or blood was left.
Brock was feeling trapped. Like the walls were closing around him. He kept running into dead-ends or monster-infested corridors. He circumvented all those, but his escape routes were cut off one by one, and soon, there would be no path left to walk. The enemies he’d bypassed could arrive behind him at any moment. And he was crossing the large labyrinth with slow, tiny steps.
At this rate, even if the monsters didn’t catch him, he would run out of water and die before he even made it a few miles in.
Brock was feeling immense pressure. On one hand, his responsibility towards his big bro, Father, Mother, and everyone else. If he died here, he would make many people very sad.
On the other hand was his responsibility towards himself. He didn’t want to die. Not here, alone and trapped in bare corridors. Not to faceless bone monsters. He wanted Big Bro. Mother. Father. Anyone.
He was scared. The monsters closing in from all directions became a mental bind around his mind, slowly but unstoppably increasing the pressure. He fought to remain sane, to flex his bravery muscles and retain control of himself, but it was difficult. The fear was overwhelming. The helplessness was wearing him down.
Panic was rising again, the only response his body could muster to the pressure.
This was all happening because he was weak. He had only ventured this far because of Big Bro. Without his protection, Brock was nothing.
Why? Why did it have to be like that? Why did he have to be weak?
He was born weak. He was smaller than the other brorilla children. His muscles were less defined. That was why Father had kicked him out of the pack—though Big Bro insisted that Father had acted out of love.
He had grown stronger by Big Bro’s side, but he remained useless. Ever since they came to this weird place, Brock had achieved nothing. He had always been carried and protected by Big Bro. If this continued, then sooner or later, he would be cast out again. Maybe forced to return to his pack as a loser. Nobody would accept him.
There was a clear line between survival and death, victory and defeat, triumph and uselessness. It was called strength.
But his muscles were too small. He had tried his hardest, but it was not enough. The Big Thought had promised him strength, but it, too, abandoned him, betrayed him.
And yet, if there was one thing that could save him now, it was this Big Thought. It had given him most of his strength. To get even more strength, he just had to make it bigger. A Bigger Thought.
Brock was surrounded and overwhelmed by pressure. He almost broke but didn’t. And from the pressure came a spark. The Big Thought called to him. And Brock dove into it.
To make it bigger.
