The treasure chest glided forward like a lazy gondola through the bile-flavored Venice of nightmares. The viscous juice around me glowed faintly—pale yellow-green, rippling with reflections that didn't match mine.
I didn't relax. I couldn't afford to. Not here.
Every calm stretch I'd encountered so far had been a setup for disaster.
Suddenly, the canal twisted.
I paddled around the bend and came face-to-face with two openings, yawning like the twin maws of some eldritch beast.
Two paths. Two tunnels. Both cloaked in shadows so thick they seemed to pulse.
A fork.
My hand hovered over the paddle, uncertain. "Tch…"
'Fifty-fifty chance. A coin flip.'
'And knowing me… I can get lost even when the odds are 99.9% in my favor.'
One pulse of wrong current… one twitch of the paddle… and I could be circling rabbit intestines forever.
The treasure chest drifted forward, its wooden sides groaning as if it, too, feared the choice ahead.
'This isn't just left or right. One path means salvation. The other… digestion.'
I stared into the darkness.
And the darkness stared back.
"Oh man…" I whispered. "What am I going to do?"
On the left, a wide-open path stretched like a welcoming hallway—gentle currents, no sound, no stench. It almost sparkled under the greenish glow of digestive slime, as if whispering,
"This way. It's safe here."
Too safe.
On the right, however, was a tunnel that looked like it had never seen light. Narrow. Cramped. Crooked like a spine broken in five places. The current flowed jagged and uneven, pulling the box in violent jerks. The stench hit me like a blunt hammer.
Decay.
Rotting meat. Sulfur. Faint traces of chemicals that burned the back of my throat.
And worst of all... bones. Human bones.
Skulls. Femurs. Spines.
Floating.
I squinted into the darkness and saw a rotted ribcage bump into a wall of tissue and split open like a cracked egg.
My instincts screamed, "Go left!"
But Isaac's voice echoed in my head. "Your instincts are broken, Llyne. Don't follow your gut. Your gut leads you everywhere but where you need to go."
Tch. He was probably right. Again.
I clenched my jaw and paddled right. Ignoring the silent protest of every cell in my body. The treasure chest creaked in complaint as it slid toward the death tunnel, bobbing awkwardly in the thickening sludge.
The stench tripled. The air stuck to my skin, wormed into my nose, burned my lungs.
'If I can just get through this and rescue Rona and Ronald… sacrificing my nose is worth it.'
The juice beneath the box gurgled with wet, hungry sounds. The walls around me were pulsing slightly, alive in a disgusting, rhythmic way. My torch cast flickering light, revealing walls lined with twitching, damp moss—no, not moss.
Something else.
Fungal growths.
Wriggling. Breathing.
I turned the light away instantly.
"Oui... This place isn't just creepy. It's filthy, too…" I muttered, wiping tears from my burning eyes. "Oh, my poor nose and eyes."
FWOOSH!
A sudden gust tore through the corridor like a blade of rot. It slammed into my face, carrying with it a concentrated wave of stench so brutal, it could've melted steel.
"Kgh—!"
My eyes burned. My vision blurred. My throat clamped shut as bile rose with violent urgency.
Blegh!
I puked. Right into the juice.
The acidic splash rippled across the surface, momentarily silencing the corridor with its shame.
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, exhaling in defeat.
"I don't think the rabbit will notice if I puked inside it."
The words tasted worse than the stench, but I forced a grin and paddled forward. The air was poison now—not just to the lungs but to the will. Each stroke of the paddle felt like moving through a soup of despair. My vision was tunneling.
But I couldn't stop. Not here.
Not yet.
Bloop. Bloop.
That sound—bubbling—popped through the silence. Thick, wet, and ominous. The juice had started to fizz, forming bubbles that hissed and foamed like acid left to boil on a cursed flame.
Hssssssssss...
A strange noise slithered through the fog.
My eyes narrowed.
"Hmm? Oh! There's a bubble! But why...? Don't tell me the juice is boiling?"
It wasn't hot. The heat wasn't the kind you feel on your skin—it was chemical.
I reached out.
SZZZT!
The juice bit me.
"AAgh!!" I yanked my finger back. It was red, burned and throbbing.
"It's not boiling... but it's extremely toxic."
Suddenly—
SPLASHHH!!
A series of slick, wet tentacles burst out of the juice. They whipped through the air like dancing ribbons made of molten jelly. Thin. Translucent. Beautiful in the most repulsive way imaginable.
"Wow… It's so pretty and disgusting at the same time."
The surface churned as something rose.
THUD.
It leapt. Straight up—attached itself to the intestinal wall with a sickening SCHLP.
I squinted.
Its body was dome-shaped, glistening with mucous membrane, almost gelatinous. A jellyfish—but grotesquely over-eyed, its glimmering dome lined with dozens of twitching pupils staring down at me in eerie silence.
A Watcher.
'Low-level scout. Too weak alone, deadly in packs. If one's here… others are close.'
I grabbed the nearest weapon—a baseball bat. Aluminum. Scratched. Heavy.
Not ideal. But it would do.
The creature didn't move. Just hung there, suspended. Tentacles swaying in slow rhythm, calculating. Watching. Judging.
I raised the bat.
"Come at me if you dare! I'm gonna make a ball out of you."
Inside, my voice trembled. 'Please stay small. I can't hit anything bigger than a ball with this.'
But I knew.
This was a test swing.
Not for my strength—
—but for what was coming next.
The juice frothed again.
The jellyfish twitched.
And in that heartbeat of silence, my body shifted.
Knees bent. Muscles tight. Vision locked.
Ready for the first strike.
SWOOSH!
Like a bullet fired from the depths of the abyss, the jellyfish monster launched itself straight at me—
too fast.
My eyes widened. My instincts kicked in—I rolled hard to the side, barely keeping balance atop the treasure box.
But not fast enough.
SNAP!
Pain exploded across my arm. My breath caught.
"AAARGH!"
I looked down—red, whip-like streaks stretched across my skin, already swelling and darkening. The thin, venom-laced tentacles had kissed me—just once—but that was enough.
"Damn it..."
I reached behind me with trembling fingers and yanked a bottle free from my belt pouch.
Pop.
Vinegar.
With one sharp pour, I drenched the wound. The acidic sting lit my nerves on fire—but after a few agonizing seconds, the burning dulled.
"It works," I breathed, sweat trickling down my temple.
"I guessed it's the same as normal jellyfish… but it has many eyes."
I didn't have time to rest. The monster—scarred but unrelenting—was already scuttling back up the wall. Its eyes—all of them—glared at me with twitching malice. The ceiling itself seemed to squirm as the thing prepared for another strike.
"I can't move the box. I can't dodge far. If I want to live—I have to move faster than it does."
I readied the baseball bat.
Not a sword. Not a spell.
Just me, steel, and timing.
"Come on..."
The air thickened. Time stretched.
It jumped.
A blur of pink and transparent muscle, its tentacles aimed like spears. It cut through the mist like a phantom, descending with fatal precision—
CLANG!!
I swung the bat with every ounce of strength I had. The sound it made—metal cracking through slime and cartilage—was music to my ears.
"HIIIEEEEEEKKKK!!"
It let out a shrill, high-pitched scream—inhuman, glass-shattering—and went tumbling backward in midair, tentacles flailing like shattered ribbons.
SPLASH!!
It crashed into the juice and vanished beneath the surface in a writhing frenzy, swimming away with desperate zigzags like a demon retreating to hell.
I panted heavily, arms trembling, staring into the foaming residue where it had vanished.
Then I lifted the bat triumphantly above my head.
"DON'T COME BACK AGAIN!!" I roared into the fog.
Only silence answered.
'…Oui. Alive, for now. But if that was just a scout… what's waiting deeper inside?'