A long time had passed.
I thought I had been used to the silence. How naive.
Not a single thing had gone right. The moment I arrived in this godforsaken world, I was trapped in a cell for no reason. The next thing I knew, my saviour, who had saved me, got beheaded right in front of me. And then, I had to escape this cursed place somehow while a monster was on the loose.
How nice. Watch me beat this impossible tutorial, without any weapons and no death.
Ridiculous. What kind of bullshit fate was this? Was that nun girl supposed to go through all of this? Now I could not even blame her for this. If I had been her, I would have done anything to dump this insanity on anyone else.
Drowning myself in guilt and regret. Crying out pathetically. Lamenting to nobody. Time quickly flew by.
Oh well, whatever, I needed to be on the move. Who knew when that monster would reappear? I could only hope my rotten luck would have mercy on me.
I would survive. I had to.
Moving carefully along the maze-like hallways, I turned left whenever possible. Eventually, I would find the exit. As long as that monster didn't find me, it should have been good.
That's what I thought.
-Thump
My soul must have left me for just a moment. Looking back fearfully, I saw a few hollows approaching me. It looked like there were still more of them in this dungeon. However, they were not a concern.
Simply by moving, they wouldn't have been able to catch up with me. Their groans were a bit distracting, though.
I thought I was on the third floor. Now I regret running too far away like a coward.
***
It had been a while since I had started walking like that. I had come back to the second floor.
The hunger and thirst. The physical and mental fatigue. They were starting to get on me badly.
This was not good. I didn't even know how close I was to escaping this floor, let alone escaping this place. And the hollows were still trailing behind me. I had to be quick.
Several figures appeared in front of me. They were a bunch of hollows. Damn it.
Now I was in a tough situation; this was a one-way hallway, and judging from the sound behind me, a swarm of hollows was about to catch up with me. I had to break through them to move forward. That was the only way to survive.
Convinced myself with that, I took the first move. I lunged at the hollow ahead with the intent to push it aside.
But that proved to be much harder than I thought. The hollow retaliated, not going down without a fight. It hit my face and lunged, jaws open wide to devour me.
However, I hurriedly kicked it aside. It was too slow. After wrestling with another one like that, I made a run for it. Staying there any longer risked being overpowered by them and dying.
As I ran across the hallways. Left, right, right, left. It felt familiar; had I been here before?
Ah.
A dimly lit hallway to the staircase of the first floor. Horrifying memories that I did not want to remember. Despite that, I remembered all of them vividly.
The floor and wall were laced with scratches and cracks. Blood had spilt all over the floor. Angela's head and her sword were still here.
But her body was nowhere to be found.
...
What?
From shocked to terrified, I couldn't believe what I was seeing at that moment.
But no one would be able to answer me. Putting up with this nauseous feeling, I advanced step by step.
The sword on the ground stared at me as if to say, 'Pick me up'. I complied.
Walking up the staircase, my steps had never been this heavy. It was like my guilt and fear manifested to hold me back. I could not shake this burden off.
The first floor welcomed me. Everything was so dark here. I hesitated to make my first step.
"!"
Something had started to move towards me like it had been waiting for me all this time.
Tensing up, images of the monster flashed through my mind. I wanted to give up. But one way or another, I must stand my ground.
To honour Angela.
To live.
I braced myself. Determined to avoid its strike no matter what. All I knew was that if I could get past it, this would all be over.
Maybe that was why.
I forgot that its steps should not be this light.
Stepping from the dark, it confronted me. My mind went blank.
In front of me was Angela.
Angela's body.
"...Huh?"
I let out a stupid sound.
It was unmistakable. Angela's headless corpse lurched towards me.
I hesitated. It was all it took.
Her corpse lunged at me. Both of us fell down the staircase, hitting each stair with a sickening thud.
-CLASH!
My head is disoriented. I lay sprawled on the floor. My whole body ached terribly while I clutched my twisted left ankle.
I was doomed. I had to do something. Fending off Angela's corpse, I tried to crawl my way out. But other hollows had caught up. I screamed for help miserably.
But nobody came. Only the mocking groans of hollows answered back to me.
I was mauled to death.
...
I could not see a thing.
Memories of the past drifted past me. Incomprehensible sounds rang in my head.
So that was it, huh? So pointless. My life, it was.
Oh well, whatever.
...
I don't want it to end like this.
***
'...Where... am I?'
Waking up, I scanned my surroundings. Brick wall, dimly lit touches and cold floor. Typical dungeon.
Wait what?
"...How?"
I was confused. Many thoughts crossed my mind, but I had to check something first.
Looking at my clothes, they were in the exact state when I first arrived here. The fatigue I had grown accustomed to was gone, too. The cell door was locked just as before. Even if I refused to believe it...
"...There is only one possible explanation."
Regression. Time travel.
But why? Why me? There was no way I just happened to be that one lucky person.
'As far as I know, there is a special ability tied to everyone's starting point. This must be it.'
There was no other way to explain this. This made sense, too. The difficulty was way off the chart, so the ability must be something like this, right?
'...Though I'm not sure if this is a one-time thing or not.'
Well, I had a long time to sort my mind before Angela saved me anyway.
I had to find a way for us to escape.
I must not waste this one chance.