Floor ??? – Labyrinth Of The Deadly Embrace
The labyrinth stretched endlessly before Adonis, its twisting corridors and shadowed alcoves a testament to the cruelty of this place. Wounded and weary, he pressed forward, his body aching with every step. Time seemed to warp within these walls—minutes bled into hours, hours into days. He couldn't tell how long he'd been trapped here, but the faint glow of his red interface flickered in his vision, a silent reminder of his progress.
He opened it, and a progress bar greeted him, its completion tantalizingly close. *Level up soon,* he thought, clinging to the hope that strength might be his key to survival.
As he trudged onward, his boots scraping against the cold stone, a grim sight halted him—a corpse slumped against the wall. The man's lifeless eyes stared into nothingness, a sword embedded deep in his neck. Adonis recognized him—one of the others who had been teleported here, just like him. The man's belongings had been stripped away, leaving only the husk of what was once a fellow prisoner of this nightmare.
Gritting his teeth, Adonis wrapped his fingers around the sword's hilt and wrenched it free with a sickening scrape of metal against bone. He examined the blade—simple, serviceable. With a thought, he stored his own sheathed sword in his inventory and took up the dead man's weapon. It felt heavier than it should have.
"Who did this to you?" he murmured, though he already knew the answer. The labyrinth was not just a maze of stone and monsters—it was a battleground where desperation turned humans into predators.
Steeling himself, Adonis pressed on, the labyrinth's oppressive silence pressing in around him.
---
Floor ??? — Hall
In a dimly lit chamber, five figures gathered around an orb that pulsed with eerie light, its surface shifting to display the labyrinth's many horrors. The Lich, his skeletal fingers steepled, watched with detached amusement as the others voiced their boredom.
"I'm bored," whined a small, shadow-cloaked figure—a girl with horns protruding from her head. She kicked her legs petulantly, her crimson eyes gleaming.
"I agree," rumbled another, a hulking silhouette that dwarfed the others, its form unmistakably inhuman.
The Lich's hollow gaze remained fixed on the orb. "Has anyone caught your interest yet?"
A masked figure, his face obscured by a smooth, featureless visor, leaned forward. "This one." He gestured, and the orb's image shifted to a young woman battling a monstrous beast. Her white hair flashed like silver as she moved, her sword a blur of deadly precision. She wore a long-sleeved shirt beneath a laced leather vest, a belt cinched at her waist, and sturdy boots that spoke of both practicality and grace. A necklace glinted at her throat, a small, personal defiance against the labyrinth's cruelty.
The horned girl's eyes sparkled. "Wow, she's *pretty*! Like a princess"
A fourth figure, a wolf-like humanoid with crossed arms, snarled. "Appearances mean nothing. I want to see them break—to realize escape is impossible."
The Lich chuckled, the sound like dry bones rattling. "You're right. This has grown dull." With a snap of his fingers, the orb flared. "Let's make things more… interesting."
---
Floor ??? — Labyrinth of the Deadly Embrace
The ground trembled violently, stones grinding against one another as the labyrinth *shifted*. Walls collapsed and rebuilt themselves, corridors twisting into new, more treacherous paths. From the depths, monstrous growls echoed as new horrors emerged—some prowling openly, others lying in wait, their hunger sharpened by the Lich's whim.
Adonis staggered as the floor beneath him shuddered. Traps reset, mechanisms whirred to life, and the air grew thick with the promise of bloodshed.
Clutching his stolen sword, Adonis gritted his teeth. The game had changed.
And survival had just become even harder.