“Level 2? Is that even allowed?” I shouted the question, mouth hanging open as I spun around, taking in my surroundings. I was standing at the far end of a hallway, a massive pile of rubble to my left, the aftermath of my accidental shortcut inside. About thirty paces ahead, the hallway seemed to split, judging by the faint flickers of candlelight from just around the corner.
“I don’t see anything against it in the rules…speaking of which, you should probably stop speaking to me out loud, unless you want our viewers to find out about me.”
Shit, I thought, fighting the urge to smack my head into the wall I was leaning up against. Right. Okay. What should we do now?
“I don’t know, all the information Lucian gave us was to help us make it inside the first floor…I doubt he expected us to make it to the second floor within the first ten minutes of the game.”
I peered down the hallway, chewing the inside of my lip. There was no point in staying here, if there really were no other gladiators on this floor yet, I needed to take advantage of that. I’d just taken a step when a shriek sounded from the rubble to my left, causing me to jump and let out a shriek of my own. What is that?!
“I think there’s something alive under that rubble.” Belial stated, warily. “Be ready to squish it.”
With a solemn nod, I hefted my hammer as I took a careful step towards the rubble. Underneath the mess of stone and metal bars, I spotted something large, almost up to my waist despite being sprawled on all fours. Whatever it was, it had fur, its coat made up of several different shades of violet. I noticed it looked a lot like a mole as I circled round to get a better look at its face; only it was several orders of magnitude larger, and already dead. With a relieved sigh, I let the head of my hammer rest on the ground beside me, only to jolt, raising it back up as the shriek came again. The sound came from the rubble behind the crushed one, faint and muffled.
Carefully, I used my hammer to hook one of the larger stones, grunting as I yanked it off the pile. I froze, my eyes going wide.
Staring up from between the heap of stones were two tiny yellow eyes, belonging to a mostly naked, pinkish creature, curled into a tiny ball. It was barely the size of my fist, with purple fuzz beginning to sprout in small patches telling me it was the same kind of monster as the larger one. I hung my head, trying to swallow the knot in my throat as I realized I’d killed the poor thing’s mother.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Squish it! You might get a prize!” Belial buzzed in my head with way more glee than anyone should in this situation. It was completely defenseless. I shook away my doubt as I held the hammer over my head, concentrating on ending the little thing’s life in one painless strike. Everything in this place was probably more than willing to tear me to pieces.
I was about to bring it down on the creature’s tiny body when it blinked and it rolled onto its back, its tiny pink hands reaching for me. Does it…think I’m it’s mother?
The hammer clanked against the ground as I dropped it at my side. I can’t kill it. It’s just a baby.
“Just a—” Belial started, aghast, “that thing is going to grow up, and I seriously doubt it’ll have any qualms about murdering you when it does.”
Just then the little thing gave a hoarse, squeaky chirp that melted my heart. Its snout twitched as its miniature hands flexed, reaching for me again before toppling backwards, helplessly. Kneeling beside the pile of stone, I cautiously extended a hand towards the little creature, my breath catching in my throat when it wrapped itself snug around my finger and began to rumble softly. I squealed, feeling like my heart might burst open. It was so fucking cute. I wanted to cry at how cute it was.
What if I raise it?
“What if you WHAT?”
It’s my fault its mother is dead.
“Its mother would’ve bitten your head off.”
I’m keeping it.
Belial made a disgusted noise as I gently tickled the creature’s fuzz with my other hand. It was so soft.
“Stop petting it!” He shuddered, “you are not playing mummy to some genetic abomination. The second it’s big enough it will eat us in our sleep!”
Don’t call him that, and no it won’t, moles don’t even eat meat.
“Gah, it’s not a mole, if anything it’s got more in common with a wombat, aside from the tentacles sprouting from its back—what are you doing?! Put it down!”
I scooped the baby wombat into my other hand, lifting it up to examine its back as it rolled playfully, buzzing in my hands with each tiny breath. Belial was right. On its back were six, no, seven tiny appendages, each of them laid flat against the creature’s back. They felt fuzzy as I ran my fingers over them. If it thinks I’m his mother it won’t eat…
“OW.” I let out, as the little wombat chomped down on the tip of my finger. I shook it gently, giggling despite its little teeth gnawing with stubborn determination.
“SEE? It hungers for flesh!” Belial said before the little wombat finally let go, plopping back into my other hand and curling into a ball.
“I’m going to call you Waffle!” I said, huffing at its cuteness as I brought the humming ball of fuzz up to my eyes.
“You don’t even know what that is.” Belial huffed, as I gently slid Waffle inside the hidden pocket on my dress, careful not to seal it all the way, as it still had its rubber lining. “And you have no idea what to feed it. It’s just going to end up starving to death.”
I’ll…find something to feed him…maybe I can ask Lord Caelan when he contacts us.
“We only have a few minutes to get information from him each day, and you want to waste it on—"
Shh. Do you hear that? I stood, my eyebrows knitting at a weird, mechanical sound coming from the opposite end of the hallway. The smile I’d been wearing faded as the sound echoed closer, coming from the branching hallway ahead. A faint chorus of whirs and clanks. Hammer held tight; I paced forward cautiously against the wall opposite the strange noises, hoping to get a look at whatever it was before it rounded the corner.
From the darkness, what seemed like hundreds of glowing red eyes streaked in my direction, cold sweat prickling down my back as I saw what they belonged to, and that they had more legs than eyes. Rows of needle-thin legs stabbed into stone as they moved. Steel bodies, the length of my arm, rippling like waves as they skittered over the walls, several more crawling on the ceiling overhead. I readied myself to strike, lunging and swinging at the one closest to me before Belial froze me mid swing.
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“STOP.” he shouted. “Your system isn’t tagging them as monsters.”
I relaxed slightly as the mechanical insects continued past, none of them paid me any mind. Instead, they continued down the hallway, towards the pile of rubble I’d just come from.
Tagging them? It tells you what’s a monster and what isn’t? I focused on one of them, a gray box snapping into view around it, crossed by a single diagonal line.
“I think they’re here for your improvised entrance, along with Waffle’s late mother.” Belial explained as they began to leap from the wall onto the floor near the rubble. “By the way, these seem to be modeled after centipedes. That’s a type of insect.”
I choked at the fact he thought now was a good time for a lesson about bugs. Threat or not, they were unsettling. A shiver ran through me as they erected, nearly standing upright as their needles pinched chunks of rubble, some of them twice their size. They used their remaining legs to scurry up the wall towards the entrance I’d made. Greenish-gray ooze shot from their heads, like pus leaking from a wound, each time one of them set a stone in place. After only a few minutes the sunlight trickling in from the hole was almost nothing.
With the wall repaired, the centipedes shifted their attention to Waffle’s mother, her body now fully visible with the blanket of stone removed. A knot formed in my stomach as I took in the lifeless mass of violet sprawled across floor, its mouth frozen open as if it’d been trying to cry out. I wondered if Waffle would grow that large as I eyed the tiny lump bulging from my pocket. He was still humming, peacefully, inside.
My legs twitched, as if they were urging me to leave, but for some reason, I had to know what they’d do with the corpse. Maybe some morbid part of me wanted to see what’d happen to my body if I died here. Whatever the reason was, I regretted it instantly as the insects faces opened, ejecting pink foam. The back of my throat burned. I forced myself to swallow, fighting the urge to gag as the body began to dissolve, ribbons of smoke curling up from wasting flesh.
The fabric moved against my leg. I looked down to find Waffle’s tiny head poking out of my pocket, the torchlight from the walls shimmering faintly in his eyes as he watched the rising fumes. His little body trembled in a way that made me think he understood more than he should. My heart broke as he looked to me, his throat making a low, wavering trill—as if he were asking where she’d gone.
“Well don’t let him watch. What kind of mother are you?”
Having seen enough, I turned to leave, gently using my thumb to nudge Waffle’s head back into my pocket. His tiny paws tugged at my hand, trying to pull it down with him. With a weary breath, I unzipped the pocket enough to fit my hand, my heart melting as he curled inside my palm, his tiny hands latching between my fingers.
“Uh. Aine.” Belial said, sounding concerned. Looking up, I saw why. The little squares around the centipedes were starting to flick red as some of them turned their attention to me.
Clutching my hammer, I ran, clumsily mopping up tears with my wrist as I left the insects behind. I sped through a maze of empty halls without any thought for where I was going, finally coming to a stop when I no longer heard the awful clatter of their legs echoing behind me. My upgraded lungs really were doing wonders, my breathing was steady despite having ran for almost ten straight minutes. I hoped I’d put enough distance between myself and the centipedes, part of me found it strange how easily I’d lost them, was I just that fast now?
“No, I mean you’re fast, but those creatures didn’t seem like the fighting type.”
I stroked Waffle’s fur, one hand in my pocket as I considered Belial’s words. You think they’re like, house keepers or something? They did seem more focused on cleaning up my mess than me. They’d only really noticed me once they’d finished dissolving Waffle’s mom.
“Exactly. I think they’re creepy little maids.”
I jumped, startled by an image popping up in my vision. It featured of one of the centipedes, only it was holding a feathered broom and wearing some kind of frilly dress.
Since when can you show me pictures? I demanded, hand pressed to my sternum as my heart tried to calm itself.
“Since just now.” He replied smoothly, “and it isn’t a picture. It’s art. Something I just so happen to have a knack for.”
I rolled my eyes, a new concern knotting in my stomach as I spun to examine my surroundings, trying to decide whether I’d already been through this hallway.
“You’re lost aren’t you.”
Well yeah. Are you about to pretend you know where to go?
“No, but I do know if you turn right four times that you’ll end up right where you started.”
Shit. Had I done that? The only identifying features in each hallway were the sconces holding faint candles every six or seven paces, and each passage seemed to have the same amount. Wait, I have an idea.
If I could extinguish a candle in each hallway, I’d at least know if I’d already travelled through it. Moving towards the nearest candle, I pinched the flame with my fingers, blinking when the flame still flickered as I pulled my hand away. It’s not real…I moved to the next, holding my fingers over the flame and yelping when it scorched my skin. My brow knitted together as I looked from this candle to the false one. Why would only some of them be fake?
“Maybe that isn’t all that is,” Belial said, his voice pensive. He was right. Marching back to the fake, I noticed it was some kind of projection, playing on repeat. With my hand I padded the wall around it, my mouth falling open when it passed right through the stone. Another projection.
Feeling around with my arm revealed that the gap was large enough to fit through. Cautiously I stepped inside, eyes bulging at the dense expanse of trees that greeted me there. Warm light dripped through the gaps in the canopy of leaves overhead. I spun around to stare at the opening I’d come from, surprised to see it took the shape of a small cavern, surrounded by the face of a massive cliff. We can’t be outside…
“We’re definitely not.”
What was stranger was the fact that the outside of the cave didn’t seem large enough to fit the series of hallways I’d been walking through. Were they all some kind of illusion? Had I been circling inside a cave the entire time? An uneasy feeling prickled up my back, like a ghost tracing my spine. It made more sense for a creature like Waffle’s mother to be inside a cave, rather than lurking the halls of some dungeon.
Do you think it projected the maze just for me? Come to think of it, it seemed to match exactly what I imagined the tower would look like on the inside. Like some dark castle in a fairy tale. A new shudder ran through me at the thought. Could it read my mind?
“It? As in the tower?” asked Belial. I nodded.
The place we just came from looked exactly as I imagined it would.
“That is distressing.”
What do you mean?
“I took it upon myself to read up on this tournament, you know, so at least one of us would be prepared.” He said, with his usual air of condescension. “If the records of previous games are accurate, seeing your thoughts isn’t something the tower should be able to do.”
I’m telling you, It’s like the tower recreated the image in my mind exactly.
“I know, I can read your thoughts, remember? But borrowing your garish taste in décor is the least of our concerns. If the tower really is projecting images from your mind, that would imply some level of sentience.”
Sentience? I asked, gingerly poking a nearby flower to see if it was real. It was, or at least it felt solid. Who knows what it actually looked like.
“Yes, it means self-aware. From what I’ve read, before corporations and noble houses began farming humans, it was used as a sort of marker to determine whether or not it was okay to exploit a living creature. Either way, we need to find a safe zone while we wait for Lucian to pass along what he knows about this floor. We’re running blind in here.”
Don’t I need to kill something to enter a safe zone?
Belial let out a sharp laugh. “Luckily, the system gave you credit for murdering Waffle’s mom. It categorized her as a boss, so we’ll have 8 hours in one.”
A boss?
“Indeed. It seems she was the head-honcho of that cave. It also awarded you the optional title; Orphan-maker. You know, for turning Waffle into an Orphan. Should I add it to your name?” I cringed at that last part as I pushed through a tangle of brush toward a clearing up ahead.
Thanks for reading, I hope everyone likes waffle. Don't worry yourselves too much about his safety going forward. I'm not a monster.
Lily Carter juggles lectures, 7-Eleven night shifts, and a secret life as Lilithia Nocturne, a top-ranked demon princess in the VRMMORPG Xantia. Then a robbery, a gunshot—and blackout. She wakes on cold stone in a glowing blood circle, wearing Lilithia’s regal armor and horns for real.
A bargain-bin cult calling itself the Children of the Abyss has summoned her—on purpose, by accident. They wanted a real demoness and not a nerdy girl cosplaying one. They’re incompetent, fanatical, and, inconveniently, the only people who don’t want to burn a demon on sight. Lily plans to humor them, learn the world, and bail. Instead, rumors snowball, idiots congregate, and an accidental empire starts forming in her name.
Will Lily lean into the crown and become the new Demon Queen, ghost the lot of them for a blissfully quiet life, or—against all odds—end up saving a world that keeps mistaking her for its doom?
