The Heart is a Void: Ashes to Ashes

Chapter 141: Tunnel of Love

Crucis dropped into the chilly waters, plunging towards the entrance to the tunnels.

With a kick of his legs, he ended the drop and drifted sideways towards the hole in the tunnels. The water slowed him more than he had expected, seeming almost thicker and more stubborn than normal water, and his leftwards journey stalled slightly. However, sensing a large shadow approaching from his right, he quickened his movements and in seconds clasped onto the stony floor of the tunnel with his hands as his legs propelled him towards it.

Lunging forwards, he managed to hoist his body onto the cold, stony surface just above the water, and crept in until he was touching the opposite wall.

Looking back towards the water, he saw a gargantuan, fish-like shape rise up. This grey creature opened its gaping, lamprey-like round mouth, barging heavily against the small opening in the tunnel wall, but was unable to fit through the hole. The tunnel quaked from side to side for half a minute after the impact.

Giving up after this failed attempt, the creature descended back into the waters, and Crucis saw some of its smooth, grey skin as it flicked its tail and headed serenely in the opposite direction. It still hovered nearby for a few seconds, swimming back and forth effortlessly, before heading off.

He crouched down to catch his breath, and waited until the tunnel stopped shaking.

Looking around, he saw that he was in a large system of tunnels, that seemed to weave its way across a massive distance. From a quick calculation, he figured that one direction would lead deeper into the mountains, and the other would lead towards the East of the plains. Since the mountains would sooner or later become out-of-bounds, it seemed more reasonable to take the tunnels towards the plains.

As he walked through the tunnels, which were carved in a perfectly circular, smooth shape from grey stone, he found a few wooden railings and scaffolding around the edge. Since it was dark and slightly slippery here, he used these railings to avoid falling.

A loud moan came from in front of him, and, turning a corner, he saw a creature named the [Husk Zombie] walking aimlessly to and fro. Since this was a Norse-themed heavens, it was somewhat peculiar that these creatures were based on 'zombies' rather than draugr, but at least they seemed like easy opponents.

Approaching one, he baited it into lunging, and then easily severed its head before dropping his sword to tear its body apart from the spine. Its skin was practically falling apart, and rotten patches of it littered the ground by the end. It was indeed a 'husk' of sorts, and it broke at the faint touch of his Divine Weapon.

Moving forwards through the tunnel, he found another few zombies and killed them quickly to replenish his Divine Mana supplies. He even managed to find a detour into a small chamber populated with four of these zombies, and after killing them his Divine Mana had restored to 260.

He wasn't sure about the zombies' respawn rates. If they respawned frequently, then it would be possible to just stay down here, out of the way, and see through the event. Of course, one danger was that you could easily be hemmed in on both sides by strong players, if they happened to find their way in. The other issue is that your rewards would be highly limited, as he noticed that these creatures only gave 1 Ivaldi Gold each.

Looking through the occasional gaps in the walls, he saw that he was slightly above the waterline, travelling through what seemed like a sequence of dark, large underground caverns. There was a soft red glow from the tunnels ahead that continued getting more intense as he journeyed on, and after a double-take he realised that this was probably the red cylinder emanated by the sole current survivor of Apollo's mark.

He walked on, occasionally killing zombies on the way to keep his Divine Mana up. They seemed to get slightly more sparse over time, suggesting that he was reaching a place where some other players might have entered the tunnels.

Sure enough, he soon saw a few violently split and bleeding bodies on the ground, suggesting a fight between players.

However, there was no obvious sign of sound nearby, or any suggestion of a continued fight.

Slowing to a stop, he leaned against the wall and remained silent in order to listen for any noise. He heard the faint sound of whispering from in front, followed by what sounded like a tearful moan. There might be people nearby.

He placed a hand on his sword's hilt, and continued forward.

Soon, he saw a female's legs extended flat across the ground in a tunnel ahead. She wore compressed, white shoes that looked almost like sneakers in the dim light, and had pasty skin. A few red cuts and scratches were etched into the side of her legs.

At first, he thought she was dead, but then noticed her legs quivering occasionally, and sinking weakly to the ground. Looking out of the tunnel through a tiny gap, he was blinded for a moment by the brightness of the red light. Was this girl DellaB?

Activating [Quickstep] and walking quietly forwards, he saw hints of light blonde hair curving around her hips. That seemed to suggest that it was indeed DellaB, and she must have survived this long because she had ended up in this obscure tunnel, which had seemingly not been found by many players yet. Although the red mark showed her co-ordinates clearly, people looking for her on the land would not find her there. Thinking back, he dimly recognised some of the male corpses he had seen earlier in the tunnel as her Guildmates who had also worn the red mark.

Perhaps the advice they had received involved finding their way to these tunnels? That suggested some form of advance knowledge about this location, but, given that the Hashin had been given information about the game, it didn't seem unlikely that a few other players would also have that.

As he hid and surveyed the scene in front of him, he saw that DellaB was not alone, but was covered by a very large man who had ungracefully smeared himself over her body.

This man, another player, seemed to be using some variant of the basic [Bodylock] grappling skill. His arms were wrapped around her back, in a ring that went over one shoulder and under the other. Most warriors had this skill, since it was awarded by a warrior-only quest near starting towns, but it was rare and highly sought-after among the grapple-centric [Snake] sub-class of Assassins.

However, his [Bodylock] wasn't ordinary. His body was pressed right up to hers, and his hands moved freely rather than being locked in close to her. His right hand reached under her shirt, feeling over her breasts as she flinched back with panicked blue eyes, and the other hand felt across her back and torso. She was quite thin, and his ungainly flab draped down onto the floor on both sides of her midriff.

In this supine, cramped position, her body flattened until her frontside seemed like fragile, white plastic, curving hopelessly away from him.

As he moaned in a deep voice, she made a series of high-pitched, almost stuttering cries before letting loose a loud shriek. However, it seemed that nobody else was here to hear her, and her tears grew deeper. As she continued screaming, she was silenced as he smothered her mouth with an unwelcome kiss.

Surveying the scene coolly and planning his next actions, Crucis noticed an oddity.

This was clearly not the usual Bodylock move, which was quite focused and didn't allow for this much unrelated movement and closeness. Typically, there were protections against players being in this kind of undesired proximity, but seemingly this player's Bodylock was glitched in some way that circumvented these protections. There were actually persistent rumours about sordid acts like this occurring to people taken prisoner, though mostly not near Kruxol, but this was typically just rumours.

Crucis could see that this man was from the Guild [Machu Pichu], a Guild which he hadn't heard much about. He had only heard them mentioned twice, when players were gossipping about this Guild selling herbal concoctions made to resemble depressants or anti-depressants.

The girl began to whimper as soon as the man pulled his lips away. "You have no right... let me go, please."

Despite the tone, her eyes glanced coldly towards the left, where her sword lay on the ground, out of reach. Crucis could read between the lines: she wanted the man dead.

"Look, baby, how did you get so beautiful? You must be really popular, you are like a cheerleader from a movie?" the man replied, in a low-pitched American-Arabic accent. The girl flinched away as he spoke. "Come on, babe, marry me. You know I can't do this for so long without going further. Think of how much agony I am in!"

"You? Have you ever even thought of how I must - ugh, ugh, you're just some creep, you're not in agony."

"Baby, you can make my dreams come true! Isn't that something to be proud of?"

"No! I don't care!"

He pressed his body down on hers insistently. "You don't care to make someone happy? I used to be a painter, I loved it so much when person came and said my paintings made him happy. If it made him laugh and cry from beauty, like you do to me! Then I would be faint from joy, I would give him any art he asks for."

"I said I don't care. Look, I'm not having sex with you, and that's final. I don't even want to be in the same place as you. I don't -"

"But I can't stand to lose you, after we've been so close for such long time! I won't let you go, my little flower."

Although he wasn't that concerned about her fate, Crucis did find her suffering at the hands of the fat man to be sympathetic. After all, he had recently been a whale's plaything, and had only narrowly escaped.

As he surged forwards, the man sensed him late, and awkwardly rose while fumbling dazedly for a sword. The man raised his sword in defence, but his grip on it was shaky and it leaned limply to the side.

Crucis struck the man's sword away in one blow, sending it flying towards a corner of the cavern.

Without a back-up weapon, the man gave up and put his hands in the air, his thickly-bearded face giving a pleading look. Crucis raised his blade's point towards the man's neck, and took a few threatening steps forwards.

"No, please, I will not do anything to you!" the man said. "I will leave you both, okay, brother? See, I did not do anything bad to you, right, Della?"

DellaB frowned, looked into Crucis' eyes with a conspiratorial gaze, and hissed, "Kill him."

Her voice was almost a whisper.

She still seemed somewhat disoriented, after her recent experience. Although she had reared her back straight on realising that the man might be forced to leave her, she still went faint after a few seconds, with a peaceful look on her face.

Crucis considered a moment, then turned to the man and asked, "How did you do that with Bodylock? It isn't the normal skill, yes? Tell me your trick, then I will let you go."

"Oh, well, I can explain it," the man stammered. "If a skill like Bodylock, which creates lock - if you are using that - and also use something that is a 'charged ranged attack,' my friend told me this term, it is from distance and takes time to use, then they cancel each other out. So you can start the charge, then when it is nearly ready you use Bodylock, that cancels the other move but also the lock is broken by charged move. So you start move, but the game doesn't think you are using it, so you can do other thing with it."

That made some sort of sense. A charged, ranged skill was rare among melee classes, and significant lock skills were rare among archers who used more ranged skills. However, if both were used at once, with the correct timing, then it might lead to hijinks where the one skill overrides the other. This would explain why the game acted as if the man was continually starting 'Bodylock,' hence displaying the move name. While Crucis wasn't entirely sure how this glitch could be used in practice, it did seem quite versatile and was worth knowing.

"So what 'charged ranged attack' did you use?" he asked.

"Oh, it is the skill called [Ceremonial Sword Throw]. It is advanced ceremonial sword skill."

No wonder, a skill from high up a typically near-useless skill tree. This player must have beelined it, which is probably costly in terms of skill points. Perhaps there were alternatives, though.

"Alright, thank you. Now get lost. Don't try to pick up your sword."

The man ran away quickly through the tunnels, leaving his sword lying in this cavern. He would probably find the Husk Zombies difficult to fight, since they are quite strong, but might be able to get past them. However, his journey would be a useful way to test if there was anyone else in the tunnel. If he started loudly begging for his life again, there was probably someone there.

"Hm. Is he gone now? Thank God," the girl said, forcing a smile. She blushed sheepishly as she looked down on her clothing in disarray. "Hey, you didn't see what he did, right? If you did, I bet you'd hate him as much as me."

Crucis crouched down. "What did he do?"

Her teeth clenched as she revisited the traumatic memory, and tears rolled freely down her eyes. That might have been why he asked.

"Well, um, his friends fought off my group, they killed my best friend. But he killed three of them! Then this guy just grabbed me, threw my weapon away, and... well..."

"Alright, no need to say," he replied soothingly.

"Yeah..." she whispered thankfully, her eyes still quite faint. "By the way, is it alright if I, um... my sword? I feel vulnerable without it. I can help you out, if we stay together we'll be safe down here."

In a daze, her tear-blinded eyes blurred over as she looked to the right, and her vision of the sword was so hazy that it seemed to be in multiple places at once. As she reached out to drag herself towards it, her fingers scraped across a sharp stone and began to bleed.

She sighed, then stiffly clenched her teeth for a moment as the pain shot up her forearms.

"Never mind... Fine, after all, you're not going to do the same thing he did, right? Come on, you don't look that desperate for me," she said teasingly.

"No," he said, raising his sword's tip from the ground.

He knelt down, leaned forwards, and swiftly beheaded her.

Her body slouched down from its perked-up position, and her disheveled, crumpled clothing looked even more crumpled now.

Looking through his rewards, he saw that he had gained the usual 100 Divine Mana and Ivaldi Gold for a player kill. In addition, he received some of her armour, [Blue Steel Gloves] which carried a Dexterity boost and a [Soft Metal Cuisse] to guard the thighs. Since she had been on the run, having the armour on would have seen her die earlier. He also received a [Rune of Vár], based on a goddess named Vár, which enhanced your whole team's damage when used on a sword. It might be useful for specialised contexts, such as a sword used for team Arena events.

Since she was on the side of the Vanir, he checked quickly and verified that his Divine Mana was draining slightly more slowly after her death.

She had also dropped a few diaries and other paraphernalia. Seemingly, as players were trapped in here, keeping some form of diary had become common as a way for people to give their lives a sense of regularity and meaning, and more and more players were dropping these. He typically ignored them, but wondered if this diary would have any details about how she had found her way to the underground tunnels. All the same, it wasn't worth checking just yet, since there was still an event to finish.