“Come-on then! Let’s see how long you can dance!” The man who’s trying to stomp the life out of me doesn’t let up. He’s hitting the ground so hard the whole tunnel is shaking. I roll over something wet and squishy.

Flesh.

Tepis?

Sierra?

Rita?

“Ahahaha I see you found your friends! But they can’t save you now!” My mortal foe hollers as he chases me around the cave. Every time, the boot lands just close enough to my head that the shockwave is deafening. He’s doing it on purpose now. I stumble over another body and I pray that whoever it is, is just unconscious, but I have no time to check.

Can’t even take care of myself right now.

*BOOM*

*BOOM*

*BOOM*

“DANCE RAT! DANCE!”

*BOOM*

*BOOM*

*KACHA?*

That’s when it happens. Right after one last stomp. The back of my head hits a wall, and I know I’m out of room. But his stomp sounds different this time. Something’s changed. Like the ground is weird.

No…not weird…hollow!

*KAAAAAAACHAAAAAA*

I know what it is before it happens.

My body remembers even if my brain hasn’t caught up.

Arms cover head, legs tuck into a ball.

Then we’re falling, rocks all around.

CAVE IN?!

#

*Thud*

*Tssss*

*CRACK*

*Tssss*

*Boom*

*Rumble*

Things hit me.

Chaos reigns.

My gut drops out from under me.

I’m flipping every-which-way.

The darkness turns me around and spits me out like a laundry machine.

Water splashes on my face.

Rocks smash on my skull.

Down!

Going down!

Under!

How long have I been falling?!

*CRACK*

Something hard and heavy hits my shoulder and I feel my collarbone bone snap. White-hot agony joins the throbbing pulses being sent from my skull with each hit. I don’t know what to hold, everything is under attack. The world is falling, no I’m falling, it’s all coming down!

*Whoosh*

I keep smacking into new things. A ledge here, an outcropping there. Bouncing around, I’m like a pinball inside the machine, just getting absolutely battered by anything that comes near me. Some part of me wants to wonder why this is happening.

Surely, I’ve been falling for too long?

*Whump*

But then I hit another ledge and anything resembling coherent thought is smacked right out of me.

*Whoosh*

I pick up speed.

Hit something.

Lose it again.

“THHEEE HELLL ISSSS THIIIIIS!”

Sometimes I think I can hear the other man screaming. It seems he’s getting farther away. Perhaps we have diverged onto different paths during our descent to hell. I’m halfway convinced that I’m not really falling anymore.

Maybe he killed me with that stomp and this is the afterlife?

*WHUMP*

When I hit the ledge, the searing pain seems to say no.

If this is hell it’s awful realistic!

The worst is that I can’t see anything. My sightless eyes dance around madly, a vain effort to try to help spot salvation. Though I grope around desperately at first, trying to find something to hold on to, anything, all that happens is I get hit by more things. Giving up, I just hold my head and curl up tightly into a ball.

*Whump*

*WHOOOOOSH*

After a particularly nasty hit, I tumble off the side of another ledge and begin to pick up major speed. I think any human from before the Calamity would have died a hundred times over by now. Crushed by rock or dashed against a cliff. My confusion only increases as the wind grows shrill in my ringing ears. For a solid minute now, my heart has been pounding out of my chest. The shattered bones in my body throb, but it’s nothing compared to the fear I feel as I enter a true freefall.

Oh my god…where the hell am I?!

*WHOOOOOOOOOOOOSH*

Did I just hit terminal velocity?

#

How long have I been falling?!

Maybe it’s been minutes.

Maybe it’s been seconds.

All I know is that ever since I hit terminal velocity, my fear has doubled even though things have stopped hitting me.

Oh god…I’m going to go splat when I land!

It was like jumping out of an airplane…without a parachute…at night…with your eyes closed.

*WHOOOOOOOOOSH*

Down, down, down we go. All I can think of is what’s going to happen when I hit rock bottom.

It’ll definitely kill me, right? But will it destroy the brain stem so I don’t reanimate?

It better…

It has to…

Most people probably would be hoping to survive the fall.

I’m not.

I’m just hoping the fall will be strong enough to finish me completely and reset all of this.

I’m ready to die!

Where the hell is the bottom!

The cold wind rushing by is streaming into my ruptured eye-sockets. It burns like all hell. I’m beginning to miss getting smashed. At least it distracted from the pain of a body that’s slowly giving up on life.

*SPLASH*

Hitting water at terminal velocity would liquify any normal human. However, just purely from levels, I have a base stamina of 12. The impact almost breaks my unprepared legs.

Almost.

“MMMUUURRRMPH!”

The water is thin, bubbly. It cascades around my head, into my empty eyes, down my throat. I think it’s filled with air because I sink through the surface with barely any resistance.

Have to get air!

When the pain leaves my legs long enough to move again, I stroke for the surface, praying that I haven’t gotten turned around. Without my eyes, there’s no way to see if I’m swimming up or down. All I can do is just keep going. There are bubbles everywhere. The thinness of the water means that there isn’t enough resistance. My hands aren’t able to grab onto enough to lift me up. A hidden current washes over me and spins me around.

*Shuaaaa*

Water leaks inside and fills my ears with the sound of running water. My body is caught in its flow and I zip away downstream. Something slaps my face, drawing blood, but I don’t care. I grab onto it, desperate for anything that might lead to the surface!

Need.

To.

BREATHE!

Pounding, rushing, my world has devolved into madness. Unable to see a thing, I use the last of my strength to haul myself up what I think might be a tree branch or root in the water. As the blackness of my world throbs red from oxygen deprivation, I finally break the surface!

“HAAAAAAH!”

Each choking breath is punctuated with streams of burning gunk from my lungs. I cling to the branch without any sense of self like a lonely worm in a rainstorm. It is my safety, the only thing that is real in my world.

*SHUAAAAA*

It’s loud. The sound of water splashing is constant, ever-present. I know what it is even if I can’t see it.

A waterfall. Close-by too.

I have no idea where I am, but I know that the longer I stay submerged in the river, the weaker I’ll become.

After the numbing pain of the impact fades away some more, I do my best to haul myself along the root blindly. Bit by bit, the cold stinging air of this place contacts my wet body, but I welcome it. Despite the pain, it means I’m getting out of the water.

Crawling ever further on the root, my fingertips eventually brush against something I don’t expect to find down here.

Dirt? Shouldn’t it be rock? Where the hell is this? For that matter, what kind of root is freaking growing down here?

Ignoring my confusion, I proceed on clambering off the root and onto solid ground. Once I’m finally secure, I pause, turning my head this way and that, searching the darkness.

I can’t hear anything over all this water.

After some time, I gain at least a little confidence that the high-level is not here. Not that it matters. If he was, my only hope would be to throw myself back into the river, but at this point, I think I’d rather take death. My body is broken in more places than one.

Hell…I’m broken in more ways than one.

What happened to the others?

Did they fall down here too?

But even if they made it into the river, if they were unconscious then…

I force my thoughts away from that particularly line of logic. Even still, I can’t help but to begin to gnaw on my lip.

I’m alone down here.

I’m blind.

I have no idea where my enemies are.

Damn…this is literally rock bottom…

That one gets a laugh out of me. I regret it instantly as my broken collarbone and a hundred other bruises and cuts remind me of their presence. Darkness wears on my mind and soul. I’m utterly and totally lost in this strange abyss. Moving even a centimeter feels like too much right now.

Which way do I go?

How do I know what’s safe?

Fear paralyzes me. Indecision takes over my body and I grow afraid to take so much as a step. So, I lie there, unable to convince myself to move. It’s a bad idea, eventually, I’m going to need to find food. Or some way out of here. Maybe even some way to die.

I don’t want to live in the dark for the rest of my life.

I’ve reset the timeline for other people before. While I may be alive, and I don’t want to undervalue my own life, I don’t think I have it in me to spend my days as a blind man. Each second I spend here is another second closer to starving to death. Or being caught by something or someone. I have no idea what the dangers are in this place. Still, every time I move, the thought that I might accidentally fall into a hole, or go the wrong way, worms into my mind.

In my despair, there is nothing but sheer blackness.

Until…for the first time in a long time, I see something.

Huh? Is my sight returning?

Then I realize it’s the System.

Even though I’m blind, I can still see the blinking red notification in the darkness.

[System Notification: You Have Entered Regionwide Dungeon The Underworld!]

My heart skips a beat as I recognize the truth of the matter.

This is the Underworld?

Then my heart skips a second beat when I hear someone screaming at me from afar.

“WAIT RIGHT THERE, RAT! YOU’RE DEAD!”

#

“Mrorowowow-!” A ginger cat yowled as it stumbled on its bleeding claw and fell snout first into the torn snow. It stared wearily at the strange, hollow, footprints formed by the bizarre abnormality it had been fighting for so long. The MobGlitch turned its blurry, humanoid head and then ran off. Wearily, the tired feline slumped, its paws shaking, as its multi-colored blue and emerald eyes began to close…

“Damnit! I’m out of mana!”