“Answer me, boy! Where the hell are we?!”

“It’s a beautiful day in our town! Look at the pretty flowers!”

“Arrrgghh! If I could kill you I would, you damn doll!”

“It’s a beautiful day in our town! Look at the pretty flowers!”

You might wonder what exactly is going on right now, but this has much to do with what Pluton was mildly miffed about a while ago. You see, the elites of the Sultanate incursion into what once was Ititlis had not abandoned everyone there of their own volition. No, a certain giant metal man had spirited them away for a little ‘game’ of his own. He was certain that, if the Sultanate won, he and his lifestyle would be in jeopardy, if not by the hands of invaders than by the hands of certain Darksolian power players. He felt that to make sure he could live his mechanical life more or less the way he wanted to, he had to play some part in how the war was going.

Of course, he was not one to stick his neck out of his metal man-cave, so he devised a very special method of execution for his foes, all while making sure they could very well end up never knowing who or what did them in. This was what the exactly 300 people that made up the ‘best of the best’ of the invasion had to deal with, a seeming real-life game world where the ‘NPCs’ were unkillable and even invulnerable and they just assigned the ‘Players’ tasks to do every day.

Any attempt to question the NPCs would result in repeated dialogue, eventually leaving the Players no other option than to move along and try and solve the underground town’s problems. (Author’s note; Be aware that this place is different from the normal Dungeon Town)

As the days passed, the outsiders began to grow restless and ever more annoyed. No matter how many issues they resolved, they were still unable to leave this place at all. All 284 of them had tried for the past three days to find some way out, but there did not seem to be a door to exit this damn place anywhere. They had sent people to the outskirts, only to be met with a wall that reached up to the end of the skybox, and this could only mean that there was some underlying issue that they needed to solve.

With the third night since their arrival out of the way, all 284 of them decided that it would be best to get some shut-eye, and they turned in for the night.

…

Morning came and the 269 Sultanate Elites woke from a fitful slumber. They had all been tormented by nightmares where they had been accosted by people wearing their unit’s uniforms yet who had faces that none of them recognized. These seemingly spectral men begged them to ‘open their eyes’ and ‘see the truth’, but not a soul could understand the meaning behind such words. It was odd that they had all shared the same dream, but it was probably just a twisted joke from whatever monster had trapped them here in the first place.

They decided to up their attempts to search for a way out and went out into the town to see if they could get more information or find whatever quest would allow them to escape from this game.

…

Another day had passed and the 243 men of the Sultanate’s special ‘300 Chosen’ formation had been left with not one clue as to how to escape. Things were not looking good, but at least they had each other to lean on. As they talked and reminisced about past triumphs (of which there were few) the stories occasionally shifted around a bit, yet no one could put a finger on why that happened. Some parts of their old stories just did not make any sense, as if characters and people that should have been within them were absent, yet no one could figure out who was missing.

Still, they were one of the elite 300 Champion formations, those chosen by the clergy and blessed with supernatural power and might. The 243 of them here were more than enough to find a way out of this pla-.

“Hey. Question.” Asked one of the invaders.

“Yeah? Go on, brother.”

“We are a formation called the 300 Chosen, right?”

“Yes? And?”

“How come there are only 243 of us?”

“Well, that’s because….”

The men looked at each other. Certainly, their dormitory that they had managed to get had spots for three hundred people, yet there were only 240 of them here. Some of the beds even looked like they had been used relatively recently, yet their occupants had left them, possibly even while they had slept. This was not right. Something was very wrong here, yet once again, not a soul could figure out what was going on.

Their formation’s number was sacred! There had to always be exactly 300 people in it at all times, which led to reserves being taken around with them to fill in the numbers lost in combat (which had never happened yet to their knowledge), but now there were only 238 of them here.

Something was wrong, but they were all too tired to deal with it. They would wait until the next morning to deal with the problem. Solinaye was not going to let His faithful simply vanish into thin air, right?

…

Zero Noir, the massive, mechanical grim reaper of a machine with metal tendrils for legs, watched his 'entertainment' play out. If his metal face could smile, he certainly would have grinned widely as he watched yet more of the formerly 300 idiots get knocked off as the night progressed. One went down to get some water, tripped over the true danger of the hellish game he had created without them realizing it. The ignorant idiot then proceeded to pull up some water from a well, all while the nightmarish monster’s eyes gazed down on what could very well be its next meal.

Fortunately for the soldier, the beast’s other orifices had already sated its collective hunger for now and the man walked back with a water bucket in hand as the beast eyed him hungrily from the front. Eventually, the creature’s head had to move aside to allow the soldier could enter the bunkhouse.

Another few men vanished from all memory that night, and only those on the outside with the right connections would be any the wiser as to what kind of sick and twisted game the gigantic immoral trash can was playing with these invaders. As the artificial night ended, Zero Noir’s newest nightmare fuel held its heads high above the town and sang its haunting melody for all to hear. The game was only just beginning.