Another day came and went without any real incident and the elites of the special 300 Chosen formation, or at least the 202 of them that were there, were sitting down in the bunkhouse. They had seemingly forgotten what they had discussed last night, almost as if the people who had brought it up had never existed before, thus rendering the entire convocation as non-existent as themselves. But perhaps some minor glimmer of remembrance yet remained, as their talks once again turned to how odd it was that their number was so much less than what it should be.

“I mean, this place is far from hostile, so how is it that there are 300 beds, but only 196 of us here? I don’t feel that they were taken to a different trap than us, instead, I feel this deep sense of loss and a sickening sense of déjà vu.”

“I get you, brother. For there to be only 187 of us… It makes no sense. His Goldenness, Almighty Solinaye, would have given us some sort of sign. Instead, it is almost as though He is deaf to us… Not that He is, of course! I’m no Heretic!”

“Yeah, I get what you mean, brother, but the fact still stands that there are only 184 of us here when there should be 300. Wait… Something seems off…”

The rest of his fellow brothers in arms turned to the most recent one to speak as if awaiting the word that may very well save them from this weird trial they had been forced to deal with.

“How many of us did you say there were here of the 300 there should be?”

“182?”

“No! Something is very wrong!”

“Why is that?”

“Because unlike you guys I’ve been trying to keep a record of what has been going on here. Look at these.”

The newest member of the formation handed out a document to his 179 companions. They were diary entries, but for just over a third of them at least one name, or what should be a name, was missing from somewhere in the text. It was not as though these names had been wiped off or had the ink delicately removed, instead it felt far more sinister, as though the name itself had simply vanished from the world itself.

“This… this is…”

“And watch this.” stated the man who had passed out his diary. He then took one of the many tools that had come along with them, a device used to extract ink from paper that it had been on for under three years. It was a revolutionary device, but one that was left intact from the age of the First Sultan and was therefore very valuable.

The diary-writing soldier drew the device over the place where a name should have been, and as if by magic all the ink that would have made up the written name was sucked up, even though the place was seemingly blank. This made everyone very uneasy, and one person took the information that they may very well have been forgetting over a third of their intended number.

One man took it far too poorly and decided to be quite childish about it. He stuck his gloved fingers in his ears and repeatedly said, “La, la, la, la, la! I can’t hear you!”

This one act was, while incredibly childish and unfortunately, something this man had done often before, the act that ended up solving the puzzle as the man in question had his eyes open the entire time and after a few repetitions of his chant, his words slowly trailed off and were replaced with a look of horror and confusion.

He stopped his words, took out a piece of paper and wrote something on it, and then pulled one of the gloves from his ears (he had left them there, but had rather comedically left the fingers of his gloves inside them). He seemed to his comrades to be in a bit of a daze for a few seconds before he saw the note he had written and cautiously plugged his open ear once again, his look of horror and confusion returning in full force.

The soon-to-be savior of the survivors motioned for his fellows to block their ears, and one by one they followed suit if only to keep the man-child of the group from crying and complaining. As they each blocked their ears, it spurred others to do so more quickly as those who had their auditory sensors jammed could be seen with looks of abject fear and stupefaction covering their once hardened countenances.

One by one, their eyes were opened as their ears were closed, and they beheld their bunkhouse in its true state. The windows were shattered, the beds that had once apparently had people in them and that had been left abandoned were covered in blood and gore, some of it more than a few days old and reeking to high heaven. Worse still, there was a long, serpentine neck with a cruel fish-snake-like head with a mouth like a Moray Eel studying them from inside their domicile. The head seemed to smile a sadistic grin before it was pulled by the snake-like yet utterly scaleless neck out of one of the windows.

The elites understood exactly what had happened, or so they thought. This giant snake monster had them under some kind of delusion and had only been foiled in its plot by a chance action taken by the most childish of their number. If he had not been left alive until now, they might very well have been whittled down one by one!

But now was not the time for thoughts of what would have been, now was the time only for thoughts of what must be done. The men who had survived up until now, all 170 of them, all donned their armor and took up their weapons. It was time to hunt a monster.

…

Zero Noir watched as the Sultanate’s so-called elites walked out to behold the true state of the town. The NPCs were not even human in appearance anymore, just humanoid dolls made of a pale, flesh-like substance with only a mouth and two ear holes for use in the deception. He had hoped that his False Hydra would be able to decrease their numbers even further than this, but he was unlucky enough to have a man-child among those whom he had stolen from certain death at the talons of Pluton.

He did, however, love the expression that the Players had when they beheld the twisted nature of his game for the first time. The ten long necks of the False Hydra kept watching the dead men walking, Zero Noir until ordered the monster to retreat to its lair. If all went according to plan, which it both had and had not so far, this was going to be a good enough show to make him wish for a mouth to eat popcorn with.