Vaile’s eyes began to flicker open as he regained consciousness. As he came to, he felt… better. Better than he had in at least a few weeks. He felt strong, he felt durable, he felt... he felt like all the power that had been robbed from him had finally returned. He slowly shook himself, letting the wonderful sensation of what had been denied flooding back into his perception. It. Was. Glorious.

As he regained his composure, he found that he was lying upon a… well, he wasn’t sure what it was. It was akin to a mix of some kind of gel and a bed, but it also was not either of those things. He wasn’t sure what it was until the thing that he was laying upon began to shift and yellow, otherworldly eyes began to open all over it. The eyes all stared at him as he stared back until Vaile jumped off of that which he had been laying on and prepared for combat.

The thing that he had been laid down upon quickly began to shift into various forms, like a giant amoeba made of dark purple and blue goo, but with eyes aplenty all over it. Soon after, slathering, gaping, toothy maws manifested here and there upon the thing’s surface, and Vaile almost decided to risk it by attacking first.

However, his usual thing of checking levels and names above the top of his potential foes saved him and the ‘enemy’ from some unneeded trouble. The name of the creature was green, showing that it was an ally at best and a neutral at worst, while its level was only in the mid-300s. Vaile relaxed his stance and watched as the Shoggoth slithered away, leaving Vaile alone in a place that felt eerily similar to someplace he had been before.

However, he was sure that he hadn’t been here before, as he would have remembered such crazy architecture. However, what jogged his memory was the sight of a single door that was extremely out-of-place. This door was an exact replica of one of the doors leading to one of the rooms that he had fortified. And to be fair, he was around 90% sure that this wasn’t just a replica, but instead the genuine article.

He almost made it to that door when he felt a scratching kind of feeling in his head, urging him to turn around. He hesitated, but eventually relented, coming face-to-face with a tall, gaunt, thin, purplish-skinned humanoid with an octopus for a head. He felt like the creature was just wanting to make sure that he didn’t come to harm, but where that feeling came from was unclear. The level of the Mind Flayer was far lower than his, easily giving him at least a few hundred levels of difference. This meant that even if the thing tried to mind control him or influence him using Psionics, it would find such a thing next to, if not completely impossible.

At best it would be able to try and talk to him, maybe toss a few things at him for physical damage, but now that he was back at his full power, the Mind Flayer could and would be curb-stomped into the ground before it even made a dent in him.

“We wish to give our collective thanks.”

Vaile didn’t so much as ‘hear’ those words so much as ‘feel’ them. The Mind Flayer didn’t use normal vocalizations but instead used simple telepathy to send those words directly to his mind.

“Uhhh… you’re welcome?”

Vaile wasn’t exactly sure what the Mind Flayer and the ‘others’ that it supposedly represented had gotten from him, and to be brutally honest, he didn’t really want to know. If the lore behind Aberrations in the MMO was anything to go by, then it was in the best interest of Vaile’s mental wellbeing to simply avoid knowing. He had rough ideas and assumptions, but he really, really didn’t want to know if they were correct.

“We understand that you wish to leave this place as soon as you possibly can,” replied the Mind Flayer with a telepathic voice that somehow blended utter disinterest with a tinge of dissatisfaction and regret. “And we will work towards that goal. Or, rather, we have worked towards that goal.”

At this, Vaile felt a mix of relief and concern. In the MMO, Aberrations, such as Mind Flayers, Shoggoths, Hounds of Tindalos, and more, were almost always either incredibly hostile to anything that was not one of them or treated those others like lab rats or even like livestock. If they were able to get him out, then they could leave at any time they wished as well. The nations out in the rest of the world beyond this newly twisted realm were woefully unprepared for these things, and if they decided to set foot upon that realm, then it would be only a matter of time before-.

“Our God desires that we remain in this pocket realm, only venturing out to claim more chattel and resources, and only when we need to. We shall begin our preparations for the Final War, and we will cooperate with the other forces of the Alliance to reach that goal. This is our realm, and we would not wish to risk oblivion by tempting the wrath of the other forces of the Alliance.”

Vaile wasn’t sure what most of that meant until he realized that the reliefs on the tower’s interior seemed to point towards some future conflict and the possible ways it could go. Also, he wasn’t sure what this ‘Alliance’ was until he once again put two and two together and realized that it must be a coalition of the most powerful of the Tamed Beings and their followers that he had connections to.

With these realizations, his fears were… well, not entirely assuaged, but they were dampened. Now all he had to do was not go insane until after he was out of this place, which he figured would be easier said than done. He may have been at an exceedingly high level, but he remembered the old saying that “you can even kill a god with enough papercuts.”

For now, he would seclude himself in his saferooms and wait until whatever thing they were doing to get him back to the regular world was nearly done. Oh, and he would need to collect his ship and the other stuff that he had left in the other rooms. Those were all very valuable, and he wasn’t going to just leave them behind and gtfo asap. Rules of Horror be damned, he was not going to leave such valuable stuff to waste away, especially when he now was back at full power.