Shane stopped in his tracks and stared at the floating ball with various conflicting emotions—his pounding blood feeling like ice. Anxiety slowly became the emotion that threatened to overpower his sense of reason. Shane knew what she was implying and had to confirm his greatest fear.

"What's wrong, Shane? You look like you've just seen a shoeless vagrant eating a rat."

Alabaster's concern fell on deaf ears as Shane pieced together the question he needed to ask the flying metal ball.

"Liz, how many Shanes have visited this world before me?" He clenched his fists to stop them from shaking.

"Oh, that's an easy one!" She giggled. "There have been twenty so far. That makes you the twenty-first!"

Her tone almost makes it worse, he thought, as he tried to wrap his head around the implications of what she had just playfully admitted.

Alabaster was about to ask Liz what she had meant when Shane began shouting.

"I'm the twenty-first version of myself to be born into this fucking game?! Why is this happening, Liz?! What happened to the other twenty copies of me?!!" His heart was pounding so hard he could see it in his vision and hear it in his ears.

Shane wanted to continue yelling until he got some answers when a horse suddenly came galloping past him at full speed. He looked down the road and saw that the covered wagon had gotten closer and was maybe a football field away.

But something else had happened while he was screaming.

The horse had gotten loose, and the caravan was on its side—its wheels were still spinning. Then an explosion of force blew apart the wagon's layered cloth covering and wooden structure high into the sky. Pieces flew in all directions, with some landing near Shane and Alabaster.

Shane took a few steps closer and rubbed his eyes. The answer was right in front of him, and it was holding the limp body of the person driving the wagon by the neck.

Alabaster immediately began powering up, his arms gaining a rigid definition as orange energy pulsed through it.

"What the bloody fuck is that, Shane?!" Alabaster roared, not so much in anger as in fright and confusion.

Without turning to face either of them, Liz slowly floated forward. She put the words to what they saw—her voice utterly devoid of its previous lighthearted bubbly tones.

"That is what happened to the other ones, Shane."

What he saw would haunt his nightmares for years. The thing holding the corpse by the neck was him, but it wasn't him either. It certainly looked like him, similar face, build, and height. It even had his white wavy hair, except it was a bit longer and stained with blood. What stood out beyond everything else, though, were the exaggerations.

The right arm holding the driver's neck was thicker and longer than the other still muscley left arm. One of the legs seemed to have an extra joint, allowing it to fold in on itself as the creature aimlessly limped around the destroyed wagon. Shane gasped, his breath catching as the deformed Shane noticed the trio. To his horror, one of its eyes was much larger than the other.

The Shane doppelganger's spindly hand released the corpse's neck, and it fell to the ground with a wet thud. Its hazy eyes found Shane, and its mouth began to flap open and shut as if trying to talk without knowing how. Without breaking eye contact, the doppelganger reached into the air grasping at what looked like nothing.

At first, Shane was sure it was about to cast a spell. Until an intimidating battle ax materialized into its elongated fist—Its fingers wrapped around the ax's hilt multiple times. Its long handle appeared to be made of a hard pitch-black material, with a long tight cloth wrapped around it. The double-bitted ax head blades were at least two feet long—and impossibly sharp.

He wondered briefly where this guy had gotten an ax like that before a realization struck. It has the same inventory system that I do! Shane panicked internally. He had to warn Alabaster.

"Watch out! It looks like his powers are just like mine. There's no telling what spells and feats he has!"

"Shane! Watch out!!" screamed Alabaster in response. Shane had taken his eyes away from his grotesque copy for only a few seconds, and it was gone.

Shane looked to where it had been standing and saw nothing. Then suddenly, something caught his eye as he looked up. A cloud directly above where the corrupted Shane was standing had just been split in half. He was immediately covered head to toe in goosebumps as his mind raced to make sense of such a thing.

Shane was frozen in place, stuck in the own processes of his mind even as the grotesque version of himself fell from the sky. It was falling fast—faster than what gravity customarily allowed. Its one colossal arm raised the two-handed ax far behind its back for a single devastating attack.

He could only watch as the large ax descended towards his skull. He knew he should move, but a new realization kept him grounded.

This corrupted version of himself didn't have an aura, which should have been impossible.

There was no way to gauge how powerful this guy actually was. The strength and feat it just used to reach the heavens and descend upon him like this must have been extraordinary. This realization blossomed a great fear in his heart.

Shane could see the madness in the eyes of the funhouse mirror version of himself that was only a few meters away from impact. Shane's vision immediately darkened as the back of Alabaster's head came into view—followed by a bright yellow light that enveloped them.

He realized Alabaster was shielding both of them, with not just one but two of his yellow barriers stacked on top of each other. Shane could barely make out Alabaster's palms facing outward, outstretched and crisscrossed. Shane's corrupted copy let out an inane cackle of glee as the heavy ax struck the barrier—dead center.

Shane's ears trembled as an audible explosion rang out from the attack. It was like a meteor hitting an incredibly thick, giant glass dome. His ears rang something terrible as the shockwave from the force struck him.

He couldn't keep his footing and was blown backward a dozen feet as a large crater big enough to fit the fallen wagon sank Alabaster and Shane's corrupted copy. Shane was winded but largely unhurt and looked only to see the top of Alabaster's shoulders—the crater was that deep. At first, he thought his vampire companion had been able to block the attack entirely. It was a double-layered barrier, after all.

Shane's corrupted doppelganger began to giggle a high-pitched gleeful sound.

“Hheeeeeheeeheehehehehehe!!”

Shane didn't know why until he heard a crack, followed by the sound of shattering as both of the barrier's yellow glow faded. Alabaster cried out in pain as Shane watched the giant ax sink into both of his arms. The ax eventually stopped halfway down the vampire's forearms. The elegant man grunted with pained effort and flexed his hardened muscles.

What could I even do against such a monster? His mind was frozen from a fear he shouldn't have felt in this situation. Did that other me cast a fear spell? Maybe it's being caused by the massive plunging attack it just made? Shane tried to reason his mind out of its current irrational state but failed when his reaction felt all too rational.

-Notice-

Fear debuff In Effect. Duration unknown.

Shane witnessed the window before him, but it didn't cure his ailment. He was stuck.

"I can't do it," he muttered.

There's no way I can measure up to that thing, he internally anguished.

"I'm not good enough," Shane whispered.

I'm going to lose the first friend I made in this world! He couldn't help but think.

"Alabaster, I'm so sor,"—Shane was suddenly struck in the head by something hard.

-3 HP (Liz's body slam)

"Ow ow ow, boy, your head is hard. Why aren't you helping him?!" She looked at him incredulously.

The attack notification confirmed what his throbbing skull was telling him. Liz had flown as fast as she could into him, leaving an indent the size of a small dinner plate in her metal body above the screen that housed her expressive eyes. He watched as she floated up to his face with eyes that were both pleading and serious.

"You need to help him, Shane! You are NOT so weak and helpless that you can't save someone, and I'll do everything in my power to prove it!" she said with fierce encouragement.

Just as she finished talking, a metal plate that made up part of her outer shell moved aside, revealing what looked like a pair of high-end speakers. Shane wasn't an expert audiophile, but he could tell each speaker had multiple woofers of various sizes. Suddenly, music began blasting out of her body. As Shane listened, he realized it was one of the game's songs from the original soundtrack used for boss fights.

The developers went all out when finding talented musicians for Endless Veil. He remembered visiting the studio once where the original soundtrack was being recorded and played, and it was just as great then as it was at this moment.

A driving beat accompanied by layered percussion. Powerful strings harmonizing with the melody. A piano's soft keys spread wistfully throughout, punctuating moments of tension and triumph. The more he listened, the more he felt immersed and engaged. His worries, fears, and feelings of inadequacy were fading—he felt so grateful for her at that moment.

Shane smiled through the fear as he watched and listened to this machine companion try everything she could to lift his spirits. To his immediate delight, it worked.

-Notice-

Fear debuff expunged

His mind cleared of doubt. Replaced by a rigid determination to put his corrupted duplicate out of its misery and rescue Alabaster.

Shane lifted both his hands and cast "Skeleton Crew" as the music played on.