A team of survivors arrived after we descended the tower. Of course, they didn't believe in us when we told them about the portal's disappearance, so we had to wait for them to check and come back.

"This has never happened before!" Their leader, a strong middle-aged man said when he left the tower. They looked tired and two of their team members were hurt, so they decided to rest inside the tower while thinking about their next move.

It didn't take long for other teams to arrive, all displaying the same behaviour. And each one had their theory of why we were trapped inside the [Memoir]. Of course, none of them made sense.

A woman believed that the knights were actually in league with the cannibals and that we were food delivered in exchange for runes.

An old man claimed that the United States army had probably found a way to enter this world and was attacking the knights. Which blew up the portal.

A teenager claimed with all the certainty of the world that this was just an alien experiment and we have moved to phase two. When questioned on how he knew that, he didn't even know how to respond.

I keep watching the discussions, resting on the wall with my arms crossed over my chest. Wondering when they would stop with pointless discussions to focus on the real problem.

"Those people are a bunch of idiots." A woman said, stopping at my side to watch the scene. She had long curly black hair and a body that would draw the look of any man. More importantly, she had two swords and a knife.

"They are. Do I know you from somewhere?"

"Are you hitting on me?" She teased with a soft voice.

"No, it's just that you are talking to me like you know who I am."

"Maybe I do know." She turned and looked me in the eyes. Her lips formed a grim, and I felt my sword getting heavier with the danger she could impose. "Don't worry, I'm not your enemy."

"And I can trust because of?"

"Because we are in another world and the past has no place here. And because I'm one of the few people here you can trust to be good in a fight."

If she came from where I thought, she had a point. Yet, it didn't mean I could trust her, for as far as I knew, she would backstab me when it became convenient for her.

"I will think about it."

"Oh, come on, sweat. Let's -"

"What are the morons doing here?" A strong voice shouted, getting everyone's attention.

The owner of the voice was a knight, to my surprise, because I didn't know they also risked their lives inside the [Memoir] like us. His group was composed of 6 knights and two archers, with armours so thick I had to wonder how they were walking. Their cores were also silver, with three [Spell Runes] on each.

Aside from the sword hanging on their belts, each one also had a different weapon. The most impressive one was a war hammer that I doubt even a professional weight lifter would be able to use since the head of the hammer had two faces bigger than a man's head.

"The portal is gone." Someone told him.

The knight took off his helmet, revealing a young face with an eagle-like nose. He glared at the tower, and then looked at the sky. "The bad news is that it will soon get dark, and the creatures of the night are far worse than anything you have seen." He pointed to the woods. "We will need as many touches as we need to move in the woods in the dark."

"Why not wait for the portal to reappear?" Michael asked him, getting laughs from almost everyone. I left the wall and made my way toward him.

"Silence!" The knight ordered, ending the laughs. "Because portals don't disappear. They are destroyed. The good news is that there is another one we can use. The bad news is that we will have to fight our way there in the dark and surrounded by enemies."

"Stay near me," I told Michael when I arrived at his side. "This will be dangerous."

The knight ordered us to take branches from the trees and make torches for our adventurer. Despite it being an order, I didn't feel compelled to obey it and judging by everyone's casual behaviour, it wasn't an order enforced by the slave spell.

"See, we should work together." The woman said, stopping at my side with a wood branch. "This will be dangerous."

"Who is she?" Michael asked me, with a tone of suspicion."

"Darling, I'm Alana. And I just want us to help each other." She said, smiling and stopping to break a branch from a tree.

"Where is your team?" He asked her.

"Dead, but you don't think I'm blamed for that, do you?"

"I-"

She talked before he could finish. "Let's make a deal. I tell you guys what I know, and you let me come with you."

Not trusting her didn't change the fact everyone would be moving and working together. And I was eager to get any information I could to increase my survival chances. I could turn her down now, which in the end wouldn't prevent her from fighting at our side or accepting her offer for the time being.

Having her closer would also help me keep an eye on her, which was safer than fighting wondering if she would backstab me in the dark.

"What kind of information do you have?"

"Why do you think this place is called a Memoir?"

I have wondered about that, the word was similar to memory, but I couldn't make any sense of it. "No idea."

"You are slow. This is a reflection of a world long dead, like a living memory."

That explained why everything looked odd inside the [Memoir]. I suddenly remembered that the aberrant woman said something about their return, but I didn't pay it any attention in the heat of the battle.

"So, if this is a memory. What were we fighting? Wait, how do you know about that?"

She smiled. "I sold my work for a knight in need of comfort. Some men enjoy having to pay for it, you know?"

"No, I don't."

"He told me about it when I asked him after sucking him dry." She said, passing the point of her tongue over her bottom lips.

"Could you let this information out of it?" Michael said, stuttering more than he normally did."

"You are too shy for a big man." She blinked at him. "Anyway, we were fighting a creature born from the memories of what was left of this world. Every 24 four hours more of them appear."

She wasn't whispering, which got the attention of many of the people around us. I could already see that this would become the gossip of the week when and if we returned alive. I had to wonder how many of them were thinking the same as me.

"We are decreasing their numbers, keeping them in check."

"Probably." She said. "I didn't care to ask, actually…" by the way she curled her lips and narrowed her eyes, it seemed I had hit a sour spot.

A pair of hands grabbed me by my shoulders. Holding me in place. "What a curious bunch, why are you chatting instead of doing what I ordered?"

The fact that he managed to sneak behind me without me realizing it sent a chill through my body. The strength behind his grip was also inhumanly high to the point I couldn't even move. Either the humans of his world were far stronger than us, or their silver core made them ridiculously stronger.

"We were only talking while fulfilling our order, Sir," I said, feeling him almost crushing my shoulder.

"You lost all your [Mana Shield]?"

"An aberrant broke it."

He turned me, and stared me in the eyes with a cock smile on his face. "You killed an aberrant? What did it do?"

"It created illusions," I answered, guessing that it was what he meant.

My answer brought glee to his eyes. "You killed the matriarch! That sneak bitch was giving us trouble. The king was wise to send you people to help us."

Since he looked pleased, I took the risk of getting some information out of him. “She said something about we not being able to prevent their return, what did she mean?”

The glee in his eyes disappeared, giving place to a deadly serious look. He stopped holding me by the shoulder. “That’s of no concern to your kind, return to your duties.” He turned to return to the tower when a man screamed in pain. A second man shouted that we were under attack, and in less than a second the world went to hell.

Arrows and balls of fire were shot against us from all directions. Some of them hit the trees, while others hit the people around us. I shoved Michael down, covering my body with my shield.

“With me brothers!” The knight shouted while raising his axe to the sky. I felt a strong vibration in the air, then noticed my shadow was twisting and gaining form. It started to crawl out of the ground, growing and being reshaping.

It formed a hand, then a body. As it twisted in a mad dance, armour started to cover it. More joined it, coming out from the shadows of the people around me, until we were surrounded by dark and twisted black and purple warriors armed with axes and hammers.

The knight didn't need to give them an order, for they rushed toward the forest. Screams echoed from inside it, as they claimed the lives of whoever they were battling.

Cannibals came running in our direction, like a horde of mad animals. I got up, meeting the sword attack of the first who found me with my shield, shoving his weapon to the side. With a swift motion, I cut his neck and kicked him back to face my next opponent. A throwing axe came flying deadly closer to my head, to the point I could almost feel the cold steel against my skin.

Two cannibals were coming toward me. One was fat and slow, with a flaming axe in both hands. The other was tall and slim, armed with a spear, with a green beholder floating near him. It focused his attention on me, sending a message inside my mind.

A Beholder of Slowing has its gaze on you. Your movement speed decreased by 40%!

I gasped in horror as the slim bastard stuck his spear forward to kill me. As I raised my shield to block his attack, my arm moved slower than I was used to, but not as much as I thought it would.

His spear gazed at my shield, changing its trajectory and cutting my cheek. He was too far for me to attack him, so I held his spear and pushed him toward myself, headbutting his head when he got close enough. I heard his nose breaking, as he became disoriented. The fat man got closer to my right, ready to strike me.

Grabbing the slim cannibal by his cloth. I shoved him to the side to block the flaming axes with his body. The smell of burned skin and fat impregnated the air as the steel cut his skin at the same time the flames cauterized it.

The fat man kicked him, making us fall to the ground. The slim man's body was above me, pinning me to the ground. It was not heavy, but I didn't have the time to react because of my decreased moment speed.

I looked at the flaming axe held high, anticipating the attack aimed at my head. I summoned my beholder, who appeared between us, receiving the attack for me. I felt its pain inside my head, like a sudden headache and its desire to curse me for using it as a meat shield.

The beholder's body faded, leaving only the lingering pain inside my mind. The fat cannibal laughed as he held his axe high for a second attack. I held the dead body over me, to use it as a shield when Michael hit my attacker with his shield like a train. Sloppy as it was, it worked.

Your movement speed returned to normal!

Thanking whoever God ruled that world. I freed myself from the dead body above me and got up. Michael and the Cannibal were locked in a fistfight on the floor, with both their weapons on the ground.

I ran toward them, kicking the cannibal's head. Michael got up, shaking, and I drove my sword down, piercing one of his eyes.

"Thanks, man," Michael said.

"No, thank you," I said and noticed a woman running toward him with a spear, only for a dark cloud to emerge in front of her, taking the shape of Alana, who cut her off the woman's head.

The fire started to spread over the trees, as the night started to descend over us. Three knights had joined their leader, forming a circle with their backs to each other.

"We need to get out of here!" She shouted. "Right now!"

The air got hotter and heavier, and despite the light provided by the increasing fire, the smoke it created made it harder to see and breathe. The fire also didn't stop the cannibals from advancing on us. One of them came out from the smoke waving his axe against me. I blocked my shield, shattering it into pieces. The axe blade cut my arm, but not enough to make me worried. Grinding my teeth to ignore the pain, I shoved my sword inside his chest and twisted it inside him.

"Fuck!" I screamed, cutting a piece of my shirt to give myself some first aid. Michael tried to help me, but I shoved him. "Focus on yourself."

A warhorn blew from inside the forest. So loud it felt like the whole forest was screaming. All the cannibals around us shouted Yeho or something like that at the same time, over and over again, like they were chanting something.

Trees started to fall as something approached us, at the same time the fire was spreading faster than before. I tried to look for a way to escape the hellish fire, but we were surrounded by it and battles.

"Slaves!" A knight shouted. "I order you to cover our retreat, protect us."

I felt a sudden desire to go to his rescue and fight until my last breath. Joy like I never had felt in my life took control of my mind, demanding me to fulfil his order.

I started to look for him until I saw him fighting together with the three other Knights. I smiled when I saw him, then felt a hollow in my heart when I realised he could die.

He needed me, so I ran toward him, ready to throw my life to save him.

"Are you insane?! The order is cancelled!!" His leader shouted as loud as possible.

The joy faded as suddenly as it started. It felt like I had woken up still half asleep and disoriented from a hangover. The experience was enough for me to understand why that tattooed man licked the floor without vomiting.

He was enjoying it.

I didn’t have the time to think about it. The trees from the place I had come from were blown up by some sort of attack, flying and falling all over the place. One fell right in front of me, killing a woman and two cannibals. I jumped over it, ready to run for my life when a shout forced me to turn, only to see a red man so tall and muscular, that my mind refused to believe he was real. He had a massive axe in each hand, so thick that it made the knight warhammer look like a toothpick.

“What the fuck is that?” I asked no one in particular, only to vent my stress.

He run toward the direction I was in, raising one of his massive axes to attack. His horizontal slash blew up more trees, while also sending a shockwave that I somehow doubt had come from a [Spell Rune]. The shockwave tossed me against a tree, with enough force that I was sure I had broken at least a rib. Clenching my tooth and using all my will to ignore the pain, I got up.

His attack has killed friends and foe alike and even cleared some of the fire. There were dead people all over the place, many below fallen trees. Some unlucky people survived the crash with exposed fractures. The world around me became a sea of screens and cries, as the cannibals started to feast on the unluck survivors.

I had lost my sword, despite knowing it would be useless against the giant cannibal or whatever he was, I still felt naked without out. A glance was enough for me to see that all weapons around me were broken and useless. He was coming in the direction I was until one of the shadows warriors created by the knight’s leader attacked him, but the giant simple punched it into oblivion.

The fire and fallen trees surrounded me like a wall. There was no place to run to even if I wanted, and I was tired and in pain. so I spat on the floor, took a fighting stance with my fists in front of my body and spat on the floor. “Come on fucker, come get me.”

“I praise your courage.” The knight’s leader said as he appeared from behind me. His armour was shattered, and his left arm was broken. Half of his axe blade was also shattered, so I had to wonder why he didn’t hide to save his life.

Which gave me an idea.

I took the leather bag inside my pocket and removed took the [Banner of Blindness] from inside it, shoving it in the rune slot at my [Mana Core]. I checked my mana, which was at 20/100 and cast the banner.

Only to feel my body breaking apart and pass out.