Chapter 35: The Final Rest Stop

Normally, after I would reach the bottom of a set of stairs, I would take a short rest. This was to mentally prepare myself for the floor ahead, but also to just rest my body from descending the many stairs that existed between each floor.

However, I didn’t stop this time. Perhaps it was due to the novelty of what I was seeing, or perhaps I was till shaken from losing my right arm above the elbow. Thankfully at least, it had stopped hurting, and there wasn’t even pain when I touched the end of the stub that was once my dominant arm.

The table that stood before me had paper of it. Just like The Hub. This floor looked nearly identical to The Hub, but every single store that lined the seemingly infinite halls was stocked. Everything, clothing, food, the only thing I didn’t immediately see was a pharmacy of any type. It was a shame, but I could just as easily go to floor thirty-one for a quick trip.

I tried to grab for one of the pieces of paper, then quickly adjust so that my left arm would grab it. This was going to take a while to get used to, but it wouldn’t demotivate me. I was so close to the end now. I read the paper that I grabbed from the table.

‘Welcome to the second hub floor, it doesn’t have a fancy title like the first one. Not many people who make it here are of sound body or mind anyways. Like the first hub though, there should be someone here to greet you soon. If a pen and paper don’t appear within a minute or two of you picking up the paper, come back in a few hours, then someone might be here.’

I set the paper back on the table and waited. I was a bit worried as a full minute passed with nothing happening, but sure enough, a pen and paper appear on the table with a greeting and a name.

‘Hello, I’m Mark. Welcome to the second hub floor. Congratulations on making it so far.’

‘I’m Logan, sorry if my replies take a long time, just recently lost my right arm, have to write with my non-dominant hand now.’

‘Take as much time as you need, I won’t go anywhere. How long did it take you to reach here from the first hub?’

‘I think it was a few months, maybe only two or three.’

‘Incredible. You must be aiming for the bottom then?’

‘Yeah. I learned that I’m going to die on the final floor back in the library.’

‘Wait. You found information there? How, if you don’t mind me asking.’

‘If you didn’t meet the librarians, it is already too late for you. I met a librarian early, on floor seventeen. It’s almost like a test of sorts, if you attack them when they’re at their worst, you can’t be expected to stay calm when they tell you about your own doom, I guess.’

‘Interesting. Did you share this information with the first hub at all? I do what I can to help them, but they’re all so stagnated there. Information is kept secret, and no one wants to go down any further.’

‘Don’t I know it. I befriended Kacey, the person at the entrance of The Hub, but he basically told me to not go back because he wasn’t interested in knowing about an end due to his age.’

‘That old guy knows about the end already.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘Kacey is The Author. He wrote all the guidebooks and made it to the end. Only to turn back and talk to none of us about what he experienced. He refused to talk to any of us and went back to the first hub to live until he dies of old age.’

‘I don’t know whether to be surprised or not. I can’t say that I saw it coming, but I was lied to on many an occasion then. Basically, any information I didn’t find out on my own and bought there was wrong.’

‘He changed after making it to the bottom. There are only five floors after this one, but it seems that they are harder than any of us can even comprehend. I’ve only made it to thirty-seven, but I still have ten years before I’m at my limit.’

‘Just for reference, how long did it take for you to get from the first hub to the second, here?’

‘Around three years. I really struggled with a few of the more abstract floors, like floor twenty-eight. Also, the demon on the previous floor kept me there for a year.’

‘I would have rather stayed for a year. She removed my dominant arm and sent me on my way.’

‘A death sentence then. My condolences, but what did you do to earn that?’

“Oh, I totally deserved this. I kept talking shit, eventually I was going to get hit. I met this demon on floor eighteen, called her a few words, then in defiance made myself seem more defiant than she could control.’

‘Well, I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but are you stupid?’

‘I sure am. Fortunately though, I made her bored of me immediately by faking my reaction after she removed my arm.’

‘You aren’t just stupid, you’re insane. She can see your thoughts and desires; how did you fool her?’

‘I just, didn’t acknowledge how I actually felt. I lied to myself just as much as I lied to her. Somehow, it worked, and she believe me. Even slammed in a compliment as well that was totally empty, but she believed, then she just sent me to the exit.’

‘Absolutely wild. Well, since you just lost an arm, do you need anything? I have a small collection here, but as you can see around you, I’m sure, everything is fully stocked and even restocks after a day.’

‘I’ll be fine. I have enough resources for a straight shot from here to the end. I don’t plan to stay on this floor for very long. In fact, I might go visit the first hub floor and spread as much information as I possibly can under the alias of The Author.’

‘I wouldn’t bother. Most people are happy there thinking everything they know is correct. Only the people who push like us will ever know that there is actually an end to this hell. They’ll call you a liar almost immediately, even if all you tell them are facts.’

‘Understandable then. I shouldn’t waste my time here; I have a world to return to after all.’

‘You are either the worst liar ever, or there’s an interesting story I’d want to hear. However, I won’t hold you here, you probably want to get going. I’ll give you a gift for entertaining me. The next floor is an art gallery, if you can, try to hide at night, as the ‘security’ is dangerous. The art itself can’t hurt you, but it will try to hold you until security can arrive.

After that the next floor is just a long hallway, I don’t know anything more than that. Also, there aren’t any monsters here like there are in the first hub, so you can just do whatever you want whenever you want without worrying.’

‘See you around, Mark.’

With that, I left the table. There wasn’t anything left to say. It felt a lot more professional than any interaction I had at the first hub. I wanted to go back, and confront Kacey, but it wasn’t worth my time. The man wanted to see the downfall of everyone trying to travel through and acted like he was going to share the information I gave him.

I was angry, but there is nothing I could do about it. If this is what he wanted, it was what he was going to get. I didn’t have the time, nor the patience to deal with a dumb situation like that. I wanted to, I really did, but I just needed to leave, and the situation wouldn’t have anything to do with me anymore.

My mood was sour as I chose a random hallway to just sit in. I should probably rest here for a day or two at the very least so that I can prepare for the floors ahead and calm myself down a bit. Maybe I would try to get used to doing things I used to with just my left hand now.

Maybe getting used to using a fairly large ax with only my non dominant hand should be high up on the list. Especially since the next floor appears to be combat related. I could go back to floor four and train against the Shade Houndes. That might end poorly though, considering I’m starting from less than nothing.

Maybe the table on floor twenty-six would be willing to re-train me, but the risk was higher than the reward. I really had no option other than to just get used to swinging and stopping my ax with just a single arm.

I grabbed my weapon after taking off my bag and got to work. The weapon felt heavier in my left hand than it ever had before. I swung it around for a while, losing control of it constantly. I threw the ax against a wall, frustrated that there wasn’t anything to show anymore for my months of practice.

I didn’t have the dexterity in my left arm to accurately swing it, and it would take weeks to even get to the level I was at when I got that first ax back on floor four. I slowly walked over to my ax and picked it up. The only damage on it was still that small scratch, beyond that, perfectly undamaged and just as sharp as ever.

With nothing more to think about, I mindlessly swung my ax around in various ways to get used to the weight. It was awkward at first. I nearly hit myself, I would drop the ax, and many number of things would go wrong, but slowly, it was getting better.

I still knew how the swings I had done before worked, and I knew why they worked the way they did. I just had to apply it in a different way now that I had less to work with. It was slow going, and by the end of the first day, I felt confident in being able to hold the weapon.

Progress was too slow for my liking, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I needed to retrain myself so I could defend myself. Even if the next floor is the only one that requires combat, I needed to train for it.

Just because I knew when I was going to die, it didn’t mean that I could actively try and get myself killed. More than likely, I would just end up tortured, barely being the same person coming out the other side. It wasn’t dying, but I may as well be dead at that point.

I slept beside my bag, trusting the words of Mark at the entrance. It was just a feeling over a short conversation, but I already trusted Mark more than I had every trusted Kacey. Kacey had never once been straight forward with his answers.

…

I woke up angry. Not that I had a bad dream, come to think of it, I never once had a dream since very early on in these floors. I wonder if it had something to do with my mental health. Probably, but I wasn’t qualified to even guess at a possible answer.

Today, instead of pushing myself to learn my weapon, I went for a walk just to see what this floor had to offer. I did have to find the exit on my own, but it really shouldn’t be too hard if it was like the first hub. I would just have to be mindful of any green lights. The next floor probably wasn’t a boss, so green would be the right color.

I just wandered around, looking into the stores. I changed my wardrobe up a little as I had found a high-end sports store. I grabbed a magnesium fire starter, lightweight clothing and clothing that was easy to put on. Warm layers and cool layers. I was prepared for anything else this place would throw at me.

I wasn’t going to look for much else. Sure, there were some stores that had nice food that I didn’t hesitate to eat on the spot, but I wasn’t going to bring anything with me other than the most necessary of things. I did however find a store that had energy powder that I could mix into water.

I decided to only do that with roughly half of my water. I also tried to avoid the ones with ingredients that I knew would just make me thirstier and go through more water than I needed to. Some of them seemed to be interesting, and I even found something with a flavor that I used to like a lot.

There were so many stores, and it was all free stuff. I would have to remember that once I’m back in the real world, I would need to use bathrooms properly, as well as not just take anything I could find laying around that was mildly useful to me.

I found an electronics store that had TVs that were running. Playing advertisements for products I had never seen, most of which in languages I couldn’t understand. This was only natural in a different world. This was a dead world, but I guess it was less dead than the first hub, but only slightly.

I walked into an appliance store and washed the bag I was using. There was a display washer and dryer that worked. I emptied out my bag to do an inventory check and just watched my bag spin around inside the glass front of the washer and dryer.

I felt like a young kid again, able to be entertained by the most mundane of appliances that I had taken for granted when I was back in the real world. I missed it, and I was feeling a little lonely while I thought about my parents, and how they might be doing without me.

They had to have moved on by now. Moved to a new home to rid themselves of the bad memories. I wonder if my friends that I went to go meet had even seen me. If they were questioned by the police as my last known contacts.

I guess it didn’t matter. I would find out once I went back and managed to get a hold of everyone. I think I was going to apologize to my old friends. I was wrong about them, I felt like I learned that with all the time I’ve had to think while down here.

They weren’t necessarily childish; they were just having fun while they were still young. I had too dark an outlook on life. I was jaded for no particular reason other than that I thought that was just how life was supposed to be lived.

I was also going to apologize to my parents. They treated me kindly, but I only returned it with a dark and callous attitude. Through no fault of their own, I twisted our interaction wrongly and interpreted them in a way that I wanted to.

No sense thinking about now though. I had plenty of time to do that once I escaped. Walking around and moping had only wasted a few hours, it was too early to go to sleep again, so I guess I would spend more time practicing with my weapon.

…

Five days passed in the blink of an eye. I practiced with my weapon while wandering around the floor kind of vaguely looking for the exit. I did end up finding it, but I wasn’t ready to go down yet. I wanted to at least be able to control my weapon half as dextrously as I could with my right hand.

I was close, and I was tempted to call it good enough, but good enough was going to see me more injured than I already was. Hopefully, another day of practice was going to be enough. I was using some obscure methods to practice that I had never even thought about.

I would try to write something in the wall with my ax while holding it near the end, just to get a feel for how much movement in my hand correlated to the end of the ax. Short answer, it was a lot. I rested one more night and decided I wasn’t going to improve much more in a short amount of time. I opened the large wooden door with an ornate silver handle.

The comforting stairwell greeted me.

Four more floors to go.