As the elevator descended, Vaile wasn’t sure which was worse, the fact that the elevator music that was playing kept glitching out or the fact that the lower it went the more he felt that the growing anxiety would soon be the least of his worries. He kept a good handle on his mental state regardless, as this whole realm did nothing but induce stress and anxiety. What more damage could a gradually increasing level of those things do to him now that he was accustomed to such heightened levels already?

The elevator lurched to a stop and played a beep that sounded like the fading, dying voice of an Astromech Droid. Moments later, the doors began to open, catching multiple times before completely opening. Vaile stepped out of the elevator and listened for any potential threats. Aside from the sound of the elevator doors closing, all that could be heard were the sounds of silence.

Oh, and some eldritch whisperings that seemingly came both from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. The Rules of Horror told him that going forward would be a very bad idea, but what other choice did Vaile have? With eyes and ears scanning for any potential threat, Vaile moved forward and hoped to whatever god, gods, or lack thereof that existed and didn’t that he would make it out of this both alive and intact.

Well, if his previous encounters had been anything to go by, the odds of him getting out were definitely not in a low percentile.

…

So far nothing had jumped out and tried to kill, maim, possess, corrupt, and/ or eat him. Well, nothing had tried to do so yet, and Vaile was still absolutely certain that something else was in this place aside from himself. Despite walking for at least three hours, he had yet to see anything that convinced him that there was a way out of this realm here.

That was, until he saw a fuck-all massive door, just like the one that he had used to enter the tower that was now so very far above and behind him. He knew where this was going, and I, the author, am sure that you, the reader, know where this is going as well. With little choice but to press forward, Vaile pushed against the door. He strained against the massive piece of sickly green occult stone for longer than he should have needed to if the previous door had been anything to go by, but this door refused to budge.

After straining a few more times, Vaile wondered if he was going about this all wrong. He looked over the door a bit more closely before mentally facepalming as he realized that, on his side, this was a ‘pull’ door. He felt like a moron, but at least no one was watching… right?

He gave the door a slight tug and it opened rather easily. He walked through the open door, fully expecting it to slam shut behind him. But, to his surprise, it did not, and remained just as open as it had been when he had slipped through it. As he watched the door with a paradoxical mix of concern and relief, he heard a noise behind him. He slowly turned around to face the main portion of the massive room that he was in and discovered that there was something in there that he had neglected to notice previously.

In the dead center of the room was a large carved… something. It was fused with the ground and made of the same deep and sickly green stone that made up everything else here, but that was not the most concerning part of it. Planted in that sculpture was an object that looked strikingly similar to one of those weird obelisks that the Desert/ Sand Elves had been using, but this one was much smaller and was shaped in the rough form of a sword.

Vaile knew exactly what that sword-shaped object was doing, why it was there, and what the sculpture that it was planted in actually was. He had seen enough fiction to know where this was going, and as such, he knew what he had to do. It was a gamble that he needed to engage in, but if it paid off as all his other gambles had, then he would be able to bail if and when he so desired.

He clambered up on top of the ‘sculpture’ and placed his hands on the ‘hilt’ of the ‘sword’. Immediately upon contact, his hands felt like they were on fire, or at the very least felt like they had every pain receptor in them dialed up to 11. He had experienced worse than that, though, and began to pull the ‘sword’ free from its moorings. At first, no progress could be made, but gradually the sword-shaped object began to move. Every moment was agony for Vaile’s hands and, by proxy, the rest of him, but he kept pulling regardless.

Suddenly, an arrow shot past his head. He checked his minimap and saw that there was a seeming horde of red dots coming his way. Strangely enough, none of the dots would try and scale the sculpture, and thus they were using ranged methods to try and deal with him. He didn’t need to turn around to know who and what was attempting to stop him, as he could hear the voices of people from all throughout the city yelling and screaming at him to stop.

Vaile recognized this cliché all too well. Someone finds some eldritch artifact that the masses hid from the world, tries to remove and/ or destroy it and the townspeople descend upon them saying things like “You know not what you do!” and other such things. Well, if they had wanted him to not free whatever monstrosity was imprisoned by this glitched-out object then they would have let him leave a different way.

Also, they had not exactly been very welcoming during his stay. Sure, some of them had been during the day, but the vast majority spoke to him with condescension and outright malice in their voices. Plus, there was that one guy who tried to scam him with a ship that was worth much, much less than he offered to pay for. No, if they had wanted him to be on whatever side that they were on, then they shouldn’t have treated him so poorly.

The sword-shaped object was almost free, but Vaile had been hit with several ranged missiles. He remembered now what it felt like to be a new Player, where a few good hits from a thrown stone could put you on your ass with minimal effort. However, if he, a now beyond max-level Player, was going to die in such a humiliating way then he would free this… whatever this thing was and plunge this realm into what he assumed would be akin to the mythic age of Aberrations that was spoken of in the old RPG game series known as Mazes and Monsters.

He gave one final tug as an arrow embedded itself in his lower spine, which caused his legs to give way as the brain lost its connection to them. However, Vaile had succeeded in removing the glitchy object from the ‘sculpture’ and as he faded into unconsciousness, he felt the whole realm tremble and quake. The ‘stone’ beneath him began to take on a far fleshier feeling and the color of it changed as well. Vaile drifted off to damage-induced dreamland as the excised object shattered into nothingness, blissfully ignorant to the calamity that he had just unleashed.