Chapter 2 - Trapped Within

"Oh, what bad luck... what terrible luck!"
He paced back and forth, sometimes trying to shake the cell door, but nothing worked.
"Of all the damn places my consciousness could have created, why did it have to be a dungeon?"
I really hope this doesn’t signify something about my psyche because I don’t find this joke funny.

Looking around the cell, he saw a silhouette in the corner on the floor.
"Time to be useful."
He looked at his hand, and a card appeared; it was the torch card. He held it, and then particles of light transformed into a torch.
"At least it’s instinctive."
With the torch in hand, he went to the corner and saw...
"A skeleton, a damn skeleton."
Ah, I definitely have skeletons in the closet...
"If this damn thing moves, I swear... never mind, I don’t want to tempt fate."

Not knowing where to go, he tried pressing his face between the bars to peek outside, but all he saw was a corridor with two directions, dimly lit by a few torches.
"This can’t be happening; there’s no way the Inner Self created this. There would never be an endless maze; it doesn’t make sense."

Desperate, he began to search his cell for something useful. The skeleton had tattered clothes but no pockets. With difficulty and a bit of disgust, Lucan moved it out of the way.
"There goes my hope of having a trapdoor underneath it."
Moving the skeleton, a key fell to the ground.
"Yes!"
Running to the cell door, as soon as he put the key in the lock, the unexpected happened.
The key doesn’t turn!
Lucan sighed.

Realizing the irony of the situation, he laughed bitterly.
If you had a key that opened this cell, you definitely wouldn’t have stayed here... I was stupid to have hope.

Organizing some of the things he had found, he saw before him a moldy mattress, a tattered sheet, a small wooden table, a key, and a... skeleton.
"Think, think, think," he said, hitting his own head.
"Wait!"
Suddenly, a bucket and a broom appeared on the floor.
"I need to consider my options."

Having no idea what to do, he dismissed the items, which turned into bright particles and vanished. Lucan sat on the floor and reflected.
Looking down thoughtfully, Lucan was reviewing his options. He didn’t know if, within the Inner Self, he would feel hunger.
"Can you die inside the Inner Self? ‘Devour or be devoured’... if I don’t die in battle against my Inner God, at least he won’t have my physical body."
He lay down on the mattress.
"But that doesn’t mean he won’t come after me. I’m defenseless here. He can simply come and kill me."

In the tutorial, an event is created based on the Initiate; the trial is a sort of initiation into the Deviant world. This is how awakened humans evolved and gained prana power, learning the laws and rules. By passing the initiation, you gain knowledge and can also meet NPCs to extract information from them. The event scenario is a puzzle that leads to a final guardian. Facing the Inner God and proving yourself in battle, you are recognized as a Deviant and awaken your power. The initiation also rewards you based on the challenge; you can even acquire a card as a prize for defeating the Inner God. You appear in your ‘world’ called the ‘Inner Self’ with nothing from the Earth dimension. In this dimension, you have no items except the three initial cards to help you complete your challenge.

Conversing with NPCs allows you to undertake missions and gather information. The final guardian is the Inner God of your Inner Self, located in an area you need to find. Information is obtained through your own deduction or by completing tasks for the NPCs. You need to pay attention to what they tell you, from a problem somewhere in the city to the location of items. You can choose to listen carefully, try to buy information, complete missions, or even resort to aggression to get something. Only you can decide how you will find and face your Inner God. There are some 'key' NPCs that you can help, and they will reward you with cards that may be useful, not necessarily for battle, as upon completing the tutorial, you return to the Earth dimension with the items you acquired.

“Either I hope for an NPC to come here, or I’m doomed. I also hope that the Inner God stays fixed in one place… but that would be too good to be true. I also don’t have the patience to play detective and wander around talking and deducing things to fish out his location.”

The estimated time to complete the tutorial doesn’t exist; even time itself is a challenge or puzzle that the Initiate needs to endure and solve.

While reflecting on what to do, footsteps came from the corridor. They were sharp and unhurried, but something could be felt in the air. Something was wrong with those steps, and the breathing of whatever was coming grew increasingly deafening. The breathing was off, as if it were struggling to pull in air, and faint whispering sounds could be heard.

Fear took hold of Lucan. Standing up, he went to the torch in his cell and extinguished it. Huddling further into the darkness, he shrank into the corner. The footsteps grew closer, and suddenly, with its fingers caressing the bars, a girl in a white dress passed by. She didn’t seem to be even ten years old, and her white dress was stained with a black liquid.

“Why didn’t you keep your promise? You promised…” The girl murmured as she walked.

At that moment, Lucan couldn’t even breathe, fearing that thing would see him.

Not human…
He froze and stayed under the sheet for a while as if that would somehow protect him or make him invisible.
What was that? Could it be a whispering being? Corruption?
Lucan remained still in the darkness, staring fixedly without moving like a statue. He observed the other cell, which also had a skeleton... But there was also a…

A key!
Next to his cell neighbor’s skeleton, there was a key on the floor.

He stood still, waiting for a while until he felt that the being had moved away. Instinctively, he tried to stretch out to reach the key, even though it was physically impossible. But a reflex from his mind, seeking freedom, made him try.
I can’t reach it…
Sitting on the floor and leaning against the wall, he laughed.
“What a bunch of useless cards… a torch, a bucket, and a… broom.”
He sighed and then realized what he had said.
“A broom!”
He shouted and then covered his mouth in silence, afraid the girl-like being would hear him.
A card appeared in his hand, turned into light, and a conjured broom appeared.

Stretching his arm with the broom in hand, he tried his best to reach the other side. Then a metallic sound came from the floor as he managed to drag the key towards him. When the key was almost within reach, he laughed at himself and grabbed it with his hand.
"I love you, little broom, you weren't useless after all."
Trembling as if the key would break with the slightest touch, Lucan inserted it into the cell lock, and the door opened.
God, thank you.
As the cell door opened, the key in the lock vanished into bright particles.
"I guess it was single-use."
He looked both ways down the corridor to see if that being was still around and then stepped out. When he was about to leave, he remembered he still had another key.
"Thanks for the key."
Looking at the skeleton in the locked cell, he decided to try something and used the key from his cell to unlock his skeletal companion's cell.
"It worked."
Then his key also disappeared into particles.
Taking a look inside the cell, he didn’t see anything useful. It had the same things his cell did. So, Lucan left.

He had two options.
"Either I go where that being went, or I go where it came from..."
But when he looked in the direction the child had gone, it was just a dead-end corridor. There was nothing there.
A chill ran down his spine, and he decided to go the other way. Walking quietly, trying to avoid making noise even with his bare feet, he crouched to keep his shadows from moving too much in the torchlight.

Reaching the end of the corridor, he saw a large wooden table with a chair behind it. On the table were a paper and a key.
The paper read:
"Two treacherous thieves were given each other's cell key. To free themselves, each would need to hand over their key and trust the other would do the same. But how could two liars who never trust anyone take the first step, believing the other would change their nature and not betray?"
Lucan frowned.
Good thing I had the broom...
Opening the door, he left the dungeon's prison wing. What awaited him left him intrigued.

A Few Days Before the Initiation:

The girl stood in front of Lucan holding a piece of paper that contained a ‘Rorschach Test’. The test was a blank sheet with black ink blots.
“It could be anything strange or someone. Just look at the image and tell me what you see,” said the mysterious girl.
“You want me to say if I see a black ink blot?” Sasha said, laughing, but Lucan remained serious, staring at that black stain.
“It could have been just a sensation, anything that happened recently, flickering lights, a change in the weather.”
“A ghost?” Lucan asked, laughing.
“Did you see one?” the girl looked at him, but it was a different look. She was analyzing him.
“I didn’t see anything,” he said.
“And nightmares? Have you had any?” she asked them.

“Nightmares?” Sasha asked, confused.
“No” Lucan said.
“I don’t think so. I usually sleep and never remember what I dreamed,” Sasha said.
“Well, that’s it. It was just a project for my college. You’ve both helped,” the mysterious girl said.
“See you… what’s your name?” Sasha asked.
“Olivia,” she said as she walked away.
Lucan continued his work as usual, smiling or pretending to smile.
“It wasn’t raining, although it had rained the night before… so why was she carrying an umbrella?”
After finishing his shift, he put on his jacket and headphones. Grabbing his usual instant noodles, he headed home.
A Rorschach Test… I didn’t think I’d see one of those again… the last time was in that place. Sasha didn’t understand what it was. It’s a test for the human mind, a unique test. Each person looking at the inkblot can see something completely different; it’s related to their perception of the world and their personality. A test capable of making the conscious and unconscious work together, used to… identify the degree of mental disorder, the Corruptions.

“You saw it, didn’t you?” a voice asked from behind him.
“You… followed me?” he said, turning around to see the girl from before.
“Don’t try to hide it, the test never lies, you saw something.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about… and besides, you waited until I left… that’s a bit creepy,” he said, laughing.
“The test told me that you’ve seen something.”
They continued walking down the sidewalk.
“Oh, the test talked to you? A piece of paper?” Lucan asked sarcastically.
“Listen… I’m a Deviant, specifically from the Division of Psycho-Agents on Earth.”
“I thought you were a college student?” Lucan laughed, mocking.
“No. I said you helped me with a college project, not that I studied there. This is my job, I work for the university,” she laughed.
“I know exactly who you guys are, I’ve seen many around. You’re the kingdom’s executioners.”
The girl sighed.
“Look, it’s not like that,” she tried to explain.
“Just spit it out, I kind of want to go home.”
“I track potential Corrupteds. We have people who can sense and feel specific peaks of prana. Usually, these peaks are related to Corruptions, a sign of mental decay.”
Lucan couldn’t lie or hide anymore now that she knew about him. In these situations, it was best to cooperate.
“I understand… I think I’ve seen one of them, a black figure. Sometimes I see it watching me, sometimes standing in certain places.”
“You’ve seen one?” she gripped his hand slightly in shock. “How long has this been happening?”
“I don’t know… I’ve lost track of the days in my routine.”
The girl sighed deeply and then began to explain:
“A Corruption is the result of the personification of mental decay. A total corruption of the Inner Self. A buildup of emotion and sensation: usually fear, terror, hatred… and pain. It stops being a mental state and becomes personified, like a haunting or a demon. They have a single objective… to destroy human beings. They are born from these feelings, thus personifying corrupted prana. No one knows exactly what they are, only that the Whispers are involved with them. Once they settle in the mind, the goal is to contaminate the Inner God, making it take on infected and distorted forms.”
Lucan listened to her explanation, this was the Corruption of the Mind. A door that no one knows for sure can be opened to the mind and corrupt it.

“It takes a lot of mental energy, maybe years, but they feed on it, on our fears. That’s how they are born, or… come into our world. They’ve been in our society longer than you think. Their existence is… let’s say, as old as ours… when I say ours, I mean… humanity. You can see them in a museum if you want; the ancient men in the early days of humanity drew them on cave walls, ghostly figures. But some people faced them with fire. Fire isn’t a specific weapon; the figures meant that fire represented the courage to face fears.”

Lucan considered this, thinking about how humans had been fighting these corrupted beings since the cave times.
“They’ve been around… for a long time.”
“Not just here, but in other worlds too. That’s why we deal with corruption before it reaches the Inner God. If it reaches the Inner God… the God will be corrupted, and they’ll be able to bring a distorted version of it through the human who possesses the Inner God. From what I can sense, you’ve reached the awakening of your Inner God and can walk the path of the Deviant, but you’re in serious danger. Everyone around you, including me, is… if corruption reaches your Inner God… it’s over.”
Lucan swallowed hard.
“You need to go to a Bonfire and complete the Initiation. You need to claim your Inner God before those things reach it.”
“I understand. Just answer me one thing. What happens when the infection of the Inner God reaches a point of no return?”
“W-we…” she stammered, “we kill the host of the corruption…”
“Then I guess executioner suits you well.”
Thus, Lucan had to be escorted by the Deviant to a nearby point containing a Bonfire. The Bonfire is a magical tree always in flames that allows the Deviant to access the Oblique World. A dangerous world filled with many corrupted monsters where part of humanity migrated, but it contains many treasures. There, powerful cards can be found, gold to be discovered, Bonfires to be claimed, and a new life to be lived.

Lucan would use one of these Bonfires to access his own Inner Self and complete his Initiation before the corruption of the Whispers killed him.