So, I was here. In the dark, gloomy corridors, lit only by the sickly glow of emergency lamps. I let the clarity fade; my brain was starting to ache from maintaining it, and I needed to feel the real fear again—the fear of this place, with all its monsters.

  I pulled myself together, pushed the dread down, and started to explore. With no concrete plan, I simply moved forward.

  I found a door—another rusty, old door. Why not open it?

  I did. And behind it was something I never expected: a forest. No, a jungle. A tropical jungle. How? Why? It should have been noisy, teeming with life, but I heard nothing. An eerie, perfect silence. Suspicious, I closed the door. More questions. Still no answers. Why a jungle?

  I continued and opened the next door.

  A room with a spring bed, bathed in the same red emergency light. Then I saw him. A figure huddled in the corner. He saw me too. I saw raw anger and terror in his eyes. It was the same white man I'd killed with the knife.

  We both froze. He coiled, ready to spring. I made an attempt.

  "Wait! Let's talk!"

  Surprisingly, he answered. I didn't know the language, but the tone was pure rage, the voice itself guttural and broken. It didn't matter. He launched himself at me, using his long arms to propel forward.

  I snapped into clarity, raised the gun, and pulled the trigger.

  The bullet hit him square in the forehead. His awkward body crumpled at my feet.

  I let the clarity go. My hands were shaking violently; the gun felt like a slab of lead. Damn. He had been intelligent. He had tried to speak.

  Eventually, I stepped into the room. I had to search for clues. Of course, there was nothing. Just more rusty garbage and the overpowering stench of urine and feces. I stepped over the body and moved deeper into the corridors.

  Time lost meaning. I opened more doors: one revealed a desert, others—empty rooms. I should have brought a watch. The corridors began to feel familiar, lulling me into a false sense of routine.

  That's when they came. From around a corner, a squad of short white men appeared. But they were armored-in fucking bone armor-and armed with crude bone weapons.

  There were four of them, and they charged.

  By now, I could summon the clarity almost at will. I used it, aimed, and started firing. But this time it was different. They used their bone shields, dodged. Only a headshot would stop them.

  I ran out of ammo. No time to reload. One of them smashed into me at full speed. So much for Blacky deciding I could handle myself. Shit, shit, shit!

  I dodged a bone hammer, drew my knife. He backed me into a corner. No escape. I closed the distance. His hammer grazed my side—not a full hit. I tackled us to the ground. The dwarf bit into my shoulder—searing pain! I stabbed him in the belly. He clawed at my face, fingers aiming for my eyes. Damn it! I bit down on his finger and stabbed again, and again.

  We wrestled on the floor for what felt like an eternity. He was stronger, but I was faster, better at leveraging my position, always twisting the knife free. Eventually, the knife did its work.

  I shoved the dead body off me, my back against the wall. I couldn't hold the clarity any longer; I let it slip away.

  Oh, fuck. The pain hit me like a truck. My whole body was a mosaic of bruises and bites. A chunk of skin was torn from my shoulder. My hands trembled uncontrollably as I tried to reload, managing to fumble only one bullet into the magazine before the others spilled onto the floor.

  Damn it all. I was a fucking engineer, not a monster slayer or some universal soldier. I was a weak, middle-aged woman. And despite being fired, I'd been content with my pointless life. At least I'd eaten good food. At least I'd done things I loved. Not this. Not hunting one specific monster in a dungeon full of nightmares.

  As if on cue, ten more white dwarves rounded the corner.

  A strange, icy calm settled over me. This wasn't a battle. This was an execution.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  "I'm not giving you the satisfaction, you bastards."

  With those words, I slammed the magazine with its single bullet into the pistol, placed the barrel against my temple, and pulled the trigger.

  In the moment between the decision and the act, the darkness around me stirred. It didn't just move-it came alive. And from its heart, Blacky manifested.

  My hand, guided by an instinct deeper than despair, jerked the gun away from my head.

  The corridor was a slaughterhouse, painted in blood. Not a single dwarf had survived.

  Blacky sat beside me, and I could almost feel his satisfaction radiating from him. He had killed them all without effort—a flowing torrent of shadows and teeth that consumed them. It was terrifying.

  I gave Blacky the sausage, drank some water, and tended to my wound. I tore my T-shirt into strips and fashioned a crude bandage, hoping it would at least slow the bleeding. I pulled my hoodie back on. I wanted to give up, to hide in one of these rooms and wait for the reset. But no. I had to move.

  I reloaded the magazine to capacity and moved forward. All these horrors were waiting for me. What a blessing. Damn it all.

  I walked. The first door appeared after maybe fifteen minutes. I opened it: a mountain landscape buried in snow. A frigid wind whipped through the doorway, making me shudder. I closed it. Opened it again. This time, a tiny, empty room. I repeated the process a few times; the room remained. Hmm. So the locations seemed random, but rooms were the default.

  The corridors branched endlessly. I kept choosing the right turn, a pointless ritual in a place that felt both infinite and constantly reshuffling. I never felt I was retracing my steps. Was this place limitless, or was it rebuilding itself around me? I walked on, the grim realization dawning: this place was immense, and my chances of finding the three-eyed entity were vanishingly small.

  Blacky stopped. The fur along his spine stood straight up. Something truly terrifying was ahead.

  It emerged from a distant corner. Arms. Dozens, maybe hundreds of them, sprouting from a body that resembled a pale, fleshy spider. Its head wasn't a head but a gaping maw, large enough to swallow me whole. And the eyes... at least a hundred glowing red eyes.

  A sudden, foreign impulse to run flooded my mind. It wasn't my own. Was it from Blacky? I looked at him; he met my gaze. The message was clear.

  In the next instant, Blacky dissolved into a river of darkness and surged toward the monstrosity.

  I watched as hundreds of hands lashed out, trying to grasp the flowing shadow that was Blacky. Then I ran in the opposite direction, shouting over my shoulder, "Don't you dare die!"

  I ran until my lungs burned. Three minutes later, I heard the wet, slapping sound of countless hands on stone behind me. Damn it. Had that thing killed Blacky, or had he just retreated? I couldn't afford to worry about him now.

  I needed a door that wasn't a room. I yanked one open. A room. Ran further. Another door. Another room. I glanced back and saw it in the distance—a skittering, multi-limbed horror closing in. Shit.

  Another door. This time-not a room. I threw myself inside and slammed it shut.

  Behind the door lay a desiccated field rolling into hills. In the distance stood an old castle. The air was oppressively hot. The door behind me was now just a weathered wooden shed door. I could wait here for the day to end.

  But life, as usual, had other plans. The air around the door began to crackle and fracture like glass.

  Shit. I bolted toward the castle, my only hope for shelter. As I neared the hill's crest, I heard the sound of shattering reality and a ground-shaking roar. It was coming. The castle was still too far.

  I looked toward the castle and saw a knight, kneeling in prayer before it. And bones. Human bones, scattered everywhere around him. What fresh hell was this?

  The knight noticed me. He was bald, with eyes like dead fish. He stood, placed his helmet upon his head, took up two longswords, and began marching toward me.

  At the same moment, I heard the slithering, grasping sound of a hundred hands right behind me.

  I spun, aimed, and fired. But the creature was too damn fast, dodging every shot with unnatural, skittering grace. My gun clicked empty.

  I was out of hope.

  The knight stood beside me, two naked swords in his hands. His ancient armor was still etched with faded heraldic marks. He regarded the monster, and the monster regarded him in turn. Why was I still here? If I ever got out of this, someone was going to pay.

  In the next instant, everything erupted into violent motion. A forest of hands lashed toward the knight, and his swords became a whirlwind of steel. He moved with impossible speed—a blur to my eyes. Severed hands flew through the air. The fight lasted less than a minute. The knight drove both swords through the monster's central mass, pinning it to the arid ground.

  Incredible. And terrifying. Why did I keep attracting more and more powerful nightmares?

  The knight removed his helmet. His face was pale but human, etched with exhaustion. His dead-fish eyes did nothing to improve his appearance, but the aura of power around him was undeniable.

  "So," he said, his voice a dry rustle. "You are the new challenger. What do you seek to achieve here?"

  "What? I don't understand what you mean."

  "Another pure soul..." He sighed, a sound like shifting gravel.

  A black flash washed everything away.

  Once again, I was in my room. Once again, I had only more questions.

  Every time I made a plan, reality found a way to shred it. I had no strength left for the corridors today. I needed a day. A single, normal day to breathe.

  After my mom left for work, Blacky emerged from the corner. He looked intact, but I could feel a faint tremor running through him.

  "So, it was a tough day for you too, huh?" I hugged him, and we sat like that for a long while—two battered creatures sharing a moment of silent understanding.

  It was time for school. I was so damn tired...