The first thing Nox registered was the absence of sound. Not silence—absence. Like someone had ripped the audio track from reality itself. Then gravity remembered its job.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
The scream tore from his throat as his body plummeted through what felt like liquid darkness. Wind whipped past his plague doctor mask, the familiar weight of it suddenly foreign against his face as he tumbled end over end. His stomach lurched into his throat, then somewhere near his spine, then back again as he spun through the void.
Red light exploded across his vision. The system interface materialized with all the subtlety of a fire alarm in a library, its crimson glow painting everything in hellish tones.
Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning Warning
The text scrolled faster than his panicked mind could process, each repetition hammering against his consciousness like digital nails on a chalkboard. Through the cascade of warnings, new text appeared:
You have been transported into a Tomb of the Death God
Quest activated: Protect your 3 Comrades
If anyone of them dies, Quest will fail
Penalty: DEATH
Reward: ????
Nox's mind reeled as he processed the information.
"What teammates? There aren't supposed to be teammates! There's supposed to be a huge group of A-Rank hunters after me!"
Another scream pierced the air, this one distinctly feminine and terrified. A second voice joined it deeper, older, equally panicked. Nox twisted his body mid-fall, searching for the sources of the voices.
"Ekkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!"
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
There two figures tumbling through the darkness alongside him. A woman in knight's armor, her brown hair streaming behind her like a banner of panic. Beside her, a middle-aged man in elaborate alchemist robes that billowed and snapped in the rushing air.
"We're falling to our death!" the knight screamed, her voice cracking with terror.
Nox didn't hesitate. The familiar weight of his abilities responded to his will, and his body began its grotesque transformation. Fourteen tentacles erupted from his form—four from his back, writhing like serpentine extensions of his spine. His plague doctor mask split open with mechanical sound, the metal plates retracting to reveal his true face as ten additional tentacles unfurled from where his head should have been.
The sight would have been nightmare fuel for anyone with functioning eyes and a normal concept of human anatomy. Black, glistening appendages moved with predatory grace, each one thick as a man's arm and covered in what looked like living shadow.
Two of the tentacles shot out like harpoons, wrapping around the falling hunters with surprising gentleness. The knight's armored form clanged against his makeshift appendages as he drew her close. The alchemist's robes fluttered as Nox pulled him in, the man's terrified face inches from what had once been Nox's human features.
With his remaining twelve tentacles, Nox began the delicate process of not dying horribly. The appendages coiled and twisted, forming a complex spring-like structure beneath them. Each tentacle flexed and contracted in sequence, creating a biological shock absorber that would have made any engineer weep with envy.
The ground rushed up to meet them. What had seemed like endless darkness resolved into details that grew larger and more ominous by the second. Below them stretched a plain of black glass, its surface reflecting their approaching forms like a dark mirror. The material looked volcanic, as if some ancient catastrophe had melted the earth itself into this obsidian wasteland.
To the west, Nox caught sight of something that looked almost comically out of place: a wooden village nestled against the edge of the glass plain. Thatched roofs and timber walls stood in stark contrast to the hellish landscape surrounding them, as if someone had dropped a medieval settlement into the mouth of a volcano.
"Hold on!" Nox shouted, though his voice came out distorted through his transformed features.
The ground reached up like a jealous lover.
BOOMMMMMMMMMMM
The impact sent shockwaves through the black glass, spider-webbing cracks racing outward from the point of collision. A massive crater formed beneath them, chunks of obsidian shooting into the air like deadly confetti. Dust and pulverized glass rose in a choking cloud that turned the air thick and gritty.
For a moment, the world was nothing but ringing ears and the taste of volcanic dust. Then sensation began to return, accompanied by the familiar symphony of post-impact groaning.
Nox retracted his tentacles with deliberate care, each appendage sliding back into his body like a reverse birth. His mask mechanism hummed as it closed, sealing his transformed features back behind the familiar plague doctor facade. The process always left him feeling slightly hollow, as if he'd folded essential parts of himself away.
"Fuck," he muttered, testing his limbs. Everything seemed to be in working order, though his back felt like he'd been used as a punching bag by an enthusiastic troll.
"I thought I was finished."
A groan came from his left. The middle-aged alchemist was sitting up slowly, one hand pressed to his lower back.
"Eghh... my back..."
The man's voice carried the particular quality of someone discovering new and creative ways their body could hurt.
From his right came a different sound entirely. The brown-haired knight had rolled onto her hands and knees and was making the universal sound of someone whose stomach had decided to stage a violent revolt.
"Uwagggg..." She retched again, her armored shoulders shaking with the effort.
Nox took in the scene—the crater they'd carved into the landscape, his two battered companions, the ominous tomb they'd apparently been deposited into—and let out a laugh that sounded like air escaping from a punctured lung.
"Huh. What a fucking great beginning."