"Fear", perhaps the dilemma of this word is that no one wants to feel it, and you might ask yourself what is the greatest fear that exists in humanity, well it is the fear of the unknown, that fear of not knowing what will come toward you or what strange thing you might bump into on a dark night, or perhaps the thing behind you, pretending to be your guardian angel.
Our friends have entered the cave and a terrible darkness takes hold of them as they move forward. Mist surrounds their entire path, making it almost impossible to see. As they press straight ahead, our friends begin to lose sight of one another.
DANTE HERALDI: Guys, we better hold hands; we can't see well in this place. We are almost out of the cave.
REX: (biting Dante's clothes) I'm biting your clothes to keep moving, Dante.
DANTE HERALDI: I hear you, Rex, can the others hear me?
A deathly silence surrounds DANTE; MALEKIN, ISAMU, ELENA, AND QUETZALCOATL are not there, and our friend begins to despair.
DANTE HERALDI: What the hell?! Where is everyone?!
REX: Calm down, Dante, we have to keep moving forward; look, we're almost out.
DANTE HERALDI: I hope to find them outside.
An immense light strikes their faces all at once, making them close their eyes for a few seconds; when they open them, in front of them is a gloomy place completely surrounded by mist, almost in complete darkness. It is a forest, and further ahead, they can barely see dwellings made of stone. The mist was thick, but most importantly: only DANTE AND REX were in that place.
DANTE HERALDI: Curse it, Rex, the others have disappeared.
REX: (trembling) Hey, Dante, this place gives me a bad feeling.
DANTE HERALDI: Yeah, me too. There's a cold atmosphere, like a spirit breathing down your neck. I'm going to use my "levitation" power to look higher up.
DANTE tries to use his power to fly, but realizes he cannot use his spiritual power in this place.
DANTE HERALDI: (nervous) Something is wrong, Rex, this place seems to suppress all my powers. What am I going to do? Let's see my stats (opens the blue screen). This can't be, almost all my skills appear as locked, umm, and my stats were cut in half even though I'm already level 5000.
REX: Dante, can you use "examine"?
DANTE HERALDI: Even that skill was locked; it seems that in this place we are practically an almost ordinary human and dog.
REX: That can't be, thank goodness I can still speak.
As our friends argue, a mysterious shadow approaches them, moving in a very strange way through the undergrowth that was in that place.
DANTE HERALDI: Did you hear that?
REX: (trembling) This place scares me. Look, Dante, what is that?
DANTE HERALDI: That… is it a person?
Out of the darkness, a female figure slowly emerges; the low visibility allows them to see the figure bit by bit. Slowly, a white dress comes into view. As she steps out of the darkness, we get a better look at the being standing in front of our friends. The more visible this creature becomes, our friends notice something red at chest level, and once she reveals herself completely, horrified, they realize that where her face should be, there is no face—only a skull wearing a bridal veil. It looks at them and produces a spectral noise, frightening our friends. Upon seeing that thing, their instincts scream at them to run. DANTE touches his bag, but notices something, and terrified, he stops to look at that creature, but quickly reacts, first subtly telling REX to run, and then yelling at him to run, and they start running.
DANTE HERALDI: (while running) Rex, run faster; we have to get to those houses visible in the distance.
REX: (while running scared) The blood of Christ has power, AHHH! Why is it following us? Look, Dante, more of them joined in.
Horrified, they see that more women with skeleton faces have joined the pursuit. As our friends run, they notice various entities that inhabit this jungle: a two-headed alpaca with sharp fangs, strange black sacks crawling along the ground making lamenting noises, odd floating heads with black eyes, an immense creature resembling a bear but with a more human shape, and many more.
After taking all of this in, our friends run in sheer panic. Terrified, they manage to enter a sort stair-stepped town resembling an ancient Inca city. Frightened, they manage to dodge all these creatures and cleverly slip into a stone house to hide; inside that place there is a cellar, and they manage to take cover there.
REX: (trembling and teary-eyed) WHAT WAS ALL THAT?!
DANTE HERALDI: (trembling) Keep your voice down, I know… That was hair-raising. What are those creatures? Where exactly are we? I don't know what to think; I'm worried about the others. Where could they be?
REX: (calms down a little) Dante, this isn't normal.
DANTE HERALDI: (calms down) I know, there is something in this place that amplifies your fears. Also, I can't draw my sword; I realized before I started running, I don't feel the bond I had with the bag.
REX: This is bad, what are we going to do?
While our friends stay in that spot, we move to another part of this gloomy, nightmarish place; there is MALEKIN, who wakes up lying on the ground.
MALEKIN: (Gets up holding his head) What the hell happened? Where am I? Umm, this place is eerie. Where is everyone? (In his mind) Wait, most of my powers have been blocked and my strength was cut in half. What the fuck is going on?
As our friend gets lost in his thoughts, we see a strange flame of fire leaping between the trees, and MALEKIN notices it, watching the moving object intently.
From one moment to another, this same flame of fire jumps in front of MALEKIN, and we realize it is a quadrupedal being resembling a cat, but larger, with black fur and pointed ears. A peculiar detail was that along its back, a line of flames was drawn from its head to the base of its tail, but what stood out most was its tail, which was shrouded in flames. The animal, with its purple eyes, roars at MALEKIN, who feels a bit of fear, but then calms down and gathers courage to face that creature.
MALEKIN: I don't know who you are, but you better get ready; I'm a demon too, and I won't let you instill fear in me (removes his bandana).
The feline, upon noticing MALEKIN's face, gets startled and bristled, preparing to attack, but suddenly, from behind the feline, a figure quickly kicks it, sending it flying, and escapes. Then we realize it is QUETZALCOATL, who has arrived to help MALEKIN.
MALEKIN: Quetzalcoatl, it's you, right?
QUETZALCOATL: Yes, it's me. What happened? This place separated us upon entering, and I feel many hostile presences here. Also, most of my powers were blocked. For a change, I'm back in the same boat; that bastard Mictlantekuti, doesn't he have better things to do?
MALEKIN: What was that thing? Do you know it?
QUETZALCOATL: In my life I have never seen that thing; I've never seen a nahual like that.
MALEKIN: What is a nahual?
QUETZALCOATL: They are beings that transform into animals; it didn't seem like a chaneque either, rather like a supernatural animal being. How strange. Well, moving on to another topic, where are the others? I don't feel Dante's or Elena's presence, nor Isamu's.
MALEKIN: Yeah, me neither.
QUETZALCOATL: This has to be the work of the Lord of the Dead. Come on, Malekin, we have to look for them.
MALEKIN nods his head and begins his exploration through these lands; meanwhile, now we go to a more distant place, to be precise, the center of this place, where an immense stone pyramid stands inside this location. In the main chamber, a place filled with corpses on the floor, we see ELENA hanging passed out in a cage in the middle of the room, and seated next to it is ISAMU. After a few seconds, ELENA is waking up.
ELENA: (Wakes up and sits up.) Ouch, where am I?
ISAMU: You're awake. Are you alright?
ELENA: Oh, it's you, Isamu. How did we get here?
ISAMU: I have no idea, I only felt a quick flapping of wings above our heads; when I tried to react, I was already knocked out and woke up in this place. This place doesn't inspire confidence, do you smell that?
ELENA: You mean that smell of metal, of iron. Yes, I know that smell; it's blood, right?
ISAMU: Yes, look down, Elena, and don't scream.
ELENA slowly lowers her head and, horrified, looks at the countless corpses beneath her cage, which gives her goosebumps as sweat slowly begins to run down her face. And while processing everything she has seen, a drop of water falls onto her clothes. Upon touching the drop, ELENA feels a viscosity different from water and discovers that it isn't water, but blood. Looking up, they realize that a huge bat is above them eating a corpse, and the blood was dripping down into their cage. We see how the cage was stained with viscous, iron-smelling blood that bit by bit dripped onto ELENA's clothes. With a look of horror, just on the verge of screaming, ISAMU manages to cover ELENA's mouth.
ISAMU: (covering her mouth) Quiet, don't scream. There's a reason we are alive in this cage. Right now we are nobody to kill that thing; if you haven't noticed, our strength has been diminished, our power is low.
ELENA: (Allowed to speak, trembling)… Isamu, do you think we'll be able to survive this? I don't want to die and disappear.
ISAMU: If that thing hasn't killed us, it means it has a plan. For now we just have to wait. Truthfully, I don't know how that creature got here; I can't believe this place has changed so much. The last time we passed through here, it was just an immense dark room with mist; now it has this monster here. We'll have to wait for Dante to find us.
ELENA sighs upon hearing ISAMU's words about this world. We will move to another section to see what happened in this place better. Now we are in the throne room of the God of the Dead's palace, where on a throne of bones sits lord MICTLANTEKUTI, a powerful being at first glance, somewhat thin, with garments worthy of an Aztec god. A skull mask covered his face and a crown of leaves adorned his head, and suddenly, a minion of the god appears to report the situation.
MINION: My Lord, the soldiers guarding the mortals inform me that they have arrived in the world of mist.
MICTLANTEKUTI: …I hope they die in that place; I suffered greatly to bring that guy to that world. I hope that king makes them suffer in that world.
MINION: My Lord, that place was changed a couple of years ago, right?
MICTLANTEKUTI: Of course, I am anxious to devour their bodies; the soldier and that samurai laughed in my face and escaped. I had to call upon someone I don't like to modify that place and try to kill them, even if it's just one of them.
MINION: Excellent, my Lord, I won't bother you further; I'm taking my leave.
MICTLANTEKUTI: Get out before I exterminate you.
The God of the Dead is deeply worried about our heroes' progress and has modified another trial of Mictlan. Now we return to our friends DANTE and REX, who are walking stealthily through the streets of this incredible Inca city.
REX: (nervous) This place gives me the creeps, I've never seen a place like this. What culture could it be from?
DANTE HERALDI: In Peru I came across ruins similar to these. It seems this civilization we are in is Inca; I don't have much knowledge of this culture… I had a friend who died before me; he was from that land. If he were with us, he would know what to do.
REX: Do you smell that, Dante? It smells like sulfur.
DANTE HERALDI: Yeah, this reeks. Wait, get down, Rex!
DANTE manages to save his friend REX from an attack; an immense skeletal hand tried to strike REX swiftly. Our friends look up and notice an immense skeleton with red eyes glaring at them.
Our friends are shocked by such a massive creature, which crumbled a couple of structures with a single swipe of its hand. The skeleton quickly prepares another attack, and our friends try to dodge, but the skeleton is too fast. Just as they cover themselves and duck their heads to take the hit, a massive noise makes them look up again, and they notice that a quadrupedal animal resembling a jaguar, but skinny and hairless, knocks the skeleton down. This same creature, after tackling the skeleton, steps in front of our friends. DANTE and REX stare intently at the skeleton, while the creature begins to circle them as if measuring them up to hunt them.
After a few seconds, the animal lunges at them, but REX screams "Help us, DANTE!", and the mysterious animal halts its attack and speaks.
MYSTERIOUS CREATURE: Dante… is that you?
DANTE HERALDI: (surprised) That voice… Brayan? Is that you?
The creature turns out to be a friend from DANTE's past, but in this world of mist and low visibility, could this be real? Very soon we will find out.