Too Stubborn to Die

Talia stared down the cowering man. He had fallen victim to her, entering her shadowy domain, and it almost made her feel bad for his tortured soul. Perhaps a sweet escape was a mercy.

Her lips, painted black, creased into a satisfied smile. Best of all, this was her opportunity to show what she was capable of on her own.

It was a little troubling that they had been split up. But there was nothing to be done about it.

It had all happened when they had entered a maze filled with mirrors and whispering voices. Everything was protected by powerful barriers, too, so they couldn’t just go destroying the mirrors.

There had been powerful Skills at play, too. Confusing ones that made following one’s own senses nearly impossible.

Still, it wasn’t like they had completely lost each other. They still had the chat features.

Talia herself had tried to complete the maze several times, but kept coming back out into the city. On her fifth attempt, she had sensed these two tracking them and decided to intercept them.

Somehow, Aaron had found his way through the maze, and after confirming over the chat that she was alright, informed her that he was delving deeper.

She had no idea where Zero was, and every attempt to contact the wolf was met with automated troll replies, which were getting frustrating, to say the least.

However, she saw the silver lining in it all. She had felt like Aaron’s sidekick for a while now, and so she was more than glad to deal with a couple of overambitious fools by yourself.

After all, she had earned her rank by herself. She was one of Earth’s elites, and it was time to remind anyone that might have forgotten that.

“So, have anything to say for yourself?” She said, looming over the man.

“I,” he swallowed. “Please. We just wanted to…”

Ignoring his pleas, Talia narrowed her gaze on him. Inspection was useless against the doppelgangers found in the city and further below.

He looks human, but so did the others.

No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t notice anything off. So, she had to rely on the only method she knew of, and grabbed a handful of burning embers with her avatar and threw them at the man.

“Ah! Hot!” Thomas sneered as he brushed away the flames. “What was that for?”

“Oh, so you really are human. Sorry. It’s just a test.”

This man mightn’t have been one of the doppelgangers, but as she eyed him, Talia got a bad feeling. Her creep meter had gone through the roof, and this guy set off every alarm bell possible.

Especially the socks. He hadn’t realized it, but she had seen him sniffing them.

But even if they were creeps, they were human. And Aaron had asked her to show restraint if they came across other humans. He reminded her that this Thomas guy had reached out to them via the chat, and there was a chance he meant well.

On the other hand, these two weirdos had to be some of the creepiest men she had ever seen.

The one that had disappeared had been bouncing around and cackling like a hyena, with ratty teeth that made her skin crawl. This one, on the other hand, looked like a typical creepy basement dweller. He looked like if an internet moderator got fit, and despite the fact that he easily could have done so after reaching E Grade, he for some reason had not fixed his hairline.

I should at least try to be nice.

“Why are you following us? What do you want from us?” Talia asked, making herself appear larger with the help of her shadows. She might not attack him unless attacked, but that didn’t mean a little fear couldn’t be employed.

“I–ah, we,” the man swallowed, falling backward and clambering along the ground.

Interrupting them, footsteps sounded to their right, and a small figure appeared at the edge of a trash tunnel.

“What are you doing?” Sniffed Arthur, as he came strolling from the edges of the shadow. “Thomas, really? You’re not giving away all our secrets, are you?”

“Arthur! Thank goodness! You’re back! Now come, we can deal with her together! This is our chance!”

“Ohohoh. Together? After all you’ve done? Now you want to be friends.”

Talia raised a brow. At least this was straightforward confirmation that these two were bad guys that wanted to attack them.

But were they both real? Not that it mattered too much if they were her enemies, doppelgangers, or not. There was also the mind plague, she reminded herself. If they were infected, that might be what was causing their aggression.

But before she could decide on her next action, shapes began to swirl strangely, and colors bled into one another.

What the?

She blinked. It was a bad idea. Suddenly, her shadows were gone, and replacing them were endless rows of sunflowers that lined the walls and ground of the underground chamber in all directions as far as she could see.

“Huh?”

Talia rubbed her eyes, but it did little besides smudging her dark mascara.

But the sunflowers weren’t the worst of it. Before her was a purple teddy bear, and it was menacingly marching forward with a dagger held tightly in its hand.

Who is… hold up. That isn’t the hyena guy, is it?

She looked down. There was a rather inconspicuously large rock only a couple of meters from her, and she raised her brow inquisitively at it.

Oh, I see. I think I know what’s going on.

She felt like slapping herself for making such a big error. They had walked into her trap, and she had had the upper hand. Had was the keyword. That was until she had decided to reveal herself. It was a stupid act out of mercy, or maybe some kind of hubris. Thinking herself the hero of the story.

In truth, she had just allowed them to reverse the situation against her.

She had obviously given them a chance to counter with some kind of mental Skill. And the only reason she was still alive was probably because the little one had fallen victim to this world’s mind plague.

Either that, or the little one was just an overconfident doppelganger.

Talia backstepped. Fighting while under the influence of a mental Skill wasn’t ideal, and if they were infighting, it was her opportunity to disengage and return to her shadows.

The rock started to move as the purple teddy closed in on it, and she sensed Skills activating. Now wasn’t the time to intervene. Not if they wanted to fight among themselves.

Don’t worry, I will bring you into the embrace of my nightmare soon enough, Talia thought as she internally chuckled and fell back into the darkness.

*Aaron*

Aaron had been rather pleased with himself since arriving on this confusing floor. First, there were the indestructible doors, which he had made short work of by using [ Bombardier Fist ], and embedding it right into the heart of the door itself, bypassing its barrier.

That had put a smug grin on his face. And when he rather effortlessly found his way through the chamber of mirrors, it only grew wider.

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Inspection might have been useless in this place, but his soul powers weren’t. The combination of [ Gorgon’s Soul Vortex ], and his heightened soul made finding his way rather easy.

However, when he had tried to help Talia and Zero follow him, that had been far more difficult. They looked straight through him, clearly confused by the countless mirrors and adjoining passages that messed with their vision.

And then there were the doppelgangers. He had sensed them coming and going, taking on different appearances, stepping into the mirror cave and whispering before retreating again. But despite feeling their souls and knowing that they were there, his eyes still betrayed him.

So when he called out and tried to follow Talia and Zero, it wasn’t overly effective. And he found himself walking in circles, and following doppelgangers as often as they did.

His saving grace had been the energy he sensed down deeper into the trash caverns, and it had been just that sense that he had followed to escape the mirror room.

He was a little worried about the two of them. Hopefully, they wouldn’t get themselves into too much trouble without him. Then again, they were strong themselves, and they still had a quest to complete.

Ahh, calm down. I’ll go find them after I deal with this.

Of course, he was concerned about the royal guards bubbling into then first. That’s why he did a little tactical trolling. Telling them exactly where he was, and exactly what he thought about their mother, and her orbital pull.

It should be just through these passages if I’m not mistaken.

“Aaron, there you are!”

He turned, and Talia was smiling with her arms extended. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“You need acting lessons!” Aaron said as he crashed his fist through the doppleganger’s face and kept walking.

The doppelganger went flying, slamming hard into the wall with a deathly crack.

“Ouch. Don’t think you’re getting up from that.”

All the doppelgangers he had come across were all peak E grade, or low D grade, and weren’t a match for him.

“Woof, woof!”

“Hey, keep the doggos out of it!” Aaron hissed as he landed a spin kick across fake Zero’s face and snapped its neck.

Within seconds, the fur receded to leave behind a hairless, humanoid mole creature.

“Fuck, you lot are ugly.”

Aaron just shook his head and kept walking.

They threw up a few more cheap tricks, like children with lollipops, and grieving mothers.

But just like his friends, he could see straight through them to their rotten souls and delivered fierce retribution to the shapeshifting bastards.

He was getting a kick out of beating them up. He was still pissed about getting caught off guard by the first one that attacked him. They had taken Talia’s form, and while he had noticed something was wrong, he was also scared about attacking a friend, and so he had let the shapeshifter land several hits.

If it had been anybody else, those hits would have caused some bad wounds. And when he finally fought back, he was not happy about it. And ever since then, he had taken to brutalizing them with satisfaction.

As he walked, he saw a figure up ahead, and it turned to him. It was a spitting image of himself.

“Are you my reflection?” It said.

“Mate, you made a big mistake!”

Aaron’s fist slammed straight through its face, killing it instantly. If the doppelganger thought that taking his appearance might slow his hand, it had been very mistaken. He had no qualms about killing himself.

But they weren’t done yet, and before he reached the end of the passage, figures started to charge out at him from the adjoining caves, one after another, and swiftly met their ends against his fists.

Aaron was faster and more precise than he had ever been, and low D-grades were barely even a bother anymore. Within seconds of the carnage breaking out, he had beaten down a dozen low D-grades, and a couple dozen peak E-grades without barely breaking a sweat.

“Come on,” he said, stretching out his arms. “Is this the best you lot can do? I see straight through your little trick, and without the mirrors, this is all too easy.”

That didn’t seem to stop the determined shapeshifters as they kept coming, and seconds later, he was fighting against a small army of school girls armed with cleavers.

A little girl in a uniform charged at him, and a kick blew her head off. Simultaneously, two little boys pounced on him from behind, but he just spun around with a kick that caught both of them and sent them hurtling straight into the wall.

His fists flew through an army of school-age children as they kept charging him, slamming them down, and breaking through their defenses as he went all Neo on their asses.

Despite knowing they were doppelgangers, it still felt weird slamming his fists into school girls and boys in uniform. Breaking their bodies and sending them slamming against the compacted walls of the trash tunnels. Luckily, they died shortly thereafter, revealing their true forms.

“Nice try. But it’ll take more than that to stop me.”

Aaron blinked as he stepped through into the next chamber and was greeted by a geriatric army that looked like it had just escaped the old folks home.

“Hello deary—”

His fist slammed straight through the elderly woman’s face, breaking both her bones and her glasses, and she crumpled in a heap before his feet.

An old man was next, attacking with his walking stick. It sailed harmlessly past Aaron’s face, and he countered with a left hook that blasted both his dentures and his entire jaw off his face.

Next up was a man in a mobility scooter, who charged straight for him, only to receive a perfectly placed flying kick into his face.

Aaron danced through the geriatric mayhem, crushing old bones and gray hair beneath his laser-focused fists.

As they died, they reverted back to their mole-like features, but he didn’t slow for long enough to appreciate his handiwork, beating his way through the ancient-looking brigade.

“Too easy,” Aaron cracked his knuckles as he finished the session off with a spinning backfist straight into the face of a sweety, prunely looking old lady, crushing her in a single strike.

As he brushed himself off, he kept walking. But what greeted him next wasn’t another chamber filled with doppelgangers testing his morals, but a massive chamber that expanded out into the darkness. And filling it was another subterranean city.

“There really are a lot of you bastards, aren’t there?”

As if responding to his statement, a giant screen that took up a massive chunk of the city flickered on. Static filled the screen for a short moment, and then a smiling, bald face appeared.

“Hello there. Welcome, my guest. You’ve come far to make it all the way down here. Let me introduce myself. They call me Mr. Fake. And I’m in a bit of a pickle.”

“Mr. Fake? Well, it sounds like I’ve finished my quest then.”

“Uh-ah-ah! Not so fast. Your quest is to discover me, isn’t it?”

“How did you know that?”

Suddenly, the ground began to shake all around him, and the city twisted and changed before his eyes. Pillars of apartments literally moved before his eyes, some falling into the ground below, while others moved aside.

Within a minute, the transformation had completed, and before his eyes was a giant orb filling up most of where the city had been.

“It’s complicated. But I think we can get along. You see, I can help you. Tell you how to defeat this dungeon. This structure you see, the orb, the one that just built itself. It is both an arena, and my prison. Be careful, though. Don’t try attacking it yet. I have seen what you’re capable of, but there are dangers down here even you don’t want to go messing with.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes. I want to help you. I am a prisoner here just as you are. Do as I say, and we can both get out of here. And you can go on to complete your dungeon.”

Yeah, I’m not so sure about this guy.

“Look, within the orb is my prison. There is an incredibly powerful trash monster inside. Far too powerful for the likes of you. But there’s a catch. The System has put in place mechanisms for smart dungeon divers to overcome this seemingly impossible task. There is a corruption festering below. You have probably felt it. It is what turns the doppelgangers mad. If you can find it and deal with it, then not only will the doppelgangers return to their senses, but the monsters’ main powers will be weakened, and defeating it will be that much easier.”

“Why? Do you want to help me?”

“Like I said. I’m imprisoned. The evil doppelgangers of this trash world captured me, and imprisoned me inside of the monster itself. If you can beat it, you can free me.”

Aaron glanced across at the giant orb made of trash. He couldn’t see inside, but he could sense what was within it. And it was incredibly strong.

Shit. Whatever is in there has to be C-grade at least…

It wasn’t just the power he sensed, though. Both his own senses and the quest marker were pointing toward the orb. Regardless of whether or not Mr. Fake was telling the truth, he needed to enter the orb to finish the quest.

What do I do now? Do I listen to this guy?

He didn’t think Mr. Fake was straight-up lying, but something was certainly off about him. Then again, if he were a prisoner, why wouldn’t he want to help?

Also, what was the alternative? Rush in a try to deal with a monster that pulsed with the same kind of energy as his core? That was suicide, even for someone as powerful as himself. There was a gigantic gulf between D-grade and C-grade, far bigger than the difference between E-grade and D-grade.

As he considered his options, Aaron noticed that he was getting a lot of notifications. It was the System informing him every time somebody entered the floor, and he started to understand the predicament he was in.

The more people that entered the dungeon, the harder it would be to discern who was and wasn’t a doppelganger.

And just then, when he didn’t think things could get any worse, the massive screen started to play his most recent rampage. Of course, it wasn’t showing the doppelgangers he killed changing back to their real forms. No, it was just a reel of Aaron beating the ever-living fuck out of old people and school children.

The screen flickered again, and a fuzzy vision of Mr. Fake appeared. “Think quick. You don’t have a lot of time. The corruption will try to turn you against yourselves!”

Mr. Fake

Mr. Fake sighed in his tightly packed trash prison, barely able to move as he decoupled from the wires he had hijacked. It was the only good thing about being imprisoned in a trash world. There were always loose ends to take advantage of.

I hope I did enough.

He had rewired the settings of the arena orb he was imprisoned within, connecting them up to the world core that powered the entire spatial plane. And with any luck, it would be projecting a huge amount of power to anybody who tried to inspect or sense what was within. Enough energy to convince them that they wanted no piece of the monster within.

Otherwise, they might just charge in and complete the quest normally, and his plans would be ruined.