Shadow

Down across the road from the town side, an unnatural darkness filling every crevices and pathways, obstructing his view of the town and swallowing the vehicles scattered about. They are creeping towards Teddiore.

When they reach him, the dense darkness envelops him. The clear view from the early half moon is obstructed. His visibility as of now has been reducted.

The temperature plummets and the silence, broken. Rattling noises from the littered cans and an irregular thumping noises are sounded as sudden as they come.

The thumpings almost sound as oozing flesh impacting the cold hard ground, wandering aimlessly within looking for something. Probably him.

Splat. Thump. Splat. Thump.

Teddiore should have known from that exagerated clattering, the modern art and now this stupid setting. It all points to one thing; Mr Spartakles the Twenty Seven!

He whips out the culprit and faces it with a judgemental squints.

"Speak, you mongrel! Did you set this up? Was this a trap all along? I though we have a bond." He cries in disdain. The baffled turtle looks at Teddiore in disbelief.

'It squeaks in plea and pledge guilty.' A narration provided by his sound mind. When in actuality it is spewing profanities and lamenting its luck when this big fat buffoon landed on it when it just wanted to cross the road.

[Arrived right in time. Did anyone send him any psychotic medication yet?]

[Yea man. He ate 'em all in one go.]

[Say whaaat??]

'No matter.' He will settle this gut wrenching betrayal momentarily. With a single leap he lands silently on a vehicle from memory and swiftly pockets the offended Mr Spartakles.

A pond of darkness and silence greets him. Bits and pieces of bigger transportables poking out of the surface of said pond.

That is just it. A small pond with approximately fifteen meter radius and two meters deep. Everything outside seems to be untouched.

He hums in contemplation before arriving to a conclusion. A single hand dissapears into shimmering thin air and pulls out a peculiar looking fishing rod. It is exuding a galactic mist, tiny bits of destructive shooting star flying about, vindictively pelting Teddiore's face with targetted ease.

He ignores the prickling pain like a champ.

Holding the galaxy rod at waist level, he checks the lure and finds a tiny piece of a Black Dungeon Core. It might be a little bit too excessive but there's plenty where that comes from. Plus, which respectable creature wouldn't want a tasty looking dungeon core?

Time to cast. Teddiore sweeps the rod back so the delicious bait is behind him then bringing it forward, releasing his thumb from the reel, allowing the line to be pulled. The bait drops into the darkness with a splash and a clolorful ripple forms around it.

'Now the wait begins.' Or so he thinks. The bait is taken not two seconds later. What a weak minded creature.

The thing about a horror genre story is that the author generally does not show the creature monster so early on. Not because they themselves does not know what it is but mostly due to the principality of the crippling fear for the unknown.

Therefore, a pixelated shadowy creature has been caught! It is making some sort of unknown movements but can not be seen though the censorship.

Teddiore excitedly uses gentle finger flick.

It was super effective. The pixelated shadowy creature has been complete and utterly vaporized.

His outstretched finger hovers in midair. A genuine baffled look grace on his face.

'Weak!!' He complains in bewilderment. It had been a while since he has encountered such a weak creature. The last monster he dealt with was a world level calamity and knowing so, he deliberately tone down his strength to 0.000001%.

With the creature completely obliterated, the dense shadowy fog naturally dissipates and Teddiore's first clue slips through his careless grasps just like that.

Silence, once again, settles in snugly.

He dusts himself off any imaginary dirt and promptly drops the fishing rod. In which the item manages to pettily pelts some shooting stars at him before dissapearing into his inventory.

'Its okay.' He consoles himself, 'the operator should be here any second now. Why is she taking so long? Might as well find some clues first.'

Mind set, he ventures into the eerier townside. As eager as before, quite curious as to where everyone went and to where exactly he is.

[Too strong!]

[#$*% he's doing it again!]

[We demand compensation. Isnt this a horror genre mission?]

[Yea yea!]

[He's gonna breeze through this like he did the last 17 missions.]

[Boooooring!]

[According to the percentile statistics of general viewers, we tend to like more mindless overpowered slaughtering, face-slapping, dopamine, ceretonin, gambling, system, plots-]

[Shut up ^]

[-which contains 50% shameless porn and money throwing chapters]

[I resent your statistics. Its 90% shameless porn]

[...Lets just send a complain to the operator.]

[Dearest valued viewers, due to the contract agreement we are unable to change how the traveller manages his dealings during said missions-]

[FEFIFO donated 2 x Shimmering Dying Planet Heart]

[PregLady donated 25 x Supreme High Crystals]

[Omnomtail donated 1 x Grade-Red Prometious Star]

[StarDog donated 1 x Golden Vain]

[...which remains to be unseen under terms and condition applied. How may we proceed?]

[Make him weak!]

[Yea yea!]

[Make him grovel like the dog- [What you have against dog huh?!] he is.]

[Thats a bit too far. Just... entertain us. Things has been quite boring recently.]

[Hehe. Here, make him wear this.]

[ScoopThatWater donated 1 x Chains of Desolation]

[Hah! Great idea, Dipper!]

[Why thank you, Sirius.]

[Oh oh! Gacha! Don't forget the gacha system!]

[Come on. That is way overused.]

[No less addicting though.]

[...true.]

[Dear valued golden goos- I mean, loyal viewers, due to your overwhelming support, we shall make appropriate changes after the short break. Stay tuned.]

[Wait... guys. I think we got too carried away.]

[Oh f-]

[What have we done?!?!]

[Current in channel: 7]