The Tutorial Begins
The moment the 5-minute timer ended a screen appeared before all the Testers.
[Total Testers - 9997]
[Level 1 - 2371]
[Level 2 - 638]
[Level 3 - 745]
...
[Level 11 - 620]
[Level 12 - 632]
Some had smirks and others had grins running across their faces and the occasional snickering targeted at the lower levels, whilst others didn't care much and focused on their level.
But just a minute after the Tutorial had begun...
SCREEEEEEEECH!!!!!!!!
The sound of someone's nails slowly scraping along a blackboard erupted throughout every tutorial.
"AHHH!"
"WHAT THE!"
"UGH!"
All Testers bent over in agony and raised their fingers, clawing away at their faces, attempting to remove the source of this noise.
Just a second later the sound died down and the Testers, whether they were the toughest of men or the weakest willed individual, all sighed in relief.
[Error Has Occured]
"???"
Just as the waves of pain died, another ripple spread through the Testers, a wave of confusion.
[Fixing Total]
A minute of silence later...
[Total Fixed]
-----
[Total Testers - 9998]
[Level 1 - 2371]
[Level 2 - 638]
[Level 3 - 745]
...
[Level 11 - 620]
[Level 12 - 632]
[Level ??? - 1]
-----
A wave of scorching heat attacked his face, the ends of his hair caught aflame and began slowly burning away like candles.
"Wh-", opening his mouth to speak a wave of flames entered through his mouth, burning the insides causing a wave of pain to fan out through his mouth.
'Fuck that hurts, the first level of Psuedo Hell?'
His entire body felt like it was placed in an oven.
'I can't even open my eyes.'
Moving his feet around a bit, he tried to sense the sort of material he was standing on.
'It's a bit gritty, almost crunchy even.'
Lowering himself, he touched the ground to feel it, 'It's not hot.', in fact, the ground was surprisingly cool.
'Perhaps!'
he didn't waste any time and began searching through the ground.
'Come on...'
Minutes passed and the heat was only getting worse, at this rate he would be cooked alive. His hand movements became more efficient by the second, sifting through the trash, he was slowly getting closer to his goal.
Clack.
His dried lips spread, the cracks along them split, a trail of blood began flowing down his face but it dried up just as quickly as it appeared.
'Found you.'
-----
"Hey Ray, what do you think those question marks mean?", a man with a buzz cut and beautiful hazel eyes sat before a campfire curled up in a ball.
Sparks from the campfire blazed outwards as a man with slightly long, messy dark hair and green eyes poked at it with a stick.
"He probably unlocked a hidden level or something like that, you shouldn't think about it, we've got plenty to deal with on our end too. Not only that, the screeching completely messed with my head.", his voice now monotone in comparison to his cheery form back on Earth.
"We're even off course from our original route..."
Lucas gave a muffled response back and closed his eyes to get some rest.
Ray put the stick away and lay on the dirty ground.
A few hours of sleep passed by and the moon hung high up in the sky, shining down its frail rays of light down at their worry-filled faces.
Chirping rang around them at times and cicadas screeched through the empty night sky every so often.
Other than that, it was complete silence.
Crunch.
Boom...
Both Ray and Lucas woke up instantly.
The earth beneath them vibrated as a tree dropped down right next to them, a deep rumbling began appearing all around them.
Lucas slowly raised his eyes from the ball he was curled up in previously...
Hopelessness dawned upon him as he met its eyes.
"Fo-Fo-Foo-Foo-FOOD?"
An abomination made up of three separate human bodies, each body contained a mixture of organs slipping out.
The bodies lay in a triangular formation with their chests facing outward, the feet extending outward allowing it to roll and move on all sides naturally.
But for its head, a mixture of razor-sharp teeth and dark tentacles squirmed around, slapping at any nearby object.
Lucas' eyes drooped downward to look for Ray...
"Huh? Ray? Brother?"
Only the sight of his brother running away from him remained within his eyes.
Swipe...
A tentacle silently swept by, a concoction made of blood and bones fountained outward through the sky, dying it a beautiful red hue for all to see.
"FOOD!"
Peaceful crunching and slurping echoed through the forest.
One must remember...
That even the tiniest flutter from a butterfly could cause a storm elsewhere.
-----
Within the Level 12 difficulty.
An innocent-looking young man backed off slowly, sweat dribbling down his forehead, splattering across the blood-drenched floor.
Blood spilt through his hand as he held the location where his right arm previously sat.
"Ah!", his shoes lost grip as he slipped on the liquids beneath his feet.
But even as he sat on the ground he continued backing off, the face full of desolation continued crawling away under basic human survival instinct.
A large man stood before him and watched him crawl away with an entertained smile on his face.
"Why!", the young man shouted in desperation.
The man responded simply, he raised his right hand and bit off the meat that remained on the bone.
"You taste good."
This was no man.
Blood-red horns curled off his forehead, piercing towards the sky. His dark red skin lightly stained from the blood of the human before him, the liquids slowly dripped down his legs and mixed with the rest of the blood on the ground.
He began picking his teeth with the fingers from the bone then threw it to the side.
Clatter.
"Hik!", the young man followed the bone with his eyes as it flew to the side.
Throughout the entire situation, he never stopped crawling backwards.
"Now then.", the demons rough voice whispered into his ears erotically.
"AH!"
The young man didn't even notice when it had happened, but the demon was crouching directly beside him at this point.
"Thank you for the meal!"
Its cheerful voice blasted at his body, its lips parted revealing a long, snake-like tongue within, the demons hot breath brushed his cheeks.
Only two views remained within his eyes.
The beautiful blood moon in the skies, and the one who was about to take his life.
Crack.
The distance between them suddenly grew quickly.
'Ah, maybe I can live, mummy, your son Krayle might survive.'
Krayle witnessed the earth split apart and gradually swallow him whole, like a whale feeding on pathetic Krill.
A smirk spread on his face as his eyes met the demons' who lay far away from him now.
-----
Under the blistering heat, he picked up the object from the ground and untied one of his laces.
Wrapping the laces through the object he formed a string that allowed him to wear this object on his face like a mask.
A cool feeling spread through his face and he finally gained the opportunity to spread his eyes apart.
The cold skull mask and his tattered, burnt clothing blended to form a picture of a savage barbarian.
"It's literally hell."
Looking at the ground he was relieved and terrified at the same time.
"A graveyard.", all around him lay fragments of bone, there lay many different types of bones, from incomplete, shattered forearms to perfectly maintained full skeletons, whilst others were small enough to be confused with pebbles on a street.
Running his feet through the ground to recreate that gritty feeling, he sighed in relief.
"I'm glad that I was able to figure it out that quickly, otherwise I'd be cooked steak within just a few more minutes."
"I can even open my mouth without burning myself now."
'Let's collect a full set before I burn to death.'
He began rummaging through the graveyard and picked up a suitably sized piece for each of his body parts, he placed each bone beneath his clothing and ripped off some of his clothing to tie it tight.
"Good enough."
Now that he was safe, he began analysing his surroundings.
A few minutes silently passed.
Raising his hand he placed it on his chin and continued contemplating, "It looks like a simple graveyard, but every so often weird blue energy spews out of the ground."
He continued observing it.
"It has a pattern to it.", looking around he noticed that each 'Spout' had the same timer, but the timer began at a different moment in time so it would seem random.
'Even so, It's weird, this is meant to be a Pseudo Hell, so why has nothing happened so far?"
To remain cautious he watched the 'Spouts' for a bit longer.
"Huh? It's speeding up? It was 30 seconds before, but now it's 15 seconds..."
Suddenly each one of his hairs stood on end.
"Don't tell me!"
He remembered how the ground beneath him was cold.
"But where does this cold come from!"
His eyes began shifting downward.
"From beneath me!"
Split.
Cracks spread along the ground beneath him, the blue energy began spewing out unceasingly around him.
'I was mistaken, this isn't a normal hell.'
"This is..."
An old name popped into his mind.
"The frozen hell of Norse Mythology..."
"Niflheim!"