******Warning...Pretty intense imaginary here*********
Agnis walked towards the three guards, who were wearing very light armor. On her way towards them, she picked up a silver platter and placed four glasses filled with red wine on it. She carried it like a server towards them.
"Are you guys by any chance thirsty?" She winked at one of the guards. The youngest guard blushed and lowered his eyes.
"Oh, thank you, my lady," said the guard as he picked up a glass of wine.
"My pleasure." She smiled sweetly. "I was getting a bit lonely and when I saw you guys I thought you might like some company." She handed the other guards their wine, smiling and making eye contact with each one.
"You are a life saver, ma'am. I've been dying of thirst. We are not allowed to move from this spot for long periods of time," said the other guard. One of the guards brought out a wooden chair for her to sit on.
"Thank you. That is very kind of you." Agnis sat on the wooden chair and crossed her legs. She purposely pulled up her dress slightly, showing off her legs. All three guards glimpsed for a brief moment and tried to hide their interest. The youngest lightly tugged at his armor as if he was overheating from his blush.
Zero took this chance and quietly slinked behind the guards while their attention was diverted away. He quickly moved down the moonlit hallway. Whenever he heard or noticed the guards, he quickly moved into the shadows, erasing his own silhouette and movement.
There were a couple of times the guards walked right past him. This was one of his Ninjitsu skills that he used and put into practice. Skills that he had in real life worked surprisingly well in the game world for example he noticed that the NPCs had the same similar functions. It was a very miniscule detail that made them feel even more real. A reminiscing of a memory popped up in his head from his old school days. He could still hear his teacher's booming voice giving out a specific lecture.
"The human eye sees in three ways: color, silhouette, and movement. If a person or an object is being still and has the same general color and shape to the surrounding area then it is technically invisible to the naked human eye. By erasing all three, the human eyes do not easily detect the presence of another being. Then there is the difference between daytime vision and nighttime vision. During the day, the human vision picks up color, while during the night, their vision is black and white, so they see everything in grayscale." The teacher smacked his stick onto the board. Zero snapped back to reality.
Zero slowly slinked in between the shadows, making his body fit with the surroundings.
There are just too many of them, thought Zero as he plastered himself to the wall in-between some statues, hiding from a pair of guards.
"Did you get the fresh batch of green eyes the customer ordered?" said one of them.
"Yep. I have it here." The other guard pulled out a glass jar filled with green eyeballs.
"That's disgusting. What would they need body parts for anyways?" The guard was trying not to gag as he stepped away from his partner.
"Best not to know and just deliver it to the customer," the guard replied as they headed toward their destination.
"Transform into Origin," Zero muttered under his breath when they left. He needed a clue of where they were hiding Tino, and sneaking around for a long period of time would get him nowhere when he had to get back to Agnis.
Slinking quietly down the opposite hallway from the guards, he knew that he only had about one hour in his origin form. Through constant practicing of his skills he had been able to gain an extra ten minutes. He wondered why his origin form was more limited than his human form, but he had found no answers. Zero sniffed the ground, trying to find any scent that was lingering. As luck would have it he noticed a faint smell of blood on the floor, which he followed until he ended up in front of a wall.
"Huh?" Zero sniffed around, confused. "This can't be the end. It must be some kind of hidden door." He knew it was typical for people to hide things behind walls or doors to create an illusion that there was nothing there. It didn't fool him and his nose in the slightest. He sniffed around a little more, looking for a heavily dense smell that people tended to leave behind when they pressed or touched a certain area repeatedly. In his smell vision, he saw a pool of condensed aura hovering around a small camouflaged button on the wall.
Not only that his ears picked up some kind of moaning scream where he was at. Is this where the cook stated it would be? He looked around even more diligently trying to uncover its secrets.
Zero pushed the button with his paws, and the door soundlessly slid open.
This ability is quite useful. I'm starting to understand what it's like to be in a mind of an animal. Living in an animal form had given him a different perspective of the world.
"Bingo." Zero looked down upon the descending staircase. A strong breeze with the stench of blood wafted into Zero's nose. Quickly, he sharply inhaled and held his breath to dampen the smell, but eventually he had to breathe again.
Ugh. This smells, thought Zero as his face crinkled with distress. With every step he took down the stairs, the smell of blood permeated his nose, making him queasy. Even though he turned off his skill, the stench of blood was still overpowering.
Bzzzzzzt!
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" screamed a female's voice in pain.
Zero jumped back, startled like a cat from the unexpected noise coming from the distance.
"Please stop! Aaaaaaargh—" The female's voice was abruptly stopped as if something was stuffed into her mouth.
Zero cautiously moved down the stairs. The air felt colder as he descended deeper and deeper into the ground. The walls were covered in graffiti with black magical symbols that glowed softly in green with thin sheets of ice.
On his last step, he saw rows of bloody naked male and female torsos lined up like slaughtered cow meat that were on hooks with their heads, arms, and legs dismembered. Blackish goo that oozed out of their skin formed magical sigils on the bellies of the pregnant looking torsos. Couple of times he thought he saw something move in their belly. Each of them was encased in an egg shaped water test tube with black tubes hooked into it. Thousands of black-filled, tube-like wires that were attached on the outside of each egg container led towards a lit-up room in the distance.
On top of shelves, dozens of frozen hands and legs were packed tightly in containers from male and female humans, elves, dwarves, trolls, and monsters that he had never seen before.
He had never felt this unnerved before. Flickering lights illuminated the dim room. With each flash, he saw new horrors. Zero swallowed loudly as he took a couple more steps towards the flashing light. He did not want to go towards the light in the distance, but his gut told him that whatever he was looking for would be there.
What he saw stunned him. In the middle of the room was an operation table with a young female strapped down. Behind the operating table a huge egg-shaped glass tank the size of half the room was filled with water. Inside it was a deformed-looking being. It had two female faces conjoined to each other with elongated horns: two on the forehead and one coming out of the side of each cheek and chin. Its arms were muscular and humongous, with sharp black claws. Thin long black spines protruded out of its back. What unnerved him the most was the body looked like someone threw it together in an experiment. He wondered if it was even human. The lower half of its body was connected to the egg machine. Each of the black tube wires that were connected to the other egg-shaped containers in the other room were all connected to this specific glass tank. Black ooze was being milked out of this creature and directly inserted into the others.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt! Thump.
Zero moved from one table to the next, trying to find what he was looking for. A bright blinding flash of light brightened the room. A fat man with beady eyes with a mask covering the majority of his face held an electrical chainsaw looking equipment. His white doctor apron covered part of his obese belly and was soaked completely in fresh blood.
Bzzzzzt! Thump.
On the wall Zero saw a silhouette of the fat man sawing off the female's arms. Blood splattered and flowed everywhere like a stream as the right arm fell on the ground in front of Zero. Zero backed up towards the walls ready to bolt but instead his back legs stepped on something squishy and soft. He turned around and noticed a severed left leg on the ground.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt! Thump.
Another fell to the side.
Zero couldn't take it anymore and he was about to hurl.
Bzzzz...Click.
The sound of the machine turned off as it was laid down gently on the table as if it was a newborn baby. Zero peeked out from under the table and noticed the fat man pick up a syringe filled with black gooey substances. Squirting it out a couple of times to take out the air bubbles, the fat man inserted it into the belly. In seconds the belly inflated and the body spazzed out uncontrollably.
What the hell. What the hell. What the hell! Zero eyes enlarged.
I need to get out of here before I get killed. Zero's mind raced with many different escape plans. He was stuck underneath the table, because the fat man was blocking his escape. Reaching down with his pudgy hand, the fat man began collecting the arms and legs one by one.
No! he screamed silently in his mind. Crouching down low to the ground, he was ready to pounce when he had the chance.
As soon as Zero saw the fat man's face, he pounced with his claws spread out in lightning speed. He did not allow the fat man to squeak. Crashing through the sides of the tables, his fat pudgy arms swung the medical equipment around as he stumbled. The room shook with his heavy footsteps until he fell heavily onto the ground with a loud sickening thud. Zero furiously bit down on the fat man's ear, tearing it off.
"GAHHHHH!" the fat man screamed in pain as he swung over his head trying to hit Zero.
The window for escape was closing; he knew he had to immobilize the fat man fast or he would not be able to escape.
"Get off, you rodent!"
Scampering around the fat man's face, Zero jumped off and landed on top of the table where all the medical tools were laid. As he looked around the room in the light, the floor was stained heavily with blood as it glistened like rubies from countless deaths.
Bolting towards the door, he jumped up in midair but was snatched by the fat man by his tail.
"Gahhh!" Zero yelled in pain as his tailed got snapped back. It felt like his joints were hyperextended. In that moment of pain, Zero instinctively grabbed the nearest filled syringe with his paws. Hanging upside down, he saw the fat man's mask fall off his face. It was the same man that had sold the high elf. Zero looked at him in disgust as his blood boiled in rage.
"Let go!" yelled Zero as he was dangled by his tail.
"It talks?" said the fat man as he wiped away the trickle of blood from his face. "I wonder what your insides would look like. Would you have an extra stomach like some of these monsters that I have been slicing? No. No. I need to save that spot for them to grow."
Zero did not like where this was going. He spat on the fat man's face as he swung back and forth.
"You vile rodent!" Zero's foul rotten breath overpowered his sense of smell making his eyes water heavily with tears. This must be what my breath is like. He coughed.
Zero knew he didn't have much time; with one last flick of his tail, he had enough momentum to stab the fat man's hand with the syringe and inject the black goo. In a cry of pain, the fat man let go of his tail. Flipping over like a cat in midair he landed on all four feet. His mind went into a survival mode and all his reason left him. Given this opportunity, Zero jumped up towards the man's throat and latched on.
The fat man stumbled backwards as he desperately tried to pry him off his throat. As he pulled, he caused more laceration to his throat than before.
"Let… go." The fat man coughed up blood. He continued to pummel down, only to be rewarded by the tightening of Zero's already clenched teeth. Zero made sure that if he was pulled off, a chunk of the man's throat was coming with him. As the fat man was stumbling around, he impaled himself on a sharp protruding metal rod that hung against the wall. The fat man looked down in shock at the metal rod impaling his heart. Coughing up blood, his hands loosened and slackened to his side. Zero let go and slid down when the fat man stopped moving.
"Huff. Huff." Cold puffs of air came out of Zero mouth.
"Katoo." Zero spat out the man's blood and tried to settle down his heart. His jaws were covered in blood; he looked like a feral animal. He did not expect to kill someone in such a way. Even though the death was not real, the whole experience was still unnerving.
"Everything is all right. This is just a game," Zero told himself. He shook off the feeling of disgust and began going back to business.
You have leveled up!
You have received a necklace of toes, the diary of death, and ten pieces of gold.
"Necklace of toes? What kind of sick joke is this?" Zero grimaced as he thought of the variety of people it went to.
"Identify necklace of toes."
Necklace of toes
A collection of variety of human toes. A psychopath that enjoys slicing up fresh bodies for his own joy. A very dark aura surrounds it. It is best to throw it away, but if you can calm the souls maybe something really good can be gained. Be careful; strange occurrence might start happening around you.
Thinking deeply, Zero debated to keep it or throw it away. The bad outweighed the good, from dead people's toes, possibly curse, and strange occurrences. He did not like the thought of having a necklace of toes with him, but the chance of treasures enticed him. He stowed both of the items away in his magical bracelet.