Elevator

The group ran as fast as they could to escape the Smilers that followed them. Vain also understood why Xavier called himself 'highly trained'. Xavier was the fastest of the group and when he saw Vain carrying Helen, he was able to carry her and run at Vain's fastest speed at the same time!

That is extremely fast considering Vain's speed was reaching up to 20mph while running unrestricted. A smiler's speed reaches anywhere from 10-20mph depending on the instance, but anything over 15mph is considered to be a rare case, or when the smiler is especially violent.

The group ran as fast as they could, keeping a slightly faster pace than the entities that were chasing them. Eventually, they dashed into a side hallway to avoid some type of moth, which could be female Deathmoths that spit acid, unlike their male counterparts who are completely docile.

After ten minutes of running there appeared to be more entities coming up, although there were some doors, the group hadn't checked them since these Smilers chasing them had been fast. Vain pulled out his sword, and yelled, "Athena you check the doors! Xavier! Henery! Kill and move fast enough that we still have time to run when the Smilers arrive!"

The entities blocking them included, an unfortunately large Clump in the back with one Crawler. The other entities were just useless compared to them; two Skin Stealers, two Hounds, and one Wretch. Thanks to the small size of this group, Vain put away his sword first to shoot twice focusing on the Skin Stealers before switching back to his sword.

Xavier took care of the crawler and split the Clump into two before switching to his long daggers that could already be used as a short sword. Henry on the other hand shot twice as well focusing on the Wretch before moving to his regular sword. Hounds are like the natural enemy of Scratchers, but to humans like them, the hounds are just cannon fodder.

Vain killed one hound while moving fast at one of the Clumps that had been split. Each clump now had eight arms and two feet each, making them almost a normal Clump. Xavier killed the other hound and attacked the other Clump making it look easy to fight such a Clump. Henry on the other hand took a small pause before helping Vain since Xavier seemed fine alone, while Vain was struggling.

Helen who was being carried before began to search the doors alongside Athena while the men fought. This floor had nearly 1/8 the doors that the last level had, making the number of doors that they could check few and far between. On the plus side, doors were more commonly unlocked here, but very few led back to level 2, while most only led to different sections of the level.

Athena found a way out and made sure it was known. The men who had almost finished killing the Clumps heard that there was a close-by exit stopped and retreated, while the Clump who was smart also knew it was a losing battle and retreated letting the men run to the door where the Smilers had just caught up and were right there almost killing them as they ran through the door. It was so close that they had to throw another flashlight to avoid any casualties.

The battle lasted less than two minutes but still was almost too slow to escape. This made this battle the fastest group battle that Vain and Athena had ever experienced.

Closing the door everyone stopped and caught their breath, but the small break didn't last long since new entities were already appearing from the darkness. This group of entities was extremely similar to the one they had just fought against. The only difference is how many entities there were; four Crawlers, five Wretches, four Hounds, two average size Clumps, and one Skin Stealer.

Everyone fought this time and ended the battle fairly easily. Everyone had a long-ranged weapon and almost everyone besides Xavier used some kind of arrow. The entities had to survive every person who worked even better together than before. Surviving a life an death situation allowed the group who had some problems to work well enough together to kill almost every entity before they could even reach close range. The fact that they had watched how the other people fought throughout the other battles helped a lot as well.

Vain used most of his arrows before the entities even reached close range, after which he fought and was able to kill everything that survived the onslaught of arrows with the help of everyone besides Helen who didn't know anything about close range.

Finally, after consecutive battles and using all their energy to run away from Smilers, the group fell to the ground to rest. Everyone was breathing heavily besides the useless Helen who was calming down quickly.

After five minutes Athena couldn't help but turn to Xavier to ask him everything that was on her mind.

"Hey Xavier? Could you tell me how you are able to stand your own against the Clumps? Why do need experience if you seem to be fine with such situations even on this level which is even more dangerous compared to the last level in which you first went to get experience?"

Xavier smiled with the same proud face he made every time he spoke, "Well you see we at the U.E.C. believe that one shouldn't risk their lives! But we also know that getting experience needs to be done since some of our members are too proud and don't understand the dangers until they experience it themselves. I can deal with a Clump alone, but that just shows why we are so prideful and don't understand the dangers of this place.

Finally, as you also saw, the Clumps can become harder to fight when they exist inside a vent or dark places which hinder prediction abilities. I saw it coming and could fight against the Clump in the vent, but since the group I was with didn't notice anything beforehand, we were attacked and lost most of our members. This is a very good learning opportunity since the U.E.C. can't teach me everything without accidentally missing something."

Athena nodded, but before she could continue with her questions, a corpse was thrown at the group and a strange sound was made scaring almost everyone besides Xavier. A Faceling appeared and made a mocking gesture before it ran away the way it came.

Xavier stood up suddenly and yelled at the group, "Quick follow it! It is a jokester Faceling that doesn't attack people!"

Although confused at what Xavier got at, the group still followed his lead since he obviously knew more than they did. Luckily Xavier quietly explained what he wanted to show them.

"These Facelings don't show any difference between other Facelings, but they usually lead to a way to a safer level. So we need to check all the doors if we don't see an elevator show up."

Everyone here understood what he meant almost immediately after his short explanation. On level 3 there are randomly appearing elevators that allow one to go to level 4 or 5 and are often used to move through levels 3-5 since they are all connected.

After following the Faceling for a while the group did indeed find an elevator in a random wall bringing tears of joy to their eyes. They were also happy that they hadn't met any other groups of entities on the way since they would miss where the Faceling child would go.

The group didn't care about anything else and ran to the elevator and entered it without saying another word. Everyone knew that this meant safety.