Deacon wandered the tunnels now with a limp in his gait, the faint green hue of the glowstick casting his silhouette across the warped stone walls. His breathing was uneven beneath the makeshift, origami mask – something he made out of folded parchment that he would use for his Status Pages, tied hastily with twine from one of the destroyed crates in the first room.

  The air here was thick with both the scent and taste of decay from all the corpses scattered about and spores from all the vines and moss along the stone walls.

  Pausing under a low arch, neon green glowstick raised with his left hand, the faint light caught on something dark smeared across his thigh, blighted blood, that partially dried into the cracks of his leather armor.

  He grimaced and wiped at it with the back of his Mycelial Grasp and quickly burnt it with a quick application of Ignis. It wouldn’t infect him, not after taking the remedy he made after killing the Elite Blighted Crawler Host, but being thorough never harmed anyone.

  The next corridor was basically redecorated with bloated blight growths: bulbous cysts pulsing softly, a tapestry of fungal cords threading from floor to ceiling like veins beneath pale, blistered skin. The blight choked the light that seeped into the corridor that was created by Deacon’s neon green glowstick.

  He didn’t step into the corridor.

  This wasn’t a passage that he could walk through alone, he had no means of dealing with an area covered in that much blight. No, he would only enter those areas with someone who could cleanse the growths and sanctify the area infected by them.

  Maybe if he had an artifact or some sort of tool to ward off or sanctify and cleanse, then he would go in alone, but those tools and artifacts were far above what he could purchase, at least at the moment.

  He turned back the way he came, making a full 100 degree turn around the bend.

  The corridor behind was clearer than the one he was just in, though far from being untouched, but compared to the one he was just in, it was practically as clean as a hospital.

  Spores drifted zily through the air like ash from a campfire under the night sky, and every few dozen steps or so, the stone was uprooted to reveal Blighted Crawler eggs. Dead ones, thankfully.

  It was then, just past another bend, that he spotted a barricaded doorway at the far end of yet another corridor, which to him was weird, considering the other corridors he'd walked through, none of the doors were barricaded. They were at most covered in blighted growths.

  At first gnce, to him, it looked like a hastily put-together barricade that was made out of desks, chairs, even potted pnts long since wilted to dry husks, all crammed tightly together to block the entrance. But upon further scrutiny, whoever had done this hadn’t been fleeing; they were trapping something or somethings inside.

  Deacon’s eyes narrowed even more so as he realized there was no blight surrounding it or the corridor.

  He crouched low in order to examine the base of the barricade, the sickly green hue of his glowstick pooling in uneven light across the floor. That’s when he saw the scratches, gouged deep into the stone, a half-circle pattern scraped again and again into the floor, as if by cws… or fingers… They pointed inward, further cementing his theory that something was trapped behind the barricade.

  Whatever had gone in hadn’t come out, he noted as his finger hovered above the scratches on the stone. No, judging by their angles, they were trying to get out of that room.

  "Why is that?" He muttered under his breath as he tightened his grip on both the glowstick and his short sword. "I know it wasn't the Blighted Crawler Host, so maybe this was something the Aztecs did, or potentially the people that were dropped off via ships."

  He cast a gnce at the other forks that were connected to this corridor, other than the one he had come from. One colpsed and the other was filled with drooping mycelial strands that, for some reason, would form a star at their ends. Not to mention the air down those paths looked to be heavy with decay and spores, a slow-breathing miasma that would cling to your skin.

  He rose slowly, ignoring the faint ache his leg gave, and began to disassemble enough of the barricade to allow a gap narrow enough for him to get through.

  Once he’d created one, he carefully got atop the mahogany desk and stepped into the closed-off corridor.

  Dust puffed beneath his boots as he carefully stepped down from atop the desk, nding with a muted thud in the corridor beyond. The air was still dry, stale, and heavy with age, but absent of that familiar decay and blight. Instead, moss clung zily to the corners where stone met stone, and long-dried vines coiled along the walls like veins turned to paper.

  It was quiet. Too quiet.

  Deacon moved forward slowly, eyes flicking between the stone walls, floor, and destroyed furniture. And if he was being honest, the fact that he'd yet to see a rat was cause for concern.

  The pce was practically untouched, ignoring the destroyed state of the furniture… so why the cw marks?

  As he descended deeper, something new caught his eye: alcoves, small ones. They were carved into the far side of the corridor; no rger than four meters by four, each recess was identical in shape and size, spaced with eerie precision like cells in a beehive. He would know, especially with Esmerelda randomly bringing them into the dining hall whenever she didn't like what was going to be offered as dessert.

  He stopped at the first one and peered inside.

  Metal doors sealed the room off, with only a small space at the top of them that acted like windows, but they were sealed by metal bars. Behind them was a simple-looking yout: a bed made from what looked like dried leaves and bundled, stained cloth, a dented metal bucket in the corner filled with brown and leaves, which he assumed to be filled with shit, and directly in front of the door was a pair of restraints, long-decayed leather straps dangling from iron loops bolted into the back wall.

  Curled beneath them, untouched by scavengers or time, was a skeleton. Limbs drawn in tight, back against the corner, skull tipped downward like it had tried to make itself small in its final moments.

  Deacon said nothing, just stared at the bound skeleton before moving on to the next one.

  Same structure.

  Another bed, another bucket, another set of restraints, and another skeleton.

  He continued on, passing cell after cell – some were empty, others still occupied by bones. Their bones weren’t shattered or their room bloodied; there were no signs of violence around their bodies…

  Then it hit him.

  He stepped back, eyes wide as he turned to face the corridor head-on, like the pieces of the puzzle was putting together were only now settling into pce.

  “This… is a jail,” he said aloud, voice barely more than a whisper. “No way.”

  A strange, excited shiver climbed his spine. He had heard of jails before, in old stories passed down from descendant to descendant of how people used to lock up the dangerous way back on Earth, before the sky fell and the world turned.

  Floor Zero didn’t have jails. If you broke the ws, you were just killed asap. Compared to the two, he’d preferred how things worked on Floor Zero. There was just less of an issue of people willing to commit crimes when anyone who’d done so would be swiftly executed in front of everybody, and the statistics don’t lie about how effective it is, dropping from 87% to 13%.

  He moved slower now, the novelty of discovery giving way to something else – excitement, maybe, or a creeping sense of unease.

  But then he paused for a second as he came across something… One of the cell doors wasn’t shut.

  Not blown open, not shattered, and not cwed up. Just… slightly ajar. Upon a more detailed gnce, the door hung crooked on its hinges, and the far end of the door was practically kissing the floor as the top two knuckles on the top hinge were cracked.

  Deacon stopped mid-step - all the other cells had been locked tight. Except for this one…

  His hand tightened slightly around the grip of his short sword and glowstick as he crept forward. In doing so, the tension around him thickened. Maybe this was it, maybe the thing that had cwed at the barricade, the one they’d tried to trap in here, was in this cell, pying dead behind a door left just wide enough to tempt the unwary.

  He reached the iron bar window on the door, careful not to breathe too loudly and give away his position.

  The glowstick angled forward, casting a sickly wash over the cell beyond.

  It was the same yout as the other closed-off cells. Same leaf-bed, same bucket full of shit in the corner, the same pair of rustly looking shackles bolted to the wall in front of the door. But what truly caught his attention was the skeleton. It wasn't directly in front of the door like the others; this one had its back braced against the far left wall, barely in view. The bones were thick and long—broad shoulders, wide jaw. Male, most likely.

  And stabbed through the hollow of its own throat was a bde.

  A sword.

  Held steady in both hands, as though the man had plunged it into himself and then simply sat there… waiting to die.

  Deacon blinked, leaning in slightly. The hilt was dark and grainy, just like its bde. It wasn’t made out of metal. It was made out of–

  “Wood?” he muttered.

  He stared at it harder. The bde had been carved from a single piece of heavy wood, its shape vaguely triangur with rough edges running up the fuller. It didn’t look like a ceremonial killing at all, nor was that strike made with it clean either. It looked rushed, like someone had carved it out of desperation with whatever they could find.

  Deacon let the glowstick drop a little, casting the figure in deeper shadow.

  Was it a suicide? He asked himself. Why unchain yourself just to do that? I mean, couldn’t you just bite your own tongue and choke on your own blood?

  His eyes flicked to the empty shackles. Then back to the weapon. His gut tensed.

  “Did they give you the bde?” he asked the bones quietly. “Or did you make it? But if you did, why make something as rge as a broadsword? Why not a knife?”

  Maybe the prisoner had been given a choice. Maybe he’d escaped the shackles, but not the cell, and saw no point in going on. Or maybe–

  Deacon’s eyes hardened.

  Maybe whatever they locked in here wasn’t supposed to escape its bonds.

  Deacon stood there for a long moment, eyes lingering on the wooden broadsword jutting out from the skeleton’s neck and held in its hands. Something about the scene gnawed at him.

  He narrowed his eyes and stepped forward to grab ahold of the metal door.

  He moved slowly and carefully so as not to alert any creature or potential creatures in this room, and he wedged himself between the opening, giving it just enough of a push to squeeze in.

  He crouched beside the skeleton, careful not to make it colpse.

  Up close, the bde looked even stranger; there were faint symbols scratched near the base of the hilt, but he didn't recognize a single symbol.

  “Alright,” he muttered, more to himself than anything. “Identify.”

  Item Name: Echoform ReliquaryType: WeaponRarity: ArtifactDescription:Forged from Livingwood, Echoform Reliquary can shift between multiple forms stored within, seamlessly in response to the wielder’s intent. Though currently in its base material, the Echoform Reliquary is designed to accept upgrades, allowing stronger materials to improve its durability and additional forms to improve its combat effectiveness.Current Forms (1/2):? Form I: [Broadsword]? Form II: [Empty]Effects: Self-Repair, Swap Form.Requirements: Humanoid.Current Material: Tier 1 WoodMaterial Upgrade Requirements: Tier 1 Steel

  No way!... What the fuck! Deacon mentally shouted, eyes wide and jaw scked as he stared at the wooden sword in question. This was an artifact!

  I get that yeah in this Floor they were more common to find, but holy fuck! Deacon’s face grew into a smile. Out of every Artifact, wand, staff, armor, tool, sword… every other one, I find the one I was pnning on purchasing at the Floor Fifteen auction here?