Chapter 376: Devoured By The Noosphere, Falling Into The Deepest Abyss

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Riven saw the black hand behind it all.

It was an endless accumulation of pure darkness, a vast black cloud spreading across the planet and feeding on every fear it touched. He could not see a face or understand its purpose, but he felt its attention turning toward him.

"Uuggh...! Ahhh!" Riven groaned as pain tore through his head. He tried to pull his mind away, but the visions clung to him, dragging him deeper into the darkness.

And now, it was trying to consume him.

The Dungeon revealed itself to be something similar to a Memetic creature, an entity that existed through thoughts, fears, and memories that had somehow manifested itself into the material plane, some kind of predator of thoughts and minds. It kept trying to consume Riven’s mind and soul like a parasite, digging deeper each time he resisted. The more he struggled, the more tightly it wrapped around his consciousness.

"Riven!" Vladimir, Daniela, and Label called out to him, but he didn’t respond. His body remained frozen in place, his eyes staring at nothing as if he had fallen into a coma.

Everyone ran to help him, but the Dungeon began to shapeshift endlessly around them to stop them from ever reaching him. The manor vanished beneath their feet and became a dark forest filled with twisted trees. Floating pumpkins burning with hellish flames appeared between the branches and bombarded them from every direction.

Enormous wooden claws surged from the forest and slashed at them, tearing through the ground with enough force to send dirt and broken roots flying. Behind them, the puppet master’s manor rapidly broke apart, its walls splitting open to reveal countless puppets hidden inside. Their wooden jaws snapped as they flew toward the group in a massive swarm.

"Was this a trap?! How?! Claymore was using this place without any problems!" Vladimir screamed as he knocked several puppets away. "Who set this up?!"

Vladimir tore through everything with his burning claws and rushed toward Riven. Flames spread from each swing, reducing the nearby puppets to ash, but more kept appearing from the collapsing manor. Before he could reach him, something massive began to emerge in the sky above them carrying an immense, mind-crushing pressure.

TRUUUM!

It was an endless black cloud with a pair of crimson eyes, their light resembling countless dying stars. Its enormous shape covered the false sky, and the entire Dungeon trembled as the creature looked down at them.

"Aaaaggghh!"

"Uuugghhh?!"

"N-Noo! Noooo!"

Its mere gaze stunned Vladimir, Daniela, and Label. Their bodies stopped moving as countless nightmares and horrible memories from their pasts invaded their minds. Every one of their regrets, fears, and moments of helplessness returned at once inside their minds, forcing each one of them to relive what they had tried so hard to leave behind and move on from.

Meanwhile, Riven continued to be consumed little by little as he sank into the deepest parts of the endlessly shifting Noosphere. His thoughts scattered across a sea of memories that belonged to people he had never met, and he struggled to remember his own name among them.

Then he saw a giant tower floating within that endless dimension of thoughts and ideas. It was made from conceptual power given form, something that should not have existed as a physical structure. Yet it was desperate to enter the Material Plane, to become one with it and reshape reality around itself.

The giant tower glistened as countless Dungeons similar to this one gathered around it. They merged into its walls one after another, becoming new floors, halls, and chambers within an impossible structure that continued to grow without end, each floor a fake, fictional world born from human imagination, fear, mythology, legends, and even history.

"W-What am I seeing? This Tower... Wait...! Babylon?!" Riven asked in utter disbelief. The name escaped his lips before he could stop it, pulled from memories buried within his past lives. Even after everything he had witnessed, the sight of that tower filled him with immense fear. The trauma he’d endured in such a place, and to see it right here only filled him with more questions than anything else.

Unable to stay where the Tower of Babylon was seemingly being constructed, Riven continued falling through the endless dimension as enormous hands reached up from below, their fingers twisting around one another as they tried to grab him and tear him apart. He could feel their nails scraping against his soul, but even without a physical body, Riven fought back.

"In this place, I can barely use anything without a body...! No...! I can’t let that stop me...!"

His eyes glowed brightly as his memories became his power. Images of every battle he had survived, every warm moment with his wife, and every moment with his family and friends gathered within his right hand, and a giant white sword surged from his soul. Its blade shone against the darkness before cutting through the approaching black hands.

SLAAASH!

"Get away from me!"

As he roared, the remaining hands grabbed him from every direction and pushed him farther into the abyss. Riven swung the sword again and again, cutting himself free, but then countless heads emerged from the darkness.

SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH! SLASH!

Their jaws opened far beyond what their faces should have allowed, revealing rows of uneven teeth as they tried to bite his body apart.

"RAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

Riven roared and tore through the hands, only for more to emerge endlessly from the black cloud. Each severed limb split into several new ones before reaching for him again. Behind them, monstrous faces watched his struggle, laughing while black blood poured from their eyes and mouths.

"Huhuh...!"

"Hahahahaha!"

"Fuahahahahahaha!"

They laughed at him, at his anger, and at every desperate attempt to escape. To them, his resistance was nothing more than entertainment. No matter how many hands he destroyed, their laughter only grew louder.

And then, from the depths of the endless black cloud, from somewhere far below the conceptual plane known as the "Noosphere" itself...

A voice echoed.

"I have finally found you."

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