Chapter 191: More Wrong

She wore a revealing red dress that left much of her shoulders and upper chest exposed, with the fabric clinging tightly around her body before falling loosely around her thighs. She was… she was here. The woman who put me in this place.

"You…" I said, my eyes widening as I walked toward her. "You bitch."

"My, my." She raised an eyebrow. "I'm a goddess, yet a mortal is calling me a bitch?"

"Get me out of here, you fuckwit!"

I reached her and grabbed the collar of her dress.

She looked down at my hand before calmly grabbing my wrist and pulling it away from her. "I cannot," she said. "And quite frankly, I think we're fucked. That's why I'm here."

"What?"

"Chaos is loose. The others will eventually come, and chaos will ensue. No pun intended."

"Who is Chaos?" I demanded. "And get me back home!"

"You're dead."

I stared at her.

"What?"

"Yes, we killed you in that room." She shrugged. "But Kara loves you, and I find you interesting, so I carried your soul here, along with your body, of course."

"W-what?"

"If you return to your world, you'll die. So get used to living here."

She sighed and brushed some of her hair away from her face.

"Secondly, I talked to Kara about this. As an apology, I decided to help you out a little."

Three UI boxes appeared in front of me.

I barely glanced at them.

There was literally a goddess standing in front of me, the same woman who was the mother of my girlfriend, or whatever Kara and I were supposed to call our relationship at this point. Everything about the situation was so completely fucked that I didn't even know where to start.

"What do you mean we're fucked?"

"I'll talk to the others," she said. "But we can't intervene in what happens in this world."

"You still haven't answered my question."

"Do you know why we bless people, my dearest Ace?"

I remained silent.

"So that we don't repeat the same mistakes that old man made."

"The old man?" I asked. "You mean the God himself?"

She nodded.

"He was dying, Ace. All that power and he still wanted more. He was a greedy bastard. So, once we killed him, we decided that we'd share some of our powers with mortals instead. We'd have people devote their lives to us, and we'd become less powerful in the process, but at least we wouldn't fucking die."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Do you know what those blessed people do?" she asked, crossing her arms. "They help us fight the Still-Dark."

"Still-Dark," I repeated. "The place you go to, borrow its power and use it to kill God."

She waved her hand dismissively.

"Bullshit. I was tortured by that old bastard for so long that I went completely nuts. Then I ended up in the Still-Dark."

"And?"

"I died, came back, died again and came back again. It happened a few more times. Like a million few times."

She began pacing around me as she spoke… and, damn. She sounded way too composed for a woman who died a million times and came back. It was like… this was an ordinary Sunday for her. Man, she was weird.

"Then the Still-Dark got into me. Into my veins. It lent me its power, but it corrupted me from the inside. I became part of it, even though I'm a goddess. The difference is that I can control the Still-Dark inside me."

She gave herself a proud little smile.

"O-okay…"

"And I was forbidden from blessing other people because the Still-Dark inside me could spread to anyone I blessed."

"And…"

"Still-Dark is inside you. I had to bless you."

I stared at her.

"And someone sensed that, then woke Chaos up."

"What?"

"I can't stay here, Ace." She waved her hand casually. "Make sure you get stronger, boy. When the shit hits the fan, you'll need it. Trust me."

"Wait. This place, the Circle. It's modern. It's like my world!"

"Bye."

I blinked.

A cloud of pink smoke was already forming where she had been standing.

"Ambly, wait!"

She was gone. I stared at the smoke for several seconds before gritting my teeth and kicking the crate beside me. The rotten meat inside spilled onto the ground, releasing an even stronger stench that made me recoil.

"Shit…"

I looked at the three UI boxes still floating in front of me.

╔═══════════════════════╗

• CHOOSE YOUR REWARD

────────────────────────

• +5% STA, HP, MP, per level (Upgradable)

• +50% DROP RATE

• +25% MORE EXP GAIN (Upgradable)

╚═══════════════════════╝

Three rewards.

Was this what Ambly had been talking about?

They all looked permanent, and each one was useful in a different way. More Stamina, Health and Mana every level would make me considerably stronger over time. A fifty percent increase to my drop rate was nothing to scoff at either, especially if better equipment and materials became harder to obtain. Then there was the experience bonus, which would let me level faster and potentially snowball my growth.

I walked over to the truck and leaned against its side, crossing my arms as I thought about what had happened back in that room.

They had killed me.

They had actually killed me, and if Ambly was telling the truth, she had dragged my soul back here and forced it into another body.

I stared at the ground.

"And you transferred me here?" I muttered. "Why?"

I shook my head slowly and focused on the rewards. The first two were good, there was no denying that, but the extra EXP was something I could really use to my advantage. From what the description showed, each upgrade would increase the bonus by another five percent, and there were five upgrade slots in total. That meant I could eventually reach a fifty percent increase to my EXP gain.

I couldn't pass that up.

I selected the last option and confirmed my choice. The reward screen disappeared, replaced by another notification confirming that it had been claimed.

With that done, I needed to get out of here. Somehow.

"Okay…" I muttered, opening the system. "Let's see where I am."

The answer wasn't particularly helpful.

I was in the middle of nowhere.

The map showed my current location, but when I zoomed out, there was practically nothing around me. I was clearly much farther from the Circle's entrance than I'd ever been before, and there was no indication of where the nearest exit was.

If I wanted to get out, I'd have to wander around until I found one.

"Okay…" I exhaled. "Let's go, Ace."

I began walking through the forest.

Trees surrounded me in every direction, their trunks dark beneath the moonlight while snow covered the ground in patches. The house I'd seen earlier remained ahead, partially hidden between the trees, and curiosity eventually got the better of me.

I changed direction and headed toward it.

The front door had been completely broken down. One side of the frame was hanging loose, and pieces of wood were scattered across the entrance. I stepped over the debris and entered.

The inside confirmed what I'd already suspected.

This wasn't some strange fantasy structure that merely looked familiar. It was a modern house, the kind of place I could have walked into back in my old world.

The living room opened directly into the kitchen without a wall separating the two. A worn sofa sat in front of a large television, with a low wooden table positioned between them. There were shelves along one wall, although most of them had been emptied, and several picture frames were scattered across the floor. The kitchen occupied the opposite side of the room, with a counter separating it from the living area, cabinets mounted above the counters and a refrigerator standing against the far wall.

Everything looked abandoned.

I slowly walked toward the sofa and crouched behind it. There was an electrical outlet on the wall. I stared at it for a moment before noticing something plugged into it. A charger.

I reached down and touched the cable. "So… this is real," I muttered. "This Circle… where am I? Why is there…"

A deep rumble shook the ground outside.

I instinctively crouched and moved toward the nearest window. Its glass was cracked in several places, but it was still intact enough for me to look through. I grabbed the windowsill and carefully peeked outside.

That's when I saw it.

A massive chateau floated above the forest.

It hung in the sky at an impossible height, close enough that I could make out the enormous walls and towers despite the darkness. The entire structure seemed to drift without any visible means of support, as though gravity simply didn't apply to it.

Its walls shifted in slow, uneven pulses, almost as though something inside the structure was breathing. The windows reflected scenes that didn't belong to the forest beneath them. Shapes moved behind the glass, appearing and disappearing in places where there shouldn't have been anyone at all, while the reflections themselves seemed to change whenever I stared at them for too long.

The sight made the entire house feel even more wrong.