A pitch-black underground tunnel.
After being knocked unconscious, the three newbie players were dragged here by a group of slime mold fruiting bodies, then transferred again to a claustrophobic room.
This seemed to be somewhere in Clear Spring City's underground transit network, except it had been transformed beyond recognition by fungal growths, making it impossible to tell exactly where they were.
The first player to wake up shook his head, pushed himself off the ground with both hands, and felt something sticky on his palms. When he opened his eyes, he jumped in fright.
Everything around him was scarlet. The pulsing fungal carpet resembled fresh chunks of flesh and gave off a foul stench that made him uneasy.
Big Pig Trotters stared blankly around him for a long time before finally forcing out a sentence.
"Holy shit? What kind of place is this?"
He had only been offline for a little while. How had he been moved somewhere else after logging back in?
At that moment, the other man and woman who had been abducted also woke up. The sight around them made them tremble in fear.
Hungry Power: "Goddamn... Did the slime mold swallow us whole?"
Bow to Hungry Power: "Wake up. You're such a huge lump—how could it swallow you without chewing you up first?"
Hungry Power: "...?"
Bow to Hungry Power: "My bad."
Just then, a bizarre figure appeared at the pitch-black entrance ahead.
It stood as tall as two people. Its burly body nearly filled the entire passageway, its face possessing only abstract features. Its upper body was muscular and robust, while its lower body was a spread-out skirt with octopus-tentacle-like cilia rolling along its edges.
It bore some resemblance to Little Feather when she had still been a mother body, though it was clearly much