Nightmare's Call

A crimson glow shone through the window onto Lin Sheng’s insteps. Holding his wooden shield in one hand and his great sword in the other, Lin Sheng stood with determination behind the burglary-proof door of his home. He wanted to go out. He could not stand the snail’s pace in the dream version of his home any longer. He needed more actual fights to absorb more souls. He was curious about the strangeness of his home in the dream realm and what the bizarre environment on the outside meant. He seriously wondered about it, so he made up his mind and opened the door to venture outside.

Lin Sheng leaned his sword against the wall, freeing his hand to grab the door handle and give it a gentle twist. As the door opened with a soft click, he quickly released his hand and gripped the great sword. Using his leg, he softly pushed the burglary-proof door open.

Outside was a pitch-dark stairway. Not the faintest sign of light was present except for the soft crimson glow that emanated out from his house. There was a figure on the stairway, outside the unit opposite Lin Sheng’s house.

It was a tall, slender man, who was dressed in white and standing with his back facing Lin Sheng. Lin Sheng could hear the man rummaging for his keys to open the door. But, the man had been standing there in the same posture, like a statue, since the moment Lin Sheng saw him, and that raised Lin Sheng’s suspicion.

Whenever Lin Sheng opened the door of his house, it would make a faint protesting creak, and this time was no exception. The loud, brassy creak attracted the attention of the man, who visibly dropped his hand from his door handle, seemingly about to turn around.

Lin Sheng licked his lips, bracing his wooden shield in front of him while he firmly clenched the great sword in his hand. He was ready for anything. Then, he heard the man panting as if he was in extreme fear, sweating and gasping desperately.

Suddenly, there was a click followed by the sound of a door opening. The burglary-proof door opposite Lin Sheng’s house had opened. The man tardily entered the house and closed the door without looking over the other side at all. Lin Sheng frowned. He carried his shield and stepped outside, eager to explore his surroundings and see what was unusual out there.

All of a sudden, the door of the opposite unit swung open with a loud bang. Two figures, a man and a woman, with pale faces grinned wickedly at Lin Sheng from the doorway. It was Aunt Chen and one of her family members.

Lin Sheng was transfixed as he turned around and slammed the door shut. He braced himself against it, standing behind his shield.

*Bang, bang!*

Shortly after, someone slammed against the door from the outside. The burglary-proof door became deformed under the violent force, which sent Lin Sheng tumbling several steps back. He almost fell to the floor.

“Sacred Blood!” He roared in fury, his body swelling as he forcefully thrust his great sword at the door. Almost at the same time, a ferocious impact from the outside broke the entrance apart, sending the entire iron door flying straight in Lin Sheng’s direction. His great sword, which was pointing forward right then, instantly penetrated the iron door, producing a horrible metal scraping sound in the process. Lin Sheng felt his sword hit something hard—a stone, or maybe a stump—and he felt a violent vibration run up his arm. He gripped the hilt of his sword as tightly as possible despite the pain. The sheer force of the impact sent him flying backward again, and he came to an abrupt halt as he crashed into the wall behind him. Blood instantly spurted out of his mouth.

However, it seemed that the people on the other side were in no better condition. They dropped the iron door and faded into a pair of white shadows before they disappeared along the stairway into the opposite apartment unit. Then, the door of the unit was slowly shut and locked.

“The heck?!” Lin Sheng defiantly got to his feet with the support of his sword. “Are they as hurt as I am?” He managed a smile and barely moved a few steps before needing to stabilize himself again. With the sacred power in his body, Lin Sheng began to heal his injuries. One of the pros of gaining the sacred power was that he could use it to treat his injuries anytime, anywhere.

Once he regained his health, Lin Sheng was all the more fearless. Carrying his sword and shield, he stepped toward the completely dark stairway again. He could choose to either go up or down. “Down it is.” Lin Sheng quickly moved down the stairs with his Sacred Blood still in effect. But as he walked down the stairs, he sensed something strangely amiss; the staircase was longer than he remembered. By right, it should have only been thirteen steps, but he had taken twenty, yet it was still not the end. Furthermore...

Lin Sheng looked to his sides carefully, and under the faint crimson glow from his house, he quickly found another strange phenomenon; there were no handrails on either side. The never-ending staircase extended downward, and there was only infinite darkness on both sides. Peering into the dark, Lin Sheng felt like he was standing in a vast space of utter darkness, and the staircase was the only solid ground on which he stood.

“This goddamn place!” Lin Sheng quickly backed up until he was in front of his house again. He cautiously glanced at his neighbor’s house, then up the stairway. Without hesitation, he went upstairs with his sword and shield in hand.

One floor after another, he climbed. The doors of the houses—two on each floor—were tightly shut. However, that was not a problem. The things that baffled him were the security doors; they appeared more ancient as he got higher up, and the doors on the upper floors had engravings on the surface, engravings of ancient patterns. It was too dark for him to see clearly, though.

He climbed four levels up before he stopped and looked back down. The faint crimson glow from his house was still visible, and it gave him some sense of security even though he had just been attacked a while ago. Perhaps it was the light itself that gave him the feeling. “People are usually drawn to light, it’s human nature.” Lin Sheng chuckled in a self-deprecating manner. He fired up the sacred power in his body to light up the edge of his wooden shield. It consumed little of his energy to provide illumination.

With the white light, Lin Sheng could see his surroundings more clearly. Moss almost covered the entire surface of the walls along the stairway, and the paint in most parts of the walls had also peeled off, exposing the light-colored concrete walls beneath. The stairway’s lighting was not of the incandescent type, instead, there were retro oil lamps in black glass housings. The two doors on both sides of each floor were equally unusual; they were utterly rusty as if they had not been in operation for years.

Lin Sheng thought for a moment, and he cast his eyes on the door on his left, which was strangely rustier than the one on the other side. He braced his wooden shield for a Shield Bash and was prepared to break into the house. Just then, the door before him slowly became ajar.