Shadow Slave: Monochrome

Nero sat on the grounds of his cell, patiently waiting for his time to strike. Yesterday, he initially thought that in a weeks time, he would be the last of the Night Children remaining in this dungeon.

However, he could only sense 50 of them left now. If things continued on like this, he may very well be the last one here in 2 days, maybe even tomorrow. Tonight, he had to contact Epsilon somehow, and tomorrow, the two had to escape.

This was the amount of time they had left to clear this nightmare.

Luckily, Rodenaus was able to assist Nero in this endeavour.

**

"Get us all killed? What do you mean? What is going on down there!? If my br— friend is in danger, then I need to go save him!"

Rodenaus went quiet. Even though the man was so steadfast just a minute ago, he seemed a little hesitant, scared even. This worried Nero.

"A long time ago when us knights of the sun came to seek asylum in this place, there was a terrible creature lurking in these caves. We tried to slay it, but it was simply too powerful, and thus we had no choice but to leave.

But then The King Of The Dark arrived, and with his mighty power he pushed the creature back to the darkest depths of this place. He.. could not kill the creature, and so he sealed it with some strange nail.

That seal is being maintained by who we call, the white. The person you call your friend. If he leaves, the seal will crumble, and that creature will escape to kill us all."

Nero gulped. So not only were there two, but three stupidly powerful beings stalking his nightmare. Of course, there were two challengers here, but isn't this a little too much?? Even for the nightmare spell.

Rodenaus looked down upon Nero. He seemed very weary and hopeless. For some reason, he did not like this.

"Child Of The Night.. there is a way for you to see your friend.. one last time."

Nero's face lit up. There was still Good News.

"You seem to have forgotten, but there is a secret exit that I dug in your cell. Most of the knights go to rest after the second meal, so security is especially thin at that time. Use that chance, and head down to the lowest floor. There shouldn't be any other knights guarding it as they only go near that floor when it is time for the white to proceed with his duties."

Then there was silence for a while. Nero couldn't believe it, there had been an escape route so close to him this whole time, and yet he never noticed it. A small smile seemed to spread on his face, which caused the knight to feel strange.

'This child has changed...'

And then Nero said,

"Thank you."

**

Nero began to caress the floor with his fingers, searching for a small clearance that was too hard to notice in the dark. Eventually after searching for 10 or so minutes, he found it.

'I can't believe I never noticed it. This place is too damn dark!'

Of course, the gap he had found was stupidly small, but with his overgrown fingernails he easily inserted them inside. And then he dug them into the ground as much as possible, before ripping it open.

A part of the floor was actually a trap door, carved from the ground itself by Rodenaus. And below it, was a stupidly long tunnel that led to gods knows where.

'Gotta be quick.'

There was no more room for hesitation, he had to go see him quickly, and then come back up in the same amount of time. He didn't know the geography of this place very well, so wasting time doing nothing was not an option.

And quickly, he jumped down as the door slammed shut behind him.

The tunnel wasn't perfectly horizontal as it had a decent curve, and the tunnel was only large enough for one person to go down it at a time. This let Nero slow down his fall, and even make it come to a stop by just pushing his feet against the ground in front of him, letting physics hold him in place.

He didn't know how deep this tunnel was, so if he fell too fast and then the ground suddenly appeared beneath him, he'd collide and break his legs before he could slow down.

He took several steady breathes, as he slowly lowered himself, not going to fast nor too slow.

And then after falling in that hole for what felt like 10 minutes, he reached the bottom. Nero quickly checked the distance he had traveled by using [Bond], and was impressed that it was jus above 100 metres.

'How long did that guy dig for??'

This was an achievement, but there were still 500 metres left. There was no time to waste just yet.

The dark tunnel had only sharply turned, but the width had remained the same. So he needed to crawl through the remainder to reach the end. The ground was dirty, the air was rancid, but Nero pushed through.

And eventually, he saw a light. He grew hopeful, and so he kept crawling and crawling and eventually reached the end of the tunnel.

There was but just a thin piece of cloth that was holding back pale white light on the other side. Nero tried to use his [Yin] attribute to sense if there was anybody nearby, and to his dismay, he sensed 2 large group of humans.

Except... one of them was living, and the other was dead.

Nero froze, he was unsure of what to expect next. What could've killed all of those people?

But then he remembered he had no time for delays, and so he forced himself forwards, past the curtain and into the light.

Rodenaus had said that they would leave Epsilon behind, and even though he allowed them to meet, Nero still refused to leave without him. He was beginning to understand this nightmare a little more now..

Nightmares were meant to be a trial, and trials always had roadblocks. It seemed that they could just wait for every knight to be overcome with despair before they escaped, but of course it wasn't going to be that easy.

The roadblocks, the challenges they most overcome to escape this nightmare, were The King Of The Dark, whatever creature Epsilon was holding back, and Sir Rodenaus himself.