431 The Pitch-Black World

Closing my eyes and opening them several times as the pitch blackness surrounded me, I tried to process what just happened to me.

'Where is this…?'

I could tell that I was surely not dead nor blind as I could still see my body, it was just that everything else was completely black…

'Where is everyone else…?'

However, the only thing that I could see was myself covered in my 'Dragon Armor', neither Light that was hiding in the bag nor Long that was inside my spatial ring seemed to exist or answer my call.

'Not even you…?'

Even as I removed the dragon scales covering the arm that 'Sky' was dormant in, I couldn't see the dragon tattoo any longer as if it wasn't there to begin with.

'No response at all?!'

Most importantly, I didn't get any response as I thought of system commands or even voiced them out, just like everything else so far, it seemed as if it didn't exist…

'Is this some sort of strange Corruption Gate…?'

As my eyes seemed to have gotten used to the static color of this space, I could finally recognize the structure of a smooth wall that existed on both sides. The ground I was standing on also seemed to be a perfect copy of it, just like the roof above my head was.

Looking further ahead, I could see that this was some sort of a cubic shaped corridor, which reminded me of the first 'Demon Base' Corruption Gate which I entered, it also had an extremely long corridor that I walked in for several hours to reach the underground hall, there were some differences such as that it wasn't as symmetric as this one and didn't have this strange coloring condition, but it seemed like a good reference considering this situation.

'This is probably another weird spatial tool that the demons have…'

Though I was slightly disoriented as soon as I entered due to the abnormality of the situation, I managed to finally come to a conclusion once I calmed down.

The object that the twin-horned demon crushed was probably a space transportation device that locked on to one's desired target and transported it to a predetermined Corruption Gate. As such, the only one that got transported was me since I seemed to be his target, which excluded Light, Long, and 'Sky', which is why I was alone here.

As for the system's no-response mode, it might be related to the separation of Long and me or there could be something special about this Corruption Gate that disallowed me from viewing the system screens or hearing its notification. In fact, it wouldn't be weird if the pitch blackness was a side effect of this ability which made parts of my senses go blind.

'That should be it…'

'Let's speed up.'

Since I couldn't see anything at the end of my long sight, I could already guess that this corridor was much longer than the old one, so I didn't wait before speeding up past the speed of sound to leave this depressing place.

`~~`~~`~~`

12 hours later...

'This…'

Thanks to being unable to call out the system panel, I tried using a watch that I bought back at Battle City to judge time, but for some reason, it was also glitched just like the system, stuck at just before I entered. As such, I could only use my mind to calculate the time that has passed since I entered this pitch-black space.

However, even then, I couldn't help but doubt whether I was actually mistaken due to the strange properties of this space. After all, I had spent a total of twelve hours going through this corridor without seeing an end to it, and while I did limit my speed to just slightly past Mach 1 to be more battle-ready after two hours or so, that was still over 12,000 kilometers traveled!

Considering my long eyesight, not even seeing anything after that much, meant that I couldn't exist even after a few more hours if I maintained my current speed.

Furthermore, I still couldn't shake off the bad feeling that still remained from the moment the demon made an appearance, it kept telling me that something was extremely off!

'Just who would make a path as long as this…?'

Not only was the corridor four times as long as the one that I considered to be extremely long back then, but this obviously wasn't the end of its length…

…

1 day later...

'Is this some sort of a joke?'

By this point, I started wondering if I was stuck on an automatically regenerating loop since I couldn't see the sword marks I left as I moved as it seemed like the most logical explanation.

'Or maybe the entrance is through the roof or the ground?'

…

3 days later…

'Is it really just this long…?'

Having spent the last three days checking all sides of the corridor for any abnormality that might be out as well as waiting at several points to observe if the marks I would leave would really change and only ending with both my doubts eliminated from the list of possibilities, I wasn't sure what to think of this anymore…

…

5 days later…

Having no choice but to take a rest after running almost non-stop for ten days, I began contemplating the possibilities I denied at the very beginning.

During the last five days, I simply went all out as I tried every single thought and idea that popped up in my mind as I ran, but they were all useless, making me unable to stop thinking of one dangerous possibility…

'Could this place simply be a prison?'