Where am I?
No, seriously, where am I?
The last thing that Satoshi recalled was dozing off in Fury's van on their way home. He could've sworn that his head 'accidentally' leaned on Shiroi's shoulders as he... drooled?
Shaking his head as violently as he could in order to forget the scene, Satoshi then refocused himself on the situation he found himself in.
What greeted him as soon as his eyelids fluttered open was pitch-black darkness that extended as far as his eyes could focus. At first, Satoshi vaguely assumed that he was in a different dimension and that he found himself here while sleeping. As to how he got here, he could only wonder, but maybe sleeping was one of the prerequisites in order to get here.
Fwooo~~~
A weird glow of faint blue light slowly came into view, illuminating the center of whatever room Satoshi stumbled upon. In the middle was a huge slab of circular stone. Unrecognizable letters belonging to an ancient language of sorts were written all around the stone. Right in the middle of it was a gem that glowed a blue color.
The faint blue light then glowed much brighter, intensifying as precious seconds passed. A part of Satoshi wanted to run and get away from the Dimension where he accidentally wandered in but another part of him wanted to stay and see things through. After all, it's not every day that one wakes up to a horror setting and Satoshi was a bit curious as to how everything would turn out.
Clearing his throat, Satoshi took a look around before cupping his hands to his mouth and shouting. "Hello? Is anybody home? I mean, this doesn't look like a home at all but I didn't wish to intrude. Also, forgive my disrespect if I ever did something disrespectful. I'm new to this kind of setting." He continued.
That's when the lighting of the room got comfortably brighter and he noticed that there were twelve other circular slabs of stones around the original huge circle in the middle. On the twelve were twelve different creatures who sat in the middle of the circles.
The first entity was a normal computer with arms and legs, and Satoshi immediately realized it was Dex. The second entity was blacked out as if a game feature that hadn't been unlocked yet. The third entity was blocked as well. And well, one would know the rest.
"Dex, what's going on?" Satoshi asked.
"Dex? I am not Dex." The computer then voiced out. "I am Dex 2.0."
"Really funny Dex, so this room... is this like a meeting place where all my other familiars gathered?" Satoshi asked. He then sat in front of Dex, right in the middle of the huge circle which was positioned at the center.
"Yes... and no..." Dex then continued before heaving a sigh. Actually, he was just kidding about being Dex 2.0 when in all actuality, it was just him. "As you might've guessed, this is another Dimension and we were summoned here against our will. Still... it is pretty weird since it's only our consciousness that got us here."
"So I was really sleeping before all this happened." Satoshi heaved a sigh of relief since he finally understood a small portion of the entire circumstance. "Still, do you have any idea just how and why we were brought here?"
"Funny you should say that." A voice boomed.
Satoshi and Dex froze in their place as an ear-shattering voice reverberated in the entire room, causing the two of them to impulsively flinch. Of course, they weren't the least bit scared (even if someone asked them if they were genuinely scared they'd flat out deny it) but the voice just had that powerful punch to it. One comment and Satoshi already told himself that he won't mess with whoever owns that voice.
"Hello, kind whoever you are, we don't know how Dex and I got here but we humbly pay our respects to you." Satoshi immediately voiced out, cupping his hands and bowing in all directions before doing it a second time. By the time he reached his third lap of bowing to every direction, the voice then spoke once again.
"I'm right here, you don't have to bow to all the representatives." The voice then continued.
Now, even though Satoshi seemed like he was anxiously panicking, he was actually calm and collected. He had been to many situations where everything was unfamiliar to him so this current ordeal was just a normal encounter in life for Satoshi. Ever since he was born on Earth filled with major problems, alien invasions, dimensional portals, and otherworldly phenomena like dungeons, he became used to life. It was a life full of surprises and it was never boring, but Satoshi had adjusted to it in no time.
That's why waking up in the middle of the horror setting or waking up in what seemed like an indie game of sorts didn't fluster him at all.
"Where exactly are you... " Satoshi trailed off, squinting his eyes while scanning the dark room for the fourth time. (He still made another round of bowing down before stopping on his fourth rotation.)
"Here. HERE!" The voice was getting rather impatient.
Satoshi then listened to the voice a bit more carefully this time and that's when he realized that the voice actually came from the black entity beside Dex. It may seem like the entity was an unlockable character in a video game but it actually existed.
"Ah, sorry, I thought you were a premium character that needed to be unlocked. Who are you? What is this place? Where am I?" Satoshi returned the question back to the being who was beside Dex.
"I am... I have no name, unfortunately." The shadow-like entity then spoke. "But I am what they call the Statue of Captivity. You've recently tamed me during your run to the Dungeon X-1022."
The shadow-like entity then transformed into the statue that Satoshi tamed in Dungeon Spire.