A massive, iron banded door stood resolutely in the center of the building’s base, engraved with a variety of scenes. Vast, tentacled beasts delivering gospels to hordes of rabid, slavering followers. Civilizations burning beneath the gaze of gods from beyond the stars. The images grew and grew within Jonathan’s mind, until he realized that his hands were drifting towards the gate, within which a portal was forming, a cadaverous hand reaching out towards his own.
Snatching his arms away from the gate, Jonathan expelled a blast of the Void from his palms, melting through the door, and banishing the portal. His breaths came quickly as he stared at where the dimensional gate had opened, nearly sucking him into its embrace.
Sighing, he mustered his courage, and strode through the blasted doorway, and into the castle. Space warped around him, the hallway that he stepped into lightning before him. A ruby red carpet extended forwards, with the walls lined with tapestries, and ominous portraits that displayed different people depending on the angle they were viewed at. Jonathan turned, but the door was gone, leaving him trapped. He punched the wall, shattering it for a dozen feet into its depth, but it just kept going, an expanse of stone without end.
Jonathan turned, only to find that he was no longer alone. What looked like a child stood behind him, a young human girl, clad in a yellowing nightdress. Her eyes were unusually bright, and a faint smile touched at the corners of her lips.
“Did Father send for you?” She asked, in a high pitched voice. “He gets lonely, you know…” Her voice trailed off at the end.
“Who are you?” Jonathan replied, readying for a fight.
The girl frowned. “I’m… I’m-” Her face twisted into a grimace, and below the thin flesh, something wriggled, shifting her facial features. When she looked up at Jonathan, he was no longer looking at the same girl.
Her teeth had turned into fangs, and her unnaturally bright eyes, into hollow holes of blinding white. Her body blurred, and a clawed hand streaked towards Jonathan’s neck, glowing with light. He backhanded the monster, shattering its delicate bones in an instant. The creature struck the far wall, its body breaking apart. From the ruins of the vaguely human form, a serpentine form arose, slithering towards Jonathan. He atomized it with a blast of his element, watching as it shriveled up from the inside out, a wave of purple destroying its form.
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Staring at the corpse of the monster’s human form, Jonathan shook his head in disgust. This entire dungeon was vile, and as he progressed through the castle, he had a feeling that it would only grow viler still.
The hallway continued on for what felt like miles, growing ever more sinister as Jonathan progressed. More of the strange, humanoid vessels for the worm like monstrosities he had seen earlier approached him. In some way, they could tell that he had already killed one of their number, and immediately attacked, clawed hands streaking towards his armor as their faces twisted in murderous rage. It was one of the most disturbing things Jonathan had ever seen, and for the last few months, he had been living in what was quite literally Hell.
The essence gain was substantial, however, given how long the corridor was. He was rapidly approaching the next level, and he suspected that as the dungeon progressed in strength, he would gain more than that. This was a lot better for his leveling prospects than the challenge of Mediocrity, that was to be sure.
The paintings on the walls grew steadily grimmer, and more disturbing the further he went, turning from strange, illusory amalgams of various people into ones that showed monsters lurking behind a facade of flesh. From one angle, a painting showed a proud ruler, a golden crown on his head, and a scepter grasped firmly in one hand. From another, that crown turned into a circlet of wriggling flesh, and the scepter, into a dismembered human arm. Parts of the paintings started to move at a visible rate as well, and they began to protrude outwards.
The hallway came to an end by the time the paintings were fully embedded into the real world, with people reaching out of the frames, arms groping blindly towards Jonathan. The very end of the hallway was covered by a massive portrait of a tentacled monstrosity, eyes blazing with the light of madness, its tentacles reaching out towards Jonathan. Its fanged maw twisted into a grin as it saw him, and before he could blink, the tentacles snapped out, and wrapped around him, before tearing him back into the painting. A flash of white light blinded him for a moment, before he emerged into another floor of the castle.
