The reflection of the red wasteland shifted and distorted into a spyral of reddish hues. Grandma Tacha felt as if the world was rotating all around her. Then, as if someone had pushed her from behind, she exited from the other end of the gate feet first.

  For a moment she found herself sospended into the air, paralel to the ground. However she had no time to process her position before falling clumsly on her back.

  She felt the hit deep in her bones “Hissss” Massaging her back, she got up. On the side, Fr?st was snickering at her, and even with a glare in his direction he didn’t stop. Instead he laughed even harder.

  “Hahaha, the situation isn’t that bad afterall” the young player was laughing so much that tears had completely covered his vision. Seeing how that old bag had fallen from the gate, had really lifted his spirits! Earlier, when he had gone through the gate, he had been lucky to have come out in a standing position.

  Even though his balance had been a bit off because of the shift in gravity, he had managed to not fall over as comically as the granny.

  Grumbling, Tacha dusted off her clothes. She couldn’t deny that she might have deserved it a little. Just a little though! Before she could complain to the kid, the gate behind her made a low humming sound before trembling and disappearing.

  Well, disappearing wasn’t the correct term, as now was a floating wolf head emblem on its place. Worried that it might be some kind of mechanism, Tacha waved a radish in the middle of it. Noticing that there was no change in the surroundings, she put the vegetable away with disappointment.

  Still in the middle of his fits of laughter, Fr?st did his best to convey his thoughts “Pffff, annoying color aside, haha, there doesn’t seem to be any mobs around” the black haired guy coughed a few times to stop his laughter “Earlier I tried climbing one of the sides, and I almost floated upwards”

  The grandma frowned “Upwards?” what kind of weird place was this?

  They were located in a canyon, smaller floating stones all around the place. As she swept her eyes around, she hoped that she would soon get used to all of this reddish brightness. Looking up, grandma Tacha could see a few bigger platforms floating in the sky. On them there were some broken pillars upside down, as if gravity didn’t matter to them.

  Tacha took out one of the radishes in her inventory and launched it upward. Once the vegetable reached the highest point of the throw, it stopped in place for a few seconds before floating off towards the red sky.

  With sad eyes, the granny looked on as the radish kept getting further and further away. She hadn’t fully believed what Fr?st told her, but now she had no choice but to believe it.

  The two looked at each other a bit warily. Neither of them wanted to magically drift away in the unkown. Still, when confronted with such a weird enviroment, they found it more wise to stick togheter, even if it was just to use the other as bait in case of emergency.

  Coughing to break the akward silence, Tacha pointed towards one of the two possible directions “We should get a move on” Fr?st nodded, and the two walked with a couple of meters of distance from each other.

  They walked for a bit before reaching the end of the path. The canyon opened up over an abyss of red fog, floating platforms and rocks all over the place and in all of positions. Tacha thought that the path ended there, but when she walked closer to the edge of the abyss, she saw that the path made a U turn towards the bottom. As she rolled a radish over, it just kept going, following the path and defying gravity in the process.

  Glancing a bit further, she could see the red fog creeping closer. The radish rolled and rolled, until it was engulfed in fog. Maybe it was just her impression, but was the fog getting closer to them?

  She turned towards the young player and she caught him looking at her, a few inches closer than comfort. After exchanging a few more glances, the two took their distance from each other.

  As Tacha was going to say something, a notification popped up in front of her eyes.

  Curiously, she took out the compass that she had obtained through the completion of the investigation quest.

  It was a simple gadget. However, unlike a normal compass, the dial had no cardinal indicators. The needle, that was supposed to be stuck in place, was spinning like crazy.

  After 10 seconds of spinning, the needle settled in pointing donwards on her 10 o’clock.

  She had no idea what it was pointing at, but if its description was of any use…

  It was most probably pointing to an important location. Could she have been wrong when she had called it a useless reward earlier?

  Fr?st inched a bit closer “What is it?” Tacha showed it to him, its needle moving accordingly “A useful item apparently” It didn’t take long for him to understand what it was. Though he couldn’t help but wonder from where she was pulling out such useful items each time.

  Ignoring the piercing stare, Tacha carefully followed the path. Contrary to her fears, she didn’t fall down the abyss below, however she did feel lighter than earlier. Maybe if she jumped now, she would really fall down.

  As both players followed the path showed by the compass, fog eventually surrounded them. The visibility was worse, but it was just that. There were no nasty surprises awaiting them beyond the fog.

  That was, until a quest popped up in front of them.

  Fr?st and Tacha looked at each other, as the same thought passed through their mind. The quest implied that something lived in this weird place. And they weren’t going to have tea and biscuits with it if they were to meet.

  With now a renowed sense of urgency, they continued on, passing from platform to platform. The needle was everchanging, each time turning sharply and decisively. The gravity too changed from platform to platform, however it never felt like they were lost, for each platform was slightly different from each other. Soon, the fatigue was heavy enough that both of them started panting.

  Then a new notification popped up.

  A lingering sense of dread washed over them, as Tacha quickly opened up her status window to check if there were any changes.

  When she saw that there were no changes on the status effects she exhaled a sigh of relief. But when she noticed that her stats were lower than usual, she became anxious. Was it the effect of said mark? Just to be sure, she checked the skill section of her menu, and there she found a new shiny skill in the previously empty section.

  It would’ve been a marvelous discovery at any other time; too bad that the new skill held no good news for the two players.

  Granny Tacha looked on in horror at the effects of the skill. It just gave debuffs to everything. Was it even legal to have a skill like this in the game? She was now as weak as a sunfish! Stumbling on a random rock was enough to kill her now. Moreover, if she couldn’t recover Hp and Mp over the 20%, then that would mean that she could have 2 Hp at best once the Hp loss of the voidblight had shaved off enough of her health.

  Wait. Didn’t this mean that she had less than 4 and half minutes before dying?

  Eyes opening wide at the realization, she clenched the compass in her hand firmly. She feared that out of nervousness she would drop and lose it. And knowing the weird gravity of this place, it might float off in an unreachable direction.

  And right now, the compass was as valuable as her life.