The Devil Is Real (Noir x Arifureta)

Chapter 2: The Vampire Is Real

The room behind the sealed doors was vast. Incredibly vast, probably bigger than an entire floor of the dungeon. It was a dark, creepy place, with a single luminous object in the end of the passageway that clearly looked like a hallway. The room was probably very large to house hundreds of those same giant cyclops that guarded the giant doors. Very tall columns led the way to an incredibly wide path, and there were no other objects in sight. Noir can see in the dark like it is daytime, so the lack of light was never a problem.

"Isn't that..." Noir openly pondered as he eyed the mysterious object. It was some sort of 3D cube, highly detailed and looking very sophisticated. There was a lot of mana going off of it, too. Noir walked closer and closer in the incredibly vast path. The object clearly had something in it—encasing it? Almost as if acting as some sort of prison to isolate the object.

It was then that a faint voice called out to him. A very faint and soft one. It was probably from some young adult girl, maybe even a girl who's just reached 20 years old. "W-who's there...?" The voice was extremely weak. It was like she'd never seen the light of the day for decades, and as if she'd never been fed anything to drink or eat for who knows how long. Nevertheless, despite the softness and weakness of the voice, it surprisingly resonated in the vast room.

"Is someone... there? P-please... I..." The hoarse voice pleaded amidst the pitch-black sea of a room, where any definition of despair can be overwhelmed by numbness from the lack of hope and faith. If anyone were trapped in this room, for even a short amount of time, madness would swallow them whole. The endless darkness and absolute silence in this dark space will drive anyone to insanity.

"No way... this deep down in the dungeon? Is it a trap?" Although Noir sounded cautious, he was certainly behaving otherwise. He did not let it surprise him even. He was just that unfamiliar with this world, Tortus. He just continued on his way with the only purpose in his mind to satisfy his curiosity.

Noir stepped up the stairs that led to the luminous cube that trapped the being, until he was directly in front of it. He laid eyes to a beautiful young woman with blonde hair and crimson blood eyes. Those eyes reminded him of a rival from hell. The woman was frail-looking and had skin so pale it wasn't farfetched to call her drained to death.

The upper half of her body, beyond the breast was the only part that was exposed—poking out of the large cubic prison. Anything else, from that point on downwards, was encased like in an inescapable and unbreakable cage of ice.

"P-please..." Noir looked at her, his intentions not the slightest bit decipherable by his facial expression. She looked so tired and out of vitality that it was a wonder she was alive. It looked like it takes all her energy to even produce a single hush sound, much less speak an entire word or more.

Even so, anyone who can think with their brain and not their dick would first think this was a trap. Afterall, this floor was stacked with over a hundred floors above it. There has to be a REASON why someone was sealed all the way down here, far from the reaches of the sun and civilization, where life is hopeless. But Noir was unbothered. A true king.

"I beg you..." The girl continued with her plead, as sincere as she could to get Noir to feel her desperation. "Please... help me..."

Noir still was looking at her blankly. In front of the cubic prison, dust particles can be seen falling in the air. It was a strange and ephemeral instance of silence, that, somehow, felt even more than the girl's entire time of being sealed. It was a moment of truth for the girl. A day and a choice in which her entire life will be turned upside down. She's spent more time locked down here than her time in the surface. Surely, she was at a point where she felt the highest tension she's ever felt in her life.