For Official Purposes Only

  Document: "Excerpt from ████'s Journal"

  RECV: ██████████ █████

  I guess if there were ever an excuse to keep a journal, it would be now. I am writing this after spending what I can only assume is a day in ███████████. The lights have dimmed in this place, at least. I'll do my best to keep track of the days in here so they can be cross-referenced when I manage to ██████.

  The first day passed mostly smoothly, although my feet ache. I met two other people, ████ and █████. They're from ██████ and way too young to be caught up in this. If I can't escort them myself, I'll try to find a group that can.

  The way that ███████ and ████ just ██████ after killing a ███████ is fascinating. I had heard the stories, and read the interviews, but seeing it in person is something else.

  █████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ If the rest of the interviews are to be believed, they ████████████████████████████████████████████████████.

  If I don't make it out, tell ████ not to blame himself.

  - ████

  (Maybe my therapist was right about journaling being a healthy hobby. Who knew?)

  Eric stopped at the threshold of the transport van as the old man sidled his way back to his seat. He had lived here for the last couple of years, and even though his time here hadn't all been good vibes and happy times, he would miss the old creaky hallways and the intermittent water supply.

  Actually, no. This place was horrible and Eric was glad to be able to leave it behind. Thinks had been so much simpler back then. Eric's bags had been stowed in the luggage compartment, so he slung his day pack over his shoulder and broke his gaze on his old home for the last time.

  And stepped face first into a wall.

  Eric was completely taken aback by this. He supported his weight with his right arm as he gently massaged his forehead with his left. His newly-wet fingertips abandoned his face as he held back a stream of profanities. He opened his eyes to find himself in a thoroughly unfamiliar environment.

  Eric found himself in front of a rough-shod stone wall. Made of stones of varying sizes piled on top of each other, with the gaps filled in with a rough mortar. A splotch of red marked the stones directly in front of him as Eric continued to wipe an overly dramatic amount of blood from his forehead.

  To his left and right, a corridor stretched as far as he could see, lit only from a collection of orange-red orbs spaced roughly 10 feet apart, illuminating their immediate surroundings but leaving patches of ominous darkness between them. The light was dim, but enough to see by, for the most part.

  Overcome with curiosity, Eric stretched his arm out toward one of the orbs, only to be rewarded with a sharp stinging pain in his hand, and a pronounced sizzling sound. He pulled back his hand as he narrowly held back yet another stream of curses.

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  Eric knew where he was, but that didn't really inspire a sense of security or safety in him, more a lingering pit of dread in his stomach. He pulled off his day pack to take stock of what supplies he had available to him. Road snacks, water, and his secret weapon.

  His unpreparedness and procrastination had seemed to work out in his favor for once, as Eric's dossier on the breach dungeon's many floors lay nestled in between a plastic-wrapped sandwich and the small, leather-bound journal his therapist had insisted he start using.

  Better late than never, Eric supposed.

  Eric absentmindedly munched on a protein bar as he trudged down the corridor he had arrived in. Seeing no practical difference between going left or right from his starting point, he had simply picked a direction and started walking.

  As a result of his recent head trauma, Eric felt his headache from the morning returning. The Hollywood bleeding had stopped, at the very least, so Eric could continue to hold on to some scraps of his dignity. His headache was the least of his troubles. From the information gathered so far, he had no Idea where he was right now. It didn't appear in the notes in his binder either, from what he had skimmed.

  Which meant one of two things. Either this level of the dungeon was a recent addition --- or no one had ever survived it before. Of the two, one felt a lot more comforting, so he would continue to believe that one, until proven otherwise.

  As if to punctuate Eric's prediction, a scream ripped through the dungeon corridor. The sound echoed and twisted in the air, so Eric couldn't make out a direction. Eric's legs froze in fright. As much as he was loathe to admit it, Eric was no hero.

  After all, who hadn't dreamed of being the brave knight, battling the forces of evil and allowing justice and freedom to prevail? The reality was, in this situation, Eric was thinking of which direction to run away. A real hero would have immediately run toward the source of the danger, putting their own life on the line for that of others, Eric thought.

  Eric was not that, though. And he simply chose to run in the same way he had been walking before. Unfortunately for Eric, and rather fortunately for everyone else, he chose wrong --- or right?

  He found himself face-to-face with a grotesque scene. A putrescent monster, reminiscent of a rotting human corpse was clawing at a young girl, roughly age 16. She was curled into a ball, having seemingly lost the will to fight back against the monster.

  The monsters claws only managed to graze the girl, staining her light yellow t-shirt red with dark blood. A boy of the same age as her stood behind the monster, desperately trying to pull it off of the young woman. His face was twisted in concentration, but his hands found no purchase on the creature's half-rotten flesh.

  Eric stopped in his tracks, pausing to evaluate the situation. He could turn tail and run, abandoning these two to their fate --- but no, the boy's eyes had locked on to his, and they were screaming for help.

  Eric made up his mind, then. He couldn't be a hero forever, but he could be a hero for a minute. His body started moved before his brain had finished objecting.

  He charged down the corridor towards the two figures, desperately clinging to to their own lives in this desolate dungeon.

  "Hey!" Eric shouted, prompting the remaining two figures to turn toward him in that moment.

  The walking corpse looked even worse up close. The purpled skin was drawn tight along its bones. It's jaw hung slack, teeth blackened and uneven. Scraps of cloth and a dark brown ichor hanging from them.

  The boy took the opening, planting his feet on the cold, dark cobble. He takes advantage of the monster's temporary distraction to reach his hands around the monster's head, digging his fingers into its eye sockets.

  The monster swipes blindly at the boy as it rears on legs, attempting to throw the young boy off.

  Eric got low as he approached. The blinded monster clawed uselessly at the air and over his back as the young boy continued to dig his fingers deeper into its sockets. Eric landed a tackle at the monster's midsection. Folding it in half and sending all three of them flying down the corridor. Away from the ailing girl.

  As they started to tumble, the young boy managed to extricate himself from the monster, rolling away as the creature's skull impacts the floor with a wet crunch.