VoC: B1 — 3. Hell
Added 2025-06-04 22:45:50 +0000 UTCPoV:
1. Sophia (Our New 20-Year-Old GF!)
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Where…am I? What is touching me?!
Darkness. Movement. The sensation of countless things crawling over skin that felt wrong, foreign, not her own.
Sophia’s consciousness struggled to surface through layers of confusion and instinctual panic. Her body felt heavy, weighted down by something thick and viscous that clung to her like a second skin. When she finally managed to force her eyes open, the world that greeted her was a nightmare of shadows and writhing shapes.
The chamber around her pulsed with an alien rhythm, its walls seeming to breathe with a life of their own. Phosphorescent veins ran through the stone like arteries, casting sickly-green light across surfaces that glistened with moisture. Everywhere she looked, creatures moved through the darkness—their forms constantly shifting, skin rippling and molding like wet clay being shaped by invisible hands.
Panic seized her chest as she recoiled, her brain wrapped in fog.
One creature near her sprouted additional limbs that withered and regrew moments later, the sound of crackling bone and stretching flesh making her stomach lurch.
I’m in hell!
Terror flooded through her as she tried to scramble away, but her movements felt wrong. Her limbs—were they limbs?—responded sluggishly, as if she were moving through thick honey.
Run! Run! Move!
The texture beneath her hands changed as she crawled—sometimes smooth stone, sometimes yielding flesh that squirmed at her touch. Her form shifted and changed with each movement, parts of her extending and retracting in ways that violated every understanding she had of her own body. The sensation was nauseating, like being turned inside out while remaining conscious of every horrible detail.
When she finally reached what looked like a pool of still water, she felt drawn to look despite every instinct screaming at her to flee. The liquid surface rippled with her approach, and when she peered down at her reflection, the scream that tore from her throat was inhuman—a sound that belonged to the writhing creatures around her.
The thing staring back at her had no fixed form. Its surface bubbled and contorted like molten flesh, occasionally sprouting appendages that split into three barbed tendrils before dissolving back into the mass. As she watched in horror, her mouth—if it could be called that—extended outward in a telescoping motion, revealing rows of needle-sharp teeth designed for purposes she didn’t want to contemplate.
I’m a monster!
“Mmrgmh!”
The unearthly noise of pain gurgled from her deformed mouth as memories crashed through her transformed mind like shattered glass: the nervousness in her voice that final night, the brown paper bag she’d tried to hide from him, the way Damon’s hazel eyes had widened in the split second before the garbage truck slammed into her side of the car.
I…died. It’s my fault… It’s all my fault.
Golden tears—actual liquid that gleamed like precious metal—began streaming down her amorphous cheeks to drop into the pool like ink in pure water. And her first spoken words came out broken and distorted.
“My…fault. It’s my…fault,” she whimpered, her voice a distorted echo of what it once was, the words rippling through the water’s disturbed surface. The guilt that had been growing inside her, the secret she’d carried into that car in Hell’s Kitchen, crystallized into certainty. “This is my punishment. I’m a monster… I’m in hell.”
The admission dissolved into sobbing as she called out for the only anchor she had left in a world gone mad: “Damon… Damon, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please…where are you?”
Yet, all that met her was the disturbing pops and snaps of creatures writhing in the dark. Looking up, all she saw was four walls…a box.
“Damon, where are you?!” she screamed, blurry vision fading out as she fell into the pool, unable to move as if paralyzed, sinking into an endless oblivion. Come, please… Damon. I don’t deserve it. But, please… I need you.
Prison gates that wouldn’t open for her, and on her hands and knees, she closed her eyes, reaching for the only hope she had left. Her soul cried out, as if she had broken wings, falling into an endless abyss.
Water that wasn’t water pressed gently around her, thick as twilight honey. Sophia drifted without sinking, her body held in a hush too deep for echoes. Light filtered down in bruised purples and soft-glowing teals, bending wrong through the pressureless dark. Nothing moved, yet everything breathed. The silence was velvet, and her limbs forgot the habit of gravity.
Above—or perhaps beneath—vast shapes loomed in the gloom: petrified roots or ancient towers, ribbed and knotted with veins of light that pulsed like sleeping monsters. Creatures like thoughtless ribbon peeled past, phosphorescent and slow, curling around her in reverent arcs. They did not touch her. They simply passed, as if she too were part of this place—not a visitor, but a memory.
Sophia drifted.
Not floating—that implied resistance, some conversation between body and world. Here, there was only being. She recognized the feeling: the ninth floor of the dungeon she was born to. Its water-thick air cradled her like a dream caught in amber, halfway between presence and erasure.
Is this Hell…or something else?
I can’t remember.
I can’t remember…
The thoughts came slowly, pushing through consciousness that felt wrapped in wet cotton. Everything was muffled here—sound, light, even pain. Her mind stirred like a creature waking from a deep, fog-like sleep.
Purple phosphorescence bloomed in lazy spirals, cast by creatures that shouldn’t exist. Fish with too many eyes. Jellies that sang in colors her human mind couldn’t name. All of them avoiding her…the thing she’d become. Fear. They feared her.
Drip.
Drop.
Breathe.
She was breathing water.
The realization should have sparked panic, but her body—was it even hers anymore—processed the liquid as naturally as air. Her lungs, if lungs still applied, expanded and contracted in rhythms not her own—movements borrowed from someone else’s nightmare.
Her limbs didn’t move right. Joints bent wrong. Her tongue felt too long, slick against teeth she couldn’t count. Her vision stretched too wide—inhumanly so—locking onto three different points in perfect, simultaneous clarity.
A school of luminescent fish drifted past, scales catching the violet light like scattered prayers.
Beautiful.
She reached toward them—and recoiled.
Her arm extended wrong. Too long. Too soft. The surface shimmered, rippling between flesh and something else—something that shouldn’t exist outside fever dreams.
No. Not her arm. She had no arm.
Her tongue unspooled, split three ways, neurotoxin barbs sliding out from wet flesh like blooming knives. They gleamed in the purple glow, elegant and obscene.
The minnows scattered.
Smart little things.
The alien thought vibrated through her like sonar, primal and absolute. Panic vanished as swiftly as it had come, dissolved by a deeper logic. Above—or perhaps below—the ceiling of Floor 9 pressed in like a tidal weight, heavy with the gravity of inevitable ascension.
She felt it calling: a resonance in what might once have been bones. Something about territory. Something about purpose. Something about—
Hungry.
The word detonated from beneath thought. Not her mind—her mind was still unraveling the impossible architecture of this flooded cavern, the way stone columns spiraled like petrified screams. This came from the meat of her, from the thing wearing her as a second skin.
So hungry.
And instead of rising toward light, she plunged deeper, cutting through the murk. Instincts guided her—not upward to safety, but downward to thinner waters, where prey walked and swam. The pressure shifted around her, not resisting but folding.
Reality bent. Pockets of air emerged like reverse puddles—spaces where breath regained meaning. She pierced one such veil beside a fungal colony pulsing with slow, bioluminescent heartbeats: the bleeding edge between Floor 9 and Floor 8.
The transition was violence without sound—water to air, one existence slamming into another. Her body accepted it without hesitation, folding inward, rearranging. Lungs reasserted themselves. Bones and meat solidified. And still, she could feel the pull of the depths behind her, like a second womb.
She did not surface. She arrived.
Adaptation. Evolution. Hunger.
The words weren’t hers. They came from the thing she was becoming, patient as cancer, inevitable as gravity.
But somewhere behind the predator thoughts, coffee-brown eyes remembered hazel ones. Remembered promises made in New York rain. Remembered what it meant to be human.
Damon…
The name struck like a prayer. Like an anchor. She clutched it close as her body moved on without her, drawn toward the killing grounds of Floor 8.
A holographic screen bloomed across her vision.
[Equipped Title: Elite Dungeon Boss]
[Effect: +1000% EXP until Level 10.]
[At Level 10, EXP gain halts. You will be teleported to Floor 10. You cannot return to Floors 1–9.]
[Advance past Floor 10 by conquering stronger territory.]
What…does that mean?
[Unequipped Title: Titan Ancestry]
[Effect: Strength and Constitution +1]
I’m…a Titan? A Titan Boss?
I don’t feel like a Titan…
[5 Stat Points Available.]
Confusion flickered—then gave way to raw desire. To survival.
[Current Base Strength: 21. Highly Skilled.]
…
[Passive Bonuses: Added to Base.]
[Active Bonus: Max Titanic Growth (90 Seconds Combat) +4 Strength.]
[Active Bonus: Grapple +2 Strength.]
…
[Base Strength Increased from 21 to 26. Distinguished.]
[Current Strength with Bonuses: 32. Genius.]
…
[Current Base Intelligence: 5. Incompetent.]
…
Feed… I need to feed.
- Day One -
The Bloom Toad squatted beside a pool of bioluminescent slime, its throat sac pulsing with toxic promise. Level 7. The system didn’t need to warn Sophia—her instincts already knew.
[Race: Mimic]
[Class: Barbarian]
[Subclass: E-tier Juggernaut]
[Lineage/Path: Titan Dreadnought]
A Level 1 against a Level 7?
Certain death—for anything with sense.
[Dreadnought: Recklessness] didn’t understand sense.
And despite only 5 Points of Intelligence, she wasn’t stupid.
23 Points of Wisdom did the work for her. Study came easily.
She had watched it for an hour—still, silent, a mushroom to any observer.
She knew the tell: the throat sac deflated just slightly, a breath before the strike. That’s when the tongue came—barbed, fast, laced with paralytic toxin.
Range: fifteen feet.
Potency: strong enough to drop the arctic foxes of Floor 6 in a single puncture.
It was one of only two apex monsters on this floor.
She wasn’t of this floor, though.
And she wasn’t just a brute.
She was the predator who learned before leaping.
When it looked away, she became a chest—gold-wrapped, lacquered, promising.
[Titanic Presence] activated—a mental attack that poked at nearby minds.
The toad’s bulbous eyes locked on her.
Greed overrode caution. Even monsters loved treasure. Their Below-Average Intelligence understood one thing above all: treasure brought outsiders. And outsiders tasted best.
It approached.
Closer. Closer.
Ten feet. The throat sac deflated—
She opened before the tongue launched, her own pseudopod—her tongue-like appendage—meeting it mid-strike. The toad’s barb punched through what should have been her brain, finding only empty space where her [Pocket Dimension] yawned.
[Adhesion] activated.
Her grip locked.
She yanked.
The toad flew forward, off-balance, unable to counter her unnatural weight. Too late, it understood. She met it mid-air—[Haymaker] met it mid-air—sending four thousand pounds of focused violence colliding with its skull.
The crack echoed through the swamp.
But…it lived.
Of course it lived. Level 7 against Level 1.
Her perfect ambush had bought her one clean hit, and now—
The tongue ripped free from her grasp, tearing chunks of pseudopod with it. Poison surged into her bloodstream.
[Acid Immunity] activated.
The toxins fizzled harmlessly, but her vision blurred for just a moment—long enough for the toad’s full weight to slam into her. She was crushed against a patch of fungal growth that exploded into her wounds.
[Spore Immunity] triggered.
Run. Have to—no, I have to fight!
[Dreadnought: Recklessness] surged.
[Cold Resolve] counterbalanced.
A second tongue burst from beneath its jaw—because, of course, it had two. This one struck clean through her center mass, the barb blooming open like a hooked flower, flooding her with [Paralysis].
But she wasn’t out of the fight yet.
She did not fall.
Rows of monstrous teeth latched onto the tongue with desperate fury, chewing through pulsing muscle as acid flooded backward through the tunnel.
The toad’s eyes bulged, its body shuddering. Even through [Poison Resistance], its weapon began to melt from the inside out.
[Titanic Growth: F-tier Activated]
Titan Lineage slowly unsealing, her size gradually increased, advancing every thirty seconds up to C-tier.
[Size increased by 20%]
[Constitution and Strength +1.]
Flesh rippling.
It was just enough to matter. Her form swelled, barb tearing larger wounds but also giving her leverage. The growth pushed the toad back.
She bit, batted with her muscular tongue, and shoved the stunned toad, having lost its primary weapon. It croaked up a choked plea for help, calling its pack, but Sohpia’s appendage slammed down on its head, snapping its jaws shut and making it go cross-eyed.
Thirty more seconds of desperate time buying…and [Slumbering Titan Blood] activated.
Her [E-Tier Dreadnought] and [F-Tier Hyper HP Recovery] sustained her:
+150% Armor Class.
[Unbending] granted [Control Immunity].
[Retaliation Damage: 25%] engaged.
[Enemy Fear Damage: 50%] scaling.
[7% HP Regeneration per Minute in Combat]
The six-level-higher monster made a break for the wall—desperate to escape.
Her tongue split like a claw, barbs burying into its soft underbelly.
She yanked.
Its scream—wet, gurgled—came too late.
She leapt to meet it.
[Haymaker] connected a second time.
Bone shattered.
Green blood baptized her.
Her first kill.
[You have slain Bloom Toad - Level 7.]
[1 Feat Point Gained: First Kill.]
[Experience Gained: 855.]
[EXP to Level Two: –355]
…
[Level 2 Achieved]
[EXP to Level Three: 645.]
I did it… I won. Damon, I—
Damon?
Who…is Damon again?
Many eyes blanking, she stared at her hard-won prize, body beginning to tremble as his hazel eyes flashed into her mind—a song blooming in her heart that connected them.
Tears fell.
I can’t forget… Please, don’t forget.
Sophia blinked, the image of Damon’s hazel eyes flickering in and out of her mind as numbers meaning something appeared. It triggered something. An itch in the back of her mind…
[3 Feat Points Gained; 13 Available]
[3 Stat Points Gained; 3 Available]
…
Hungry… Power…
Then, with a flash of her screen, it was gone.
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[Current Base Strength: 26. Highly Skilled.]
[Base Strength Increased from 26 to 29.]
[Current Strength with Bonuses: 35. Genius.]
…
The numbers flashed past her vision, too quick for her fraying mind to process. Strength. Always more strength. She didn’t question why—she couldn’t. Not when hunger spoke louder than thought.
…
[Heavyweight Upgraded from E-tier to C-tier: -9 Feat Points.]
[Active Feat: Haymaker Upgrade to D-tier.]
[Every 60s, user may deliver a single, devastating blow. Damage bonus: 2% per 100 lbs. Current: 90% (doubled to 180% via Titanic Growth).]
[Passive Feat: Heavy Fisted Upgraded to D-tier.]
[Slightly increases damage based on weight (100lbs = 0.25%). Current: 11.25% (22.5% Max)]
For a moment, she paused.
Should I…be upgrading these?
Wasn’t there a plan? A plan…
The thought came and went like smoke. Gone.
[Barefisted Upgraded from F-tier to E-tier: -2 Feat Points.]
[User’s limbs are no longer mere tools—they are hardened, adaptive extensions of raw destructive power. Your pseudopods and very body, strike with the full force of your mass and will.]
[2 Feat Point Remaining.]
Croaks sounding in the distance. Reinforcements, too late.
Far too late.
Mind struggling to keep above the surface, her Feats deactivated now that she was out of combat. Sophia steeled her bleeding heart. Tongue sliding out, she gripped the toad’s leg and dragged it into the nearby waters, sinking into its depths to feast.
Remember… Hungry… Remember! Damon…
Slipping below the surface, she saw his happy face…hunting her struggling mind.
- Day Two -.
The second toad she found had friends. Pack hunters. They’d surrounded her while she was feeding on fungus—trying to understand what her new body could digest in those rare moments of lucidity.
Three tongues.
Three different angles.
No escape.
She took two barbs before [Haymaker] connected with the smallest one’s leg—not a kill, just enough to make it retreat.
The others pressed in.
Fanged teeth met hardened flesh. Their poison failed, but pain didn’t. Thirty seconds of tearing, choking struggle—until
[Slumbering Titan Blood] activated.
Her body began to repair. Not enough to win, just to survive.
How did it get so messy?
A barb pierced one of her eyes.
How did I get so messy… I have to live through this hell for him!
Despite the regeneration, her consciousness began to fade. She collapsed to her side—playing dead. Let them believe the poison had won. Let them move in to feed.
She counted the seconds.
Twenty-five. Just before the regeneration faded.
She lurched forward.
Tears streaked from her many eyes, mixing with glittering yellow blood. She sank her jaws into the nearest toad’s eye, ripped it free with a scream that didn’t sound human.
Whatever she had said—whatever sound came out—froze them.
In the chaos of its thrashing, she escaped. Dove deep into a pool. Hid in an underwater cave for six hours while remaining in combat with weak fish to maintain her regeneration
However, that sixth hour, when lucidity returned…
[You have slain Bloom Toad - Level 8.]
[Experience Gained: 954.]
[EXP to Level Three: –318.]
…
[Level 3 Achieved.]
[EXP to Level Four: 1,932.]
[3 Feat Points Gained; 5 Available]
[3 Stat Points Gained; 3 Available]
…
I killed it?
I guess it bled out…or something else finished it off.
Doesn’t matter.
I’m surviving.
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[ Next POV: Damon]
[ Theme: Okay, let's go back to our MC for a bit of a breather!]
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