Autophagy

The invisible maid started screaming as Song Lei stabbed her. It was another maid just like the other one.

"Fuck!" Song Lei muttered. He finished the maid off and ran to the kitchen island to press the button he had seen before.

Song Lei laid on the ground and pressed the button.

'Great!' Song Lei shouted in his mind. He was exhilarated. After pressing the button, a small drawer had come out of the kitchen island. As the drawer was initially integrated into the kitchen island, it would've been impossible to find without Song Lei noticing the button. He felt that he was finally a bit lucky after a long time.

Song Lei pulled the drawer and looked inside it. There were more than ten pills in it. Song Lei quickly picked and wrapped them up in a napkin.

After his job was over, he had to decide what he was going to do. The maid's shout might've alerted Amber.

'I've to go back to Isabel as fast as I can and give Mia the pills. I feel like the things will start spiraling down,' Song Lei decided.

*Rumble!

The whole mansion started shaking. Song Lei had to spend quite a bit of effort to keep his balance. After some time, the shaking stopped.

'What is happening?' Song Lei thought. He ran up to the light switch and tried to turn it on. Unfortunately, he couldn't do so. No matter what he did, the lights wouldn't turn on.

'There's no way this is a natural quake,' Song Lei omitted the thought. There wasn't even a ground outside of the mansion, let alone tectonic plates. 'Something big must be going on. I have to be quick.'

Understanding that he didn't have much time left, Song Lei opened the door of the kitchen. He gazed into the eerie corridor of the mansion. Normally, the lights would be on for Song Lei because of the reverse lights rule. But now, there wasn't anything illuminating the corridor other than the faint light of the moon.

Another thing was the fact that the nothingness was slowly spreading. Normally stable state of the nothingness was broken as it was spreading to the upper floor slowly but surely.

'Is the mansion breaking down?' Song Lei guessed. There were set rules in the mansion like the reverse light rule. These kinds of things seemed to form the dream space's identity. As those rules were disappearing, Song Lei guessed that things weren't going well for the mansion.

'Amber and Alan might've already started fighting...'

Song Lei closed his eyes and stepped out of the kitchen. Walking through this corridor was really dangerous as there could be maids there. If they located him first and decided to stealth, Song Lei wouldn't even know what killed him.

Fortunately, there didn't seem to be anything dangerous for now. Before passing by the dining room, Song Lei put his ear on the door to listen.

'What the...'

There were loud hissing and whistling coming from the dining room. Cutlery was being thrown around. He could even hear some spanking from there. Two people were shouting at each other angrily. Weird thing was, there seemed to be something stopping Song Lei from understanding what was happening behind the door. He could understand the words being spoken but couldn't understand the full sentences no matter how he tried.

Instead, he stopped listening and kept walking. He wanted to collect some information but it didn't seem to be possible for now. After going up the stairs, Song Lei was met with the purple goo from before.

'This is bad...' He thought. The goo had formed its own tentacles and was fighting Amber's tentacles. The whole corridor was in a messy situation. On the good side, though, as the tentacles were occupied fighting each other, it was easier for Song Lei to walk through the corridor.

He reached Isabel's room and entered. She was sitting next to Mia who was lying on the bed. She was caressing Mia's head. Hearing Song Lei opening the door, she jumped out of bed.

"Did you find the pills?" Isabel asked. Song Lei unzipped his backpack and brought out the napkin he had used to wrap the pills with. Seeing the pills, Isabel's eyes started shining.

"Thank you, Lei!" She shouted with excitement before taking the pills from him. Song Lei smiled at her.

"No problem. I'm doing this for myself too," he said. It was true. He couldn't leave the dream space without their help.

Isabel ran to Mia's side and gave her the pills. After a few seconds, Mia was up and going.

"Thank you!" She said. She got up from the bed and hugged Song Lei. Song Lei answered by patting her on the head. If he could, he would make sure that Mia didn't have to fight. But he needed every help they could get.

Suddenly, the mansion shook again. Isabel looked at the ceiling.

"We have to act. Amber and Alan have already started fighting," Song Lei said. Isabel nodded and held Mia's hand.

"Let's go," she said. Song Lei opened the door and went out.

"Eww..." Isabel was disgusted by all the goo on the corridor.

"You'll get used to it," Song Lei said. "By the way, what is Mia going to help you with? Can she really fight?" He asked.

"She doesn't have to. Her simply being next to me increases my power by a lot. And the safest place she can be is next to us. She shouldn't leave our side."

Song Lei nodded and said, "And what should I exactly do?"

"Honestly? You'll have to improvise. I, too, don't know a lot of things about Amber and Alan. The best thing you could do would probably be to protect Mia from any dangers. She can definitely defend herself but you helping her would always be better."

They reached the staircase. The nothingness had already spread halfways up the stairs. Song Lei didn't know what would happen when the whole mansion was covered.

Before going any further, Song Lei closed his eyes and held Isabel's arm.

"What are you doing?" Isabel asked.

"I can't go any lower than this without closing my eyes. When I have my eyes open-"

"Okay okay. I understand. You're talking about the complexity right? Now that I think of it, it can easily be fatal to humans..." Isabel cut Song Lei off. "What does that have to do with you closing your eyes though?" She said thoughtfully.

"I- I don't know..?" Song Lei answered.

"Well, it might just be a rule of this dream space," Isabel guessed. "In that case, you're really lucky. Normally, closing your eyes has nothing to do with complexities. You would have died a very quick death if you tried the same thing in real life."

Song Lei shivered as he asked, "What are complexities exactly?"

"Well… It's just like you said. They're nothing," Isabel said while leading Song Lei towards the dining room. "If you fall into nothing, you'll be the only thing inside nothing. With time, you'll cease to exist. But that will take a very long time. You'll experience hell before you can die."

"Why would I suffer if there's nothing in there?" Song Lei asked.

"You see… There are things called pattern screamers in there. There are also people who have fallen in before. With time, all their thoughts and emotions start festering the nothingness. When you fall in or even get in contact with the nothing, you'll start feeling those same feelings for yourself," Isabel said.

"Where do you even learn this stuff?" Song Lei asked. "Do ghosts have some kind of wiki of their own?"

"When we consume other ghosts, we get some amount of knowledge from them. I don't know the origin of this information. I just know it," Isabel said nonchalantly.

As they were talking, they finally reached the dining room. From the noises, Song Lei could guess that the fight was still going on.

"I'm opening," Isabel said. Song Lei gulped loudly and nodded.

*Creak....