An Englishman in Castle Aincrad

Floor 13 - Chapter 1 - Hot and Bothered

For the group, the past three floors had been an interesting set of experiences. The Eleventh Floor had taught them how not to be killed in multiple sandstorms and how to live an almost Bedouin style life for the time being , whilst the Twelfth had certainly looked far more peaceful... until the Piscine Pirates turned up, and then it had been far from peaceful. As a result, they'd all been hoping that the Thirteenth Floor would be a little less chaotic.

As it turned out, the universe, and more particularly, their wannabe god had other ideas... cue them walking straight into an active volcano.

Sometimes, Jet wondered exactly how Kayaba decided what should be on a floor, and which floors were in which order, because the entire floor being the core of an active volcano certainly wasn't what he'd have considered a logical progression from a seafront on the last floor. That lack of thought on the actual surroundings had lead to him and Rain becoming lost inside one of the endless channels leading to the core, whilst racing to escape from what felt like it could've been the start of an eruption...

It hadn't, but the two of them were now very lost, and wandering aimlessly around the tunnels. That wasn't the only problem... the smell was diabolical! Both Jet and Rain had wrapped their winter scarves around their noses and mouths, a vain attempt to mitigate the smell.

It really wasn't working, and whilst they couldn't vomit... the constant gagging from the smell was getting infuriating, and another problem was starting to become obvious to them, as the heat and very low light reduced their visibility to practically none, with the visual distortions caused by the heat making that situation even worse.

''Rain, you still with me?'' Jet called back, as he held out a hand to signal to her where he was.

''Yeah, we could do with getting out of here though...'' Rain called out, her arm reaching out, and finding Jet's shoulder amongst the smog.

''Agreed, it's starting to smell-cough, splutter- worse than a gym changing room in here...'' Jet muttered, holding a hand up in front of his face, and not being able to see it was a pretty big indicator of just how thick the smog was. Had the smog been any thicker, he'd have expected it to be on Love Island...

''I can't even see my own messages...'' Rain muttered, trying not to let go of her only real way out of this cavern. The last thing she wanted was to be wandering around, alone, blind and constantly gagging on the smell of sulphur every time she had to take a deep breath, and it didn't take a genius to work out that Jet had a similar train of thought going on...

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Almost an hour had passed, and the pair had at least escaped the blistering heat, the smog was dissipating quickly as they did so. For the first time in nearly an hour and a half, they took their scarves off, and breathed a sigh of relief. The smell was still poor, but no longer overwhelmingly so, and the heat was still immense, but had reduced to a manageable level the further they'd moved out of what they were sure was the core. Jet had, however, learnt that going to sit down was a very bad idea, as even with the pain limiter, scorching hot rock was still, well... scorching hot.

''I've messaged them, but no reply yet.'' Rain, evidently taking note of the situation her friend was now in, nursing his burnt backside whilst muttering about the point of the pain limiter if it would do that, decided not to lean on anything nor sit down, and turned to the singed knight. ''Still sore?''

''I feel like a kid who sat on the hob. Just a bit, yeah.'' He replied, sarcastically.

''It is a bit weird though.'' Rain ignored the sarcasm, and got straight to the point. ''The pain limiter, why would it have an upper threshold? Surely that would be the point you'd want to, you know, limit pain? I mean, imagine if you broke a leg during a fight, and tried to carry on... there's only so much adrenaline can do, right?''