John entered the Corruption dungeon with only Salamander at his side. Knowing what was going on, Lydia had gone home and the rest of the harem just wouldn’t be of use inside this dungeon. On the contrary, their presence was likely to make things more difficult, given that things scaled depending on group size. Since only John would directly benefit from a victory, them coming along wouldn’t serve anything. He also needed them to get back to work. Fusion wasn’t in a crisis, but it was in a situation where it was beneficial to show people normalcy. He would have preferred to join in establishing the normalcy himself, but this situation was still the primary concern.

The reason why Salamander stuck around, even though the rest of his elementals went after their duty to look after the Elemental Islands, was because she was the sole elemental that had both first-hand experience with corruption and had come out untainted. If all else failed, she would hopefully cut through the haze and get him to use the Escape Rope.

‘Now, what am I dealing with,’ John thought and looked at the entrance window.

“Looks normal enough, at the moment,” Salamander remarked, as John dismissed the window. He could only agree. They found themselves inside the kind of corridor he would expect in an upper-class apartment building. A light grey carpet and blue painted walls were illuminated by circular lights set into the ceiling above. All of them were simple but of high quality. What was missing were any sorts of doors or windows. It was just the corridor.

“’At the moment’ is probably the operative part of that statement,” John said and got moving. Before and behind him was only the extension of the corridor. It wasn’t as if he had much choice on the matter except to move in some direction. John chose forwards. “Give me your hand.”

“Scared?” Salamander asked with a grin.

“Cautious,” John returned, feeling her hot fingers intertwine with his, “and wanting for your presence.”

Side by side, they advanced. At least they took steps that carried them forwards. It was difficult to discern how much he moved through the corridor with the stained, light grey carpet. Nothing ever seemed to change in it and nothing came into view in the distance.

Bored, Salamander dragged a finger along the wall. It created a little sound, adding to the quiet of their footsteps. Two pairs of feet and the scratching on walls. John stopped and shook his head. When he focused his gaze again, the carpet was clean. “Slow perception warping,” he sighed. “Classical thing for the corruption of minds.”

Salamander knocked on the silent walls. “Tell me about it,” she said.

“You experienced it too?” the Gamer asked.

“Yeah, but that’s not what I mean, stud,” the apocalypse elemental retorted. “I mean tell me about this indoctrination BS. Might as well keep your mind on it while we keep going.”

John hummed in agreement and explained his understanding of the procedure as they advanced. “Indoctrination is a generally slow process that comes from someone feeding you a, usually deliberate, limited set of information and therefore warping your sense of reality. Repeated iteration of half-truths, initially, and lies, later on, ensure that one is programmed to believe in an approved set of ‘facts’ rather than reality. Traditionally, this happens by omitting redeeming qualities about the opposition. Their religion is entirely evil. Their policies can only end in catastrophe. Their culture leads to the breakdown of decency. Such and similar things. At the same time, one’s own side is aggrandized and negative consequences left out. This creates a person that’s less an individual and more an embodiment of a doctrine. The indoctrination is therefore complete.”

“And why would anyone do that?” Salamander asked through black, pointy teeth.

John took a slow breath and watched her reform to her usual shape. “Individuality is often a bother for those in charge. A population made of individuals is impossible to predict. A ruler wants to feel in control. They want to know that, if they move the levers of power, things that spreadsheets line out are the reliable outcome. Making everyone as similar as possible maximizes that predictability.” He chewed on the inside of his cheek for a couple of seconds, until Salamander’s tail whipped his butt.

“Keep talking. What’s the process?”

“Easiest is to get to people through the education system,” John mechanically formulated his thoughts. “However, it is actually surprisingly easy to nudge a society in a certain direction, given enough reach. Control the centres of information distribution and you can set the tone. Set the tone, echo it through enough sources, and moralistic individuals will repeat it. You nudge society in a direction, until the opposition gets whipped up just enough to get organized and then you stop. Then you wait. You defame everyone who is getting outraged about what you already did, since they clearly warn about things that will never happen. Then, when things are calm, you continue moving. Then you stop again. You repeat this, again and again. People don’t like to be wrong, so they will keep committing to the path.”

They kept walking through the dirty corridor. Salamander’s trailing finger got stuck on a piece of the cheap wallpaper, partly tearing it off the concrete wall. Something tapped from the other side, but John ignored it. It had been there for a while.

The hand he was holding was clad in metal. Salamander having the bits of plate armour that covered her arms and feet activated in a combat zone was only logical. That her skin went hotter, as they trotted along, was only logical as well. The daughter of the war god had to be prepared to launch her flames at any who may oppose them at any moment.

“They will keep committing to the path…” he mumbled, feeling that he wasn’t living up to that at the moment. Gravel crunched under his step. The light grey pebbles smelled of the ocean, of saltwater and rotting algae. The four walls of the corridor were beset with teeth, like a four segmented maw that would devour them and bring them to the promised land – if only they committed fully to feeding it.

The lights above changed with every step, until what had been lightbulbs were the shining centres of large, lidless eyes. They reminded John of a giant sea creature. They stared and illuminated his way. Expectations and the knowledge of what to do next. Unflinching, they judged him.

“…the path…” he mumbled again. Then abruptly stopped. A shiver went through the corridor. The Gamer’s mind stemmed against an accumulation of walls inside his mind, barring him from forbidden thoughts. ‘This is my mind,’ he growled at whatever forces were trying to recruit him for it. ‘Slow or magical indoctrination, you can try to tug on me, but I decide what desires and knowledge controls me. OUT!’

The entire corridor shivered and growled. John’s rejection of the corruption came too late for it not to have manifested already. The fish eyes, the teeth poking out of the ocean blue carpets, the gravel, it had all become as real as things inside an Instant Dungeon could be. A hellish stench rose from the direction they were headed.

“Let’s go!” Salamander shouted and turned around. She tried to fly, but found herself bound to the ground she already tread. She and John, both of them tried to hurry back the way they came from. An upwards slope and treading gravel, they fled from the teeth that now broke out of the walls and threatened to rip them apart – devour them by force if they weren’t going to offer themselves willingly.

The slant was so extreme John and Salamander had to move on all fours. A tide of pebbles washed over them, made it nigh impossible to actually move forwards. A pained howl reached his ear as Salamander’s foot was skewered by one of the spikes.

“Keep going!” the apocalypse elemental growled at him when John stopped in his climbing efforts. “It‘s just a dungeon.”

“I won’t let you die even in ‘just a dungeon’,” John declared and fired two Blast Rays at the spike. It shattered. Burying his feet as deep inside the gravel as he could, he grabbed Salamander and threw her ahead. Then he pounced. Even with his superhuman abilities, half a metre was the best he could do, but it was enough to get him out of the immediate ugliness of the collapsing corridor.

Ahead, Salamander ripped the remaining shard out of her heel and extended her tail towards John. Pulling him forwards was a difficult endeavour, his weight pulling her back down the slope. Only by tearing into the wall did she get enough grip to move both of them up. It was yet another bit of distance that he put between himself and the teeth. “Fuck, I love you,” the apocalypse elemental shouted over the sound of an avalanche of gravel.

Grey washed over them, battered them with a thousand tiny punches, served as their greatest obstacle while they kept retreating. The more they struggled forwards, the more the angry rush and foul smell faded. It went from nigh impossible to escape, to difficult and finally manageable, as even the slope of the corridor normalized. Before they truly knew what happened, they were crawling over solid ground and the only smell around was that slightly sweet fragrance of carpet cleaner.

“We have to keep going,” the Gamer stated.

“Go where?” Salamander wanted to know. “Because I bet you twenty-thousand tittyfucks that something just as bad is in the opposite direction.”

“Exactly. We have to find the balance,” John told her and shook his shirt to get the remaining pebbles out of it. “The antidote to indoctrination is finding your centre. As time demands, you may sway to one side or another, but you always have a balance to return to.”

The two of them walked until the ground was even and the corridor was in the pristine condition they had originally found it in. There they stood and waited. “This is kinda boring,” Salamander pointed out.

“Yeah,” the Gamer agreed, feeling the pull of both ends of the corridor. Now that he was acutely aware of the way this dungeon tried to mess with his thoughts, he knew how it maximized the human wish to explore. There was a certain torture, a horrible boredom, of standing somewhere that was just safe. Aspects of the human psyche demanded that he either discovered new things about his environment or at least saw to it that he developed his current situation in an advantageous way. Those desires were emphasized and they were stronger in John than the average person to start with. One did not start building their own nation without a lust for recognition and the unusual.

What John also had more than the average person was willpower. He crossed his arms, squared his feet and waited. He heard the sound of gravel approaching and backed off in one direction. The sound of whistling steam came from the other, and so he retraced his steps back again. Both horrible ends of the dungeon tried to get to him but neither seemed able to. Not as long as he stayed vigilant, moved in accordance to what threatened him and kept himself under control.

Still, that didn’t end the dungeon. “Hmm,” John thought and considered everything he knew so far. Then he raised his foot and used a Technique to kick the wall as intensely as he could. Concrete dust and chunks of wall fell to the floor, revealing a pitch-black rat and a tunnel network. John grabbed the monster before it could run away. It felt disgusting, like a jellyfish crossed with phlegm, but John held onto it anyway while Salamander raised her hand and torched it.

Between the scratching and the destructibility of the walls, an unusual trait in Floor dungeons, he had known that something had to be hidden in them. That it was the only monster they had to slay to make the dungeon disappear somewhat surprised him, however.