.htaccess rewrite to show only root url and hide everything after /folder - apache

Question

From this URL
www.example.com/error_documents/404
to this URL
www.example.com/404
I've tried many different .htaccess rules but none of them worked.
I'm trying to just hide the /error_pages/ folder section from the URL without any actual redirecting because if I write a correct *RewriteRule, its just keep repeating itself and I get an ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS error, because if you want to go to an unknown folder, the error document redirects to example.com/error_documents/404 and if I rewrite this to example.com/404, its an unknown folder so it is trying to redirect me to the /error_documents/404 page but the htaccess file keeps redirecting to a forever loop.
Current .htaccess file
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]{3,}\s/+error_pages/([^\s]+) [NC]
RewriteRule ^ %1 [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule (?!^error_pages/)^(.*)$ /error_pages/$1 [L,NC]
This .htaccess gives me forever loop:
www.example.com/unknownfolder
to
www.example.com/error_documents/404
to
www.example.com/404
and this keeps repeating...
I'm using cPanel for ErrorDocuments and the main .htaccess file is:
ErrorDocument 400 http://example.com/error_pages/400
ErrorDocument 401 http://example.com/error_pages/401
ErrorDocument 403 http://example.com/error_pages/403
ErrorDocument 404 http://example.com/error_pages/404
ErrorDocument 503 http://example.com/error_pages/503
Options -Indexes
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP:X-Forwarded-Proto} !https
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off
RewriteRule (.*) https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

Answer 1

ErrorDocument 400 http://example.com/error_pages/400
ErrorDocument 401 http://example.com/error_pages/401
ErrorDocument 403 http://example.com/error_pages/403
ErrorDocument 404 http://example.com/error_pages/404
ErrorDocument 503 http://example.com/error_pages/503
You shouldn't be using an absolute URL in the ErrorDocument directive in the first place - this is what is causing the external (302) redirect and exposing the location of /error_pages and the error document. Consequently, this also loses information about the request that caused the error.
However, /400 and /401 etc. should reference the actual file(s) that handle the request. eg. /400.html and /401.html etc.
You should be using a root-relative file-path (starting with a slash) to the error document and then Apache will issue an internal subrequest, rather than a redirect.
For example:
ErrorDocument 400 /error_pages/400.html
ErrorDocument 401 /error_pages/401.html
ErrorDocument 403 /error_pages/403.html
ErrorDocument 404 /error_pages/404.html
ErrorDocument 503 /error_pages/503.html
Your /error_pages now remains totally hidden from the end user.
No need to manually try and remove this from the URL (because it should never be present in the URL to begin with). You can (optionally) prevent direct access to the /error_pages directory if you want (careful not to block subrequests for the error documents).
Reference:
https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/core.html#errordocument