Awakening of the Weakest Slayer

All of the beasts and the group of humans once again went to their glorious work of harvesting Spirit Essence for their Lord.

Under the pale, ethereal lights of the three moons, they all performed the same actions, the same repetitive, mindless tasks, as they had done the night before. There was no sense of individuality, no hint of a desire to do something different.

Sezel as a mirrored copy of others around him did the same thing. He would stop momentarily, a question, a doubt, a sense of wrongness, bubbling to the surface of his mind. But then, as quickly as it had come, it would be gone, suppressed by the single, all-consuming thought that he needed to make sure that his Lord had an adequate amount of Spirit essence.

The Lord. He didn't know who, or what, it was. The thought of asking, of trying to peek behind the curtain, never even crossed his mind. It was as if his thoughts, were being controlled by someone, or something, else.

And as for the mindless beasts, they were all acting like brainwashed lab rats.

Sezel tried to distract himself, but after a bit of rest, the same thought would gnaw at him again and again, a persistent whisper in the back of his mind: he needed to collect as much Spirit essence as he could.

The monsters, including Sezel, Vesta and Shiki worked all night, they collected as much Spirit Essence as they could.

And as soon as the first, faint rays of the sun reached the ground, they would again return to the underground Sanctuary, their bodies moving as one, and bow down to their so-called Lord, offering the Spirit essence crystals they had harvested as a tribute.

After that, the Beasts would go on to their work of feeding the crystals to the mysterious, humming machines that lined the vast, cavernous chamber. Meanwhile, Sezel, Vesta, and Shiki would take a nap, or talk about somethings.

Mari used to listen to their conversations and she noticed that as soon as they started to talk about something other than their work, one of them would interrupt and take the conversation back to harvesting Spirit Essence. harvesting Spirit Essence and all.

It continued on for days, and then for weeks. The same routine, the same mindless, repetitive cycle. They would work during the darkness of the night and rest during the day. Their working pattern was not normal, nor were their actions.

Mari would try to talk to them every now and then, her small, desperate voice a plea for reason, for a return to the people they once were.

But none of them would pay her much heed. Only Sezel, who seemed to be fighting some internal battle, a war being waged in the forgotten corners of his mind, would try to talk to her in secret. But even then, he could not figure out what was wrong, what had happened to them.

One day, as the night sky was once again taken over by the bright, hopeful lights of the sun, all the monsters suddenly stopped, their movements ceasing as if a switch had been flipped.

Sezel, too, let out a sigh of relief and crumbled to the ground, his body a weak, trembling mess.

He looked at his side, where his small, pathetic haul was. Just three crystals. He had become weaker. In the beginning, he had been able to harvest six or seven crystals a night. But now, doing just three had made him feel as if his body was going to break.

Sezel's gaze was fixed at the sky, at the colors changing from a dark, bruised grey to a hopeful, brilliant blue as the sunlight lit up the world in a vibrant, colorful hue.

His head was throbbing with a dull, persistent pain. His eyes had big, dark circles under them, his face pale and gaunt. His body had practically lost all the mass he had gained, leaving him scrawny and weak. His white hair was no longer smooth, in fact they wouldn't be called white now, they were dirty.

'Why do i feel so weak?' the thought crossed his mind as he tried to raise his hand, but failed miserably. His mind was covered in a thick, suffocating fog, a strange haze that he had felt before, back when he was inside the black pond.

His eyelids felt so heavy that he was forced to shut them tight. He could feel his whole body aching, his muscles sore and protesting with every small movement.

'How long?' he thought, his mind a sluggish river of confusion. 'How long has it been since i ate something?' Suddenly, as he asked this question, a sharp, stabbing pain erupted in his head, a pain that had no source, no reason, no end.

The Lord is waiting. You shall not make him wait any longer.

Through the corner of his hazy mind, he heard this voice being poured into him, a cold, emotionless command that suppressed all the other things he was thinking, all the other questions he was asking.

"Mister… Mister…" he opened his eyes to the sweet, worried voice of Mari. She was on her knees beside him, her face filled with a concerned emotion that no one had ever shown for Sezel before.

Mari's expression eased a little as Sezel opened his eyes and looked at her. "Are you alright?" she asked, her voice a soft, gentle murmur. She picked up a water bottle and pressed it to Sezel's dry lips. The cool water, all though normal, felt as if it were a sweet, life-giving medicine that slowly, miraculously, took away the burning sensation in his whole body.

He gathered all the strength he had in him and finally spoke, his voice a hoarse whisper. "I am…" he stopped, his mind a blank, empty slate, as he tried to think of what the next word should be. His gaze lowered to himself, taking in the pathetic state of his body, and the even more pathetic, fractured state of his mental health.

There was only one thing he could say about his situation.

'It won't hurt to say it out aloud for once, right?' he thought to himself, his gaze then shifting to the little, worried girl, and then again at the vast, endless sky above him. "I… am not alright. It hurts. My body hurts, my head hurts, and I don't know what's happening with me either," he said, the words a confession, a desperate plea for help.

His mind felt a little at ease after letting it all out. He closed his eyes, and let his consciousness fade into nothingness, Mari's cry a distant, fading echo with every passing second.

His consciousness floated through an endless darkness, and then, it entered the vast, familiar plane of his Spirit Meridian.

He opened his eyes slowly, taking in the familiar view of the vast, desolate plane, surrounded by jagged mountain peaks on all sides.

He looked up at the eternal, starless sky that stretched boundlessly above him, an empty contrast to the vibrant, living sky he had just left behind.

His gaze then shifted to the swirling, chaotic ball of black mass that floated at the center of the plane, a sun of pure, unadulterated nothingness. Around it floated the card that contained all that Sezel was.

He gulped hard, not from the sight of these strange, familiar things, but from the realization that his mind was clear here, from the sudden, terrifying clarity that made his blood run cold.

He clutched his head with both his hands, falling to his knees, his breath came in ragged gasps. 'what had happened to me? What was i even doing? and for what?'

His head was filled with questions, a chaotic vortex of confusion that he couldn't answer. "How long have I been doing that?" he asked out loud, his voice hoarse whisper in the, empty silence.

His eyes squinted, as if he were trying to see through the fog that had clouded his mind for so long.

"How long have been acting like that, you know don't you." he asked again, his gaze wandering around, searching, hoping, to find any signs of the mysterious girl. But everything was as silent as it ever had been. There was no sign of her.

He sighed, a long, weary exhalation of despair. He had to figure it out himself. He had to figure out how long he had been acting as a slave.

Suddenly his eyes widened as a cold realization struck him. 'What if the moment i regain consciousness, i again start acting weirdly?'

He could vaguely remember hearing voices in his head that had suppressed his memories, his thoughts. Whatever it was, it was targeting his mind directly, and that was the biggest, most terrifying problem.

A physical opponent could be defeated with trickery, with cunning, with strength. But an unseen, unknown enemy, one that could burrow into your mind and turn you into a puppet… that was a far more dangerous foe.

And he had another problem: Shiki and Vesta. He would need to figure out how to get them out of this weird spell, this hypnotic trance, whatever it was.

With all that now swirling in his mind, the thing left to do was to go out of his Spirit Meridian.

Before going back, he summoned his card and looked at his stats, mainly his evolution points and his Soul Shards.

[Evolution Points - 245/10,000]

[Soul Shards - 100/100]

He was not much shocked, but disappointed. The Soul Shard gauge was full, and he hadn't yet tried creating another puppet. As for the evolution points, it didn't make any difference. He wasn't going to make it to that unreal, astronomical mark in such a short period of time.

With his final thoughts, his mind now clear, it was finally time to go back. Sezel's heart was beating faster than usual. He took a deep breath, and then, with a final, resolute effort, he left his Spirit Meridian.

But the moment he opened his eyes back he froze, his body a prisoner of a shock so profound, so absolute, that it defied all reason. What… What is going on?