Awakening of the Weakest Slayer

As Sezel opened his eyes, he expected to see the worried face of Mari, her small, anxious features the first thing to greet him in this terrifying world. He had only been inside his Spirit Meridian for what felt like ten minutes.

But when he opened his eyes, the little girl was not beside him. He was lying there on the hard ground, alone.

He hesitantly, painfully, pushed himself up, his muscles screaming in protest. And the scene that greeted him made his blood run cold. Not from shock, or fear, but from pure disgust.

"What are you doing?" he shouted, his voice a raw whisper, his face twisting at the grotesque spectacle unfolding before him. All the Flesh Reapers were hunched over something on the ground, their scythes tearing and rending.

Black blood pooled from beneath their legs, staining the dusty floor. They were feeding. And the most shocking part, the part that made Sezel's stomach churn was that Shiki and Vesta were also in the crowd of those beasts, their human forms lost in the bloody feast.

Sezel's gaze darted around, frantically searching for the little girl, panic rising in his chest. But he let out a sigh of relief as he saw her, huddled against a wall, her small body pressed into itself, as if she were trying to disappear. His puppet, the spectral Flesh Reaper was just beside her.

It was a good thing it was acting as a guard for her. Sezel's gaze again flickered back to the grotesque scene unfolding in front of him.

His earlier questions, his earlier confusion, now a roaring. "What in the world is happening?" he asked, his voice a low, incredulous murmur as he pushed his body to its feet.

It was a mess. A bloody, incomprehensible mess. Most likely, the Flesh Reapers were devouring another one of their own, one of the beasts they had killed. But why? They had been working together, all this time. Why would they kill one of their own?

Questions piled up inside Sezel's head, with no answer at all. He slowly, shakily, walked towards them, his vision swimming, his body so weak that he felt as if he would collapse at any moment.

In the corner of his eye, he saw Mari running towards him, her small feet a blur of motion. And then, she was there, her small arms wrapped tightly around his waist, her face buried in his dirty, tattered shirt. Sezel put a familiar hand on her head. "Don't worry now," he said, his voice soft. "I am okay."

The words were more than just words for the little girl. Tears started rolling down her cheeks as she refused to let go of him, as if she would lose him again if she did.

Sezel passed her a weak, tired smile and then, with a deep, steadying breath, he continued his slow, deliberate walk towards the party of beasts. Vesta and Shiki were still there, they were joining in, as if they had completely, utterly forgotten that they were human.

He stopped a few paces away from them and asked, his voice a hesitant, trembling whisper, "What are you doing… Vesta?" His eyes squinted.

Vesta flinched at the sound of his voice. Up until now, she had ignored it, or rather, hadn't paid it any attention, her mind and body consumed by the same strange devotion.

She slowly, brushed her face clean with the back of her sleeve and turned her head to look at him, a coquettish smile playing on her lips. "No… Nothing," she said, her voice a strange, singsong melody that was a horrifying parody of her usual tone. "We are… just having… lunch."

"What?" The word escaped Sezel's mouth, a sound of pure shock. "Have you lost your mind?" He stumbled back a few steps, his eyes wide with a horror that was so absolute, that it almost made him physically sick. He immediately turned his face to the other side, unwilling, to look at Vesta's face right now.

It was streaked with the black, viscous blood of the monster, a horrifying lipstick around her lips. Huge, dark circles, the bruised, hollowed-out look of a person on the brink of collapse, had formed under her eyes.

She was not in her right mind. She was not even herself anymore.

"You want some?" she asked, as she held out a piece of raw, dripping monster meat towards him. "The Lord ordered us to eat some," she said, her words a simple, matter-of-fact statement that was terrifying.

Sezel looked at her with squinted eyes, She was completely under the hypnotic spell, whatever it was, that had controlled their minds. Sezel, however, was thinking straight for now. The voice in his head was gone, his thoughts were clearer.

'So, maybe if i could convince her to go inside her Spirit Meridian, would she become normal?' he concluded, a desperate, reckless plan forming in his mind. But it had only been mere minutes since he had woken up, since he had regained his own composure.

There was no guaranteed proof of how long it would work, of how long he would remain free.

As for the beast meat in her hand, it wasn't that bad. After all, the Spirit Realm was all about survival, and if you wanted to survive, you had to be willing to go to the extreme, to do things that would have been unthinkable .

It was a miracle, really. If he hadn't been weakened, if he hadn't accidentally lost consciousness, it would have never occurred to him to access his Spirit Meridian. Vesta was in a similar situation, but her strength, her ability to withstand the weakness for much longer, had proven to be a setback, a curse in disguise.

The beast, or whatever it was that was controlling their minds, was not so stupid. It knew exactly the difference between beasts and humans, and it had deduced that its human slaves were on the brink of exhaustion. And so, it had ordered them to eat, to replenish their strength.

Beasts, on the other hand, could live much longer without food, but as predators, they still needed to hunt. And another question brewed in Sezel's mind, a cold, sharp-edged question that sent a shiver of fear down his spine. 'Why is that thing even keeping us alive.'

Suddenly, the pain in his head returned as a stabbing, skull-splitting agony that nearly made him nauseous. His thought process became sluggish and clouded, the voice returned to the corner of his mind.

And this time, it was asking him to eat, to rest, to get back his stamina so that he could work more, harvest more, serve more. Sezel gritted his teeth, his whole body trembling from the skull-splitting pain. But he held on to his sanity, to the fragile, precious clarity of his own mind.

Sezel bit his lower lip as hard as he could, a streak of pure, red blood flowing down his mouth. The pain made him feel a little better, keeping his thoughts intact.

He took a deep breath, and then, with a final, desperate, suicidal act of defiance, he shouted at the top of his lungs. His voice echoed through the vast, empty factory. "I won't work for you!"

At first, nothing happened. But then, every single soul around him stirred, their heads turning as one, their gazes, all of them, locking onto him. Mari clutched him tighter, her small body trembling with fear. Sezel held his head up and looked around, at the monsters, at Vesta, at Shiki.

Their eyes were all fixed on him, an all-consuming gaze that pinned him down.

"Damn it," he whispered, a hard knot of fear forming in his stomach. "I am fucked."

He had just made every single person, every single beast, inside the walled-off boundaries of this forgotten, hellish world, his enemy.