NOVEL NEXT Chapter 10 (Rock Bottom)
System>
{Quest "Exterminator" Completed!
[Issuing reward]
(Number of quests completed: 10)
Calculating total reward: [Complete] - - - -
{Successfully deposited: 1500 gp
A bright flash, a feeling of weightlessness horror, the fear of death, these thoughts all poured into my mind, along with a throbbing pain, and what felt like blood running down my face. As the darkness around my vision slowly lifted. Everything around me felt incredibly painful;. I couldn’t move at first; each breath felt like I was fighting for survival. All around me was a sickly stench, which combined with the pain, to make me feel entirely ill. But still, I was safe.
The surroundings were quiet, all was still except for the occasional clink of what I assumed to be a rock hitting the stone floor. The only thing that seemed to disturb the atmosphere was the tranquil sound of water rushing, in the distance, it was a sound that penetrated the walls of rocks surrounding me, but one which still sounded far beyond where I was.
I wanted to look around, but I couldn’t I couldn’t move a muscle each moment the throbbing in my head became worse, slowly drawing out my thoughts, eventually I lost track of what was happening, everything started to blur, in the back of my head I could hear some chirping from the system but what it was saying was recognizable to me if it was saying anything at all. I thought for a time I was dying, and I didn’t blame myself too much for thinking so it really did feel like that, but surprisingly as time went on the feeling did not get any worse, rather it began to subceed, as gradually I felt the strength of my body began to recover, though I could place no real reason as to why this was.
After some time of struggle, I managed to open my eyes. Looking around the desolated rubble, I couldn’t help letting out a rasping gasp at the hellish scene that greeted me. All around were the crushed and tangled bodies of the once fierce ants. A few struggled to move, convulsing against their mangled bodies; it was clear they could no longer pose a threat.
Trying not to breathe in the stench of the many bodies lying around, I weakly struggled to pull myself out from the small crevice I had fallen into. My throat was choked heavily with a combination of dust and what I guessed was blood, making breathing difficult. Slogging to my feet, I stood there, speechless for a time, before a hot sensation on my cheek woke me up from my stupor. A single tear rolled down my cheek, but it was not alone for long. Soon, what came to be a waterfall of tears started to stream down my face. I wasn’t sure why I was crying; somehow, it felt better not to place a reason for it. Despite desperately wiping at my face with my dirty hands, I couldn’t stop the tears from flowing. My head felt heavy, the many wounds I seemed to have sustained during the fall were nothing compared to the tumultuous vortex of emotions running through me.
I felt the weight of everything I had done crashing over me in that great single moment, as I could no longer contain the emotions that I had been suppressing, partially, that entire time. I was scared, terrified that I was going to die, that I wouldn’t make it out of here, that all the effort and pain I had been suppressing would be for nothing. I don’t know how I’ve managed to survive so far; in my previous life, all I was good at was climbing the corporate power structure and getting rich. I wasn’t a passionate man, or experienced with anything beyond what little society had managed to teach me during my life. All I tried to do was live happily, but in the process, all I really had experience in was not being swallowed in the perfections of society. I’m honestly a bit surprised to see I’m having so much trouble here; I mean, I already died once, and I know there’s an afterlife. Shouldn’t I be some great philosopher now? But I am scared; I don’t want to be hurt anymore. I don’t want to keep fighting for my life. I don’t want to keep struggling here. But what can I do!
Looking around me once more, I felt some odd dregs of my mind clawing at me, telling me to just lay my head back and rest for a moment longer, give myself one more second to recover. But I knew if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to open my eyes again. I knew it; I knew I had to keep going, and I hated that fact. I desperately wanted to change something, for someone to come help me, for the dust around me to die down so I could get a deep breath, for a pillow behind my head so I could get more comfortable, for someone to talk to that wasn’t my own mind. But I knew it wouldn’t come. Maybe I could spend some of the gp I earned to get some of those things, but I knew I couldn’t. I needed those for survival; I needed to live. I wanted to live more than anything. As I slowly drew myself deeper into that thought, something became apparent to me: I had lived; I had survived, and I just had to keep doing that, over and over again until I had survived everything!
I threw my hands up in the air with a sense of half-delirious excitement. I felt I was going insane. What the hell was I even doing? What felt like just a moment ago, I was on my way home, to my cushy house, from my nice job, the only thing struggling in my mind being how I was going to finish off the leftover food in my fridge. And now here I was, going on some rant about how I was going to survive, while relying on what? This gamey system? Well, actually yeah, I guess I would. Yeah, I guess I do have an advantage. I’ve already gotten stronger; I’ve already started to stand a chance. So why shouldn’t I rely on it?
As my mood rapidly swung from depressed to excited to resolute, I slowly lie my head back down once again, just savoring the emotions I felt now, letting my mind run wild with my thoughts. I couldn’t hold back a half-crazed smile from slowly appearing on my face.
Primarily what I felt was relief, a pure and unfiltered relief, one which I do not think I have ever felt before. Yes, I felt ecstatic when I passed my college degree or when I got promoted to a high position, but compared to those things, this relief was one of having lived through hell. I had done it; I had survived. Even though my map confirmed with a multitude of red dots that I was indeed still very in danger, the quiet white outline of my “cloak” skill at least confirmed to me for the moment that I was safe. A strange thing did stand out to me when I was looking at the map. I noticed a bunch of the dots were disappearing to one corner of the grid out of my vision, with the overall number seeming much lower than it was before. Though looking at the number of carcasses around, I guess that it’s no wonder it seems that way.
The bodies around me did have one positive, they could allow me to replenish some strength, and despite my revulsion. I think it’d be in my best interest to start trying to absorb a few of these, seeing as I was pretty sure my body was starting to go into shock, which is clearly why I started to cry. Don’t question it, okay!
Slowly walking forwards to one of the carcasses, I winced with each step I took over the rough ground. My clothes had done well enough to survive all the damage, but despite being some magical clothes from that fraud goddess, they were still not in the best shape, having multiple large tears in some places, and a burn mark clearly visible from where that strange ant had just barely missed me.
Arriving at the nearest corpse, I held back my feeling of disgust as I reached into its crushed corpse, laying my hand on the first piece of exoskeleton I could find, waiting for the familiar system notification to alert me of the imminent absorption. Expectably, I soon heard the cheery jingle fill my mind.
{Successfully gathered all compatible energy}
{Attempting to raise soul integrity}
...[Failed]
Sadly, it wasn’t enough; I couldn’t feel much of anything improving, the feeling threatening to bring back the stream of tears from before. Wearily wiping my eyes, I struggled over to the next corpse, repeating the same gruesome process.
{Successfully gathered all compatible energy}
{Attempting to raise soul integrity}
...[Failed] x6
Along with the familiar dull tone, I pulled my hand back. I still didn’t feel normal, but after repeating the process a couple of times, I at least managed to get to the point where I felt a little stronger. Tiredly trudging over to a nearby elevated rock. I slowly rested my head down as I let out a long sigh. I allowed my aching body a moment of relaxation while I took a moment to consider a few things. First, what was I to do next? I had completed the quest that had got me into so much trouble in the first place, so I now had quite a few gp on my hands, as well as a bit more time to make good use of it. Second, I needed to figure out a way to get out of this place, and if I couldn’t, I needed to start considering ways to survive here, though frankly, my spirit was not ready to consider that outcome, so the second option was quickly thrown out. For now, I’ll just stubbornly hold on to hope that there’s some way out. Finally, I needed to take some time and steady myself; never had I been in this type of situation before, and frankly, I fear that as time goes on, I’ll get more and more absorbed into this role of survival. I greatly feared that I would lose the civility of my modern world, regressing into nothing more than a ball of feelings and emotions that paid such great reverence to my hunter and gatherer ancestors.
I did not want to turn into something which was no better than the bugs which lay scattered around me, roving about, slavitiating to kill so I can scrape a few more gp points together for another day of survival.
Sighing to myself, I took a deeper look around the room. The room was heavily scarred with the effects of the collapse; besides the ant corpses, there seemed to be strange chunks of rotting flesh scattered about, with small white strands still twitching on them. As much as I tried to collect them for energy, putting my hand on them didn’t seem to do anything besides feel gross.
Looking at my own self I couldn’t help but feel strange, I looked lightly at my hands covered in dust, these hands which had allowed me to survive so long. If I was looking at just the frailness of them, they would have certainly evoked some measure of pity in me, but as it is now I couldn’t help feeling some sense of pride in how far they have brought me. This body which at first seemed so desolate now seemed to have some deeper beauty, it now almost seemed delicate like a fine gem.
Shaking my head over this thought, I started to chuckle to myself. This body, which despite my reluctance in accepting it as mine, had carried me so far, it had endured things, survived so many things which I did not think possible for myself to survive, I suppose putting the responsibility of survival onto a body, isn’t quite right, rather it’d be more correct to say I had survived it, but I still couldn’t help disassociating myself from my body, even if I knew logically that didn’t make sense. And besides I guess I had started to grow attached to this body, I certainly couldn’t look at it so harshly as I did when I first arrived, maybe to a certain extent I had started to consider it my own.
I knew at least I didn’t want to lose it, to die again, with one thing weighing at the back of my mind. If I did die again, where would I end up next? Would I even get a second chance?
My mind was turned away from my reflections by the sudden illumination of my vision by a beam of orange light, which shot up from a pile of rubble near the middle of the collapsed hole. The beam disintegrated the rock it touched, sending billows of black smoke and shards of stone in all directions. It was moving now frantically, erasing the top of the pile of stones, causing shadows to dance around the room, guided by the light's changing direction. As the beam continued to carve out the rock, I was hit by a wave of heat across my face. It wasn't overly painful, but it served to demonstrate its power all too well. The beauty of this display was not lost on me; it was something I might have even paid money to see in my previous life. However, as the beam began to disappear, its heating dying down, casting the space once again into almost complete darkness, it did nothing to reduce the sinking feeling in my chest that I was not the only thing to survive the collapse.