I don’t know how long I’ve been here.
An hour? A day? A week?
I don’t even care anymore.
It’s still the sa night — sa sky, sa cold air, sa silence.
The moon hasn’t moved an inch since that night.
Just sits there, bright and quiet, like it’s watching .
Probably enjoying the show, like it’s got front-row seats.
Maybe it finds it funny, watching run and kill like so dumb donkey chasing a carrot it’ll never reach.
The stars don’t even blink.
They just stare back, cold and far, like they already know I’ll keep running anyway.
At first, I thought it was just — too much blood, too much running, not enough sleep.
But then I saw it.
The trees, the grass, even the damn moonlight — all shifting, just a little, like the world was crawling forward at worm speed for no reason.
Every path curved back to where I started.
Every tree looked the sa no matter how far I walked.
It wasn’t spinning fast or anything... just quiet, slow — like the whole place was stuck replaying the sa mont over and over.
They call it a spatial loop, right? That broken place where nothing moves no matter how far you walk.
I rember hearing sothing about it once — D-Night, physics breaking, getting replaced. Never cared then. Should’ve.
Light bends, ti circles, ground folds over itself like so drunk god tried to patch it together and gave up halfway.
Yeah, I used to think that was just another dumb story teachers made up to scare newbies.
Yeah. Turns out they weren’t kidding.
I stopped counting after the tenth kill.
At first it was Echo Wraiths — easy enough once you learned their fighting pattern.
What can I say? Even if they evolve, even if they grow a brain or two, they’re still just otherworldly creatures.
Predictable.
And, after a while, they felt more like training dummies than threats.
Loud when they die, quiet when I devour them.
Then I t the Bone Crawlers.
Yeah, those freaks were a pain. Always ca in packs, crawling out from cracks you’d swear weren’t there a second ago.
They liked jumping you from behind — guess that’s their hobby.
I’ll admit, they gave so trouble at first.
One wrong step, and they’d already be on your leg, chewing like it’s dinner ti.
And then there were those red-skinned otherworldly creature — the ones with four jaws that scread like sirens right near your ears.
What were they called again?
Hmm... can’t even rember. Probably because I kept shutting my eyes every damn ti they opened those jaws.
They were annoying as hell. Every scream made the System screen blur, so half the fight I was swinging blind, trying to find their weak spot through the noise.
After that, things started to drag.
Each fight took longer than the one before.
Every damn ti, I ca out more tired, more cut up than I went in.
It wasn’t fast anymore — not like before.
That’s when I realized it — the jump between F-5 and F-6 isn’t just one rank. It’s a whole damn wall.
The difference hit harder than any claw. Figures — even power’s got a class system.
F-5s were warm-up toys now, but F-6s? Every one of them was a damn nightmare.
Every swing took more out of . Even killing them started feeling pointless.
And the F-7s... yeah, don’t even get started.
Three of those things nearly ripped apart.
I had to run, patch myself up, co back swinging, again and again.
Two nights without sleep and that endless fight that wouldn’t die.
But I didn’t stop. I hunted them.
Didn’t matter if one F-6 took hours or an F-7 took days.
I tracked them down, one after another — until there was nothing left of them.
I killed them.
I devoured them.
Not because I had to.
Because I wanted to. Not for rcy, not out of duty — because that pull in my chest wanted it, because it proved I was still here.
Every ti I felt that pull — that deep drag in my chest — it was like sothing inside whispered "more."
And I listened.
Because that pull... that heat crawling up my spine... that was the only thing that made feel alive anymore.
I don’t even know how many days passed after that.
Could’ve been three, could’ve been ten — I stopped counting.
Everything just started to blur together — the fights, the screams, the blood.
All the sa noise, sa heat, sa silence after.
I don’t even rember when I stopped sleeping. Maybe soti between the seventh kill and the next sunrise that never ca.
Then one night, I slled it, it was the different scent.
I knew it the mont I slled them.
Not otherworldly creature this ti — humans.
Two, sotis three. Moving too clean, breathing too steady to be hunters.
Assassins.
And every single one of them carried that sa faint scent — hers.
Like she’d touched them once before sending them here, just to remind who owned the knife aid at my back.
At first I wanted answers. I pictured grabbing one by the collar, forcing the reason out of him. Why send F-5s to a newbie zone? Why my blood? Why i Lin?
But every ti I opened my mouth, there was nothing left to ask.
They were gone before my first word landed — swallowed clean. No corpse, no core, no proof. Just emptiness where a body used to be.
Questions died with them.
By the seventh, I stopped wasting breath.
By the tenth, I stopped pretending it mattered.
What mattered was the look in their eyes when it happened. That flash — panic, the tiny stupid hope that maybe they’d get out of it. Watching that stupid hope snap like a twig, watching them realize they picked the wrong target — that was the point.
Make them see they were wrong to co for . Make them feel every second of it.
So I stopped asking why. I made them pay instead.
I took their lives slow when I could — let the fear stretch, let the pleading get louder, let the last light leave their faces while my veins filled back up.
That rush when a life drains out and everything tightens inside — that’s what I chased. That’s how I kept climbing.
F-5.
F-6.
F-7.
F-8.
F-9.
F-10.
Each one slower, harder, heavier.
But I kept moving.
Because what else was there to do but keep climbing?
I didn’t even notice when it happened.
One second I was standing, the next the system screen popped up in front of .
[ Rank Up: E-1 ]
[ Seed Growth: 637 ]
[ Threshold Reached — Abyssal Root Formation Initiated ]
Then it hit — not pain like a cut or burn, no.
It was deeper.
Like sothing inside woke up and decided my veins didn’t belong to anymore.
It started from the chest.
A slow crawl, hot and cold at the sa ti, slipping under the skin like it was alive.
I could feel it spreading — one line at a ti — tearing, peeling, replacing.
My heart kicked once — hard enough to steal the air out of my lungs.
Then it stopped, hanging there in my chest like it forgot what to do next.
For a second, everything went quiet — no blood, no breath, just pressure building, swelling, like sothing inside was winding up to break.
I glanced down and saw it — faint, dark line spreading under my skin, pulsing like they were alive.
Thin, black roots crawled out from the seed in my chest, digging through like they’d been waiting for it.
I bit my tongue just to feel sothing human again, but all I tasted was nothing.
"Guess this is what change feels like," I muttered, half-laughing, half-shaking.
"Pain that doesn’t ask for permission."
I dropped to my knees before I even realized it, fingers digging into the dirt.
Then the pain hit — sharp, crawling through every vein, like molten wire spreading from my heart outward.
I gasped, pressed my hand against my chest, and when that didn’t help, I slamd my fist there — once, twice — desperate to feel it move again.
And then it did.
A single, deep thump — slower, heavier — echoing through like it was learning how to beat all over again.
Then another window blinked open in front of my eyes.
[ Root Integration Complete — 1/9 ]
[ One vein successfully replaced by Abyss Root. ]
[ Circulatory conversion: 11% ]
[ New Authority Granted: Abyssal Silence ]
[ Effect: Creates a silent domain — all sound and vibration erased within 50m radius for 1 min. ]
[ Passive: Immune to sonic and ntal interference. ]
[ Additional Effect: Targets below rank experience temporary sensory distortion and loss of balance. ]
I could feel it — that slow throb crawling under my skin, thick and heavy, like sothing waking up inside .
The new vein pulsed on its own rhythm, ignoring my heart completely, moving slow... deliberate... alive.
And warm — no, cold-warm, but sothing deeper, darker. Like it’s smiling back at you from the inside.
It climbed up my neck, behind my eyes, like sothing old had just woken up inside .
Didn’t even realize I said it till I heard my own voice.
"I’m awake again..."
My throat stung as I spoke.
"This world’s been rotting too long... ti to scrape it clean."
Arc 1 Finale — The Seed of the Abyss.
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