Xin suddenly awoke, not to pain, nor to breathlessness, but to silence so complete it felt like the universe had ceased speaking.
His breathing was steady, his chest rising naturally as if he had just emerged from a pleasant sleep. Yet his mind was in disarray.
He lay flat, back pressed against coarse stone, staring up at a sky that didn't shift. It wasn't black—but a hollow, stagnant gray, like ash stretched thin over the corpse of a dead star.
Xin's memories weren't ordered, they were scrambled, and he decided to rest for a while, not moving as he gazed at the lifeless sky, a different location than the previous two.
"... What happened back there?"
The wind didn't stir. The air tasted dry, like old parchment that had forgotten the scent of rain.
"..."
He blinked once in response to the silence he was met with, and with a sigh, he opened his mouth again.
"Alright, so to summarize.... I died twice, once by an odd-looking creature that seems to have dragged me by accident and the other... well... it can be considered suicide to an extent. Due to severe thirst I was forced to drink water from the pool, and well..."
He exhaled heavily as he recalled the memory of being in pain, and subconsciously his hands went down to his liver and eyeball where he felt the most agony, touching them.
His indifferent eyes suddenly brightened as he looked at the sky and snickered at the absurdity of it all.
"Wow, they even got me under a sky that has the color of expired milk. What a good day to prepare my funeral. They sure are considerate."
With a sigh, he went on speaking.
"I should write a trilogy sometime. Best-seller: 'How to get murdered by a snake-thing and then commit semi-suicide by thirst. I bet it'll make a good market hit.'"
Struck by silence, Xin fell quiet for a while, pondering the words he had read earlier. They seemed to hold truth, especially considering the 'Don't trust reality' ones.
The water... seemed off somehow, and he was fairly certain his previous cause of death wasn't due to chlorine. If the chlorine content had been that high, his eyes would have been blinded the first and second time he submerged in it.
There were a few patterns he noticed in his deaths. For instance, when he died the first time and woke up, he noticed his eyes stung, which likely meant that he somehow died and was transported out after death and revived.
This meant he did not return to a certain checkpoint like a specific 'Barusu' and merely stayed as-is, perhaps even transported a few minutes or hours into the future.
Although this information wasn't currently useful, it might prove otherwise later. It was like solving a puzzle, and he, as the professor, was carefully placing each piece slowly to see the full image.
But even so, in this puzzle, there were pieces that didn't seem to fit the board, yet if you removed them, the puzzle would be incomplete, unable to reveal the final image.
The phrases like 'Don't trust reality' or 'Wake up' were strange to begin with. He tried to connect them to the door the skeleton-like creature had emphasized, yet it made no sense. There was simply no link.
With a groan of lethargy, Xin slowly sat up on his rear, his joints protesting the movement. The most important thing he recalled before death were the '0X' characters shown right as he was drowning.
It was almost... a countdown for his deaths? That seemed the most plausible answer. Which... would explain why he looked like he had wandered into a children's horror book of ghosts and demons eating men for breakfast and women for dinner, while stirring children in their fruit-juice cups.
But the 1X countdown earlier made no sense, even though he hadn't died.
With a sigh of resignation, he slowly rose to his feet, brushing debris off his clothing, his heartbeat steady as ever.
His goal was to get out of here, no matter the price.
Other than his internal thoughts, there were no sounds, not even the wind, which made him raise an eyebrow in intrigue. It seemed this place... seemed a bit safer than the others?
"Oh, I just planted a red flag"
Only... the sound of his own pulse. A slow, echoing thump. It felt wrong—distant, like it wasn't coming from his body but from the stone beneath him.
The landscape was seemingly endless, many hills and mountain-like landscapes in view, along with trees.
What met his gaze was something otherworldly.
"Talk about a dead end.." His eyes narrowing, he looked to what was ahead of him.
Something... was odd.
A ancient hell, or so it seemed.
The hills filled with grey deciduous trees fell away into a sunken valley—no, not a valley, but a necropolis, ancient and grotesque.
The first gravestone was, then another, then a hundred. Each silhouette more monstrous than the last gravestones, with the first being human size, and others being far what exceeded the size of humans, speculated to be of creatures beyond the comprehension of humans.
Each slab was massive—some shaped like blades, others like shattered wings. And each bore no name. Only hollow etchings, like someone had started writing epitaphs in languages no living thing could finish.
What they all had in common is that the monuments here were related to either death or interment.
As Xin crested the hill, a pressure settled on his chest—not weight, exactly, but the sense of being watched by something far too still. The horizon warped, as if refusing to focus. His instincts slowed him. Something ahead was different.
Xin looked detachedly at the scenery, before he slowly walked down the hill he had awoken on.
In the distance, a massive sword the size of a skyscraper stood buried in the heart of a crater, its hilt wrapped in runic chains that shimmered with a faint blue fire, two mountains filed with dense trees on them.
He ignored everything around him and walked slowly, his footsteps stepping on the lifeless grey grass along the way. The air thinned as he approached. His ears began to ring. Every step was accompanied by the soft crunch of grass—except once, when there was no sound at all.
He continued walking until he entered the district of the graves, no smell of decay present in the air, nor the stench that marked anciency.
He didn't know why his feet moved toward the graveyard. Maybe curiosity. Maybe something worse. But as he passed the first blank headstone, a chill licked his spine
He walked for a while, his gaze probing for everything around him for any clues, as he began his search with one small grave seated on his right.
He calmly walked towards it and stood in front of it as if observing it with his keen eyes. Gently touching the stone, he looked back to his fingers for any trace of dust that may signify the ancientness of such tombs.
Yet, to his surprise, he did not find a trace of dust or so, making him muse in contemplation. Next, he checked the type of material used for the grave, yet found no similarities to it and to other materials back on earth.
Although seemingly similar to a mixture of cement and steel, the material had a complete different texture to anything he could think of. The closest thing he could compare it with is a combination of titanium, plutonium, and copper.
He slowly rose to his feet, deciding to do a taboo thing that many people would outright refuse, were they in his footsteps.
Slowly sitting on his knees, he brought his hands, and began attempting to move handfuls of dirt to dig the corpses out. He needed to confirm himself if there were any bodies.
Yet, no matter how much he tried, it was like there was a force that stopped him form attempting to dig out anything out. No matter how much he pushed his fingers into the grey-like soil, he was unable to even create a dent on the earth.
It wasn't that it was hard, it was like it wasn't meant to be dug in the first place.
Furrowing his brow in puzzlement, he observed the earth for a few moments, before he decided to give up. Brushing his hair to the back, he looked at the peculiar sky for a few seconds in rumination, his eyes flickering back to the tombstones in front of him.
He decided to walk for a while more, perhaps he could find a thing or two that could help him.
His walk did not take long, his observant eyes had caught sight of something peculiar.
In fascination, he halted his steps, his pitch black eyes fixating on a tombstone that stood particularly out from the rest.
Although it looked the same as others in terms of size, unlike the others, it seemed there were understandable words written on it.
Walking to it, his heart starting beating erratically for unknown reasons, almost as if he felt a connection from this particular tombstone, a foreboding emotion overtaking his mind.
And he wasn't wrong.
Writing.
Written in blood.
"Xin. Betrayer. Survivor. Final Resident."
A Gravestone.
Calling for him.
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Hello everyone,
This is author-kun. As you can see, I'm trying to experiment with new ideas like internal monologue, but I still feel things like thoughts to be a bit shallow. Don't worry though, I'll need some time to fix that stuff and to improve.
There are some things that I can't pinpoint as well, so I would appreciate anyone to give me a heads up on more improvements to give, thank you~
Also, there is a high chance I'll improve chapters of part 1, so look forward towards it.
Fantasy and r-18 are soon coming~
-ItismeindeedsoObey