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Chapter 205 Volume IV - Chapter 50: Unacceptable Offer

Over and over again.

Every minute, every hour, every day.

In different ways, in different methods.

Yet that wasn\'t the worst of it.

The worst was the addiction.

They made me take it thrice a day at first, but now I could take it once every two days.

During the first period, my whole body would start shaking. Then I would start to suffer from thirst. I would feel like my organs were being squeezed. Then I would feel my stomach start to burn, and drinking anything other than the drug would never take away that burning sensation.

After that, the pain would continue to increase. My body would writhe for it, yet they would never give it to me until I was at my worst.

Of all the tortures, this was the worst.

After a while, when I realized that I was becoming extremely weak from hunger and bad conditions, I felt something inside me change.

The day I saw the amount of dried blood that belonged to me pooling on the floor, I stopped thinking about how to get out of here.

I bit my tongue and tried to commit suicide.

Only to be thwarted again and again by another \'me\'.

*******

I had a dream.

A dream filled with my desires.

It was a dream of the family I wanted to have in the future.

I had friends.

There was Sue.

There was Clara.

I was in my late twenties. I had a detached house on a green plain.

I had my children.

I was... I was happy.

Is that why it was a dream?

When I woke up, when I saw the gray wall in front of me and a dwarf came into my field of vision, I smiled for no reason.

Why can\'t I just die?

*******

As the sound of footsteps echoed behind me, I raised my head and looked up at the ceiling as my new torturer tried to choose what to do to me.

I felt the Absolute Mind trying to calm me down, trying to make it easier for me to ignore the pain.

It was the same as always. First, my mind slowly cleared, then the pain returned and after a while, the limit of the skill was exceeded again.

As the poisonous, burning needles were inserted into my skin, into every part of my exposed skin, a question arose in my mind.

Before I came here... what was I doing?

*******

"I\'m tellin\' ye, that one\'s no good anymore. Not a reaction from him. Hard to believe, but he has grown accustomed."

I closed my eyes as the dwarf spoke in front of me with his bracelet on his arm.

No pain... none.

Strange...

How long has it been? How long have I been here?

I pushed my mind, I thought about what I was doing before I came here.

Oh, right...

How could I forget?

Ezareth, and Dorhud... south and north…? battlefield. Caleuche…

A few weeks?

A couple months? No, it couldn\'t have happened that long...

"Understood."

When the dwarf finished talking to his bracelet, he looked at my face and sighed with a slight smile.

"It was fun."

Then his hard, curved fist landed on my face again. My teeth chattered and the world went dark... as always.

*******

The gray clouds continued to move slowly, peacefully.

Under the overcast sky, the rain was pouring down, soaking my clothes.

I didn\'t care much, though.

It felt foreign. Everything I saw with my eyes was strange.

I squinted my eyes as I continued to look at the sky. I found this silence, this peace... I found it disturbing. It wasn\'t this, I was supposed to be somewhere else.

I shouldn\'t be here.

\'Tenebra, have you made your choice?\'

"Do I have another choice?"

When I heard my own voice, I noticed something strange.

It didn\'t seem to belong to me. It was also a foreign voice.

It was also soulless, without emotion. It was like an empty shell.

It was wrong, like me being \'here\'.

Even as my lips curved slightly upward... my smile was devoid of emotion.

"I hope you won\'t be sorry."

The clouds stopped moving. The lights of the city, which seemed to be constantly blinking, suddenly stopped. The colors, the colors of the world, faded and grayed one by one.

Time seemed frozen. And yet I could still move.

\'What does this mean, Tenebra?\'

I stood up without saying anything.

Until now I had been sitting on the terrace of a huge building.

A terrace in the heart of the city. Now it was cut off from the flow of time.

"It\'s nothing."

The voices, so many voices, different from each other but feeling the same, came out even louder and harsher than they already were, as if in anger.

\'Tenebra, don\'t you dare make a stupid mistake. You are blessed with knowledge, you should know what a mistake means.\'

I looked at the sun, faintly visible behind the clouds, not even it was moving.

It was as if time had stopped, not in this city, but in the entire universe.

"Of course, I know."

I stopped myself and sighed lightly before the smile on my face widened even more.

"There is one point where I disagree with you, though."

I turned away, heading toward the door of the terrace as the flow of time slowly returned to normal.

"This is not a blessing."

My eyes fell to the floor. I felt a pain in my heart as my voice, which felt like it was coming out of a hollow shell, left me even more soulless than it was.

It was not a physical pain. Yet it was literally different from any other.

It felt like it was draining my soul. Dulling my mind.

"It\'s just a curse."

*******

My eyes opened with a sharp, painful throbbing I felt when I was thrown to the ground and hit my head against the wall.

I tried to move my wrists reflexively, but something instantly pressed my hands against the wall, preventing me from moving them and binding something to them.

As my vision cleared, I saw what had happened to my hands. They were chained.

This gave me the opportunity to finally see the person in front of me. As usual, it was a dwarf.

After chaining my hands, the dwarf stepped back and looked at me briefly. Then, without a word, he took a deep breath and walked out of my new room.

With that, he slowly closed the door to the room. The amount of light coming in was greatly reduced and I realized where I was.

I was in a dungeon, a dark one, with so little light that almost nothing could be seen.

After a while, a sound caught my attention.

A hissing and crawling sound. At the same time, a pair of eyes in the darkness looked up at me.

"Ha- cough...! Ahahaha..."

I ignored the eyes that seemed to be moving toward me and hit my head back against the wall.

Is this it?

More voices followed as the thing crawled closer to me.

First, I saw a few more pairs of glowing eyes, then another sound, and with my eyes getting used to the darkness I saw another creature... It was a centipede.

*******

I felt dizzy. I kept throwing up from the venom of snakes and centipedes. It wasn\'t long before I realized that these animals were trained. Because they never poisoned me to death or tore my flesh.

I survived every time, even though I wished to die over and over again, with infected wounds all over my body, drinking poison every day instead of water, being offered the dead bodies of these poisonous animals instead of food, but I always survived.

I had no contact with any person. Apart from snakes and centipedes, I never saw a single moving being separate from myself.

The only thing that kept me connected to reality was the dreams I had.

Whether they were dreams of my desired, dreams of my past, or dreams as Aiden. Even if I couldn\'t remember any of the last one properly, there was a lot more of it that stayed with me now than before.

Aiden talking to himself against the void, for example. I couldn\'t remember who he was talking to, or the voice of the person he was talking to. Maybe he was schizophrenic, I don\'t know, but details like that connected me to reality and to being alive.

So I kept reminding myself who I was.

Once again... the days passed.

Maybe it hasn\'t...

"H- h… ey…"

My eyes fell on one of the snakes on the floor.

"Can you... not bite s- so much... today?"

The snake didn\'t care and opened its mouth, sinking its fangs into my foot. I smiled and coughed several times as I felt a small amount of its venom enter my body and enter my bloodstream.

Did I go crazy?

No... I couldn\'t think like that if I was crazy, could I? Absolute Mind wouldn\'t allow it anyway...

Or will it?

It hasn\'t been working properly for a while... It\'s active and inactive.

I don\'t know...

With these thoughts, a strange one slowly surfaced.

Why am I being tortured?

Just because of the existence of the Spiritual Ascension and my help to Dorhud?

No... Impossible... I can\'t go through so much just because of these two things.

Are they having fun? Are they doing it on purpose?

I don\'t understand...

Why?

It\'s ridiculou-

My thoughts were interrupted by the opening of the long-closed door of my room. A dwarf entered, a cold looking dwarf with his hands behind his back.

The snakes and centipedes in the room shuffled out of the way and disappeared into the darkness, as if in deference to him. Then the dwarf slowly looked me up and down. Meanwhile, I also looked at him.

There were countless insignia on his uniform. Each one symbolizing how high his rank was in the army.

Maybe I would have known who he was if my memory hadn\'t gone haywire, but I didn\'t even try.

"Aiden Tenebra."

He didn\'t speak in a strange accent like the rest of the dwarves. He was also fluent in Lunar, one of the two languages used by humans. At least the two words he said made me feel that way.

"I have come to make you an offer."

He approached me, ignoring the state of my body. He ignored the filth in the room and looked sternly into my eyes.

"How would you like to fight for the South Holar? People as tough as you are hard to find."

My lips curled upward. It hurt because they were dry and cracked, but I didn\'t care and smiled broadly.

"Hahahahahah... HAHAH...!"

After all you\'ve done to me?

"This offer is a chance for you to get out of here, Aiden. I suggest you don\'t underestimate it."

No way...

There\'s no getting out of here.

Even if I join the army, they won\'t let me go free. Besides... the thing inside me won\'t allow it, it will never let me get out of here.

What happens if the word \'okay\' comes out of my mouth? It can\'t, but what if it does?

I... No, I won\'t think.

I remained silent and the dwarf continued to stare into my eyes. After a short silence between us, he sighed, his eyes narrowed.

"I think your answer is negative."

Again, I did not answer him. Then, frustrated, he turned to the door, without looking at me again, not even once.

"So be it, Aiden Tenebra. Rot in this hole forever. When the time comes, I\'ll make sure you see your friends and your sister firsthand when we step foot where they are."

I couldn\'t say anything as the dwarf walked out. I could only hear him say something to someone outside before the door to the room literally slammed shut, something that made me frozen in place.

"Make it heavier."