Chapter 2: Poisonous Hope

[Extreme cold detected!]

[Trying to stabilize internal temperature!]

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…

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[Failure!]

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[Trying to stabilize internal temperature!]

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[Failure!]

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[Trying to stabilize internal temperature!]

…

…

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[Failure!]

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[Trying to stabilize internal temperature!]

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…

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[Failure!]

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[Malfunction!]

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[Temperature stabilization mechanism inoperable!]

[Host unresponsive… administering shock!]

 

BuzZzzZzzzZZz!

BuzZzzZzzzZZz!!

BuzZzzZzzzZZz!!!

 

Current ran amok but it failed to rouse him. The artificial spirit operating the armor progressively increased the power of the shock. It quickly consumed the remaining power within the armor. Inero-ie still showed no signs of waking up, it only further damaged his body. 

 

Another wave of shocks was administered and instead of rousing him up, it further disrupted the flow of Qi. It set off a chain reaction that resulted in him waking up, confused and in intense pain.

 

[Armor critically damaged!]

…

[Temperature stabilization mechanism damaged– Shutting down!]

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[Advised to return to settlement as soon as possible!]

 

He could not make sense of anything but to make the matters worse, the message log was uploaded into his brain directly through the interface. The sudden wave of information sent him into a mental shock.

 

What was going on? Where was he? How did he get here? Nothing made sense. He could not think straight and the pain. He was forced to juggle so many things at once while he was least prepared.

 

A ringing tune echoed directly into his brain. It further drove him into madness.

 

‘Ahhhgggg!!!’

 

He wanted to bash his head against something, he would do anything to stop the noise.

 

‘Messages? Despite turning them to mute?’

 

Though he was gripped by madness, the slightest bit of sense became alert. 

 

‘Shit!!’

 

The armor had already been greatly damaged during the fight and then it had to administer shocks to keep him alive all while protecting the body from the indescribably cold liquid that he was drowning in. Even at this time, the armor had been holding the frigid liquid back, stopping it from flooding in through the damaged parts. It was nearing its end.

 

The temperature stabilization mechanism breaking had been the backbreaker. The energy required to combat the cold increased exponentially, and with the high-intensity events occurring one after another, it died.

 

One moment it was protecting him, the next it was just a useless piece of scrap. The liquid rushed in with nothing stopping it.

 

sssSsssSSSSsssss

 

‘aahgggA!!!hhhh!!uuu…’

 

He screamed for a brief moment. The burning cold destroyed his skin as the elements that made it up expanded and shrunk causing it to be ripped apart. That was the start. The cold dug deeper, it destroyed the skin and invaded the muscles. 

 

The feeling was different from the burns from the fire but no less painful. He was trapped, he was in anguish but with no way to express it. 

 

‘aghhH!!’

 

‘fuuuuu…’

 

His body was tired and damaged. It caused the level of control he could exert upon it to be reduced.

 

The outer layers of his muscles froze and with them the blood and qi vines in those areas. The burning cold marched inwards while the liquid had completely enveloped his body save for the head which was barely being protected by the helmet. It would not be long till he was fully frozen. To death.

 

‘At least…kuh…raaaHa!…I will die…’

 

For him, all this pain was worth it if it meant he would die. 

 

But the cold was forced to halt. 

 

The qi flowed through his vines, viscous like honey. It had put too much burden on his body, it caused abnormal swelling in his Qi vines. The cracked core continuously pumped out the dense Qi. It kept him alive. The cold was blocked by the Qi, especially the bigger Qi vines simultaneously stopped the advance of the cold, stopping it from causing further destruction. 

 

Two destructive power clashed to a standstill.

 

The pain, all he could do was feel, unable to even scream as his muscles became rigid, and his mouth and tongue stiffened. The wild qi rampaged within while the intense cold destroyed the outside.

 

The pain, it was too much. Unknowingly, he became unconscious.

 

***

 

His eyes blinked.

 

‘How?’

 

He became aware.

 

‘No…How is it possible? I should be dead…’

 

The pain was no more. He could hear nothing around him, feel nothing. He tried to make the qi threads but his qi did not follow the command. It had already been difficult to control it but now with his outer qi vines destroyed it was on the verge of rampaging. 

 

He did not care about that.

 

His frozen body parts shattered as he ripped the qi from within his body, forcefully creating a few Qi strings. 

 

The was still nothing around him except the liquid. There was nothing. No sound. No motion. Nothing alive.

 

‘No!Nononono!No!!’

 

He forcefully kept creating more and more Qi strands but the result did not change. More and more, he ripped Qi out and used it to create more Qi threads. The threads expanded, branching out more and more but nothing changed. There was nothing around him.

 

‘How can this be…’

 

It would have been painful death. Those worms would have taken one bite at a time while making sure he still lived as long as possible but he would have died in the end. That was what he wanted.

 

‘Something, there must be something here…’

 

He ripped more and more Qi and the Qi wires kept on becoming bigger and bigger. Anything that could sense Qi would be attracted. It was like turning on a high-intensity torch light within absolute darkness.

 

…

 

Nothing appeared.

 

Suddenly–

 

‘!!!’

 

He blacked out.

 

***

 

The helmet was under extreme pressure. It protected his head and simultaneously provided him with the oxygen required. But with the way things were progressing, it too would become useless due to cold. It seemed as though his desire was finally going to be fulfilled.

 

Then came the but, just like every single time before.

 

Something changed. Despite the liquid still engulfing him, the cold could not get into his body. Nothing had changed around him. Even if Inero-ie was awake, he would have been unable to find anything.

 

His body drifted through the frigid liquid in the inky black depths, the flow taking him on a journey.

 

***

 

Inhale

 

His body shuddered with pleasure. The feeling as he breathed in the oxygen was intoxicating. Then the cold oxygen went into his lungs damaging them instead. He coughed and coughed, to no end. He tried circulating his qi to quickly expel the cold but an intense pain overwhelmed him.

 

Due to the intensity and the suddenness, he almost lost consciousness again. He gritted his teeth and they broke, having become too brittle.

 

The coughing erupted again.

 

He focused his attention inwards. Viscous like honey, his Qi still flowed though now spent but his core was still spewing out more. It would not take it long to recover.

 

He gathered his will and carefully directed the Qi towards the lungs, breaking it into trindles that invade his lunges and slowly pushed out the cold. Slowly, one by one he forced out the cold but the damage had already been done. Despite the pain, he only felt happy. He was another step near death.

 

It did not matter even if it was even more painful–

 

‘As long as I die…’

 

‘... But why have I not frozen to death?...’

 

Qi threads warped around his body. His body was submerged in the liquid. He should have been dead just from the cold if not from the liquid itself.

 

He opened his mouth even though it ripped the freezing skin and flesh. Despite doing so, the liquid did not go in. It was like there was something stopping it.

 

‘How is it possible?’

 

He could not wrap his head around it. But the things he could not understand only kept increasing. 

 

‘... How…’

 

A thought crossed his mind. Even if this liquid and cold did not kill him the monster inhabiting this place should have. Not encountering any monster at the start he could grudgingly accept but this was too much. How could he be in one peace in here of all places?

 

Qi strands expanded out from his body once again, sending back all kinds of information, that, when combined produced a single answer, there was nothing here.

 

‘Could I be sensing wrong? Could they have had the ability to hide from me? But I would not have been alive then…’

 

His ability to sense the surrounding was something he could not doubt. He was most confident in his sensory-related abilities. With no light, no water, no food, no warmth, and no help, he had survived all alone out of the settlement. In a place that was not meant for humans. A place where even the air was a toxic poison. Out here he survived by knowing when to hide when to run and when to fight.

 

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Even the nightmarish creatures roaming in these lands, he could spy upon them without ever being found. Creatures that were much stronger than him.

 

So he had no choice but to believe that there was nothing around him. Accepting it was another thing though. He would not give up, not when what he desired seemed to be slipping away from his hands at every passing second.

 

He pumped the Qi threads with more and more Qi making them bigger and branching them further and further. Nothing. There was nothing even after the passage of hours.

 

‘Why! Why does it always end up like this… Why can’t I just die?!’

 

‘But if not here where are all monstrosities living down here?’

 

Each and every one of the creatures existing down here was powerful. The ability to survive this liquid that could quickly freeze even the hardest steel at the slightest touch was enough to make them all formidable. But that was not all, they were all violent, aggressive just like the specters. Unlike the specters though, these things hunted anything that they came across. That was why he was so confused.

 

Living all their lives down here they were adapted to life here. It made their qi-sensing abilities even sharper than those above the land. The way he recklessly used the energy, those monsters would have been swarming in here.

 

‘Hun?’

 

Something happened. He was confused. His Qi control rapidly worsened. He gathered his focus and tried again but his Qi was unresponsive.

 

‘...What is happening?’

 

He tried again, this time he felt something, just the slight quiver of it but even that died down. He tried again and again but it just would not follow his will.

 

‘Is it the time already?’

 

‘Shouldn’t there still be time before the after-effects start showing?’

 

He thought of the time when his body was exhausted to the degree that it just could not do as he wished. Like the times his legs would just buckle on their own, like the time when his hands would loosen the grip despite it being against his wishes. Like the times when he simply could not manipulate the Qi. The after-effects were always severe. But there should have been more time before the after-effects of burdening his body started showing.

 

‘How long have I been down here?’

 

He did not know that.

 

His senses started to degrade as did his ability to control the qi, they kept getting fainter and fainter until he was stuck inside a void. He could not see, he could not hear, he could not feel. He was effectively trapped within his own body.

 

Time continued to pass and even though he went in with the hope that he would quickly die, he was still alive and trapped within that dreaded space.

 

Like every time his sanity was tested and it was found lacking. This prison was pure despair, pure fear itself. Everything was blocked out. He could not sense his fingers, his hands, his eyes, his tongue, his qi. He was trapped with his own self, with his own thoughts. Things that he had kept suppressed.

 

He tried to gather himself, to protect his sanity but it was difficult. He wanted to punch something hard, so hard that even his bones would break. All just to feel something, anything. But there was only a void. It was worse than being unable to breathe.

 

The feeling of arms and legs being tied down. The helplessness one felt when one wanted to but was unable to move one’s own body. The feeling he felt was like that, just amplified by a thousand times– no tens of thousands of times.

 

Time passed, and with each passing moment, his sanity was chipped away.

Time passed, and with each passing moment, his body drifted further into the dark sea.

 

All the while he was still trapped. The despair he felt, the fear, he could not contain them. Despite the harsh life he lived, he just could not. He never had been afraid of death, rather he welcomed it, but this helplessness, each time felt as though he was experiencing it anew.

 

Time passed, and it kept getting worse.

 

***

 

‘Iamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdead…’

 

…

 

‘Iamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdead…’

 

…

 

‘Iamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdead…’

 

…

 

‘But, if I am dead, how can I think?’

 

‘No!! I am dead! I have to be!!’

 

…

 

‘Iamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdead…’

 

…

 

‘Iamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdead…’

 

…

 

‘Iamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdeadiamdead…’

 

…

 

Death, an object of his desire, his goal. But the promise chained him otherwise, he would have long since committed suicide. He had to die but without violating the promise he had made. The promise was the reason he kept wandering out in this inhuman land. The reason why he left the safety of the Grand Formation: a suicidal task. 

 

He left that safety precisely because it was a suicidal task but it all seemed to be in vain. He always survived in the end. Despite visiting the most dangerous of the places, despite getting in fights as much as possible. Despite constantly putting himself in situations where there was just the slightest hope of remaining alive. He lived, always lived. But he did not give up hope.

 

He would not give up hope, it only needed to happen once, and then he would be dead but the hope could just as easily become the most fatal poison. A poison that one willingly took. A poison that most painfully ripped away what one desired.

 

The hope started becoming poison as his sanity kept slipping all the while the time kept flowing.

 

***

 

Fear and despair gave way to anger. The anger at his weakness. The anger at willingly shackling himself with the chains of the promise.

 

He wanted to rampage while caring for nothing, especially not the promise. Just dying somehow even if it meant killing himself. But he could not just cast off the shackles and that drowned him in despair. It made him angrier and angrier.

 

He wanted to break things. He wanted to kill things. He wanted to–

 

He wanted to but he could not. Despite his deepest desire, he could not do anything. It only made him feel pathetic.

 

‘Nothing!’

 

‘Why! Does! Nothing!! CHANGE!!!’

 

His anger kept boiling and bubbling, time kept flowing and his body kept drifting.

 

***

Time passed.

 

One emotion after another. Like a bucket that was filled with too much water, his emotion kept spilling out. Anger eroded as time passed, and so did the sadness and then the other emotions that kept spilling out.

 

In the end, he returned to his apathetic self.

 

***

 

Time kept passing.

 

‘Humm…’

 

He felt something. It was so subtle that he could have missed it.

 

‘How long has it been?’

 

There was no possible way to keep track of time. Not when he was imprisoned within his own body, completely cut off from every and all senses.

 

***

‘It is becoming clearer!’

 

It was slow but he was not bored, nor disappointed. He just kept waiting, anticipating. He kept observing as the feeling became clearer.

 

Time kept passing.

 

***

 

Though roughly, he was starting to feel the current against his body as the waves pushed his body somewhere. The destination, he had no idea of just like he did not know the reason for his survival despite being submerged deep within this glacial liquid.

 

‘I have survived, unfortunately.’

 

It was something he could no longer deny so he had to work towards keeping his promise. He had to make sure he survived. The things he had no answer for, the things he could not understand, he swept them all under the rug for the moment and focused on the things he could change.

 

***

 

“Huuuuuuuu…haaaaaaa”

 

His body shivered from the pleasure. The act of breathing was so simple but nothing could match the pleasure that hit him from doing just that simple activity.

 

Time passed and his sense started returning.

 

***

 

‘It is ugly…’

 

He thought while observing the qi vines and the core within his heart. The cracks were still there throughout the Qi channels within his body. The circulation was haywire and further worsening the situation was his broken body.

 

The blood vessels had also burst. His outer skin had completely been destroyed while the many parts of his body were still frozen. 

 

‘I should have died, so why didn’t I?’

 

That question kept bothering him. His situation was so much worse that he should have died many times over but here he was completely fine. Still, he needed to recover his strength but that was impossible to do out here. He needed to return to the settlement.

 

‘Maybe another chance will appear.’

 

Time passed. The flow kept changing, sometimes it pulled, and then it pushed, and with the terrible condition he was in it was difficult to keep a sense of it all.

 

***

Like spinning silk strands, he cautiously extracted fine and thin thread from the dense and viscous qi still flowing through his vines. Once, twice, thrice, and on and on. He kept repeating the action. Creating more and more until he had enough to spin a Qi cord.

 

The body completed, he started imprinting his spell formula upon the threads. As though gaining sentience, they extended towards the outside.

 

He started the steps again. Despite the long long time since he had been doing this, he did not feel any difference whether it be the quantity or the density of the qi that had taken hold within his body.

 

‘The core holds just so much energy.’

 

Time passed and his body kept flowing along within the sea.

 

***

 

‘Huh?’

 

His body had suddenly come to a stop.

 

‘How? No. When?’

 

He had felt nothing. That was strange. But that was not important at the moment. He could sense something. It was small.

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