LEVEL 0 IMMORTAL

The flood of spawns had ended, and the candidates on the surface, exhausted and bloodied, took the opportunity to fall back, to regroup, to breathe.

If they were wise, they should be running, but of course, they did not run; they sat around the rim of the pit and were trying to listen to what was happening below.

Yuta's hand tightened on the hilt of his sword; he was also curious.

What is happening down there?

Surely the source of his nightmares could not just end like this; it would be too easy. Every night, he had nightmares, and it was the reason he could no longer sleep. Even as a Mist Phantom, this state was starting to take its toll.

And yet, Yuta knew that he could not sleep; he was cursed. Day by day, the blade by his side was becoming more alluring to him.

What relief would he feel if he could slowly drive his sword through his left eye… very, very, slowly. Then, when he had pushed his blade until it touched the inside of his skull, he would slowly rotate it, turning his brain to mush.

Yuta tried to stop the moan of pleasure that almost emerged from his mouth, but he suspected that he might have failed as the fellow guardsman beside him looked at him a bit strangely.

He cleared his throat to hide his embarrassment, and then he felt it before he saw it. A pulse of something that was not light, sound, or heat, that passed through him like a ghost.

His vision blurred, and Yuta felt his heart stutter in his chest. He heard curses around him, and then the pit screamed.

The sound was that of something that had been asleep for a very long time being woken up, or maybe something that had been awake too long being placed to rest.

The small groups of spawns that remained on the surface convulsed, turned to ash, and did not reform, and the pit fell silent.

And somewhere in the depths, Yuta knew, the six candidates had done what they were here to do.

'It is over,' he thought. 'The womb is dead.'

He should have felt relief. He should have felt joy. He should have fallen to his knees and thanked whatever gods still listened that the nightmare was ended.

Instead, he felt hate. It should have been him; the blade that ended the life of that monster should have buried itself into his heart. Only in death would he be able to find peace and rest.

'Blood of the fallen gods, I want to rest, I want to sleep. Please, someone, kill me… please.'

The only response to his plea was an itchiness in his back, as if something was digging out of it.

He ignored the sensation because it was barely more than an itch, a small irritation between his shoulder blades. After a while, Yuta reached back through his clothes to scratch it after he noted that no one was staring at him, and his fingers found something soft and warm, something that should not be there.

He pulled his hand away, and his fingers were wet.

"What—"

The lump grew. He felt it pushing against his spine, spreading across his shoulders, pressing against the inside of his armor. It was warm, fever-warm, and it moved with a rhythm that was not his heartbeat.

"Yuta?" The young guard's voice was distant, muffled. "Yuta, what's wrong?"

He could not answer. The lump was opening.

He felt it split, the skin parting along a line that had not been there a moment before. There was no pain. There was only pressure, and heat, and a wet, tearing sound that he heard inside his head.

The thing that emerged from his back was a hand.

It was pale, almost translucent, its fingers too long and too jointed. It curled, uncurled, flexed once, as if testing its new existence.

And in the palm of that hand, an eye opened.

Yellow. Hungry. Ancient.

Yuta stared at it, and it stared back.

No, he thought. No, no, no—

The hand reached up and touched his cheek. Its fingers were cold, colder than the void between stars.

And the eye... the yellow eye smiled.

Yuta opened his mouth to scream, and the hand covered his lips.

"Yuta, don't you want to die? If you scream, then the chance for your death would be taken away, and you would be kept locked up inside a tiny, tiny box, where your blood would be slowly drained away to feed their noble babies. You will stay in your tiny box forever, Yuta, and you will not be able to cry… You will not be able to die."

Yuta was silent, and the urge to cry out in panic vanished. The voice in his head was strange, almost like that of a mad clown.

A small part of him knew he needed to cry out, not far from him were some of the most powerful people in the city, and they would surely know that something was wrong with him, and they would…

This line of thought stopped, as he understood that the words inside his head were not wrong. If whatever was inside of him was related to these spawns that seemed able to enhance the talents of these noble brats, he would be placed inside a cage, and he would suffer forever.

"On my name, I speak the truth, Yuta. But, unlike them, I am not cruel. I want you to die, Yuta, many, many times, and you shall be born in threes and threes and threes and threes and threes and threes….. Will you not like that, Yuta? Hmm, you can die as many times as you want… that sweet, sweet relief would not be far from you."

Yuta nodded and hurriedly brought the back of his sleeves to clean his mouth when he noted that he had been drooling.

"Good, now wait till nightfall and leave the city. There is a tribe of cannibals to the south, you shall find them and give unto them your flesh, and they shall not only kill you, Yuta, but I also promise they shall eat you… over and over and over and over and over and over…"

It was a good thing that Yuta's breeches were lined with metal, or his arousal would have been seen by everyone on the wall.