Free Web NovelChapter 45: Chapter 39: Rank 86
A/N:
Warning: This Chapter contains graphic content that involves coercion and child abuse.
I do not endorse or promote abuse of any kind, be it mental, physical or sexual on anybody regardless of age, gender, or affiliation.
Do not forget that this is just a dark fantasy novel and even here, abuse is not cool.
Also, there’s gonna be some disgusting and ’icky’ stuff in this Chapter.
You have been warned.
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Pain.
Burning pain. freewebnσvel.cѳm
That’s what Zeke felt the moment he swallowed the scorpion. His digestive system, which had been strengthened by eating raw rat meat, instantly started dissolving the scorpion’s hard exoskeleton.
The scorpion came back to its senses due to the pain and started thrashing around in his stomach. It stung his stomach wall with its stinger and claws. Zeke didn’t know how long it took, but at some point, the scorpion stopped moving. Most probably, it had died.
But then, the real hell began. Every part of that scorpion contained a different type of toxin and as his body was ingesting the scorpion, layer by layer, they started affecting him. The scorpion had already injected its venom through its stinger into his bloodstream.
Zeke felt like his body was burning. He wasn’t able to move at all. Right now, his body was doing whatever it could to endure all of these toxins and survive. His body started producing antibodies, which started mutating extremely fast to fend off the foreign substances.
Even his DNA started changing slightly, under the influence of the scorpion’s incredibly unstable genetic code. The worst part was that Zeke had to stay awake while these changes were taking place inside his body or else he would die.
Zeke kept breathing deeply. He was clamping his fists so hard that his nails had dug into his palms. He even had to bite his tongue occasionally to stay awake. Eventually the pain stopped and he passed out.
When Zeke woke up, he didn’t know how much time had passed. All he knew was that his throat was extremely dry and that he had a terrible stomach ache. He looked towards the entrance and found eight bowls of congee and four pots of water there. It had been four days since he had consumed anything. Wait a minute. Looked?
Zeke was shocked at how clearly he could see, even in the dark. It didn’t feel like it was dark at all. He wanted to check what other changes he had gone through and tried to sit up. And failed miserably. Every muscle in his body was screaming with pain. He wanted to throw up but there wasn’t anything inside his stomach so he ended up dry retching. After that, he was somehow able to sit up and drink some water. He ate a bowl of congee, only to vomit it out an hour later.
It took him a month to completely recover.
After recovering, he started carefully examining the changes that he had gone through. The first thing that he discovered was his heightened senses. He was able to see, hear, smell, taste, and even feel better. He knew that it was gonna take some time getting used to them. Second, his recovery speed had increased drastically. He made a small slit on his finger and it healed completely in just 15 minutes. What was even more amazing was that it didn’t scar at all.
Well, it did form a scar but strangely in just one night, the scar turned into dead skin and came off very easily. Third and the most amazing was that his blood had gained additional properties. He did some experiments with the critters he caught and found that his blood was both poisonous and venomous at the same time. Meaning, it could kill somebody if they either consumed it or if it somehow got into their bloodstream. He had also become bald, but fortunately, he could feel small hair growing when he touched his head so he knew that it wasn’t permanent. frёeweɓηovel.coɱ
He resumed his training and found that his physical durability had also increased drastically. He was now able to do harsher training. Soon, another three months passed and he had already spent a whole year in this place. He still didn’t know what his mission was, so he just trained.
One day, he heard a sound. He turned around, but before he could see anything, he was knocked out.
[Despicable bastards.]
He woke up groggily and saw that there were many children just like him all around him. It seemed that they had also been knocked out because they were also waking up, just like him. He didn’t count but there had to be somewhere between 90-130 children here. They were in a huge cavern. The cavern walls held many torches, so that there was enough light but honestly, after spending a year in the dark, the torches felt kind of uncomfortable. There was also a boundary made by wooden stakes.
Five men, dressed in black uniforms appeared. Seeing the men, the children quieted down. One of the men who liked the leader said, "I will not repeat myself, so listen carefully. All of you are beggars and orphans that no one cares about. We brought you to this place to give your miserable, meaningless lives purpose. We’ll turn you from the waste of space that you currently are, into warriors. But do not think that we care about you. We don’t. We brought 200 children here but only 105 were able to survive. And we still don’t give a fuck.
We will begin training you from today. If you are able to keep up, then you live. If you aren’t, then you die. You are to obey all orders. If you don’t, you die. You won’t talk until talked to or...you will die. When an instructor talks to you, you will only answer with either ’Yes Sir.’ or ’No Sir.’. If you don’t, then obviously, you die. You will not have names. You will only have ranks. Currently, the ranks are random but that will change soon. We will rank you based on your skills after a month. Whoever ranks 105 at that time will die. Am I clear?"
[You breathe, you die. You exist, you die. You’re dead, you still die.]
All the children yelled at the same time, "YES SIR."
The instructors then randomly ranked the children. An instructor came to Zeke and said, "Rank 86."
Zeke replied, "Yes Sir."
The instructor stared at him strangely for a minute and then moved on to another student. After every child had been assigned ranks, the instructor who had given them the instructions said, "Form seven lines with 15 children each according to the rank that has been assigned to you. Quickly."
The children quickly formed lines. One girl was overwhelmed by it all and got confused. Everyone had already formed the lines when she found where she was supposed to go, but before she could, a whip hit her back.
The instructor who had whipped her said, "Dumbasses get whipped. Do you understand?"
The children replied, "YES SIR."
The head instructor told them to keep at least two arms worth of distance between them. Then he said, "Lines 1 to 4, duck walk 50 laps outside the boundary. Lines 5, 6, and 7, give 150 push ups inside the boundary. Begin."
All the children were shocked. Did he think that they were machines? Even an adult wouldn’t be able to complete this task, right? Still, they had no choice. They just replied, "YES SIR." and complied with his orders. As rank 86, he was in line 6. He first took off his shirt because he didn’t know if they would give him another and didn’t want to ruin it with all the sweat. It wasn’t just him. Many boys thought the same and took off their shirts.
The instructors were a bit surprised to see Zeke’s built body. They had already taken notice of him and now it just put him in the spotlight even more. They could tell that he had not wasted his time in the cave at all. Zeke was also a bit excited. He wanted to push himself today. His current record was 135 push ups. He wanted to see if he could surpass his limits. He knew that they were gonna get some sort of pills, considering the amount of effort that was being put into training them.
He began and maintained a constant speed. He didn’t want to tire himself out just for the sake of finishing faster. While he was doing the push ups, he started thinking about the strange things that he had noticed. First, even though the instructors threatened them at every other second, it somehow felt that they were holding themselves back. He couldn’t explain it, but it just did. But this was fine.
What he was really curious about was the other children. All of the children had blood red eyes, like he did. Even though he had never seen his own face, he knew that he had blood red eyes. It was those eyes that earned him the name Akma-Jasik. Also, these children were cute. Like the kind of cute children you know are gonna be handsome or gorgeous when they grow up. And the third thing, all of the children had similar features. He had also heard one of the boys also introducing himself as Akma-Jasik to another kid.
As he was thinking, he remembered why the blood red eyes got him the name, Akma-Jasik. The name could be translated into ’Demon Spawn’. In his memories, he remembered one of the men who liked to beat him up for no reason said something involving the Cheonma having blood red eyes as well. He started thinking about it even more until he had a terrifying thought. But it was crazy, too crazy even by his standards. He thought to himself, ’There’s no way someone could be that crazy, right? Not even the Cheonma...’
[If anyone’s wondering, Cheonma means Heavenly Demon. Dumb Realm_Weaver is saying that he wants to use the Korean terms as much as he can.]
Wait, Cheonma? Why didn’t he think of this before? It seems that his previous guess was correct. He was in the world of Murim. He suddenly lost his balance. Not because he was scared or due to the absurdness of the guess he had just made. It was because his mission had just revealed itself.
