Free Web NovelChapter 5: Memory Fragment
The field didn’t wait for Slave 135 to come to terms with what was happening, it proceeded as brutally as always.
Though Slave 135 did not move, the monsters did.
The remaining goblins from the first wave gathered first. Those that had survived stood closer together now.
Slave 135 had already realized it long ago. They also retained their memories of the battles, and thus their minds, scarred and misshapen from battles they remembered very well, forced them to band together.
Then new shapes emerged from the swamp.
Bigger goblins, broader, thicker in the limbs, their skin darker and tougher at a single look. Their heads sat lower on their shoulders.
Their weapons were heavier, crude clubs, jagged blades.
Behind them came wolves, not the same old ones.
These were larger; their bodies were built thick and powerful, muscle pressing hard beneath stretched skin. Curved horns spiraled from their skulls, sharper than most weapons. Their jaws were wider. Their fangs were longer, visible through their still-shut maws.
Surrounding the lone slave, all eyes on him alone, for he was their only target by default.
Slave 135 stood where he was. He glanced at them.
He did not bother holding the blade again.
He did not adjust his stance, nor did he prepare.
[Trial Commences]
The second wave began, the familiar maddened frenzy.
A second-wave goblin struck first with a club, launching him into the air.
The impact caved his ribs inward. Blood exploded from his mouth before a wolf lunged.
Its jaws closed around his leg and tore. Familiar pain arrived instantly, yet without a scream nor a sound to accompany it.
Claws tore into his stomach.
Teeth dug into his shoulder.
Blades hacked at his limbs.
Amidst it all, he did not resist, despair has taken root into his heart, detaching him from everything that he could not change or afford to resist.
His body was pulled apart in seconds. Darkness followed.
The reversal came.
His body reassembled.
The monsters fell back, surrounding him once again.
They gathered again.
He was placed in a standing position, though it ended as fast, he did not lift his arms.
The third, the fourth... They ended all the same.
It was like the monsters were also locked here with him, itching for an end as much as he was.
Yet again, it remained meaningless.
Counting was meaningless. Fighting was also meaningless.
Cycles blurred together... Death followed death.
He didn’t try to run either, nor did he think anymore.
It was like his mind had locked itself, refusing to take part in this reality he could not escape.
His body went through the motions of being destroyed while his mind froze in place.
There were signs he still felt pain, but intention or desire were no longer seen from those now hollow eyes.
But the process continued. It didn’t wait for him.
Time froze.
Restoration completed.
Time resumed.
He died.
Again.
And again.
And again.
The wolves’ teeth crushed him, the horned ones pinned him down and tore.
The larger goblins shattered his skull with heavy blows.
Sometimes he lasted seconds.
Sometimes less.
He learned nothing... He gained nothing.
The Trial did not pause.
The Trial system did not intervene.
The loop continued.
At some point, the monsters stopped feeling like enemies.
They became functions, movements, impacts, and rapid pain that he was gradually failing to perceive. He stopped reacting even internally.
Death became background noise, slowly becoming a nature.
The world reversed.
Restarting another death loop.
At some point, his body stopped tensing when the first blow landed, just loosely standing.
Repeating endlessly.
He existed only as something that could be broken. freёweɓnovel.com
Maybe this isolation gave him a moment to think of things beyond this hell he was stuck in.
He had always rejected this life of his, denied the predestined fate he found himself in.
Now his hatred was brewing, erupting slowly toward everything he was seeing at this very moment, toward everything he had seen in his life.
At the monsters.
At the eyeball outside.
At the slavers who stripped him of his identity and throw him and everyone else to death.
Maybe even at the brothers who died and left him behind alone.
Suddenly, everything felt like crawling bugs, things with no value, yet capable of ruining a day, every single day... an entire lifetime.
The monsters killing, the reset noises started to get him agitated, sapping his thoughts every time they started to take form.
He was fed up with them, with everything.
The hatred burned in his heart, like a small flame in his chest.
It was not a desire to live again. It was closer to madness.
The accumulated madness finally began to move from the shackles of his mind and start affecting reality.
At this very moment, a wolf bit down on his arm.
For some reason, it felt harder than usual.
No. It only felt harder now. It felt painful again.
The horned beast snapped its head, tearing muscle free.
The pain flared like lightning coursing through his nerves.
Though, it wasn’t enough to make him scream, but enough to make him look at the wolf again.
His arm hung uselessly, half torn, bone exposed.
The wolf did not let go, attempting to yank it free.
Slave 135 looked the beast in the eyes, and he saw it... A look that could be called both playful and at ease.
They could not end this either, but they weren’t threatened. They weren’t locked with him, he was the one locked with them alone.
’No, they are the victims of fate, not me!’ A thought slipped into him mind, for the first time in a very long while.
They were the victims of fate, not him... only they could die, he couldn’t.
One goblin approached. It raised its weapon.
The madness finally fueled something.
Something not driven by reason, nor by the brutality accumulating through the trial.
Slave 135 didn’t plan it, but he brought his face closer to the wolf’s... the one still biting on his arm.
He bit back at the wolf, his teeth sank into its snout.
Blood flooded his mouth, and the action forced wolf to recoil, finally letting go of the arm.
He wrenched his ruined arm free.
The wolf stepped back, but the approaching goblin had gotten too close... within arm’s reach.
Slave 135 took a step back, his remaining arm stretched forward. The goblin’s attack missed. Instead... it delivered its head into Slave 135’s hand, who gripped onto it before smashing forward.
Thud~
Thud~
Thud~
Repeatedly without a pause, collapsing the goblin’s face in the process
The monsters, now that he was fighting back again, slowly reverted back into their usual frenzy and roars
He roared back.
The sound tore from his throat, raw and broken.
The monsters hesitated, for only a second, but they still moved as if they never had a choice but to move... but that moment they hesitated was long enough for him to attack first.
Slave 135 lunged.
He struck with his body.
With his shoulder.
With his head.
With whatever remained intact.
He drove a goblin into the mud and crushed its throat with his knee.
A horned wolf charged. He dashed at it.
Its horns gored his side, but he managed to grab onto them with the one hand he was left with.
Using his entire weight to slide, the wolf’s charge was redirected into another.
A goblin attacked from behind and tore away his barely hanging arm, whatever was barely holding it has finally snapped.
Before it fell into the mud, he grabbed the arm and swung it like a weapon. Blood splattered across his face.
He did not stop, nor did he think.
It was like he was competing with monsters over who was more of a monster.
He was fighting because something inside him had snapped.
Something that threatened his existence, that he would vanish while still alive.
The monsters swarmed him.
He welcomed it, but he was torn apart again.
But this time, his body did not go slack.
He clawed at them until his fingers were gone.
When he fell again, on the brink of death, he did not wait for darkness.
He forced himself upright, barely standing.
His legs were on the verge of collapse. His arms were gone...
Yet, he refused to stop.
He threw his body at a nearby goblin and bit into its throat, his jaws the only thing that still worked.
He bit long and hard, ignoring everything attacking him.
Until his teeth snapped. freewebnoveℓ.com
Until his jaw cracked.
Until everything went dark.
The world froze.
The restoration did not begin immediately.
There was a pause.
Silence stretched.
The mechanical voice echoed in his head, but this time it spoke different words.
[Qualifications have been met]
The words hung in the frozen air.
Slave 135 did not react.
He could not. His body was half broken, with the pain failing to linger.
[??? Memory Fragment Unlocked]
Another line was spoken, a line he didn’t understand, nor did he bother trying.
The field remained frozen, gradually turning transparent.
Within his line of sight, he could see the eyeball outside.
He could see it glaring at him, the same malice... But the one in his own was far more radiant even when frozen.
This time, the trial did not resume.
For the first time since entering the Trial Zone, the loop did not continue immediately.
Something had changed.
Not in the world or the trial, but...
Inside him.
