Free Web NovelChapter 6: Blind Instinct
The world disappeared.
Everything within it vanished, replaced by a vast, bright space that swallowed him.
Inside it, Slave 135 was falling.
Free fall without ground or horizon.
Yet, he wasn’t afraid, nor did he question it....
Here, in this space, there was no fear.
Only peace... Peace he yearned for for a very long time.
It felt like a long-earned rest for his exhausted soul, and he allowed his mind to empty itself of everything.
His thoughts were returning, becoming calmer... His memories were also falling behind this calmness.
He only felt the sensation of falling, but not the panic that follows it.
But this peace did not last long. A slight disturbance was sensed, like a slight shake from below.
And when he looked, a dark spot appeared.
Distant, but he inevitably was getting closer...
He didn’t want to leave this peace he found here. This might have been everything he had ever yearned for.
So he closed his eyes and let it settle into his heart, just for a moment, for as long as he could.
It was the first time in his life that he felt like this... a feeling akin to absolute nothingness.
A dull, empty state where everything was stripped away from his heart, and his mind was finally at ease.
That hell-like trial, the Tower he knew nothing of, the unreasonable malice the eyeball held for him...
These didn’t exist there.
This moment was the solace he had waited for, for a time he could not measure.
Yet, the dark spot kept drawing closer. It looked like a gap in the space.
An exit, as he guessed.
He did not struggle. As much as he wished to remain in this bright space, he knew that staying too long would be just as cursed as remaining in the swamp...
The hole swallowed him whole without resistance.
And when he opened his eyes—
A new scene unfolded.
A sky filled with glittering particles, frozen in place like suspended dust, each point shining faintly where it stood.
Among them, a massive orb of light hovered, radiant and beautiful at first glance, unsettling the longer he stared at it...
It did not fall nor did it move.
He couldn’t understand the scene, or why he was staring at the sky.
His gaze suddenly lowered.
Now he looked at what was below the miraculously beautiful, yet frightening sky.
It was a vast battlefield, or what remained of one.
Weapons littered the ground. Countless corpses. Remnants of monsters he had never seen before.
A scene of ruin.
Only then did he realize something was wrong.
He couldn’t move his body, or rather, the body moved on its own.
Soon memories, ’Ugh’ he grunted inwardly.
Emotions and will that wasn’t his own started flooding, only then was he struck by the absurd conclusion.
This wasn’t his body, and he was trapped inside it.
He didn’t know how he happened to witness someone else’s body from the inside.
’Is this another hell prepared by the eyeball?’ He questioned, worry started creeping into his heart again.
Yet, the body hosting him didn’t have the slightest concern. The emotions of the owner of the body stabilized his.
He looked forward, or rather, the body did.
Slave 135 tried to gain familiarity with the body, but he felt it was maybe just slightly stronger than his own.
The body had very sharp senses, and through these senses, he felt the overwhelming strength of the monsters, and the insane number closing in on them.
Compared to them, this body was insignificant.
Slave 135, who was in a similar situation till just recently, felt sorry for this person... The Trial Zone was such a small place compared to what he was seeing now.
The body muttered quietly, "So the troops have left."
The voice was hoarse, clogged, and hearing it as his own, Slave 135 failed to even recognize the tone.
He felt the face smile, oddly at ease for someone who was completely alone in such circumstances.
’What’s with him... You aren’t trapped here!’ Slave 135 screamed on the inside. ’There’s nothing holding you here, move now!’ He shouted hoping for his voice to reach the warrior.
He, who had his spear stabbed into the ground, lifted it and marched forward.
The first thought surfaced, simple and absolute.
I exist.
Nothing else mattered.
Existence reduced itself to survival. Blind survival.
Dying meant nothing. Living meant nothing.
So the body advanced.
On rocky soil, shifting between hard and soft, it clashed with the monsters.
Slave 135 could not comprehend almost anything. Not the thoughts, not the battle itself, nor could he keep up with what he was feeling physically.
The movements were irregular, beast-like, and utterly illogical.
He was more monster than the monsters before him. More savage than any beast he fought.
He did not avoid injury. He did not hesitate to trade wounds for kills.The battle lasted for days.
Maybe weeks. Maybe months. The dark sky and the hovering orb vanished, replaced by a blinding light that brought warmth. Warmth slowly turned to heat, before it eventually vanished again.
Sometimes it changed shape, or refused to show up. A day and night cycle Slave 135 recognized.
A sky he did not.
He had no control, nor any influence.
No matter how hard he tried to prevent this from progressing his voice never reached the warrior, instead, he was forced into accepting thing though the emotions and will of the body.
He could not guide the body’s actions or shape its thoughts.
Yet he felt everything, so overwhelmingly that he failed to follow. fгeewebnovёl.com
The survival instinct did not give him plans. It gave him outcomes. Images of monsters dying. Paths where he lived and they did not.
In his mind, or rather, the warrior’s mind, countless possibilities collapsed into a single result.
The optimal one.
The body consumed monster flesh for food. Used blood sparingly for water.
Unlike Slave 135, he felt thirst and hunger.
He needed to sustain his body without reversal to keep him alive.
But he sensed danger in excess blood. Something about blood screamed warning. Too much would kill him faster than any enemy.
Slave 135 only felt the danger, not the reason.
Yet, through everything done, every action taken and every thought passing, the battle never ceased, never paused.
He could feel the body’s occasional excitement, occasional despair creeping in, and he could also hear laughter escaping its lips whenever strange thoughts began to corrupt his heart.
There was no hesitation, no faltering. The heart beating in this chest was made of iron.
The longer the battle progressed, the louder the laughter echoed across the battlefield.
Time passed. Monsters like a waterfall kept coming without an end.
How many monsters had fallen?
He could not count.
More than any army he had seen as a warslave.
The body moved erratically. Stepping backward at odd angles. Twisting joints beyond comfort. Damaging knees, hips, shoulders, and spine.
Pain was irrelevant. Only existence mattered. ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com
The reason, the drive or goals behind this unwavering heart were never exposed.
Only killing was... It wasn’t out of hatred or anger.
There wasn’t any in the warrior’s heart.
The heart held no grudges, and these creatures were not sentient.
They were obstacles, and they were meant to be broken.
But he was still but a man. Fatigue was his worst enemy.
It wasn’t only about hunger and thirst.
The constant observation of terrain, foothold, timing, and perfect strikes.
Even weapons—for suddenly, the spear broke inside a monster’s skull.
The warrior seized the intact part of the shaft and drove it into another’s eye socket.
His eyes were already on a curved blade nearby. Slave 135 realized now that everything was calculated, though it was not consciously or mathematically.
Instinct.
Blind instinct.
Sharper than thought , faster than reason.
Sweat streamed down his face, drying and leaving behind salt that burned into open wounds.
It ran into his eyes, blurring his vision.
He kept them open, seeing their shapes was more than enough.
The monsters were grotesque.
Some horned.
Some larger than houses.
Some with armored tails that demolished the land with every strike.
Some with fur shining like strands of iron.
Some with overlapping scales like armor.
All of them targeted the lone warrior.
Slave 135 wondered why.
What grudge justified this?
Though, he also understood, the warrior and the monsters were the same.
Both trapped.
Both forced.
Both fighting battles that should never have existed.
Something controlled this board, something or someone that couldn’t be seen..
Something that treated existence itself as a game.
