Chapter 107: Musings of Death - 1
She was born in one of the normal villages. Unlike the great cities built upon a Node granted by the System, a normal village was largely protected not by intricate city arrays or magic circles, but by strong Cultivators.
She was born during the Dark Age, long before the System ever arrived on Earth. It was a brutal time when the Nightmare Aspect had not just twisted the world, but the very people who lived within it.
She was born to a lowly maid and a powerful Cultivator who simply wanted to relieve himself.
He had seen a beautiful woman and forced himself on her, because that was what the powerful did, they took what they wanted, and what anyone else thought didn’t matter...
From what she knew, that was the last time her mother ever saw the Cultivator.
Soon after, she was born. When the affluent estate where her mother worked found out what had happened, they immediately tossed her out onto the streets, unwilling to risk offending a powerful Cultivator.
Afterward, her mother was forced to do backbreaking menial labor just to survive, and somehow miraculously gave birth to her in the slums.
Her mother was incredibly kind; she never let her feel like she was worth any less than the other children.
Though they lived entirely on the unforgiving streets because they couldn’t afford a place to stay... in those dark times, a house was a luxury.
Safety was a luxury. It was common for the unfortunate to simply live and die in the streets.
But this harsh reality never made her feel lowly. At least, not as long as her mother was there...
One night, her mother went to sleep and simply never woke up.
She tried to shake her awake, to no avail; she wouldn’t move an inch.
It was only after the flies and mosquitoes began to gather around her still body, and the weird smell of decay filled the air, that she finally understood her mother had left her.
She had seen enough dead bodies in the slums to know what death looked like.
She was only four years old at the time...
She somehow managed to plead with the other homeless people nearby to help her bury the body. Her mother had taken care of her in life; now it was her turn to take care of her in death.
So, they buried her deep in the soil, in the same spot where she had died.
Those who had helped her dig told her that her mother had died from severe overexertion.
She finally understood exactly why she had never felt poor around her mother.
Whenever she was hungry... her mother worked harder so she could have more food. Whenever she wanted a toy... her mother worked harder to get her one. Whenever she felt the cold... her mother worked harder to afford a blanket.
In a tragic way, she had killed her own mother... slowly crushing her by burdening her with a child’s innocent desires...
Now alone, yet unwilling to simply roll over and die in a dark corner, she continued with her life.
Soon, agonizing hunger made her realize the importance of money...
And that was exactly how she started her bleak career as a beggar.
If people gave her scraps of food, she would eat it. If they threw her coins, she would carefully use them to buy food. If nothing came her way, she would just sit there and silently endure the gnawing hunger.
And unlike the other beggars who changed spots when income was low, she never changed her position.
She felt a duty to silently accompany her mother’s grave. It was the least she deserved after everything she had sacrificed for her.
And staying close to her remains warded off the suffocating loneliness. It truly sucked that she could no longer hear her warm stories, her dreams, her jokes, her laughter, or sometimes, her silent tears of regret.
But still, just her lingering presence beneath the soil was more than enough for a little girl who had no one else... until the fateful day she lost even that.
It was the men in white coats who took her away from her sacred spot.
She remembered the cold man named Dr. Isaac looking down at her and declaring, "This one has a unique affinity with the Death Aspect."
And then, the guards around him dragged her away.
She desperately tried to resist, but the pitiful strength of a six-year-old starving orphan was not something that could compare to grown men who had already stepped far onto the path of Cultivation.
With the last of her fading strength, she turned back, her tear-filled eyes locked on the patch of soil where her mother rested.
Her small, bloodied fingers left marks in the soil as she was forcibly taken away.
The other street dwellers around her simply looked away, pretending they hadn’t seen a single thing.
In a brutal world ruled entirely by strength, the weak had no say in the matters of the world. She knew that even if they foolishly tried to help her, all they would be doing was digging their own early graves.
Life was already hard on them; they didn’t need any more baggage.
Her own mother had already tragically proven that exact fact...
...
In the Laboratory
It was exactly the same agonizing routine.
Standing blankly beside a stone during the day, a stone that somehow gave off a similar, yet stronger feeling to standing beside her mother’s remains. And then, being sent to a room to rest at night.
This dull cycle repeated endlessly for days, which bled into months, and eventually became years.
She completely lost track of the exact passage of time in that windowless hell, but her slowly growing body let her know that a significant amount of time had passed.
There were other people with her, but they were always new faces.
It was common for someone to arrive, stand near the stone, and then after a few short days, disappear entirely forever. She often wondered where they went.
On the first day, they would all look relatively healthy and strong. But as the days slowly passed beside the stone, they would rapidly get pale, gaunt, and sickly.
Their rapidly deteriorating states reminded her of her mother. Though the memories were blurry, she remembered her mother had gone through something similar just before her body gave out.
She would have genuinely liked to interact with them, the boys, the girls, and even the beasts. But every single time she got close, they would back away in fear. And whenever she simply opened her mouth to speak, they would bleed from their ears and faint.
It took her some time to get used to it. After repeated attempts at basic communication, she completely gave up. From then on, she limited her social interaction to a single, silent nod.
Surprisingly, the men in coats didn’t do a single thing when all of this happened. They were only there to ensure she stayed beside the stone, nothing more, nothing less.
It was only years later that she finally knew what the artifact was. And it was not because the men in coats had suddenly decided to be soft and tell her; it was the stone itself that revealed it.
The Divine Death Stone.
That was what it was called.
It was right around then that she first encountered him, a small, fragile boy with snow-white hair and blue eyes. Later, she got to secretly know he was designated as the ’Project Nightmare’.
The first time she saw him, his small height barely even reached her hip. By now, it had been a long time since she had seen actual people, other than the men in coats who stood guard outside the reinforced room.
So she was surprised to have new company, especially a small fragile boy like him.
Remembering her traumatic past attempts at socializing, she didn’t say a single word; she just gave him a silent nod.
He blinked, and nodded back...
At first, he was quiet and obediently stood near the stone. But soon, his childish patience wore incredibly thin. When he eagerly tried to talk to her, she didn’t say a single word back. Since she knew the consequences of her speaking, she just sat quietly beside the stone, ignoring him.
But the boy was too bored. He hopped around the sterile room and even had the free time to kick the metal doors.
She distinctly remembered him whining loudly, "I miss my friends! Let me return! This stupid rock is too boring to look at!"
Now she was deeply offended.
She glared at the boy and then looked warmly at the stone. She wanted to argue that this stone was not boring, that if you just paid close attention to it, it was full of profound mysteries and secrets! But she caught herself and paused...
I shouldn’t speak... she reminded herself.
After the boy didn’t get any response from the men in coats outside, he finally gave up.
He quietly sat down near the stone, and closely watching her stare at the stone, he mimicked her and did the same.
It seemed the men in coats had set a similar schedule for him. Just like her, he would be brought here to sit with her and do nothing but simply exist alongside the Divine Death Stone.
What completely surprised her was that, unlike all the previous tragic subjects, this specific boy didn’t show a single sign of becoming pale or sickly.
By now, she knew this stone was not ordinary. Anything living that stayed close to it would experience its might after being exposed for some time.
Yet, he was the exact same, even after days of being trapped near the stone. He just looked at her, the sterile room, and the dark stone with curious eyes.
And the exact moment their daily time limit was officially up, he would instantly bolt out of the doors in a hurry, exactly as if he were escaping hell itself.
Rude...
But despite his antics, his vibrant company did make her feel better. Slowly but surely, she got used to his constant presence, just like she had with the stone.
And just like that, in the depths of the laboratory... she finally had a new, silent companion.
Project Nightmare