Chương 108: 3.32 Hurt - Johnny Cash (3:38)

Gagaking Hey Zeke… you know what some people like to do on long car rides? Listen to music. You know what you said you should be trying to do? Practice different types of songs for possible different effects (such as healing or endurance). You apparently had hours. Were you sleeping during that time? Maybe if you get a chance again in the future, play some calming music during a similar situation, see if it helps with healing or recovery, or has other effects.

Also maybe try to cause specific esoteric effects if you can (maybe make sand blow a bit away from you/the front of the jeep? Your intent when you play may help shape the magic. 7Spirals In his defense, this is what separates gamers from normos. Everyone here is thinking like it's a game. If it was any of us, I've no doubt we'd spend four hours testing whether Song A gives us +2% health regeneration and Song B gives us +3% stamina recovery. But Zeke isn't like us. He just survived what was probably the worst day of his life so I'm not surprised that experimenting with his skills isn't the first thing on his mind. But yea… dood absolutely wasted his down time. MushroomCleric Give him a break, he just survived the Black Teeth, the Shard Choir, and the freaking Eaters. I'd want to spend the next several hours staring blankly out a window wondering how I was still alive too. Sometimes surviving is exhausting enough that your brain doesn't want to think about anything else. LoraqtheMighty Nah. Zeke's just a little bitch and an idiot. His entire survival strategy revolves around magical music that nobody understands. So why wouldn't he spend a couple hours playing? Zeke is straight up pissing me off right now and I hope he gets his wispy stuff eaten by an Eater. RedCarpetManiac | He just survived what was probably the worst day of his life | The only reason he survived was because of luck. If he's fine stumbling around and not being prepared for anything, then okay. Whatever he wants. It's not us that'll get killed and left to rot out in the Deadlands. If I'd been isekai'd, I'd be boosting ALL my skills. I'd sit down and just grind. Give me a rifle. Give me magic practice. Give me physical training. Hell, let me do some push-ups in the back of the jeep if that's all I've got. Zeke is too passive and it'll bite him in the ass being so lazy. Also… the man dealt with the Reclaimer, the Bone Kaiju, Corva trying to kill him, all the dangerous shit in the Under-MIZ, the Chapel Pit, and now the clusterfuck that was the Dead Corridor. This should not be the worst day of his life. MinMaxMike Y'all forgetting about fatigue. Everyone is being like "waaah, Zeke isn't the OP character of my dreams." Have any of you ever been involved in a massive firefight between a bunch of cultists and mad max rejects? He's tired. There's a reason that athletes have recovery days instead of training until they collapse. RedCarpetManiac Recovery is one thing. Zeke's lifestyle choices are another. His whole build right now is leaning towards "accidental survival." I want just one chapter where he intentionally tries to get stronger before he walks right into another apocalypse. MoistMaidenLover So Corva transcended Human flesh, became an Eater, ate a whole base of Pale Bois and is now in a Soul Food induced coma dreaming about his life with his wife and kids? Lorem_Ipsum I doubt that he's a full-blown Eater at this point. How Zeke described him sounded more like he was trying to imitate the Eaters and completely ruined himself in the process. Unless that's just the first step to becoming an Eater. You all think that they are made rather than born? NullSigil Ooo, a complete 180 from Lorem. And the crowd goes wild!!! Yo Lorem, remember back when you were throwing a hissy fit about Zeke messing with the lore surrounding Corva? Nice to see that you have changed a bit. Welcome to the fun side of the forum. I've got a list of a few other fics that you should check out. Reader Okay guys let's get ready for the talk no Jutsu of death let's hope he can pull it off. Play some of the Naruto theme with his guitar to calm him down while doing it lol. Elterrible00 | get ready for the talk no Justu of death | Oh, I've been re-reading Naruto and it's been pissing me off all over again. Explain to me why the 4th Hokage literally sacrificed his own life to save the entire village, all while his wife died trying to seal away the Nine-Tails, and then that sacrifice gets shit on. The guy is a literal war hero. He was a genius, the teacher of Kakashi, the leader of the Hidden Leaf village, and he gave EVERYTHING to the village to defend them. And what do they do? They act like little bitches. Not a one of them thought hey, maybe we should look after the son of the man who just saved all our lives. That would be a good way to honor his memory. Not a one of them. On top of that, none of them thought it was a bad idea to alienate the kid who has a living nuke sealed away inside him? They're all like "ew, demon fox kid." That's just some straight-up bosheet right there. NullSigil Uh…. hmmm Elterrible00 What's with the hmmm Null? Please don't try and defend the 3rd Hokage. That man fumbled everything. He was shit too! Dood finds out that his student, Orochimaru, is kidnapping children and experimenting on them and getting a bunch of them killed, and his entire response is "oh, that's disappointing. You should probably leave now." ARE YOU SHITTING ME!!! ARREST THAT DOOD! And how is Naruto loving that village? That's straight up Stockholm Syndrome. If I grew up in a town where everyone treated me like trash for something that I HAD NO CONTROL OVER, and something that happened when I was only a month old, I'd be rooting for fires and earthquakes and bunny gods to wipe out everything. ClickWhirr Well, they were traumatized by the whole Nine-Tails attack. And then Danzo spread a bunch of misinformation. Elterrible00 | they were traumatized by the whole Nine-Tails attack. | Cool excuse. They're still adults bullying an orphan. MushroomCleric I don't think that was what the hmmm was about. I think he was just surprised you managed to make a few posts without plugging your patreon. Elterrible00 Nah. If I do that every five minutes, it loses its charm. You've gotta let people forget about it before you hit 'em again. Marketing 101. StoryLeech … Shit. Now you've got me waiting for the inevitable. Z3ke (Original Poster) What? What the hell am I coming back to? What does Naruto have to do with anything? SignalLoss It's nothing Zeke. What did Corva have to say? Did you talk to him? Iri's_Backstage Bad fucking idea. Tell Haynes and Vicks this is Corva, all your other weird bullshit has been vindicated. There's no reason to stick around. Either Corva turns into an eater or explodes, or somehow stabilizes - and none of these three scenarios have to do with you. Craaazzzzy Don't listen to that nonsense, Zeke. Entertain us. ENTERTAIN US! Z3ke (Original Poster) | Tell Haynes and Vicks this is Corva, | I did. And I get what you're saying and if I was you I'd be saying the same thing. I should just grab Elnor and Jackie and bolt. But… I need to know. Looking at him there, in the middle of the room, the man just looks so beaten. It's not the same man as I saw in the "visions" (or whatever they were) back in the House of Seasons. He's not the same man who tried to stab me and did kill Pell. I need to know. Blazer66 This is gonna be like the first Bioshock game when that guy who spent all game manipulating you just quietly puts himself down. This is gonna be like mercy killing a dog. Staniel Zeke, would you kindly get the hell out of there? Z3ke (Original Poster) Yeaaaa… about that. When we found him - a strange man just sitting in the middle of a room with a photograph in his hands - Haynes had the Pale Regiment spread out along the walls and made sure all the guns were trained on him. I could see Haynes struggling to figure out who he was. It was just a random dude in the middle of a room in a base that was supposed to house a ton of Pale Regiment soldiers but was instead eerily empty. So, who could it be? I knew it would set off all kinds of alarm bells. Plus, he saw the same thing I did, which was that Corva had the same rubbery skin as all the Eaters we'd just messed with. He also had a bunch of creepy ass faces and hands trying to push their way out of his skin, and I could see Haynes struggle to understand what that meant. I quickly realized that, while I knew that it was Corva sitting there, and I'd told Haynes and Vicks all about the man and how he was a psychotic mess, there was no way for Haynes to figure out who this guy was. I met his eyes and mouthed 'Corva' at him. Haynes' head quickly shot back to Corva and he stared at the man for a long moment before finally asking the questions we all wanted answered." Did you bring the Eaters here? Are there any more around? Are they still here?" Corva didn't say anything. It's not like he was trying to be shifty. It wasn't like he was refusing to answer. It was more that he barely noticed anyone in the room with him. All his attention was on the photo in his hand. Then, without even looking at Haynes, he simply nodded." Yes. I led them here." Let me tell you something. Haynes did NOT take that well, and neither did any of the Pale Regiment scattered around the room. It looked like Haynes was barely able to stop himself from throttling the man, and I could understand why. He was in the middle of the ruins of a base, surrounded by armor and gear that was all that was left of soldiers that he'd probably known. He screamed at Corva, yelling at him to explain why someone would willingly unleash something like he Eaters. What did he hope to gain out of it? Why would he work with those monsters? But Corva was once again ignoring him. He was staring at the photo in his hands and just sitting there. It was like he'd accepted that Haynes was angry and he just didn't see the point in responding to anything from the man. A few seconds of screaming from Haynes and Corva finally reacted. He shifted his head and caught my eyes." You visited the House. You spoke with the Witch. Do you recognize the signs?" I didn't know what he meant by that but I knew I had to say something. It was the only way to really get him talking." Uh… I know about weight," I told him." At least… I know the word. Some people I know… I know that you two argued. I know she was building echoes and she was thinking about stopping and you didn't like that. I know you killed her. I know… I know that you decided to search for the Eaters because you thought they could help you." That's where I started hesitating. I didn't want to tell him or the Pale Regiment about all of you and the fact that I could speak with a bunch of people on a forum. I didn't want to explain what a forum was or that they were all in a video game or anything like that. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. But also, I didn't know exactly what Corva wanted. I needed to get him talking, but he wasn't like the Corva I remembered. He was more passive. The last two times I'd seen him he'd been trying to kill me and he did kill both Pell and the Blooming Witch. This was a man who obviously wasn't squeamish about death. He'd already admitted that he'd worked with the Eaters. So… why was he being so passive? Corva let out a little hum and his eyes drifted back to the photo in his hands. I leaned in slightly and saw that it was a photo of two young girls. His daughters, I thought." She understood weight, but only parts of it. She knew how it shaped identity. She knew how memories lingered in places and objects. She knew how it could leave an impression on the world." Sadness crossed his face at that moment." But the Eaters knew more. I turned to them because I thought they could help me."" What does that mean?" I asked. He finally peeled his attention away from the photo and glanced around the nursery, letting his eyes drift across the dresses and toys and photos scattered about the place." Nearly everyone makes the same mistake. They all believe that the soul is a person. Restoration magic points to the soul as a person because that's what every religion and every story for the last few centuries has talked about. If you ask what survives after death, priests and those with the Restoration skill will say 'the soul' without hesitating." Corva trailed off and his attention drifted back to the photo and I could see Haynes and Elnor and the other Pale Regiment soldiers seemingly urging him on." They're wrong. The soul isn't identity," he started up again." It isn't personality or memory or individuality. It's simply the thing that lets life continue. It animates the body, gives it motion, keeps it alive, and doesn't explain why one living person is different from another. That distinction belongs to something else."" Weight," I said." That's what the Blooming Witch said. Weight." He nodded." Yes. Weight. The accumulation of an entire life, built up so gradually that no single piece seems important until you try to imagine a person without it. It's every birthday, every embarrassing mistake you remember while trying to sleep. It's every meal, every argument, every scar, every dream you quietly abandon because life carried you somewhere else. It's every habit, every relationship, every triumph, every regret, and every ordinary day that seemed too insignificant to remember." Out of the corner of my eye I could see Haynes getting ready to cut in and ask questions, so I held up a hand to stop him. I knew that Corva would give us the answers to what happened here. We just needed to give him time. Corva's thumb drifted over the edge of the photo, tracing it with absent care. A few seconds later he started up again." Remember when we were traveling and you asked me about the ankhs and the heart tree? I was honest about it." He said." I haven't always told the truth but… that was real. My wife and daughters did die. They died long before anyone standing in this room was ever born."" And the drifting?" I asked, trying to keep his attention on me and away from the photo." It was all true," he explained." I buried them. The few of us left in the village… we tried to comfort one another. Then they all eventually returned to their own lives because that's what people are expected to do. Time moved on and eventually their grief became something they could carry instead of something that crushed them." But not me. No. Not me. I couldn't move on. All my attempts to do so felt like surrendering," he said." Every step towards living again felt like admitting that my wife and daughters were gone. And I couldn't let them go." He swept a hand around the room, at the dresses and the photos and the toys and the blankets." I gathered everything they left behind. I took the dresses that still carried their scent, the blankets they slept beneath, and the toys they played with. I kept it all." Out of the corner of my eye I saw Elnor glance around the room, taking in all the objects that had been placed there lovingly." I didn't understand weight back then," said Corva." At least… not knowingly. I didn't have the language about it. All I knew was that throwing it all away was impossible, because these were the things tied to people I'd loved once. Even if I couldn't explain it, I knew that something of my wife and daughters was still there." The drifting was real too. I took contracts and I traveled. I couldn't stay in that town. Not after all that happened. So I worked for adventurers and merchants and anyone who would pay. Somewhere along the line… I found animancy." I could see Elnor purse his lips and shake his head, just like how Cole did back in the Valley of Echoes when Corva had asked about it." Most people thought it was a fairy tale. No one really believed it. But to me, it looked like hope."" Hope?" I asked." Was… was that how you learned about weight? I know you met with the Blooming Witch, but her magic was different from yours." He nodded again and then grew silent, long enough that Haynes looked like he was ready to attack him. I caught his eyes and shook my head and waited for Corva to continue." Animany is all about souls, and how you can move them from one vessel to another. It took me a while, but I realized that I could move a soul and it would carry its weight along with it. When I realized that, I thought that maybe death wasn't as final as everyone believed. That thought consumed me." I devoted years to finding lost texts and piecing together fragmented techniques and pursuing every rumor that hinted at knowledge considered unnatural," he explained." Every contract I took funded my studies, and every expedition I was on became another excuse to search ruins and libraries." I could see where he was going with this and wanted to speed him up a little." But you were getting older, weren't you?" His head shot up and his eyes focused on me." Yes. Yes, I was getting older. And the Drifter class didn't help. It's true that it makes raising skills to Rank 7 easier, but it locks you from anything higher. My animancy skill needed more. So I kept taking contracts to earn money, and I found someone who had a potion I needed."" One of the potions that can push a non-class skill up past Rank 7."" Yes," he agreed." I got my animancy to 8 and that let me continue my work." His eyes once again drifted back to the photo and when he spoke, he didn't sound proud. He wasn't bragging about what he accomplished. It was more like he was just reciting the information and all the steps he'd taken to get there." Rank 8 taught me that flesh wasn't sacred. A body is only a vessel. I learned how to move my soul from one body to another, taking my weight with it. Bodies without classes were the easiest to take over. They didn't resist because there was very little weight woven into them." That reminded me of when we'd first met and how he had tried to keep me classless. He'd seen that I had dimensional storage. He'd seen that I didn't have a class. I must have looked like a fat prize to him." Those who had classes… they were harder to take over. Their souls had merged with something greater. It could still be done, but the work became infinitely more complicated. But when I figured it out…" He stopped talking and I saw years of grief behind his eyes." Your wife and daughter. You couldn't find their souls. You'd been studying animancy for them but… you were trying to put their souls into new bodies and you couldn't."" No, I couldn't. It worked for me but, whatever became of their souls after death… I couldn't reach it." He closed his eyes and sat with his failure and a bitter smile crossed his face as he continued." Animancy could move the living but it couldn't restore the dead."" So you had to look into other forms of magic dealing with weight."" Yes. I learned what I was missing. I learned about weight and I was happy, because I had all these objects that still held pieces of my family and I was right to not throw them away. But I was also ignorant." Corva bent down from his chair and picked up one of the tiny dresses neatly folded near him. His movement started everyone in the room but Haynes was able to keep the soldiers from doing anything stupid. I watched as Corva's arm unspooled slightly and I had to bite back a curse. It wasn't entirely like the Eaters with their impossibly long arms. It was more like his arm was just slightly longer than it should be." This remembers my daughter, Esme." His thumb brushed gently across the fabric." It remembers the shape of her and the years she wore it and the life she lived." He paused before lowering the dress back to the floor." But it also remembers the woman who stitched it. It remembers the merchant who sold it. It remembers the customers who picked it up before deciding not to buy it." His eyes drifted down to his hands and a little bit of anger filtered into his voice." And after I carried it around the world for a few years, it started to remember me." He glanced around the room at all the objects he'd gathered." They're all like that. A photograph remembers every hand it's touched. A toy remembers every child who has played with it. A blanket remembers every night someone sheltered under it. All those memories, all that weight, it's all jumbled together."" So even after you understood what you were looking for, you still couldn't separate the weight."" No. Animancy didn't help with that. It could move souls, but not rebuild people. And the Blooming Witch and the House of Seasons that you told me about… that wasn't helpful either." I winced at that, reminded that I'd set him after the Blooming Witch, even if only accidentally." She understood weight more deeply than anyone I'd ever met. But she only understood one facet of it. She could explain how it shaped identity and how it lingered after death and how it could alter places and objects." His shoulders sagged." But she couldn't teach me how to separate it. For that, I needed others." A face shifted under his skin and I drew back a little." So you went looking for the Eaters."" I did," he agreed." They showed me something that nobody else could. They did more than just know about weight. They could touch it. They reached into living people and removed bits of weight as easily as a man could remove a knife from its sheath." He raised a trembling hand and unconsciously curled his fingers as if remembering the shape of what he saw." I watched memories disappear and hopes vanish. I watched habits and fears and entire pieces of identity stripped away without leaving so much as a wound. They showed me how weight could be separated, and I thought they'd finally solved the problem." I frowned, trying to follow where his reasoning had gone." You thought if they could separate weight from a living person, then you could separate the different pieces trapped inside the objects your family left behind." Corva nodded slowly." Everything I'd collected had become an impossible knot of overlapping histories, and I didn't know how to untangle them. If the Eaters could peel memories from a living mind one layer at a time, then surely the same principles could be applied to objects. If only I could isolate the fragments that belonged to my family and discard everything else." I… I made a deal with the Eaters. I would bring them food and they would teach me what they knew. It started small. Groups that I hired to travel with me. I led them to the Eaters and then watched as they stripped them of everything they had." Elnor's jaw tightened, but he didn't interrupt. He was just as interested in hearing what Corva had come up with as me." I learned from them and started experimenting. I learned how to separate the weight and then worked with everything I carried across the world. The dresses and the blankets and the letters and everything else that still held even the faintest trace of the people I loved." His expression softened into something almost wistful." For a few brief moments, I succeeded." He closed his eyes and one of the faint outlines beneath his skin shifted lazily before disappearing again." There were memories there. I could see them. I could hear them. A laugh or a gesture or the feeling of one of my daughters smiling at me. But then they fell apart. The weight had nowhere to go. I couldn't gather it up and put it in anything." The nursery had become so quiet that I could hear the distant crackle of a radio somewhere else in the compound. Even the Pale Regiment soldiers standing all around us had stopped shifting their weight." I kept watching the Eaters. Every person they consumed became another lesson. Every life they stripped apart revealed another glimpse of how weight behaved once it had been separated. I convinced myself that the next death or the next or the next would finally answer my questions. But… eventually I realized that the Eaters weren't teaching me. They didn't need to. I was feeding them and…" Corva looked back down at the dresses around him and he went silent for a long while." There came a point where I couldn't convince myself the Eaters would be enough to help me. I needed to experiment on my own. I still fed them, but that was just to get a view of what they could do. I eventually realized that the objects I'd gathered… they were the problem. All the weight they held were scattered. All the reconstructions I tried dissolved before they could become whole. The weight of my daughters and wife were divided among the objects." I thought to myself, maybe if I gathered them together somewhere safe, maybe then they could last long enough for me to figure out what I was still missing." A piece fell into place and I understood what happened and why the faces were there and what had happened to Corva, but I still needed to hear him say it." I drew the weight into myself," he explained." All of it. I thought… I thought that if I could take all the weight, maybe then I could separate it. Maybe then I could piece it all together. My wife and my daughters, separated from all the rest of the weight that had settled on the objects over the years." Grief dripped out of his voice." I thought it worked. At first, I thought I'd figured it out. I stripped all the objects and held them inside me and… I could feel them," he choked out." I could feel the impression of them, brushing against my own thoughts. A laugh appeared and… I remembered holding Esme's hand. I had the memory of putting my daughters to bed but, that's what my wife did. She would sing to them when she put them to sleep. And I could hear it. I heard her voice and I…" He broke down and I could see all the Pale Regiment soldiers and Elnor and Haynes look away. As much as they hated this man; as much as they were furious at him for unleashing the Eaters on everyone, they still saw a man who had lost everything." I realized later what I'd done," he said. His eyes opened and they looked impossibly tired." There were no souls left to anchor those memories. There were only fragments of lives searching for the people they'd once belonged to. They couldn't ever become whole again because there was nothing left to make them people again." He finally looked down at the movement under his own skin and watched as the outline of a child's hand gently pressed against his ribs before melting back into shapeless flesh." I don't even know which memories belong to me anymore," he admitted quietly." Sometimes I remember teaching my daughters how to read. Sometimes I remember sitting next to them as they struggle through their letters, laughing when they mispronounced a word. But then the memory changes and I'm struggling to read those same letters. I remember looking up at my father, waiting for him to tell me I'd finally gotten it right." He gave a tired shake of his head." I remember my wife smiling at me from across our dinner table, and I remember sitting in that same chair, waiting for my father to come home from work." Haynes and Elnor were silent. Whatever anger they'd been carrying had nowhere to go now. The man seated in front of us had already punished himself enough. Corva grabbed the photograph and he stared at it for a long time before speaking again, his voice coming out as little more than a whisper." The Eaters couldn't help me. They… they never wanted to help me. They only knew how to strip away and consume and… and…" He looked up at me and I saw what Corva had become. The guilt and the pain and the suffering had mixed in together and had finally taken over." Please…" he begged." Please." I sighed and nodded. Corva didn't really deserve this mercy. But at the same time, his children and his wife - or whatever was left of them - shouldn't suffer in whatever prison he had made. I reached into my dimensional storage space and pulled out the blade that I'd got from the Pale Regiment. I stepped forward and stabbed into the chest of Corva and heard as the breath was pushed out of his lungs. There was no eruption of magic or wave of energy or chorus of voices that echoed through the nursery. Everything was perfectly silent as Corva gasped for breath before slumping back into the chair, the photograph he'd been cradling slipping from his fingers to the floor. I stepped back and looked at the body. The outlines of the faces that had been stretching his skin slowly started to fade back. The small hand that had been pushing at his ribs disappeared first. Then it was the woman's face that was lingering around his shoulder. One by one the impressions quietly dissolved without struggle or pain or spectacle. And then it was over. Haynes gave a brief nod and I saw Elnor look lost in thought and then we all turned around and came back the way we entered. The base was cleared and the trucks were pulled inside and the doors were closed and… now we gotta figure out what to do next. Mithras131 Well. The Blooming Witch warned him. Hubris do be like that. Try not to get your weight eaten, Zeke. I. F. Ister | I watched habits and fears and entire pieces of identity stripped away without leaving so much as a wound. | Hey, wait, when was the last time Zeke mentioned smoking?