Chapter 6: Al, The Trafficker Of Siphon. [ Unedited Chapter.]

[] Hello, This is the original chapter I had uploaded.[] Due to my inability to past the fully edited chapter because it exceeds the original word count limit. I have pushed this chapter in a different volume to not ruin the immersion of previous chapters. Nothing has changed but added content and some spelling mistake fixes and personality changes from Al. You can read this one or the new upadate chapters it won't change future progression of future chapters.

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Something about the chills in my finger tips reminded me of being in Siphon.

The resolve to accept things are ending.

Not everyone has the heart to accept it's over now.

I remember a moment before this…

  When gunfire was the only sound you'd hear when in the woods.

  The deafening screams that filled the air each moment you know they were trying everything they could to find you.

And those screams belong to the unfortunate people who they had found while they hunted you for days.

  The scent of hair burning together with oil when they found me as armed soldiers tortured a man over a fire.

How I remembered what like to be there when they scattered the limbs they had torn of with axe and the awful sound it made as it behind a tree and into ground.

I can't forget my life in the place.

' Remember to mark him.'

It felt it was happening again.

After dying a few times I had grown used to the idea that  when I woke up in another body and things would often repeat.

No matter who I woke up as or who I impersonated.

I would vividly remember how I was killed.

A blessing or a curse. It ached in my mind as replays of myself being killed played side by side infinitely.

Each time I came too.

I remembered.

The first time was blurred and the only I couldn't see, but I was a No Life who lived day to day bleeding time through activities that damage your future.

I believed everything that happened to me in life, is all that I deserve.

I lost friends because I was too different,  I attended the funeral of someone who unconditionally loved me.

While I watched the gruesome killings of myself.

All I could do was think life could have better if someone else lived instead of me.

—— In Another Life.

  Words I would often recall hearing from the media, through songs, video games or even the bitter paragraphs written by anonymous users on /regret forums.

A phrase that could mean hope and immeasurable pain, those words were a bit closer to a bitter escape from reality for me.

  When you wake up each day strolling leisurely through life as if it weren't any different from the day before.

Refusing to grow or be better than you are.

Mindlessly doing nothing for so long.

Something inside you will fade.

What faded in me?

My desire to be something more than a No Life.

I lived a good life and although there some bad things I did to others, A No Life was the exit to exist.

  Because I would often see the gruesome depictions of my body before I could think off my future.

I closed myself off far from everything.

Rather than wanting to live as someone with good qualities and aspirations.

I was shown the vivid imagery of myself leaning against something lifelessly through dreams.

No matter what I heard or read or taken the advice from people who knew about mental health.

Living wasn't so easy to for me.

Surviving was too much for to want to bear.

Although I wanted love and kinship and friends finding companions meant I survived so that options wasn't ever considered. 

Living just like others should never seemed enough for me.

I hated change, but I yearned for comfort instead.

"…" 

The ideal of myself rotting against the side walk or being brutally tortured somewhere isolated was far more easier to understand than it was to wake up one day doing something that just might help you live life.

Being apart of a society.

My mind couldn't stand something as simple as that.

So I escaped from life, from everything.

The things I saw in stories when ever something wrong shows up and all it takes is friendship and kind words to mend everything all into place.

Something that can prevent the protagonist from being someone falling from grace.

I hated seeing such things.

That never happened for me.

When my sister died the only friends I had was pornography, video games and fan-fiction.

There was people, but no-one can make you feel happy but yourself.

Unlike friendship and kind words.

I drowned myself in every filth I could think off to replace that feeling of love, being wanted.

The void that should be filled I drowned it to the brim just so I don't have to live and it reached the point where I had forgotten what it was like to be a person when I came too.

To learn how to walk or how to even talk all over again faded as I took the guilty pleasure of escaping to my inner world.

A pitch dark place that made me feel… very warm.

I had a low self esteem when it came to life, but it was so easy to force myself to function even if I knew I had rotted the inside of my mind after her passing.

It was rotten before, but I saw how filthy I was after experiencing an moment of eternal bliss.

I had wished that life was much simple then.

In fact I had hoped for it.

I had hoped it was similar to the feeling of when you started playing a video game.

No matter what terrible things you encountered or seen.

You could always start from zero.

Leveling. Grinding. Answering the only best choices that leads to the best stages of a characters story route.

I hated being alive.

So instead of being player for a game.

  I would just modify everything and skip all the story line, because It wasn't that important to me.

Why would I want to live as someone else.

If I had already died in my head.

Instead of being a player.

I chose to be a MOD instead.

I wanted to see all the moments and endings.

The good and the bad without having to struggle for it.

Why must I work so hard to reach it.

When all I could just do is alter life.

That's what I had hoped life to be….

Like a video game that doesn't take that much effort to live the way you wanted.

Unfortunately things don't happen that like they do in video games, but people do die and the choices you make are remembered, but the only difference between life and a video game.

Is that in a video game.

Everything ends when you stop playing.

In the real world, only you stop living in it and the world will continue without you.

[ You have slain ???: Level 900000000000000.]

[ Do you wish to reset your personality construct?]

[ You have reached the end of this life.]

[ Your character can't go on.]

[ To start over in another life: transfer into a new personality construct.]

[ Your current personality construct will be destroyed.]

[ Do you wish to transfer?]

[Yes] - [No]

—— For all I had lived through even if it weren't anything compared to others.

Not once had I ever considered the thought.

If I did B in another life maybe A would had never happened.

Instead of hoping I was better or did something more.

I don't regret or desire to play god and prevent the death of my sister like how others desire to restart time and bring someone they love back from the dead.

You learn very quickly how cruel life is and the only moments I got to see my sister were the times I wasn't living.

In my dreams she would be there waiting.

[ Do you desire to live in another life?]

Most dead people should be righteous and choose to live through the choices you have made all the way until the end.

[No]

[ Your decision will have consequences.]

[ All memories has faded.]

[You have died.]

I never had that aspiration to dream of living again.

It's just that something inside of me rotted the moment I figured out your idea of death didn't quite apply in your circumstance anymore.

What is death when someone could just cut open your lungs and all you do after you wake up is remember that feeling.

When you live for certain amount of time. 

Things would often repeat itself.

I had an epiphany that In another life, I would be dead too, but I would be far younger and with less experience than the one I had already lived before.

  I would dream in my coffin like dead people do, with their eyes shut surrounded by nothing, but the air that smells like me, old musky and full of earth and I'd just dream of things.

Like I was living as a boy who flunk out of college working at a burger station, an assassin who does not like to kill people, a lawyer who is unwilling to make good and reasonable decisions in front of the law, and experience life through these different lenses of life.

I would hope to see the faces of people I care for one day, but I know I would wake up after our time together would fade.

If transfers were like a dream, then dreams would be like tomorrow.

Sometimes there won't be a tomorrow for all of us.

[ If every moment you can remember from your life was reborn again, in the form of phantom memories, projections, holographic imagery.]

[ Would you start over?]

I wouldn't know if I could ever come to the decision to start over.

Brain dance allowed a person to relive the experiences of someone else as if you were there yourself.

Trauma was just as vivid as that and I've seen many things as someone whose become disconnected from life.

  Things I wished I never saw.

Things I wished never occurred or knew.

  Like the faces of people you know and how one day you are dreaming sensations of them touching your face only to wake up minutes before you remember life took them away from you.

[…]

Compared to the purging of people who I've never met, and the fading expressions on their faces as they are violently tortured.

The killing of people felt so different after you realize one thing.

[That could have been you too.]

Whether you are involved or aren't, somewhere, someplace, somehow.

Someone will be subjected to cruelty.

[ You have transfered to a past life.]

It felt like I was in a moving train, but it was the smell that got to me first, a stench of smoke and something sweet that made you want to stop breathing.

Bliss.

It was mixing with the cold and I felt uncomfortably numb.

" What are you looking at?" 

I saw someone who appeared to be a soldier standing over a group of people, each one of them were sitting on their knees with their eyes looking down, but the youngest of the group: A young boy glared hatefully to the man with an assault rifle strapped onto his back.

It was the calligraphy on his arm band that made it faster to identify that he was a trafficker and the symbol of a blank hand with a curse mark in the middle. The mark of Siphon.

  I recognized that I was wearing the same uniform too.

The white expressionless mask he wore coldly burnt my skin.

That one sensation was all it took for me to remember.

This was the first initiation mission before I became a trafficker in Siphon. 

A trafficker… did bad things for money.

We did terrible things. Things I wished didn't need to happen and many people were killed because of it.

Many were killed because they recognized who we were.

Like instant fears humans had to spiders.

Either killed you or just ran away.

I learned very quickly what the cost of living was for a trafficker.

All you needed was weapon and the mindset to abduct others and sell them for money.

The average lifespan of a trafficker in Siphon depended on your survival.

Two weeks was the longest I knew someone to have reached, before they were found in a shed with their hands chopped off and their head found at the bottom of a well, next to many others at the bottom.

Many traffickers were found at the bottom of a well.

It was a message sent by those who were persecuted by Siphon.

I never wore a mask because of the message I found that day.

It was far better to look like a person them than it was to be seen as a symbol of terror.

To become a trafficker wasn't difficult, but It took a different state of mind to live with it all the way.

Not everyone has the heart to sell someone based on the value they could sell for.

The trade off you were paid for was cheap and took to much effort and time and the likely hood of being killed was extremely exhausting, but you were paid for each person when you were near a Black Merchant.

The average cost of a human life to a trafficker was $5000.

It was a common strategy for there to be groups of traffickers working together to make the most money even if it were to split between others at the end of a trade.

It was much easier to work together than to do it your own, but that was just a delusion for those who just started working as one.

The moment I saw the trafficker.

  I had this strong feeling something was off with him.

The way he lingered near the people who were taken from their home.

It almost seemed as if he wanted antagonize them for what he had done to their village.

In the distance smoke filled the air.

In Siphon, the absolute law is to kill anything that can kill you, but traffickers were not executioners, we were forced to find experiences by abduction and to transfer the captive to contacts who direct you to merchants who wanted to buy them.

I don't know why they wanted people, but I knew they used them in attacks against raiders or enemies of Siphon.

After all those people we captured was just a family member of someone who killed people who worked for Siphon before.

The blood history between Siphon and The Raiders was very strong, but I felt that it was only because we were carrying out active attacks on Raider territory every single day.

To capture someone they know and then use them on the front lines to capture more.

Only a monster so wicked would make people do such a thing, but if it involved money.

Anyone just might consider being a trafficker.

The rules that we should kill captives was never stated so we operated by our individual moral that aligned with making money from them.

But—  money was never there when I was a No Life.

Unlike the other traffickers who flew in from foreign nations for work.

I never understood how I was able to be there for a long time.

I didn't know where my money went or how much I had.

There was no atms or bank accounts, but there was places where you did receive your pay.

The only safe haven in Siphon where you can live as a normal person was when you were near a Merchant.

Money allowed you to live longer than most would be able too and it meant everything to those who worked for Siphon.

To just be able to live one more day meant a lot to them.

To take care of their family meant everything to them.

The worst thing they didn't know was at the end. They would be replaced by someone else after they're gone.

I learned some people did this to take care of their family in a different country, but as I thought about reasons and why I was chose it.

I didn't have a story like theirs.

I was raised in a place where people can survive, where the market prices of everything was considered cheap, but I still made a decision to be a trafficker instead of pursuing other goals that was available to me.

I had options.

Most of these people who joined had nothing to lose anymore all filled so much hate or a desire to change their life.

If someone would ask me.

Why? The cheapest answer I would give is because I did it to protect my friend.

The real answer?

——I don't know.

Most people wanted you to give them a reason for them to understand why you would do something so terrible.

—— I didn't have a reason to give.

I couldn't dream of the future and I was on my own.

I didn't have any reason to avoid it when it happened.

All I know was.

It didn't really matter anymore.

In the end, I was right.

Your actions really didn't matter.

The train we were traveling in was one of the major trade routes that was boarded by people within Siphon and often it would go through mountains and rivers passes that were hidden far away from other places.

Heavily protected by nature where death plane can't see you or set off the entire horizon into flames.

None of really cared about the planes that fly past, it was rare you would see one but compared to the raiders who would often enter.

There was always a chance that something would go wrong during the trip.

Since the train routes were all within Siphon and every inch of its territory was a burial site.

Traffickers did not have to think about a government or armed forces approaching you, everyday you just someone will be killed.

—— There was no laws in Siphon, but Siphon had only to absolute laws.

Kill and be killed.

I watched the others who wore the same uniform, but my attention was drawn to the only one stayed far to close to the captives.

Ever since the dungeon I noticed how my senses was sharper before.

The thing I could hear, smell and see was different than I remembered.

" Would you mind if I hurt you?" I heard him whisper as he kneeled down and asked the boy.

As if he was speaking to someone very close to him, but before the others saw it.

I had noticed his hand and how close it dug into the stomach of one of the people sitting in front of him.

An old man who kneeled before him was stabbed without knowing.

The moment the trafficker reached out to block his voice, I heard his lungs ache, because of the noise he made.

He was poked again and again for being loud enough for all of the traffickers to be alerted. 

That expression the boy showed as he saw it.

I noticed how he looked just like him.

His expression reminded me of the moment when I made the decision to place my ears against my sisters chest, just to hear for a heart beat, because I never wanted to accept the doctor who told me she passed away.

[ You've identified an entity inexperienced with death.]

The worst part about losing someone isn't knowing they aren't by your side.

It's  living on without them as if you had been inflicted by a sickness that fades your memories.

What I learned in my life was that despite my tolerance to cruelty.

Others weren't the same.

The hate he showed the trafficker morphed when facing a loaded gun.

The trafficker held the gun in front of his head.

The other hand held a needle like knife that dug into the person laying on the floor near the boy side.

I was drawn to the sound of the captives slow heart beat thumping in my ears.

My sense were heightened to the point that I could hear his inside move.

I walked over and kneeled down beside him.

I watched over the older man whose breathing was becoming deep and faint and I reached down to his chest to where I saw a short black hole that tore underneath his skin.

And blood gushed out of it each time his chest sank from breathing.

I knew no-one was going to stop the bleeding.

Not a single person here was going to allow it to happen, because he wasn't human to the.

I  pressed my hand over the wound on his chest and any attempts to stop his bleeding by binding the wound with a cloth didn't seem like it was enough.

I saw through his organs.

Abduct and murder were my only abilities, but he never let my hand go.

" Hold on…" I said, but the powers I had from in the dungeon never manifested.

Not a single light that could heal an arm showed or a manifestation of a sword that could fade a human body.

I couldn't feel anything here.

No matter how hard I thought about it in my mind.

In that moment I was just someone holding onto another life knowing they were already going to die.

The most awful thing was the man didn't seem to have noticed his condition.

All I heard from his lips was the name of a person he would whisper in between his breaths.

Calling out his name in language I knew wasn't mine.

He didn't seem to know that the hand he was holding onto didn't belong the one he was calling for.

He was holding onto me very tightly, but even if he spoke with a different tongue.

I feel his intentions.

How he wanted me to listen to the trafficker who had stabbed him and if I just did enough, I wouldn't be treated as badly anymore.

Although I could not manifest any power in this place. 

I had an assumption that the ability of [Conversation] from the Architect allowed me to understand what he was saying.

There was a moment where I wanted to stop him from speaking anymore.

All he did was worship the traffickers in his tongue.

A devil worship where the one who spoke feared terrible things that happened if he spoke about anything but glory.

  He talked about being obedient to the traffickers, he stared straight forward, shaking uncontrollably with his eyes wide open and then he went silent.

None of the captives attempted to do anything to help him.

Not a single stepped forward to help me stop him from rattling and I believed they all shared the same as this man did.

Obey the traffickers and you won't be harmed.

  Obedience was the only thing that would keep them from being harmed.

I remembered one of the hidden details only traffickers knew about.

  If someone attempted to harm a trafficker that was an indication that every other person who were held by them was to be rid off.

The blood between Siphon was so pitch black that even I noticed others whose hearts and instincts were stained from the killings of so many people.

I knew why they feared us, but to hear it yourself was different.

We weren't anything like those people they feared.

The man didn't want to put the others in harms way.

He didn't want to see others die because of him.

"…" Knowing that made me remember about the time I was killed by someone he feared.

How I was punished for something I never did.

After everything I had done against my morals.

I was killed because I went Siphon protocol.

It didn't make any sense.

Why I was the one who had been executed when I did nothing wrong and yet—

Someone did the same thing and no-one does anything here.

I stared at the arm that wrapped softly into mine.

The blood, his arm, the feeling of cold in my finger tips.

All the memories of my life in Siphon crashed into a single moment.

—— This isn't the Siphon I know.

A prejudice emotion filled my mind with twisted things.

Killing one of them showed a traffickers intention that they didn't really care about transferring them to a Merchant.

—— Someone would cut off his head for that.

If one day you were told you could make a lot of money by working for someone and you  they had to do was exist in that role.

—— They would be shown no mercy.

I knew what came to those who did not fulfill their roles.

My body remembers the sensation of everything they had done to me.

To kill captive within a group of traffickers was known to be one of the most taboo of things a fool could ever attempt as a trafficker.

Many would be killed over something so little.

It wasn't like they knew about it, but groups in Siphon were the most dangerous to be apart off.

There were laws in Siphon and then there was something called Moral Sense.

I saw two options in that moment.

The one where I witness each and everyone of them kill of the rest of the captives or the other where we aren't able to see a merchant and have to leave the train to find more villages to burn.

—— So what if we found more.

—— Even if we do find another.

—— What was going to stop him from doing it again.

I thought about it.

In a state of confusion.

I was somehow able to see the faded notification of the modification system.

It was so pale that I could barely read the words from it, but it flickered very dimly in front of me.

[ Dad?] 

[ Dad?]

The boy who I saw before was calling out to us in a different language.

The man in my arms stopped shaking and calmed down once he heard that voice.

I reached down to his chest and placed his arms to his side.

His eyes were open.

I shut them close.

[ The worst fear for a father to experience is to be unable to protect their children, god wasn't present to see his love.]

[ You have gained experience.]

The pace of his heart beat stopped a few seconds after.

I felt nothing but the urge of that emotion that invaded because of what I know.

I just stared for a long time.

To the wound that suffocated him.

" Is that thing dead already?"  I heard a voice call out from beside me.

The trafficker holding onto a need-like knife blade poked his chest again.

" Just to make sure."

I stood up and brushed the blood I felt over my hands against my shirt, but I could still feel the wet from the sleeves.

So I rolled them up.

Although my mind was shifting between the different areas of the run down cabin we were in.

I noticed the apathy the traffickers showed to what happened.

I couldn't pull my eyes away from the person who was tormenting the boy over the body of his father.

The words he said.

The way he said them.

—— If I said those same words in front of that man.

—— Would he have killed me too?

Remember to mark him.

The only words I won't ever forget hearing.

" I could be like your daddy." 

" All you have to do is listen to everything I say." 

" And if you are a good little boy—"

" I promise I won't hurt you—-"

"…." 

" What you can't speak English?"

[ I will kill you!]

" I don't understand a single thing you said little shit." 

[ I will kill you! ]

"… then—— die—-" 

I was no different from them.

I watched people die and watch them be killed when I knew I could off helped.

— Does it mean you have tolerate it?

— If someone killed someone before your eyes.

= Someone you tried helping.

— Is it normal to just accept? And do nothing?

[ Sometimes—— When things never change all you could hope to do is alter and make changes to it even if that would mean things diverting to what you are originally know.]

[ Morals, circumstances, decision making, common sense all of those things doesn't exist to someone who lives so close to heaven.]

[ Things don't go according to the way you wanted, but it doesn't mean you should tolerate something bitter.]

[ Altering reality doesn't need to extend to being a god.]

[ It could be something as simple as adding a bit of sugar to rich and bitter coffee.]

[ In this case.]

[ Making up for the lack of sweetness in life with a dish called cruelty.]

[ All you need is kill.]

[ You are trafficker.]

[ This is who you are.]

—— Remember to mark him.

Siphon.

—-What was Siphon?

A cruel place where humans hurt other humans.

—— What are you?

Someone who worked for them.

The sound of my heart beat raced as I thought about it.

Strangely I felt so calm even if nothing else entered my mind.

A strong compulsion wanted me to act on my instincts and too just let go.

I spoke to the captives in their tongue as the [ Conversation] distorted my voice to make them understand me.

[ You will not be harmed by us.] 

I raised my hand to my chest.

[ I promise.]

That voice was enough to put the traffickers off.

The thing is— I didn't have to use the power of Conversation to speak in their tongue.

It was the voice that sounded like the man who died that made them scared, but I pulled out my gone and walked forward.

[ May you perish wretchedly.]

I was behind the trafficker and over his shoulder without even registering the gun I had aimed above his brows, before he could even say a single word.

I fired, not once, or twice, I shot him to the amount I recalled feeling in memory when I saw the other traffickers and their stunted reaction to what I had done.

  I made a decision to show them what I knew.

The things I saw.

They needed to understand what happens here in this shit hole of a place.

  I shot him  in the knee and he fell, but I didn't stop until the gun could no longer fire, because of my senses.

I was shooting all the places I intended to hit and I didn't miss a single bullet.

He turned to his side and I fired.

He made a sound, I fired and that was when I saw the knife he used and reached out for it.

The expression his eyes showed.

I knew I wasn't over the feeling yet.

—— Ever since I pulled the trigger.

All I wanted was to kill.

That powerful compulsion was the most thrilling feeling I had ever experienced in all my life.

That desire too.

[ Watch something die by your hands.]

That feeling made my heart pulse to the point.

I couldn't anything, but the sound of a knife pushing into flesh and my own rapid heart beat.

Everything faded as I feel to the overwhelming temptation to let go.

—————

It all stopped when the mask covering his face was broken and any features he had was only left with holes and blood hiding his face.

I saw captives and I saw traffickers, but I saw fear too.

I saw myself covered with his blood and I felt weak.

My mind hadn't fully adjusted to what I had done.

It was like a blur.

I couldn't remember the rest of what I was doing other than picking up the knife, but I saw it.

—To make up for one captive place.

—You need one more person.

—As long as they heart moves.

—They would be bought.

I didn't understand.

[ A cruel display of Siphon brutality.]

I could only stare as a body of flesh utterly deformed by bullets and knife wounds still alive with his heart still beating.

— I was no different than them.

That was only thing I thought about when I saw it.

My experiences with death allowed me to know how long a person could possibly survive for based on their physical trauma and condition.

Humans were very fragile and tenacious creatures, but I broke him.

" He will be sold to them." It was unnatural tone that escaped my lips.

One that seemed so empty and feigned of moral.

Robotic and hollow.

Despite knowing how similar I was to the man who ordered my killing, I couldn't see this as anything cruel.

It felt like a fog was in the back of my mind bluing something that I know should have been there.

[ All traffickers are weary.]

I saw the gun in one hand and the knife in the other.

If it were an act of wanting to live. I showed no signs of resistances or an attempt to justify what I had done.

Remembering cruelty you've experienced was a curse.

I knew  the mind of a victim, because I've been there before.

This… is something that anyone won't ever forget.

Remembering cruelty would be like an infectious disease that continues to remind you it exists for as long as you live and it would only get worse.

Even after what I had done to him.

I couldn't think I was such a bad person and yet there was evidence that I was capable of being that.

" Ah…. Ah…. Ah——"

He wasn't there anymore. I broke him.

" Our role is to sell them to merchants."

" The merchants accept the living."

We weren't allies. We weren't friends. We weren't going to be working with each-other to the end.

I showed no remorse in my words despite us all being a trafficker in Siphon.

My words did not match.

The pain I was feeling.

It was if two different people were ordering different options to the same body.

One wanted to stop there, but compulsion wanted me to follow through.

So I plunged the knife into the body of the trafficker, marking him by twisting the blade through out his skin.

He winced to the knife entering his skin.

It was something I had experienced on my body and remembered because of the way it was seared into me by the edge of a burning blade.

Although the person who was the trafficker wasn't their anymore.

I knew how terrible it was for him as he too had ears to hear everything I had said.

The man who was full of confidence and power reduced to this wretched form.

In an attempt save any morals I had in my heart.

I carved his skin as if he were one of the things that lived in the pig pen, but I wielded the knife very gently where pain was far less than what he had felt before.

After the mark of Siphon was carved into his back and most of my hands were stained  by both sweat and his sheds of skin.

Underneath the silence I began to hear his muffled cries.

It was in that moment I began to feel the sinking realization of what I had done.

All of it just completely rushed in after I saw the notification.

[ You have fulfilled an executioners duty and remembered to mark them.]

[ Your cruelty has imprinted a horrible memory onto them.]

[ They will remember.]

They will remember?

I looked behind me towards the captives and then to the traffickers who were idle before.

All of them gone.

There in the middle of  cabin the floor was two humans.

One who died 40 minutes ago and the other who cried and laughed in between the silence.

His mind was gone. I thought it would have been better if he didn't feel any pain consciously and the only way to do it was.

Showing a side of my memories… I was afraid off.

[ Black Merchants are entities who are involved with the buying and selling of everything known to be bad. Although they are physical representation of illegal markets. Black Merchants are an dimensional interaction trading system designed by your Modification System.]

I didn't care about those things.

This was supposed to be the first mission I would have went through and failed, because the hostages were killed, but all of them lived, but one.

I stared outside to the familiar sky as the train was taking us to Siphon territory to where they would all be bought by a Black merchant or in their terms.

A contact from Siphon.

— All of this for fucking money.

I understand what I had done was beyond torture.

Somehow, Somewhere, Some day they would see something far more terrible than what I had experienced it was comfortable way to evade morals, but—

— This could never be forgiven.

——I was a fucking fiend.

I noticed how we had passed multiple fields and towns that were submerged in the after maths of wars, there were many buildings destroyed by explosions, empty vehicles that have long been burnt and small dark shadows laying on the floor.

The blackened sky of Siphon was better without the sun.

If it were so bright, the horrors of this place would be clear.

  Although it was far away from where we were.

There one time I travailed to a different village.

  I still remember what I saw in a shed that day.

"…"

This moment was a time in my life where I can't forget what those days was like underneath the blackened sky of Siphon.

As the train roared, I saw the fields and beyond it a burial site and the forests I was killed in. 

I had just brutally rendered a man to a state where he can't live on his own anymore and his body was just laying there on the floor beside the captive who he had killed himself.

  All I thought about was how I burned years of my life away indulging in manga, anime and webtoons and somehow I became this.

This fucking thing that could imitate the things I saw.

"…"  I'd wake up in the dungeon when I die.

If something happened and I was killed by the traffickers for what I did or we are killed by other groups I die.

It was in that moment when I was staring to realize how bad my actions were and how I felt like I'm unable to die because of what I had done.

It was just vivid depictions of what I know of the future.

None of the traffickers now knew of the things that involved captives.

They just believed they only needed to kidnap a person then deliver.

I knew too much.

They would turn him into a killer even if he lost his mind and if I was guilty for what I had done the only kind thing a person would do is to not go through with it and toss him out the train.

Instead of letting him live on as this and used as a disposable in attacks made on Siphon.

I can just end it all now.

It was conflicting to think about it.

I tortured, I marked and I broke his mind and after realizing it wouldn't be so soon I could die too.

Knowing this would happen.

This was something I couldn't die with.

While the captives were separated from us. I did not put the effort in disposing of the man on the floor.

I left him there with the other trafficker, but he didn't seem to see anything nor did he make a sound.

He just sat there and realized how close he resembled a zombie because of how deformed and discolored his wounds were on his skin.

If someone saw it.

I wouldn't deny that even I believe he would die from bleeding.

Maybe he would…

I didn't want to want to know.

[ Do you regret?]

I can't answer that.

I broke his mind when I knew I would go too far to the point where he would never choose to come back.

I sent him to a place where he everything everything I had done was happening to someone else but him.

"…" I was too kind, but I felt like complete shit.

[ Your mind has altered your memories, the possibility of the trafficker being separated from their body after being tortured is true.]

[ You've already experienced something similar before.]

I spoke to him knowing he wouldn't answer, but I made a decision to leave.

" Soon I will die."

" Whether you end up being sold to a merchant or being killed here won't change anything for you."

" Like me. You will die."

" When you are sent to a merchant. Your body is modified to be a soldier."

" I just want you to understand that even if I know."

" You might be watching from in there."

I pulled out a coin from my pocket. The head of a golden crow chewing on a bamboo stick and the opposite a snake that devoured its own tail.

" This will decide how you will experience death."

" I'm going to flip this coin."

" Heads will mean mercy and tails will mean hollow."

I turned the coin and with a flick of my thumb I watched the coin fall and land onto the floor with the face of the snake that devoured its tail floating over blood.

In that moment I thought of what it meant for him and how I felt myself becoming hollow inside at the choice that I will do nothing.

His fate is to be sold in place of captive was set.

He picked up the coin and I felt like he was looking at it as if trying to understand what it was.

While he showed interest in the coin. I know he couldn't see. I cut out his eyes.

I pulled onto the captive whose body had been laying there and I opened the cabin door that was used to fill up cargo in trains and the rush of cold wind burnt my skin after it opened.

Immediately I saw the trafficker rush to the other side of the room, because it.

He screamed and ran.

The open wounds he had all over his body and the blood that dragged across the floor as he ran.

I had to turn away.

Watching the scene of nature and life from a far. I pulled the captive over the edge of the door.

If I jumped the train would leave without me.

Burials were common among people who lived, but here that concept never applied for all of us.

The moment we passed a small tunnel I pushed his body off the edge with my boots and watch as he fell into the bushes down below.

In a sense I felt like something was shifting inside of my head.

I wondered about what would happen if the crow had showed instead.

If it were me.

I would have spared him by pushing a bullet into his heart.

I was ready to kill him, but now things have changed.

I made a decision in that coin and this was the outcome it had made for him.

I turned away, but I noticed the captives who were attracted by the sound and the boy stared to the open cabin door with the blood trails led too and he rushed to shut it close when called out to him.

[ What happened?]

[ Someone opened the door and it's burning his wounds!]

The young boy who saw his father die.

Showed concern when he saw the captives were trying to help the man.

Whether it be the rage and seeing the sadness of someone you love die or understanding that the person who did it is now in the same position as you.

He looked conflicted, because while he was them we watched as the man laughed.

—— I left after they tried to speak some sense into him.

I did feel guilt, but if there were any different way.

I'd do it again.

So I left.

——

I could vividly remember the lay out for the double dungeon. Although I may have experienced that side of the world.

What happened in the original story seemed to have faded each time I transfer.

Not because I forgot, but because the memory of it wasn't so important to me.

The future meant so little to me, but I know I will be there soon.

So I pondered about the recent events I had encountered in the times I was there instead of thinking of what would happen with the captives or the decisions the traffickers would make for what I had done.

Ever since the coin.

I had this unnatural discomfort to go somewhere far away from here the only thing I could think off was to transfer one more.

After leaving the cabin. I had spent sometime alone in the dark thinking of what I should and shouldn't do.

In this moment it had been almost 8 months since my sister past away and I had left my original life behind and joined Siphon.

At this time many things had changed.

None of the captives lived in my memory and I left the group and believed it was far better to be on my own.

In another life. It was the decision of another person that led me into hunting people on my own.

Although I managed to link up with someone I knew.

It was the apathy and disconnection from others that made me realize why I had always been a No Life.

I was not good with people, but I learned you didn't need to be good with people to survive.

I saw the traffickers and how they all sat comfortably in the main interior of the train.

Everything here was lavish and comfortable for someone of noble stature. In fact this part of the cabin was renovated by a trafficker who owned a major district of Siphon.

This was just a piece of comfort he wanted to share for people who worked in his profession.

I saw how some of them were unable to look me in the eyes.

  We all had our faces covered, but I took off my mask when I headed deeper into the cabin.

I left the interior and went to another cabin far in the back.

Somewhere I could be alone without eyes to see. No-one had a reason to come here.

It was the coldest part of the train and if you stood out here long enough.

No-one would be surprised if you died.

Since the wall had a graffiti that spelled out.

Worlds End pointing toward a part of the train that had the cabin door exploded of it's hinged.

  Unlike the other cabins this one was open to the harsh and freezing winds and the outside and without any protection from the constant traveling.

Many captives who couldn't bare to jump of the train were found in cased in ice here.

Thats when I actually felt the chills in my finger tips and my face was freezing to bitter cold.

I pulled the side of the blade I had taken from the trafficker up to see my face and I looked 15 years younger than I thought I felt.

I looked just like my sister, but the expression I saw would never belong on her face.

She was a good person.

I watched as the cold blurred my face.

The captives would be sold for $5000 per head.

  The traffickers would go on to sell more with the knowledge that even they could be sold for the same price.

As if anything to do with them mattered to me.

This whole time all I could do was to relive the things I had done and most recently.

All I've done was relive everything I did during the torture.

How I had copied everything they did to me onto someone else.

I've killed before, but there are many things that make me feel uneasy.

Torture and cruelty was some of them.

I know we would all die in Siphon or in life.

Whether it be under a blackened sky or by someone you interacted with here.

In the end.

It was just normal, but I truly believed no-one had to suffer in pain.

Which is why a gun was my choice of weapon.

"…"

Working for Siphon isn't somewhere I want to again.

I don't want to experience that life again.

I tossed the blade outside and reached in for my gun that I couldn't feel in my hands.

[ This action will have consequences.]

"…' 

Every action I had made in life was paid in death.

Consequences…

—— So what.

I'm already dead.

If you can describe the last sound you hear from a gun when you die…

I would call it Nothing.

-  YOU HAVE BEEN KILLED.

[ You have gained a dark soul.]

——————  ————————  —————————  —————————

If all it took was for you to just close your eyes and you know you would wake up somewhere different. 

I would pray to exit life.

[ You have transferred.]

There was this powerful desire for something to quench this thirst and rid of the foul taste behind my teeth.

It felt like I had forgotten how to breath through my nose.

It was just slightly difficult to go through it when I was being pulled by my collar, by someone—-with a very scared and desperate expression on her face

Over my shoulder.

A man was cut in half by a stone statue one of the Architects puppets and then I saw the Cruel Lord looking at us, not with an expression I've seen before.

A small light appeared in front of his eyes.

[ Your past memory has analyzed an ability: Heat Vision.]

The same light that burned me.

"…" Despite what I had done on train.

The fact that I was going to be hit by something like that already killed my motivation I had felt that moment I told myself I won't ever be in Siphon anymore.

I had this strong feeling I won't be able to make it out without dieing.

The only reason I was able to make it last time… was because I had to die.

[ Your ability Shadow Lord can only be accessed through a Shadow extraction and transfer.] 

I didn't feel angry. 

Just slightly disturbed that my only way to escape this fate was to be killed or use alter reality and even if I had made it out of the dungeon by following the story.

Who can say I won't end up here again.

If not by the light than by something else or even my own destructive thoughts that would want it.

Transfer and be transfered by death.

I was just a useless scum who had everything if I just simply die for it here.

Even if I didn't really care about what I went through, that doesn't mean I like the feeling of it or remembering each time it happened.

"…" 

I raised my hand.

[ This is your Modification system——-]

The moment the status screen was to appear. 

It felt like something was going to chop of my head.

It wasn't the only feeling. I could sense the hot energy from the Cruel Lord's direction and how long it would take to get this way.

I just didn't care about it.

I only wanted to see the modification screens abilities even if that would mean death, but this person.

Caught me by neck.

" Al! Stop standing there! Run!" 

I wanted to know who was dragging me by the collar.

Dragging me as if I weigh nothing, but also attempting to out run something I knew would hit us at any moment.

I couldn't remember a single time where someone helped me, but a pretty young woman with long bright orange hair, blue eyes, and pale skin crossed my mind when I saw the older looking woman fighting past.

The bodies of hunters who had been killed during the elimination phase of the double dungeon.

All the bodies that laid on the floor.

We rushed past them escaping to an area that was much further away from the statues.

The gate that leads to the exit of the dungeon.

This woman… didn't know and that's when it hit me.

I never told them.

  I don't believe someone would go this far for me, especially a hunter in this world, but if it were someone who knew this body.

I understand why they would react in such a way.

That feeling I had felt from my neck just then.

I stared at the sword resting by her side.

I stared at her really hard because of it, but she seemed to be ignoring it after I made her let go.

" I-uh I… sorry I was just thinking— uh…" She knew. 

She knew I had sensed her intention to kill me with her sword, but instead of talking about it.

I fixed the front of my shirt and avoided thinking on what would have happened.

Although it did make me want to ask it straight.

I wasn't that interested.

I never met her in my life, but obviously her features would resemble the girl I knew.

"…" She just stared at me.

" Sorry."  It was the only thing I heard because of the silence.

I had been so focused on to the large aura of energy that was being channeled from the direction of the Cruel Lord that I barely heard her say it.

All my focus was on the blinding light.

It was a lot bigger than the one I remembered.

I felt the energy ignite and explode.

Whether it was because of that light and certain death or I was already accustomed to it or because I was strong because of the modification system and all the powers I had gained because of it.

In this moment.

Being strong didn't even matter to me.

I just want to feel alive.

The only thing I could think off in that moment to escape death was one of the internal spells I had already gained.

A spell that could end heat vision in mere seconds without having to resort to alter reality and death.

[ Tragedian.] Although I had forgotten it's effects.

I knew everything about it and the cost it would take to activate it's power and how terrible of a skill if used for cruelty.

Cruelty…

To evoke power from words with ability to alter reality through dream like projections.

A spell cast without mana, but the sacrifice of a thought instead.

One of the abilities I had created for a monster I had designed.

[ You have gained a new title: The Idle Baphoment.]

  I imagined the heads of captives falling to the ground by orders of an executioner in Siphon and implemented my desire for it to be real.

I didn't need alter reality, but another power I already had available.

To think of the worst ending imaginable.

I took a deep breath and thought of things ending.

It was also first step that mattered.

To build a powerful combination of words.

" And the queen of hearts said."

Then evoke it through a powerful intent through your words.

" Off with their heads."

Then watch it cause effect right in front of your eyes.

Although I had just whispered it.

I didn't mistake the light that had faded.

[ The Black Tongue Of The Tragedian has activated.]

There was only one person who I focused on when I said those words.

When I envisioned a head falling off it's shoulders.

I turned my head to the only thing in this dungeon that was alive.

The stone statue of an angel holding onto a tablet.

I saw blood on the tablet and cursed blue like tattoos appear on his body.

My senses were extremely heightened to the point where we were both so far from each-other yet I could see his expression when he saw blood leaking from the corner of his arms.

The black tongue of the tragedian to manifest anything I saw into reality and the things I saw was humans being killed.

Human… The Architect was anything but one of them and yet the Tragedian made him die like one.

[ Who did this!!!!]

[ Who cursed me!——]

[ You— You did——]

Blue curse marks coursed over his arms to the point where even his face underneath the hood was shrouded with it.

His head fell off his shoulders and in the moment it touched the ground.

[ The doctrine of the Idle Baphomet has activated.]

[ Those marked by the Idle Baphomet will be killed without rest.]

I found another notification one that took over the puppets that lost their control and without my intention.

[ All your monsters will be controlled by ~+~ and orders will be carried out to initiate all out attacks on marked entities.]

[ Monsters will continuously attack until there is no life left in them.]

The system notification sent off an immediate ordered to kill until they are destroyed.

" What is that?" 

" Why are they attacking that…"

Monster.

That's what the Architect was since I too was just like him.

I also had the absolute control over everything the modification siphoned from him in my past life meant that I was also an Architect.

While under the blades of his own creation.

I knew he was staring here.

Under the attacks of his own creation there was only one statue I stopped from attacking him.

Moments I remember in the precious life I lived.

Where he questioned me as the Shadow Monarch and why he was betrayed when I killed him.

In this life.

I wonder what he would have said.

Since.

Ash-born power wasn't apart of his murder.

The Cruel Lord.

All he could do was stare up to his most perfect creation as it raised it's gigantic leg over him.

[ Most gracious… lord—] I heard his last words and lowered my arm.

[ You have gained experience.]

I don't know why I was crying when I saw the statues act like humans by tearing off his arms, or ripping out the wings from his body.

If stone statues had feelings they would be hollow.

All the statues stopped attacking the Architect once the blue markings on the Architect evaporated upon the notification.

Throughout everything all I did was observe..

The scene of stone statues hunting their own and relentlessly attacking it even it meant their arms broke because of the Architects strong body.

In the middle of the temple I was the only monster left within a room full of hunters.

All of them were unaware of what transpired.

They had slowly come to the understanding and their expressions showed their emotions on their skin.

Wanting to believe that the statutes will not attack them anymore.

Most of them cried and yet.

Only one of them stared straight to me.

The woman who was intent on chopping of my head was just staring straight at me as if she knew.

I was the one responsible for all of this.

It might have been unintentional, but it was because of her that I remembered the executions that were carried out on traffickers.

Before I could even think off Siphon.

I immediately ordered the statues near the gate to open them for the ones that survived and those who didn't make it before I transferred.

I tended to them.

I was picking up pieces of their body and placing them together limb by limb.

I didn't know why I decided to do it, but I remembered that I had siphoned another ability.

One taken from Miss Healer and the best I could do was to do the same thing I remembered doing before.

When I something crawl through my fingers.

If I had this power on the train… maybe I would have never done that to the trafficker.

A warm energy that came from the light in my hand and all I did was reach out both harms of the body of someone who was crushed.

I pushed the light over the places that were disfigured the most.

[ You have used heal.]

If anything. The ability seemed almost similar to medical ninjutsu.

[ You have used heal.]

Instead of using hand signs I would see notifications that a memory has faded instead.

Although I did not know what memory it was fading.

All my abilities relied on that mechanic.

[ A memory has faded.]

By mending the detach parts of a human body right to where it belongs and altering it to it's previous state before destruction.

Miss Healer ability seemed much closer to time alteration than it was in healing people when the system used it.

I didn't really think of anything when the gates opened or bothered to understand the words the hunters wanted to say after all of this.

All I knew is that they wanted to go home.

Once the door for the dungeon opened.

To leave this pit of death and hope to return to their normal average life.

I severed my control over all the puppets within this place to ensure that the others survivors did not have to be afraid of them.

I wasn't foolish to believe they were just going to accept they were free.

People were skeptical by nature and if something terrible that happened to you ended with knowing the reason why.

They would assume something terrible has happened.

Whether they take this as a miracle or not all depends on the human mind hunters share.

Some of them were holding out that there must be another boss monster waiting in the dark.

Maybe the silhouette of the Shadow Monarch that showed after the architect died was that monster, but unfortunately for them.

There was no a single piece of  treasure to be found in this place after the boss of a dungeon is killed, besides the inheritance of the Shadow Monarch and——

The system gifted by the Architect.

Something I had Siphoned in my past life, but I already owned my own system.

I saw two sitting side by side.

[ This is your Modification System.] —————- [ The Cruel Lord System.]

So I just carried on with stitching back the pieces of humans remains together and mending their bodies back to a state where they were once people too.

The things I saw… reminded me of Siphon.

Only that instead of human crimes.

All of this were committed by monsters.

People could do the same thing too.

It was just hard to believe that the people in Siphon were the same as monsters.

As I was immersed in the mending of one of the dead hunters.

The woman I saw before trailed me.

When I walked somewhere she would shadow my position.

If I perhaps took a piss near the wall of the dungeon. I believed she would have followed along.

If I were to describe Miss Healer when she was older, she would have looked a lot like her, but ever since I woke up in this place.

Miss Healer and Jin-woo were the least of my concerns.

All my joy in waking up in this places faded the moment I killed myself on the train, because I knew I would be here again.

It was just the joy that I once felt as a No-Life who loved In Another Life stories faded when I was reminded of the things I had done.

My identity in Siphon was this other person who became something because of th death of his sister as much as I would have liked that to be the true.

I consented to the role of a trafficker and accepted all of it's atrocities needed to fulfill it.

I accepted, but I don't know if I was able to keep up with it.

[ Heal has been applied.] Instead of seeing the same thing over again.

I would alter the words the system used every time I tried to mend someone and some cases.

[ The woman behind you farted and it smells like pig blood.]

Or I would just say.

[ The milf behind you things you are dumb use heal to bash her skull.]

Anything to rid my thoughts of that place.

Mending the dead was my only way bleeding time

Anyone would be excited to be in Solo Leveling, but for me.

This was just another place I would wake too when I'm killed.

So I planned to live it through even if it means I would end in another life again.

Using the system was starting to take affect on me.

I hadn't realized how much time had passed or how long I was doing it for.

My body worked mindlessly on it's own without me thinking.

I forced myself to smile to the beautiful woman who happened to be by my side.

It was the feeling of wanting to have a warm shower that made me stare long at my  blood soaked hands, but the words I wanted to say to the woman on why she was still here disappeared when she offered me a human hand.

" Can I be of any assistance?" She said in this sweet and soothing tone.

I stared at the arm and the body it would have belong too.

The photographic memories the puppets had and who they killed entered my mind the moment my connection severed.

So I had an idea of where and who they belonged too.

I knew exactly where the bodies of each remained.

Although  I didn't understand how I could retain the memory of it so clearly.

It wasn't anything to do with my ability to alter reality.

I just accepted the arm and laid it by my side as I continued mending a human using Miss Healers magic.

The woman I felt her stare at the light in front of me, at first her eyes were intense when she saw the green glow, I noticed how she  never said anything.

As if she were more concerned that I would exhaust myself if I keep using it for so long, but I had no mana or magic like they did.

It almost seemed as if I had a lot of memories even if I have never lived for so long.

[ A memory has faded.]

I just knew that memories were a cheaper price to pay and if that means it would erase all the horrors I can forget.

Then I would gladly keep mend humans together.

The problem was I had no aspirations to be involved in hunter work.

I would never work underneath anyone ever again.

I despise it. Working under someone or with people who can ruin you.

Of course I hated company.

I had already recognized I wasn't good with it.

This woman and I had barely interacted since that one time I saw her staring at me after the death of a Monarch and yet here she is shadowing me for god knows why.

Mending the dead back to how they were before they were killed was just my way of avoiding to live.

Like how I killed the Architect.

I didn't have a good reason to do these things.

Things progressed slowly, because of the amount of time it took walking to a person and then retracing the steps of where their limb fell too or watching the memories of the statues as they killed the hunters.

It may have seemed like I was just mending, but each time I was unsure where a part was.

I would only see how they were killed and it would happen over and over again until they looked like someone again.

"…" 

I stood over the person who would always die each time I woke up here.

This large man who wore a large green jacket and couldn't get a better hair cut.

Like Mr Panda. He was also one of the main cast who was shown in the webtoon.

" Is this someone you know?" I asked the woman.

It had been so long, but my question alerted her immediately.

She stood by my side this whole time and with a finger underneath her chin.

I watched her take a very long time in her thoughts.

I moved a bit closer and stared hard at her and I would see her eyes slowly look at me and then away.

" Maybe… Maybe not."

The moment I heard it.

I raised my hand.

" What you aren't interested in listeni—"

I began to mend his body together again.

"…"  I looked over my shoulder at her.

" Have you ever thought of learning this?" I watched the green energy glow from hands and after the time I spent on using it.

I measured the amount of time to mend a human body together if it was completely destroyed it would be about 30 minutes and for those that weren't as destroyed.

Lower than 10 depending on the condition they experienced before death.

I believed that it could be improved the more time you spent.

The woman just looked at me and then to the stomach that was stitching itself together piece by piece.

The same stare she showed from all of them.

I watch her smile as she said. " I don't deserve it."

I reached out for her arm and she stared her eyes unblinking as I touched her brow.

There was something about the way she looked at me that reminded me so much of Miss Healer.

There was this moment we she froze up because of how close I was.

It happened because of the words I said after I kiss her lips.

" You remind me off a slave."

" Terribly obedient." 

" Follows behind me like I'm your owner."

The moment I said those words.

Her expression morphed into disgust, but she didn't say anything and just stood there listening to the way I was describing everything I remembered saying to Miss Healer in multiple points of the lives I lived here.

" Someone who can let a stranger get close to you like this?" 

" Aren't you acting strange?" I was close to her lips, but the feeling of lust was evident, because I was interested in the things she had said.

The more she was silent. 

The more my assumptions and guesses began to manifest, but I didn't want to say anything.

I wanted her to tell me herself.

So when I reached out my hand and a mist from the energy moved in front of her.

I caught the moment it seemed as if she were drawn into another memory.

To see that expression every time it showed.

I always felt like something was off.

I whispered beside her ear.

" I believe you…  You would be an expectational healer." It was the eyes of interest that made me say that.

Not everyone has that seduction to something like she had shown.

" It would be wonderful to have a slave to heal me." Maybe I wouldn't always have to go off an kill myself just to feel normal.

" You have an awful personality." 

" It's quite terrible and I agree with you… but so what?" 

Mending was a game mechanic from mine-craft that required the experience of a player to fix an equipment by diminishing a level by the amount of experience orbs used as a sacrifice.

" Terrible things need to be said to measure the tolerance of the one I'm conversing with." 

" It's  E ranked ability called dead-man learning." I tossed two fingers together in a form of peace.

Although I did through my teeth. I found it quite funny that she showed signs of distrust, but didn't tell me outright that I was lying. 

After quite some time. I had come to the acceptance of calling this healing ability something else than heal.

Mend. Like mine-craft.

I didn't believe I had the same ability, but I thought of the hunters no different from tools and by sacrificing my memories they will repair on their own.

I didn't know any other way to call the light I had siphoned from Miss Healer the last time I was here.

  Since the things I saw in front me was almost similar to mend, I also remembered the other version I used that had the evaporate life too.

[ Mend: The ability to reverse.] 

[ Fade: The ability to end.]

To see a person a body mend while receiving the memories of the creature that chopped them in two.

Is one of the most oddest experience a person could ever face in their life.

What is like to help someone, while receiving the memories of the one that turned them in that way.

The ability to know is one of the psychologically infecting things I've experienced.

To watch muscle reconstruct as if the act of violence was only reverting them to a previous state or a desired one.

All I knew was the ability to heal someone was quite a disturbing evil.

[ You have received many rich blessings from your experiences and shed sympathy on those who were brutally killed in this life.]

[ She won't forget.]

That's when I turned my attention to the only one who hadn't gone away.

The odd woman who looked familiar to Miss Healer and smell just like her.

I had this faint feeling it was her, but… I didn't bother saying it.

The way she stared at it, I found her interest in healing quite different than simple fascination, from her gaze it seemed more like worship.

Once the light died, I saw her smile.

The man was still a dead man, but his form wasn't as revolting as the trafficker.

He just looked better and not like a split sausage.

" Thank you."

Those words was something I didn't want to hear.

She didn't know that in the others times I was here.

All I did was watch them die.

I could have saved them, but I didn't.

The  death of the Architect was nothing more than just a means to past time.

I would return here until the day I could no longer be able to transfer again.

Thank you?

I didn't answer that.

I stood up and stared at the temple that the Architect lived in.

None of the hunters were here, but the dead who were neatly aligned together and ready to be received by the Korean Hunter Association.

If this were anyone else. I'm sure they would have never thought about taking care of the dead so that one day they could return to someone that cares for them.

I just lifted the man beside another person laying in the line.

Jin-woo, Miss Healer or even the others who originally survived were gone, but there were a few faces I could hardly remember.

Two new faces I hadn't seen before, but their black suit outfit showed their affiliations.

One of the faces I remembered seeing quite often in the webtoon was  member who could stand between two S Rank Guild Masters and future chair man of The Korean Hunter Association.

From the moment I had finished mending the final hunter.

Notifications for the modifications system began roaring in the corner of my vision, but all my intentions was focused on all the methods I would use to avoid interacting with—

Bothersome human beings.

[ Abilities of Past life will be listed here.]

That was the moment I walked beside the woman and showed her how I ignore physical barriers when it came to the skin by conversation.

Rather to be assaulted by questions.

I believed in one sided negotiations and dead-man learning communicate with the living.

One step forward they came.

" We were told there were signs of battle and many were——."

" Look." I saw his partner say.

Although they tried to hide it,  all those they presumed to have dead and or deformed were all laid out neatly in a row ready to be received.

The suspicion that crossed one of their faces was enough for me to assume someone had given them some sort of information about the conditions of the hunters.

That was my observation from what I what assumed from his silence.

I never enjoyed silent interrogations and prefer to be the only one that should keep his silence and receive answers without saying a word.

Being direct and honest would have saved a lot of people from being killed in Siphon.

A common trait I considered to be valuable in social interaction was the ability to forge your own understanding of what ever event happens around you.

Although I tossed that thought away and spoke in pure and brutal honesty as one of them.

I considered sharing valuable information in exchange for something I desired.

" Not a single heart beat left in them." I replied.

My nonchalance was met with a certain look I felt from my left side.

That woman did not seem to like what I was saying.

The mom those two stepped there was a feeling of discomfort she was emitting and I chose to ignore it.

" I checked them all myself." Drenched in their scent whether it be man, woman or the insides of a monster.

Everything that didn't survive was on my skin and their bodies tainted my clothes and light armor.

It didn't have to take a dog to know… I wasn't apart of the killing, but It can only take a vulture to poke their beak into my arm to find out whether I was really part of it enough.

I noticed how I showed no fear or was submitted by any forms of physical and mental pressure the others would have shown in front of them.

Korean Hunters Association.

Anything to do with organizations made remember.

The only organization I knew was one that killed their own and the people they created to search for human life.

Although vultures and a member of the Hunter Association did not have anything to do with one another.

Both party loyally carry out their organizations will and they were worst of humans.

Strong. Intelligent and considered highly dangerous among their peers.

If I knew how to lie through my teeth. I would've preached a bible about the end of the world, about Monarchs— about the ability to see a step into the future— about how I came back through time, but it was so hard to breathe when all I could feel was this immense pressure evoking from the woman side as I continued to talk about nothing but sweet things.

  Although I had the mind to create the biggest cult in the world.

My social interaction with reality was rock bottom 25%

If there was something I dislike more than life.

It could be interrogations.

So I believed that the woman who I thought was much better than me with her pretty hair and blue eyes and cold lips deserved to take my role as a sacrifice in all my future conversations, because I have no interest in speaking to them or repeating myself in future transfers to come.

Maybe I was blessed to have someone who could take everything I don't want to deal with this time.

My perfect sacrificial pawn.

The woman who looks like Miss Healer.

" Al…. Why are you looking at me like that?" 

The closer I stepped to her, the darker my expression got as I thought about it.

" You're a hunter right?" I stepped behind her and aimed her body towards the other two.

" Walk forward and talk to your friends. I'm very stress and tired from using my abilities." As I faked a cough.

I continued to express the opposite of what I feeling and showing to her as she just looked at me over her shoulder and gawked as I tipped her all of the best ways and things to say to the hunters.

Although there was so many things I whispered passionately through her ears they all said one thing.

Lie through your teeth and cover for me.

" Do you understand?" Was the last thing I told her as she just stood there silently.

With her slumped down shoulders and her extinguish desire she was haunted by expression as I noticed her desire to not go through it.

" Is it that hard to tell the truth?"

" Yes, it seems exhausting." I answered.

" Then how do I explain what happened to the other? What if they ask about the thing with their bodies?" 

" God showed them a miracle." 

" Bullshit!"

" He appeared in a moment when all hope was lost and said I will save your life and——"

" All bullshit!" I grew impatient with her antagonistic views on my ideas of escaping interrogation.

So I shoved her into position.

"—— And now from the graces of god." 

" You ass——lying—"

"You are now his loyal slave who would do anything to carry out his will in this life until death." I didn't want to say so much, because there was a dark prompt from with him.

The same feeling I had briefly felt when I spoke with the Black Tongue Of The Tragedian.

There were many reasons why I couldn't say anything and most of it had to do with the way I spoke.

I had no control over what would happen because of my voice all I knew was.

Something else needed to take the hit for me and then I caressed the side of her stomach and whispered beside her ear.

" If you can do this for me… that power… will be yours."  There was odd sense of silence after I said those words.

She looked determined, but extremely nervous.

" Okay… I'm ready." I don't know if she was fucking with me, but her immediate burst of enthusiasm was enough to make me forget that she wasn't actually a submissive slave, but someone who can think and feel on her own.

Although she showed enthusiasm for something as simple as this.

Just that was enough to make me feel this way.

I extended my hand on the right side of her shoulder.

" Then may your perish wretchedly" 

A black notification screen appeared in front of her.

[ You have been tasked with an important mission: Decieve the vultures of The Korean Hunters Association to become a player.]

[ Rewards for completely this mission: Mend: An ability to reverse time.]

" Mend…" 

[ Failure for fulfilling this task: Unknown.]

[ Do you wish to continue?]

[ Yes] or [ No]

Without hesitation in heart I felt her made her decision.

[ You've accepted this mission.]

[ Show them your lords regards.]

[ Oh pitiful… believer of the Sacrificial Devil.]

I think I understood why the Architect was the best character within in Solo Leveling…

There was no doubt in my heart that the moderator was always the most closest thing you can call to God.

The ability to captivate the hearts of man.

No wonder people loved to have system, by instinct they would do anything to be a slave for something.

Lie and worship the system.

If she can find a way to do it.

The maybe I wouldn't have to leave this all behind.

I stared at the large open gate and laughed when I saw her move towards them that dark and twisted laughter could be heard through all the halls of the dungeon.

—— but I didn't care.

This was all apart of my design and if anything goes wrong there is always a next time to get it right.

The glory of being a dead-man is to always wake up in another life after death and failure can be revised in the next life.

I wanted to know how far I could go with his ability.

To conjure and inject a system into a hunter and groom them into an ideal vessel.

Although The Architect built the system to create a vessel for The Shadow Monarch.

It doesn't mean I need to be loyal to such a system, like a Mod.

I could just reach and let my system devour everything and alter the insides of system into my dark image.

While I waited to see what decision she would make.

I extended my hand behind my back.

" Merge the two systems and create a disposable system that will be inherited by a player who've completed their mission in this life."

" Durability: Until the end of the players life."

" System accessibility: No restrictions." 

" System perks: Growth type." 

" Alter everything and create a stream line that connects to the modification system for user maintenance."

So one day if I were to die.

I would know whether transfers were really just time reversal or I was being to another life.

[ ~+~  has created the E Rank Support system.]

[ Waiting for results of the current mission.]

[ If entity succeeds. System interaction of the disposable system will be permitted to be used in past live transfers.]

[ If entity fails all suspicions of the great evil that will plagued the world will be permanently link to your personality construct in this reality and every transfers you will be hunted by those who seek to prevent the emergence of the Shadow Monarch and be allied by those who wish for him to appear in the world of the living.]

[ If entity fails. You will be marked by Ashborn, The right hand of the Absolute being and become his new vessel.]

[ Hostile relationship between you and The Shadow Monarch of this reality.]

[-9000%]

I looked over to the body of the Architect and there a ghastly aura of light emerged as I saw a separate dimension open up.

In between the darkness. I saw the eyes of A large knight adorned by Shadows and the elements of death staring own at me.

The pressure was like a cold embrace grazing against my neck.

Like when a person who wants you dead looks at you dead in the eyes with a gun aimed at your heart.

A consequence? It only felt like something annoying would be attached on me for the rest of my life.

Like a curse I would be haunted by the Architect.

I reached out my hand and extended a notification prompt towards the Shadow Monarch since I knew they still had access to the Architects system.

It would be easier for someone to completely rid of his access before he would come to remove your administrative rights, but it didn't phase me if I lost it.

[ Think of this as a love letter from a disposable vessel.]

[ Do you want it?]

I showed Ashborn the event contract the modification system set up between me and the woman it called entity and the reward and failure that would be carried out after the mission.

[ Why don't we play a game.]

[ Not only will I become your vessel you will consume my conscious immediately unlike the other humans this body is quite special.]

[ Ashborn: …]

[ If the woman fails her missions I will take on the role of the Architect and you will emerge in this reality.]

[ Ashborn:…]

[If she succeeds——]

[Ashborn: What do you desire human.]

[ Consent.]

In one moment.

The Seal Of Orichalcos emerged in between my fingers.

[ I desire the consent of Ashborn The Right Hand Of The Absolute Being to sacrifice his soul willingly to the seal.]

[Ashborns Ruler Authority has activated.]

In single moment the headless body of the Architect gripped my throat and if it were to squeeze just a little more.

My head would pop open.

Despite the terrifying pressure of suffocation.

I forced myself to laugh in the pain as the air built into my lungs and I glared to the direction the Shadow Monarch was watching me from.

I managed to life apart of finger to open the system.

[ You can take my body…]

[…or destroy it.]

In the corner of my mind all I could was laugh, because it was the only thing that could help me twitch the end of my thumb.

[—-but I'm taking your soul for in exchange for it.]

[Ashborn: Then let us gamble human.]

[Ashborn: Whether your body will be destroyed by my form.]

[Ashborn: Show me that power that you are confident in taking me soul.]

[ Perfect…]

I felt my mind cut off from the system. 

I was suffocating and saw the woman who was interacting with the others.

I saw the illusion that showed a person who looked like me standing watching them and here I was suffocating by the hands of the Architect.

I wanted to laugh if I could have heard my voice, but I could only see my eyes losing its vision slowly.

Ashborn was waiting for it.

Suffocating me slowly.

I raised my fingers and thought of the only thing that will seal our fate completely.

A shadow game.

Where one person places their own soul on the line in battle.

It was the only moment I could think off where I can really feel a thing.

[ You have manifested the ability to create Shadow games.]

[ Under the effects of Alter Reality.]

[ Your body will start to rot after the victor is determined from the shadow game.]

To ensure it would happen.

I took the gamble seriously.

To show my intentions of seeing this through all the way.

Instead of ripping out his slow from the abyss.

I will just flip a coin and pray on a miracle.

The Seal Of Orichalcos showed from the above and the physical discomfort I was feeling vanished when I only saw darkness.

[ You have been forcefully been transfered to the Shadow Realm.]

The Shadow Realm or The Realm Of Dead looked just like something I recalled.

A separate dimension isolated from everything.

A place where those who lose their souls are sent too forever that was the brief description I remembered.

Ashborn stood a distance away his large form blending with its purple fog.

We did not communicate through the system.

I waited and ran through the memories of the stone statues and their time within that place.

The Architect formed them into being and everything it had remembered seeing after it's creation.

It was interesting to see how the Architect created the dungeon and how he created the system to suit the potential vessel of Ashborn.

The extreme steps used within to groom a person into a player was inhumane.

To me it was as if I watching a video, but through their memories.

It felt like I was the one who had done those things.

I did not feel fear the possibility Ashborn would learn that in order to win before the contract finishes.

All he needed was to kill.

I had hoped he figured it out, because I was losing interest in watching a stone statue stand motionless for so long.

All he needed was to wish it and I'd become a vessel, because this was a duel that involved souls.

  The Seal Of Orichalcos was god here something had to be sacrificed to appease it.

The insatiable monster that lurked in the darkness here all it wanted was to feed on souls.

Maybe Ashbon felt it down there.

Looking at us from that wretched place below.

In the depths of the Alter Seal Of Orichalcos there exist a monster.

A calamity whose insatiable hunger was drawn to a place souls would go to when it died.

An addiction in absorbing souls.

Only one place could lure a monster like it too it and that place—

—— was once called Heaven.

[ You have discovered the true history of the Shadow Realm.]

A place so empty that the dead fall straight down into the belly of a soul absorbing beast.

The perfect place to make contracts when dealing with monsters you can't touch or destroy, but I had no soul which is why I asked for consent.

There was no other way to get here other than to force alter reality.

I did it to escape pain and I didn't want remember my final moments to be like a watermelon bursting open with blood.

"…" I needed to do more

Instead of always dieing without reason. I need to do it smart.

It had to be a good reason or it would mean nothing.

I know there is something I get when I pass away, but that was important to me.

Being strong is only mean for those alive.

What's the point of being strong if everything you feel and know just leads to the moment where maybe I need to die.

So even with this power that can bend the world.

All I was using it for was to see a different picture by living through insanity.

[ An entity has failed their mission.]

[ Actions will be taken place immediately.]

[ You have lost the Shadow Game.]

[ You have no soul.]

I stood up and showed Ashborn the system notification I received.

I didn't feel to bad about it, but I wondered how could she have failed?

It was so easy to a lie.

I told her the truth after all.

All she needed to tell them was.

A calamity will end the world.

" Aha…" 

" AHAAHAHHA…" 

I didn't know why I was laughing or crying, but this dark emotion in me wanted to find a way to express itself.

If hurting yourself was a way to feel less pain.

Laughter was just the same.

It forced you find something worth laughing for.

I just couldn't stop laughing.

Then I received a notification from my modification system.

[ Contracts are very sacred.]

[ Your existence will be erased and be replaced with The Monarch Ashborn.]

[ Do you wish to continue.]

  [ Yes.]

There was no other options but yes.

As if the system waiting for me to be the one to make a decision time.

I reached out to see consequences of the mission that I would receive.

I know I was the one who initiated and my foolish greed paid the price for gambling it to chance.

[ Results of the current mission.]

[ Failed.]

[ If entity succeeds. System interaction of the disposable system will be permitted to be used in past live transfers.]

[ If entity fails all suspicions of the great evil that will plagued the world will be permanently link to your personality construct in this reality and every transfers you will be hunted by those who seek to prevent the emergence of the Shadow Monarch.]

[ If entity fails. You will be marked by Ashborn, The right hand of the Absolute being and become his new vessel.]

I stood the edge.

I didn't want to be his vessel.

I didn't want to be a player.

I didn't want to be involved with such a troublesome life.

" Kill and be killed." 

" The two absolute laws in Siphon." 

I took my hands and covered my face and took a deep breathe in.

[ Ashborn—— ] —— has decided to end my life.

I knew and I could feel the blade, the air, that energy that has slain millions of powerful life.

How could I not know.

[ 0 life points remaining.]

What it's like to die in the a Shadow Game.

[…]

My mind was submerged by a foreign aura of darkness and death.

A place so cold that I was disintegrating and mending, and the process repeated itself as he stood over me.

Watching— as pieces of me broke apart.

The less I felt.

The more I saw his form change and how it start look like the person I was.

A young man with dark hair and wearing light body armor and violet colored eyes showed an apathetic expression and watched me disappear by the curse of a contract.

—— You have died.——

[ You have gained a Black Soul.]

If I were to start over again.

Maybe this time.

—— I'll get it right.