Suddenly, I came to my senses.
My surroundings felt cold, as if I had just woken from a nap.
But when I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see anything.
Even when I tried to move my body, it wouldn’t budge. No, it wasn’t just that it wouldn’t move; I couldn’t feel my body at all.
What the heck is this?
I felt a nauseating floating sensation and a chilling cold. Trying to scream only resulted in a frustrating silence.
Let’s think this through.
Just a moment ago, I had come home after a long day’s work and cracked open a bottle. Logically, this means I must have gotten drunk and collapsed into sleep.
I fell asleep from drinking. It feels oddly cold. Is it still dawn?
Am I being pinned down by a sleep paralysis?
No matter how much I pondered, that seemed to be the only explanation. With hands and feet immovable and eyes unseeing, if it wasn’t sleep paralysis, then what the hell is it?
But there was this unsettling coldness and a feeling of floating. It was as if I was suspended in mid-air, with a chilling sensation seeping deeply into my bones.
Am I dreaming?
If so, I should wake up someday.
So, I waited.
But I couldn’t get up.
I cursed, I swore, I begged, I tried everything I could.
But I couldn’t get up.
The cold slowly seeped in, and I waited until I could no longer remember what warmth felt like.
But I couldn’t get up.
No matter how much I waited, no matter how loud I screamed in silence, there was no change in this empty cold darkness.
I waited.
I stayed still.
I couldn’t move in the first place.
Then, suddenly, I saw a light.
A bright light and a warm warmth.
The moment I saw it, I knew there was something I wanted there.
But I had forgotten.
That I couldn’t move.
All I could do was look up helplessly.
The lights multiplied one by one.
What I desired was right there, but I could only look up quietly.
What my heart longed for was up there, what I couldn’t give up was up there, what I had to have was up there.
Now the lights filled the sky like stars on a clear night.
As I continuously looked up from below the surface, I reminisced about memories from a time that felt like ages ago, yet painfully fresh in my mind.
I struggled to imagine a warmth that I no longer remembered, like a photo that had been viewed too many times and faded away.
Of course, I couldn’t feel anything.
Then one light fell.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Splash.
Crossing the surface and going below.
Finally.
The light illuminated this deep sea, and only then did I barely realize this wasn’t the sea.
Above the surface, beyond that sky.
I know the shining stars aren’t really shining stars.
There was no sea.
I was the sea.
The light was the dying life that screamed its last.
Filled with resentment and despair, the life that cursed the world as it perished.
As I rolled it around, I suddenly felt a faint warmth for the first time in ages.
Like eating ice cream after living on rice for weeks, it was sweet and delicious.
If I knew nothing, that would have been enough.
Unfortunately, I knew that this was a bitter taste.
Out of bad luck, abandoned by the world, just having done bad things, because the nation was poor. People who had fallen through the social strata, hating someone, or perhaps only those who had given up on everything, came to me one by one.
Thus, only lives that had hit rock bottom came to me.
As I gradually savored that light, I began to see how those lives had lived.
Of course, that time was incredibly quick, and after sucking for a moment, it vanished swiftly.
Then, I would have to wait a long time for the next light to fall.
One, two, three, four.
As I waited for the intermittent falls, at some point, there was a long, long time when nothing fell to me.
A very long time.
I have no sense of time, so I couldn’t tell if it really took this long or if time didn’t flow at all!
So, I decided to reach out to the light that was getting closer beneath the surface.
And I reached it.
Huh? Something’s weird.
When did I have hands?
No matter how much I think, I don’t remember moving anything!
But my desire to feel warmth overwhelmed any questions.
My hand flows slowly to touch the light. Of course, it was hard to rise above the surface. While I could move my hand, it only swayed like there was an invisible wall.
But slowly, gently, condensing me like the sea, I turned my hand into a needle and went up, up, up.
And that thin, almost invisible hand reached up and touched the light floating just above the surface.
That was not a dead life like before, but a still living one.
A vessel cracked and nearly broken with despair, yet filled with a far warmer warmth!
That light clasped my hand.
The somewhat unfortunate life begged for salvation, holding my hand tightly.
But I had nothing to offer.
What do I do when I have nothing to give?
Then I saw my thin hand crossing the surface.
Should I try giving more of myself?
Pushing me upwards, my hand got stuck against an invisible wall, but because my hand pierced through it, I began to rise.
The light was joyous.
It laughed, proclaiming that an immense power filled my hand, then it quickly stopped laughing.
And screamed.
Stop it! Stop it!
But I couldn’t stop. Because I was unable to lift any longer and stayed still.
BOOM!
The light exploded brilliantly, turning black and staining the surrounding lights the same shade. And along with that light, faraway stars fell to me.
Oh.
This was like the moment the primitive man discovered fire.
What’s happening?
As I licked the hazy piece, the life I exerted my strength on exploded. And along with it, it took other lives that were living peacefully with it. They got swept up in the explosion and died together. When that happens, they fall to me.
Once another category emerged, I could formulate multiple hypotheses.
I guess I’m a mass of power. Although I remember being a person once, now even those memories appear faded, I could still remember everything.
So, perhaps I reincarnated or something.
But warmth mattered more than that.
Here, it felt like in mid-winter, I carelessly threw on a thin jacket and stood outside for ages, soaking in cold.
It felt like holding a hand warmer that dies out in 30 minutes.
So, I craved more warmth.
When it gets hot enough, I won’t have any regrets. I want to eliminate this cold that has ingrained into my bones.
So I think about how I can get more warmth.
The recent explosion.
The vessel I could contain power was already a complete mess. Pouring me into such a vessel would naturally shatter it.
But the fact that I, who flowed out, swept everything around me is a very significant factor.
Especially the lives that were swept away and died fell to me.
The light, which was certainly high up, was certainly living its own life, right? They had parents, children, maybe seeing a bright future, or doing slightly bad things and increasing their wealth.
It didn’t relate to good or evil.
Despite their will to move towards the future, their happiness, their joy, in short, they seemed to be living well up high. Naturally, that would mean the light was bright and the warmth greater.
But unlike the high up light I was gazing up at from the bottom, they lived in a world that was physically much closer.
So when the explosion occurred, they died because they got caught up, and if they touched me even a bit, they fell to me—plunged into me like a sea.
This can be surmised like this.
If I reach out to the light near the surface and push myself up, it explodes!
Then next, if I recreate the same result, I get even more warmth. I decided to try doing that right away.
The more lights there are, the more the lights getting closer beneath the surface increase.
The place I lived drowned in despair. The world I lived in birthed fewer lives than during world wars or plagues. Death surpassed birth in this world.
Considering that, more people will drown in despair. The more light there is, the more will draw near to me.
To me.
So as I got closer to the surface, I reached my hand out. When my hand touched the light, I pushed myself over, and it reliably exploded.
Each time, the lights fell.
But that was too short-lived. And the amount that fell was small.
Then suddenly an idea struck me.
Like a dark magician making a contract with an evil devil. The kind of thing.
There had been a game about catching devils, and it’s a type that’s very common.
I grant power, and they act at will.
That power will surely fall to me because it’s me that dies!
Hmm!
Let’s do it now!
So I tried to push a little.
Very gently.
Slowly.
Bit by bit.
Gulp…
Ah.
They all burst.
Lives filled with despair had their vessels in tatters. The shining lights far away are sturdy, but the light that has fallen here is on the verge of vanishing at any moment.
It’s sweet to lick, certainly.
Yet the lives that died an unjust death were sweeter, so the higher up, the more warmth there is.
Warmth is sweetness.
So I looked over countless stars floating above this endless sea. After all, time is infinite, and lack of warmth doesn’t kill you.
Of course, every now and then, I’d think I would die if this went on, so I’d hunt, but I didn’t wish to be satisfied with that.
I want to rent out powers, feed off dying lives collecting rent, and when they die, I take it all!
Income without work!
I want to hunt automatically instead of having to hunt like now.
That’s how you should use intelligence.
But even if I push in just a little bit, they all explode, so what am I to do?
One day, as I was troubled like this, a thin thread descended from the high sky and touched me.
The other end of the thread was touching the light high above. When I grasped the thread, I was suddenly drawn up to that high place.
Huh?
I remember this kind of situation.
Could it be? Did I just get hooked?
And with that thread, I was pulled, the surrounding environment became extremely noisy. Inside and outside were noisy to the extent that it gave me a headache. Blood flowed, my heart raced, and the sensation of every cell in my being moving made me genuinely irritated.
I finally opened my eyes after a long, long time.
I saw a dark building of an architectural style I had never seen before. And in front of me were people covered in black cloth bowing their heads.
“O, you who await our despair-filled descent in hunger and malice beyond the dimensions! The Void’s existence has finally descended upon this land from the dark and foreboding world!”
I couldn’t understand the language, but I could hear and understand it.
In that case, it must be a known language.
Listening to that, I looked down. My pale skin and naked body were sitting on a hard stone throne. But the blood flowing down my body was bright red.
My somewhat protruding chest was visible, but it had a hole in it as if something had been drilled out, with severed veins poking out.
Raising my dreadfully heavy hand to bring it forward, I saw a small and soft hand. Though it was cold now.
The people around were chanting spells. A rather simple spell asking to let them live. But it’s clear that the rhythm differs from what the person up front is saying, so that must be a spell.
The fact that it doesn’t need interpretation is a blessing.
Anyway.
A gloomy building, people draped in black cloth, a girl whose heart was ripped out, and I’m the one summoned inside her.
This is definitely a cult.
“O, God! Hear our wishes! O, God! Hear our wishes! O, Cruxshibal!”
No, my name doesn’t sound like that at all.
