Chapter 2 - Alone

As his consciousness awoke, he finds himself unable to feel anything. The stillness makes no noise, or maybe he is just deaf. The intense feeling of not being able to identify his location nearly makes him go crazy, bordering on insanity. Does he still even exist? He cannot help but ponder. Was it all just a nightmare? He tries to wake up but fails. Whatever he does, he would end up facing failure, unable to do anything but...think.

Time passes, or something akin to time passes. Whether his thoughts can count as passing time or not, it is the only thing he has, his memories and his thoughts. Was he destined to remain in this state forever?

In the infinite blackness, Mark starts to contemplate on the subject of life and death. For example, why would he still be alive if his body has been destroyed? And why isn’t he in heaven, then? Could it be that all those stories about ghosts are true? Then why can’t he see them? Or, wait, maybe he is a special case since his death was so super-natural? Yes, that would make sense…

This situation of him thinking to himself went on for what felt like weeks, months or maybe even a couple of years! He slowly forgot the sound of his voice and what it meant and felt like to be alive. The thing he regretted the most was that he hadn’t been able to finish the episode of Lookism he was reading the night before it all happened.

Strangely, even though time went on, his memories, instead of dispersing, seemed to have been entirely restituted inside his brain, giving him back all of his memories from his time on Earth up till when he was 4 years old.

During his wait in this dark place, he either slumbered or recalled his past memories. He remembered how, when he was small, he had been introduced to the world of fantasy by some of his friends. Since then, he had been either reading mangas, watching animes, or playing games, mostly fantasy games like MMORPGs or Final Fantasy.

He remembered his dislike and contempt for his friends. He initially had not wanted to play with his friends, he did it out of boredom. He eventually came to like it, mostly because he was so good and adept at playing MMORPGs. He had ranked number 1 in many PvP tournaments, events, and dungeons. Not only for one game, but many.

And the mangas, after reading so much, the author was giving out less and less content to read. New mangas progressed so slowly, it truly became a nuisance to wait for weeks on end, for a single chapter of a few pages. Happily, animes had been faster. A chapter that took only two minutes to read once every two weeks, or an episode that takes 20 minutes, every week.

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The regret he felt, he had recently started a manga, or was it a manhwa? Not sure, whatever, it did not matter. What mattered was his regret. He was close to catching up, but in the midst of a filler, he chose to take a pause and play games instead.

Now, would he ever have a chance to finish reading it, could he ever dominate the MMORPGs again? The fact that everything that was happening right now was so unknown to him made him distance his feelings. He truly contemplated life.

Life is like the touch of a breeze, the wind at that moment of collision, it can be strong, or weak. In the end, the breeze fades away and is replaced, by yet another breeze. Could it be that he was meant to be like those weak breezes, diminishing in a short amount of time, life fading discontentedly?

Truly, sorrow is hard to distinguish, like immortal flames forever blazing. Some flames even soaring through the skies and ascending heavens. Like those flames when he was forging and crafting advanced items, the gathering of superior grade materials. All his hours spent on MMORPG’s wasted, his fame would eventually be forgotten, and so would he.

Oh yeah, how about his dad, mom, and little sister? He had never felt very close to them, yet, in this new trance-like state, he could easily see all of his memories from a young age. He could see how his parents doted on him, and remember how he felt jealous, but also fond of his little sister when they were both young. He did not know how, but he could feel some kind of pain. Not physical, it felt more delusional.

The emotional impact of sorrow, missing his loving sister. How many times had he not been cold and pushed her away, spending her savings behind her back? He could already guess that she knew. In spite of this, she never raged on him or corrected him, truly the love of a sibling.

He went more and more in depth with his bad character, his wrongdoings and the cold shoulder he had offered his family through time. If he could shed tears, it would have rained.

For what felt like a week or maybe months, he contemplated on the things he could have changed, on the things that could have been different. And lastly, he thought of how useless these thoughts were, as he could not change a single thing.

Calmness, for a while his thoughts ceased. Blackness or more correctly nothing, pureness of mind. It was as if the last drop of his intentions had disappeared, like he was part of nothingness.

One day, a subtle thought echoed in his mind. ‘Power’. The origin of this thought was unknown, and he himself did not know why this word flashed in his mind. But the reaction it sent off bewildered him because suddenly a sound forced itself onto him.

A majestic and enchanting sound suddenly rang out. It was unknown to him why it reminded him of a bird calling or commanding him to wake up.

“SCREECH!”

But how could he wake up, when his body had been destroyed in the core of the earth. At such a high temperature, even his ashes would have been incinerated. What came after that screech crumbled his mind. Was he really destined to cease to exist?

A soul wrenching pain, a pain deeper than a spear lunging into his heart, so deep that he felt death was impudent before this pain. What was more intense, was the fact that this pain that was a result of that bird’s screech, kept growing stronger and stronger. If he had been alive, he would have been dead from this amount of impact long ago.

The pain overlapped with an extremely overbearing thudding sound, like a car passing by him with insane speed, over and over again. When the pain neared the crux, the stillness flooded his mind again, and the pain suddenly stopped. Yet his will was shaken, and his consciousness entered into a slumber.

Slowly together with the pain, the thoughts faded away. His will and consciousness faded as he entered a slumber, whether it would be short lived or not.