To! Can! To! Can! To! Can!
—the Fourth survivor dug into the wall of her chamber before running away.
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The ominous-sounding Graveyard of hate, as worded by the system, was a large but empty chamber.
The floor was a large polished crystal that glimmered in an otherworldly green, illuminating my surroundings in a different perception. I perked my senses to keep my surroundings in check, but found something to be disturbing them; they were all over the place. I couldn’t even pinpoint my own position relative to the ground; it was hopeless to find something or someone which might or might not exist in the mystifying hue of the green light leaking out of the ground.
I was in perfect health. I hadn't dallied the time I was provided at the completion of the previous floor. Though I regretted not having been given enough time to memorize another instance of falling stars or heal, the recovery I made in the time I was still thankful for.
It may sound unbelievable when I say this, but after finding my usual methods failing in helping me get an idea of my vicinity, I decided to something really foolish. I called out to the silent emptiness which had me surrounded to find out whether it was really empty or not. Not that I was looking down on the dungeon. No. That wasn’t my intention. My last encounter with the mimicking spider in the graveyard of regret had taught me a great lesson. Everything —be it the green shimmering light or the crystal floor, the emptiness or the disturbance— was but a distraction; the only thing real was me. The stages preceding the boss room might have only tested my physique, but these rooms were special and more dangerous.
“Is anyone there?” I called out and something to my surprise or fear answered back.
“You destroyed my ambition…” Once again, I knew that voice, though not with the lingering attachment of last time. It is a distant memory now, for much has happened in between for me to remember it any longer, but at that time I knew whom it belonged to. The king.
“You embarrassed me in front of everyone! You made me grovel and beg! You destroyed my ambition!” The voice wasn’t coming from any particular direction but was echoing all over the place like a whisper riding winds current, becoming unpredictable during its travel. “Who do you think you are?!”
He wasn’t alone in the mist though. Others accompanied him in his hate. One after another they shaved at my conscience. One voice belonged to the commander who had almost buried my ambitions and made me a worker; others, to someone I hated with there being no chance of reconciliation between us.
“Did you like it when I killed that cunt?” This voice was a storm of emotions that blew my mind away from my body and took me back in time to the one place which has me seething even now. Even though I had gotten over captains death, but this . . . there was no way it wouldn’t have me enraged. Thousands had died that day, but one had been more precious to me than all the others.
“That whore thought she could fight me! Fight the whole battalion under me and save you and your pesky little runt of an army! What gave her the guts, the idea that her weak tiny legs could hold me back! Me!”
Fury rose inside me like a quick swirling tornado. It was happening again. That destructive emotion that had me unresponsive was taking over again.
I couldn’t think, or I was thinking too clearly and remembering everything: the stone rolling, me dodging, Minnie surviving the avalanche to only being caught by an enemy, someone too strong, too overpowering for her to handle, and my roar. I yelled at the phantom voice to show itself as the events of the past unfolded in my mind without any correction. Minnie died once again in my vision; her body was broken into pieces, crushed and buried. I couldn’t do anything.
“Can you see it, her death? I bet you can. Why do you think she died that day? Was it me? No. it wasn’t me. I killed her. YES. But I wasn’t the reason behind her death. No. I only played a small part in it. It was YOU! YOU KILLED HER! YOU LEFT HER ALONE AND SHE DIED CAUSE OF THAT! YOU. KILLED. HER. YOU! NOT ME! YOU!” The voice barked, trying to confuse me, break me. And it worked. Just not in the way the phantom had wanted.
Yes, there was a time when I had blamed myself for Minnie’s death; had I not left her alone on that day and ran off to fight meaningless skirmishes she would be alive. And in a way that is true. I wouldn’t have let her fall into danger was I with her. I had spent countless many nights thinking about her death, trying to find a way to save her, questioning all the if’s and the why’s, and I had already come to accept that although I was a part of the reason behind her death, it was wrong of me to blame myself. There was only one thing which had ended her life and it was him. He was the one who had killed her. He had taken her from us! He was the reason why I couldn’t remain a part of the team anymore and had joined the explorers; why Genma had lost his spark and become so silent; and why I’ll personally deliver death to the remnants of the black enemy ants. This piece of shit had changed the course of my life, steered my fate and taken the choice out of my hand; I would do the same for his family.
Though I understood it all, something broke inside me. That terrifying something awoke again. I lost consciousness. It had happened before and it happened again. My Rage had awakened. I was pushed into the depths of my mind, sheltered from everything which would come to pass in the next couple of minutes. I would be left with no memory of how the fight occurred and ended. How my rage shredded Minnie’s murderer into a thousand pieces and took revenge. Revenge . . .
But it was I who wanted to take revenge. I wanted to punish her murderer and kill him again and again until not even his ghost could roam the shade. It was I who deserved to punish him; not an emotion, which was though a part of me, was nothing more than a hindrance. If there was someone who would fight him in whatever form he possessed, it would only be ME, or my vice leader Genma. No one else had any right to take that away from us!
These emotions, these feelings, they helped me rise out from the depths of my mind. Even rage couldn’t stop me from waking up. The world was dyed in red when I woke; the green illumining hue no longer distorted my sight. I was burning up. My body temperature had shot through the roof. I was breathing rapidly, contorting my exoskeleton with every breath. I could feel my rage trying to pressure me to sleep, to seize the steering away from me, but I resisted.
“Let . . . me . . . handle . . . THIS!” I screamed, pushing mana into the depths of my body, producing a cooling effect and weakening the effect of rage. Rage persisted for a few more moments, until the churning mana finally managed to refresh my mind, after which it conceded and receded back to the hidden corners of my mind to wait for another opportunity to surface and take control.
Systems chime was the first thing I heard upon coming out of my mental prison; the messages were fading into rest as the world concentrated in front of my eyes again.
{Your willpower has risen to level 20}
{Meditation has exceeded its block and managed to calm your mind. Level 10 has been achieved.}
{Special ability: calmness unlocked.}
{Skill: Health drain resistance has been learned.}
I looked about and found myself standing in the middle of a mist cloud from which was wafting a strong poisonous stench. The green light from the ground had given the vapors shapes and forms which swiveled and swirled, broke and became, with every passing interaction. Surprisingly, my raged senses had managed to use a skill in the few moments I had lost control. I shivered at the realization that with me becoming unable to differentiate between friend and foe, my companion's lives could have been in peril were they around!
I wanted to purify this mist, but noticing my mana already half spent, I decided to let it be for the time being. My enemies were coming; I could feel it in my gut. My health was not full either, and it was decreasing at the slow rate of 1/sec. Maybe it was the mental trauma or something about the green light which had that effect; whatever it was, my blessing was already countering it.
And when I had finally calmed down, a distorted garble mix of the three voices trumpeted in my mind, “We’re going to eat you alive, tear you slowly like that fucking bitch, and slave your rotting body to do our bidding!”
I sensed no one around, forgetting the distorting effect of the green light until I suddenly did. What I perceived was nothing but a swirl about the air some distance behind me. As I turned to look, the green ghostly light around coalesced at it, bringing something monstrous into the world.
The creature which appeared had a long white body with eight long and nimble antsy legs keeping it stable. The body had exoskeleton almost twice the thickness of a common soldier. Its large oval head housed four sets of mandibles and a beak-like mouth at the center, which shone dangerously black. Straight hair covered it unarmored parts in a protective coat, while the end of its particularly short but multi-segmented abdomen housed a long poison oozing spike of green. It was big but not immensely massive or huge.
It created a commotion upon seeing me, tapping its eight feet on the crystal ground. The thing was excited. That much was easy to see. “I’m coming little antsy!” It snarled and surged toward me. I rooted my legs and waited. It curled into a ball of gleaming armor midway and gave up its charge to roll like a boulder. “Do you remember?”It said. Its intentions clear to see. I canceled my skill ducking to the left as it jumped at me, uncurling into a giant trap of legs, mandibles, and stinger—everything pointed or sharp. I grew a spike from my shell to cut at its body as it flew past. The crystal floor rang as it fell, sliding toward my poisonous mist. It had suffered a long gash where my spike had cut; its armor proving to be nothing more than a hulking ornament. Vengeance had activated in the meantime, increasing my stats by 36%!
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Our first contact ended just like that—abruptly. It dug its stinger in the floor to swing its body back my way, stopping just outside the mist cloud. Then it charged again, the blackness at its beak becoming denser. I noticed something rise out of my body and disappear into its beak, instantly mending the rip in its armor. The system then reminded me of my draining health. My hp flashed past my sight—it had dropped slightly. Turns out, it wasn’t the green luminance which had me weakening, but that hateful creature?
We met again in the middle. This time when it curled into a ball and tried to charge me, I made the ground ripple with rhythmic quake and shuffled it up. It uncurled into a knot of limbs and fell. I fired a few air bullets to keep it busy while closing the distance. There was not much aggression left in me. That much was certain. Rage, I was slowly learning, was unlike its predecessors, which would leave me unconscious after flaring once. Rage was more personal, more intimidating —touching upon my raw emotions and building them into strengths which I didn’t possess— and so was its aftereffects, which left me strained and drained—not physically or mentally, but spiritually. It wasn’t a damage to the soul which some of my already acquired resistance could resist, but something more. I didn’t know it then, but I was feeling it. Because the fight had become a chore, a task; I no longer wanted to take revenge. It is as if, the skill had purged me of all the anger I possessed and the act hadn’t given me relief, had rather created a void, which had me senseless.
The previous urge to rip its body into pieces just wasn’t there anymore. But it was also true that it had to die; even if not in the most painful of ways I could have devised or the lengthened service I could have given it; and I needed to do it quickly, for surely my concentration was dwindling.
It was back on its feet again by the time I had closed the distance. Groans ensued when our mandibles collided. I pushed it back and it snarled in hate. I got close to it again, followed the shadow steps created by foreboding to dodge its menacing mandibles, anchored mine into its face, lifted it up from the ground and threw it into the air like it weighted nothing; while it became airborne, I stabilized myself by rooting my rear legs into the ground and sent a cross slash hurtling behind it, which met the creature just as it started descending and sliced its face into four.
It fell with a wet slosh and didn’t get up again. I heaved in relief and fell on to the ground, the world spinning around me. It was over. Now, I hope the others are safe too. I thought as my conscious started drifting away. It wasn’t long after when my senses picked up another whirling storm of light forming around the fallen body of the creature and the hateful and familiar heterogeneous voice filled my mind again.
“So, scary it is the hate of this tiny thing!” , “A boy who couldn’t once lift his head in front of others, so courageous he is today.” , “He can only fight the weak; the strong makes him fidget. So antsy he is!”
I dragged my conscious out of my mind's death, further tiring myself, and watched as the green light coalesced with the creature. Soon it stood up, looking abrasively more monsterish than before. Its face had mended and had gained another set of mandibles, these ones closely similar to my trap-jaw; its legs were no longer thin and antsy, but more stocky and clawed at the ends. Its armor had grown even heftier. It had come out of death to haunt me again.
I’ll say this once, but it didn’t surprise me.
Its taunts fell on deaf ears, for my vision had already grown narrowed and my mind clouded. I was burning up once again, but not from anger this time. My resistances were slowly rising to battle the aftereffects of rage, but they were losing. I didn’t care.
The chimera then tried to slice my head off my body with its extra set of mandibles, and it would have succeeded had my auto defense not done something about it; as for what it did, I have no idea. But I retained consciousness soon enough when the system rang in my ears. Another message in blue was in front of my eyes, telling me of the reason I was still alive.
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Stable mind has risen to level 25.
Special ability: Alarm has been learned.
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There were some other notifications, but I ignored them.
I wondered after the fight what might have happened had the skill not had such a timely evolution; and also what might happen if someday I’m in a bind so terrible that not even my blessings are able to cope with it. But there was still some time before I could relax and worry about some hypothetical situation which may or may not happen. The fight wasn’t over yet.
When the glowing world returned to my eyes, I was pushing through a jagged constellation of glowing crystal that had protruded out of the once straight floor for whatever reason. My enemy had managed to gauge a deep line in front of my chest which wasn’t healing, and had sucked another quarter of my health; my mana, on the other hand, was brimming. My head was no longer in limbo to fight against the aftereffects of rage and keep me from unconsciousness —calmness and alarm had seen to that. In other words, I was myself again. I had some near misses with death, some extraordinary struggle with my own skill, but I was alive. I expended some of my mana to close the rift in my exoskeleton, and the resulted golden glow brought back my nightmarish enemy.
“WE—HATE—YOU!” It bellowed, without holding back. It was smoking; its whole body was. Its abdomen was missing as was much of its body. Its thick armor had dissolved into a sludge, which was being rapidly cooled and hardened by the thing which had created it. I could sense the stench of poison and acid coming from its body. It was dying and reviving at the same time, yet again. It crawled toward me, growing another set to legs on the way. This time they had come to protrude out of the side of its body and were armored, just like the rest of its body. Like I said before, I don’t know what auto defense had done to save me, at most it had used some skills, but its efforts had been rendered useless by the green light.
It kept its smoked eyes at me as if trying to burn my hateful face into its memory, and then it lunged. I stepped forward and rushed. We met once again in a violent clash; it vomited upon me a spray of poisonous acid and I thrust a spike into its body, and then we separated. Its poison didn’t deal me any damage, but the acid did. Thankfully, it wasn’t yet strong enough to burn through my exoskeleton. I simply cleaned it off, but not before gaining the resistance against it. My spike, on the other hand, remained lodged in the right side of its torso, despite its efforts to remove it. That must have hurt because it glared at me.
The green light coalesced around it once again, and it came out of it completely new. This time it had spikes growing out of its torso; a cheap imitation I would say but effective none the less because the next time we met its acid did me damage while I couldn’t spike its torso.
My acid resistance rose accordingly to level 3.
I changed tactics. It charged at me again, gleaming with confidence, which I utterly shattered with a cannonball, along with its body. Its front half was obliterated and the rest blew away, but by the time it fell on the ground it was whole again, with an even heavier set of armor covering its regenerated half, two of its mandibles transformed into two hammer-shaped shields, and the spikes had become much more than simple ornaments covering its back.
“Feel the wrath of our hate. This time, you will die!” It bellowed. Its torso expanded like a balloon and the spikes shot out toward me. What could I do? I rapid-fired air-bullets to counter the spikes with excellent marksmanship, but even the combined effect of the bullets and pass-through (the evolved version of dodge which lets projectiles pass through my body) couldn’t save me completely. I was shot through my forelegs. One spike took a portion of my head with it and another almost penetrated through my chest, but I managed to roll away from it in time and saved myself.
I got up and it was right in front of me, gleaming with pride; even mend wave couldn’t push it back. We collided for the last time. It vomited acid at my back which I ignored and answered with dissolve, which visibly burned through its armor. Acid resistance rose sharply to counter its attack and stopped at level 7, informing me of its rapid growth. The chimera roared in pain, yet tried to cut at me at the same time. I dodged to its flank and pushed a spiked arm into the back of its head. It rebounded with a slash of its stinger which I had to take on my back because my arm was still stuck inside its head. Its stinger was more like a knife than a needle, and it left a brutal cut in its wake. It had already grown meaner looking after dissolve’s duration ended and the fight was going to become more difficult from here on out, of which I was seeing no end in sight.
However, no matter how long the fight became I didn’t panic for one second. I had no fear in me and neither any rage. I was simply fighting, not even trying to figure out how to stop it from regenerating or to end this fight. The more we hurt each other the calmer I felt. My concentration was becoming keener, my senses sharper. Calmness hadn’t stopped cooling my mind for a single second. It wasn’t long after when the effect of mediation passively keeping me calm made me at peace. That is when I realized how stupid I was being.
Yes, it was right of me to hate all three of the ants which composed this creature I was fighting. Yes, it wasn’t wrong of me to try to shatter them into pieces. However, no matter how much I hated them all, it was useless to stay stuck in the past; More so because they were already dead. By whatever magic they had been brought out into the world, in front of me, to fight, they weren’t real. Not that I was imagining them. No, that wasn’t true either. My resistance would have ended them sooner or later had they been illusions. They were real, but only in this place, this stage called the boss room, inside this dungeon. They didn’t exist outside this place. The more I comprehended this simple truth the more I realized the meaning of this stage: The graveyard of hate. There was no point in staying stuck in the past. It wasn’t wrong of me to hate. That was my right. They had hurt me and it was up to me whether I wanted to forgive them or not. But to stay fixated upon them wasn’t right either. Just seeing where their hate had brought them, I couldn’t help but feel astonished. This will be me one day if I don’t stop hating . . . I understood. This creature was but a manifestation of nothing but my hate toward them and it was all that was keeping it around. This whole place was a graveyard and the green light was my hate given form.
So once I decided to stop caring about them, for I had already completed my revenge, the creature stopped regenerating. The exploding punch I made shattered its mandibles. The spike I stuck tore through its armor. The air bullet I used blew its legs. In the end, the green light which made it started dispersing.
“We will never stop hating you. NEVER!” were its last words before it disappeared into motes of flashing green light, which slipped into the ground and didn’t spill out again.
I watched the crystal floor and the light trapped inside it slowly dim until nothing but darkness remained.
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{Second Floor cleared.}
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{You have filled the graveyard of hate with the anger of your past and have buried it with your calmness and concentration.}
[Reward: +5 levels to skills: Willpower & Meditation.]
[Reward: Rage will no longer induce after-effects.]
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Experience has been granted for clearing the second of the three floors of the dungeon: Graveyard of Feelings.
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Congratulations, you have leveled up twice!
You are now a level 8 silver ‘Trap jaw’ ant.
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Commencing transfer to the neutral zone
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