“He’s dead. What the hell happened to him?”

One of the boys, the one who had moved his body, spoke with a hint of confusion.

“It looks like he was poisoned.” One of the two girls spoke in response, seemingly just as confused.

“What about the bandaging on his chest? Maybe that had something to do with it?” The other girl couldn’t help but guess after seeing the amount of bandaging on his chest. In fact, it was his entire torso which was wrapped up in bandaging, and he wasn’t even wearing a shirt, making it extremely obvious.

Hearing her suggestion, the boy who had spoken earlier gestured to the other boy and told him to hold the body up.

Then, as the other boy was holding Gray’s body up, the first boy started unwrapping the bandaging around his chest.

Oddly enough, Gray’s body didn’t continue to collapse as they moved him around, but he barely even registered this fact based on how slow his mind was moving.

All he could see was the bandaging around his torso being undone, revealing the massive gash that went halfway into his body that went all the way from the top of his left shoulder to his right hip.

Seeing this wound, the group of four couldn’t help but suck in cold breaths of air, as none of them had ever seen such a gruesome wound in their lives.

“Shouldn’t we… bury him… or something?” One of the girls spoke with a slight tremble, clearly more than a little shocked by the brutality of the wound.

“Hurry up and cover him up with something!” The other girl gagged before speaking, turning her head away while her face went a bit pale. She was nauseated by the sight of his body.

Even the two boys were quite nauseated by the sight of his body, so they obliged and one of them took out a blanket and threw it over his body and face.

They were originally traveling around, hence why they had supplies and a blanket to throw over his body.

After that, the voices were too muffled for him to hear, but Gray knew that his body was being dragged somewhere based on what he could hear and the constant shifting of the blanket over his head.

And this process continued for a total of three days, with the group stopping during the night and moving during the day.

He wasn’t too surprised that they didn’t recognize him, because the poison had changed his facial and muscle structure so much that he wouldn’t even be recognized by his own mother, let alone these random people.

If they were able to recognize him, they wouldn’t have been nearly as nonchalant as they had been about his death, and they probably would’ve passed out either in shock at his state or shock from their luck.

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After all, there was a bounty on his head so massive that the whole continent, even his previous friends, wouldn’t hesitate to turn him in. It was so large it could be compared to the wealth of an entire city.

As for how such a massive sum became his bounty, that was a story for another time. To put it simply, it was all because of his brother.

Now, he had bigger problems. If he was just left alone, even if he was dead, at least he’d be able to see some change in the world through birds, the blowing and falling of leaves, and the shift between day and night. However, if these teens buried him as he knew they wanted to, that meant that he might truly go crazy.

However, it wasn’t as if he could resist or ask them not to, so he just had to go along with the fate of his body.

He didn’t even know why this was happening to him, but it ultimately didn’t matter. He only wished to maintain his sanity.

However, he wouldn’t get his wish as he suddenly saw the blanket pulled off his face as his body was lowered into a grave that they had dug.

Then, without an ounce of hesitation, they began to bury him.

‘No… please… don’t… bury… me!!!’ He cried out in his mind with everything he had, yet there was no way for them to tell that his mind was still active, and they continued the process of burying him.

Slowly, dirt covered his vision and the world around him went deathly still. All the light in his eyes faded away as he was left unable to see anything at all, and his already blocked ears were so muffled that he likely wouldn’t even be able to hear lightning even if it struck near him.

As for smell, he couldn’t smell anything. And his mouth had long ago dried up so much that it was impossible to taste anything.

He figured that the only reason that he still had any form of sight or hearing was because they were the two ways that you most interacted with the world. Not even touch was as important as sight or hearing.

He didn’t even know just how much this situation would come to affect his life. It was a torture unlike anything you could experience naturally. Being void of all one’s senses and trapped with your own thoughts in the endless silence of death.

It was truly a life-changing experience, and he would only come to learn this later.

Under the effects of his slowed mind, it might seem like time would pass quicker to him, but instead, it seemed to pass even slower.

With time passing endlessly slowly, he quickly became numb and lost track of how much time had passed, and as he descended further into madness, his mind slowly started to become more active, but he couldn’t even realize it since he had lost his reference point.

For forty years he was subjected to this absolute torture of his senses.

However, just while he was going through another cycle of descending further into insanity, he suddenly felt a massive change as all at once, his senses exploded, his heart beat powerfully, and he was almost forced to take in a breath of dirt, mud, and water as his body suddenly came entirely alive.

All at once, he was completely overwhelmed by his senses as his body randomly flailed almost out of his control, an effect of having not moved for so long.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!” He couldn’t help but laugh louder than he ever had in his entire life, and his voice echoed through the area around him very clearly despite him being underground. It sounded like the laugh of an utter madman, yet it was filled with an intense joy.

‘I’m finally free of this curse!’ With this, he desperately began to claw his way to the surface.