Ackster trudged on endlessly in the grey world of mud and mist. His body had lost most of its color, and there was barely any discernible difference between him and his surroundings. It was like he was becoming part of the wretched, dull, endless marsh of wet mud.

His legs had long since grown numb and weak, too weak.

Ackster walked just slow enough for the mud to grab hold of his foot. It wasn’t more than any other time. But Ackster was too tired to fight it and free his foot from the mud’s wet and cool embrace. He fell.

But Ackster’s body was at least awake enough to catch his fall. Before he could give the ground a wet kiss, he braced himself with his hands.

‘Wait….’

The fall induced Ackster’s first thought since he started losing color and turning grey. The thought moved at a snail’s pace through his mind, and he barely even registered having it.

The thought and what had prompted it was about to disappear from Ackster’s head and, with them, probably the last remaining splotch of color on him.

But a final bout of clarity hit Ackster, bestowing upon him a lifesaving grace. It was like a candle-sized beam of sunlight had pierced through the grey veil clouding his mind and the grey mist veiling his surroundings.

‘I’m not supposed to have both hands.’

Ackster brain fought like an old ride-on lawnmower caught in a steep uphill battle.

The two thoughts crawling through his mind were paving the way through the thick mud in their path, opening up for more.

‘No. I am supposed to have two, but I don’t. I have….’

A third thought that raced to catch up to the previous two entered Ackster’s mind.

‘I have one arm, one hand.’

Ackster’s glazed-over eyes, white like a blind person’s, turned to look at his muddy palms.

He had one arm and one hand. He was supposed to, at least. He knew that. He knew it deep in his heart, thanks to the pain that came with the knowledge.

But why did he have a complete now? Was his body healed? Was this grey landscape the price he had to pay for that?

No.

That wasn’t it.

Ackster’s head ached as he tried to remember, tried to figure out what was going on, tried to find the answers to the flood of questions that welled out as soon as the dam in his mind burst.

The more he tried, the worse the pain got. It went from having bumped his head against a too-low doorframe to someone playing the drums at a rock concert with it in an instant. And it kept intensifying.

But if there was anything Ackster could bear, could endure, could handle, it was pain.

Ackster didn’t let the pain within his head or the fact that it was magnifying like the view of a meteor entering the atmosphere impede his progress. He didn’t let it stop him from thinking back to what the last thing before this grey landscape he remembered was.

He used the pain.

The pain was the first thing that felt real when not even his body did.

After entering this muddy wasteland, the only thing that had provoked Ackster’s senses had been the fatigue of walking endlessly. But even that sensation had gone through a thin plastic film before reaching Ackster, who hadn’t even thought about it since his mind was at a standstill.

Ackster used the pain and its realness.

He used the pain of searching for the truth of his mind to remind himself of all the pain he had bore already.

The fight with the poison goblin, his broken arm, and the poison-induced fever had invited him to the world of pain. And he had all too willingly accepted that invitation with all his heart as he sought after pain.

Whenever he got the chance, he chose the riskiest and most brutal solutions to his problems.

The pain of broken bones, lacerated skin, and torn muscle grounded Ackster. It held him in its grip and forced him to confront reality.

He wasn’t in some strange dream manifested by his escapism.

He had transmigrated. It was his new reality. And the pain helped him remember that.

It also helped him remember that he was alive.

As long as he felt pain, he lived.

And that was all he wanted. To live.

This pain Ackster felt for the first time in what felt like forever helped bring him back to sanity, to the real world. He was no longer walking on the brink of insanity. He was no longer walking toward his own doom.

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Color returned to Ackster, still kneeling in the mud. From the center of his chest, his heart color returned to Ackster’s pale skin. The whiteness from having been stuck underground for several months was a stark contrast to the grey world around him.

Color returned to the ratty, yellow rags, stained with blood, that was all that remained of his clothes.

His hair and eyes regained their marine-blue luster, and his eyes especially shone with radiant determination.

His pink lips split up in half a smile as he stood up.

Ackster was back, and so was his color, which had been leeched away by his surroundings.

The only exception was his right arm up to right below his shoulder. It was the only thing as grey as the mud beneath his feet.

Ackster grabbed the seam and yanked his fake arm off of himself. He threw it on the ground, where it collapsed into a pile of dust that melted into the ground.

Ackster might have regained consciousness, and his thoughts and body might be in a good state. But he was still trapped in the muddy wasteland.

Ackster snorted.

He stomped on the ground. The wet mud didn’t splash or cave under his feet.

It dried up like the desert. That dryness spread through the wasteland, blowing away the fog with it. And once the cracks in the ground reached further than Ackster could see, they reached the sky, which also began cracking like a glass dome.

All around him, the world collapsed, piece by piece. It all came crumbling down like a house of rice.

As the final piece of the grey world of mud and fog crumbled to the nonexistent ground at Ackster’s feet, Ackster’s eyes only saw black for an instant before he returned to reality.

Ackster sprung up from his sitting position, immediately destabilizing the hot air balloon’s basket.

“Hey! Watch it– Ac– Dean! You’re conscious?!”

Ackster didn’t immediately answer as he was still incredibly disoriented and weak from what he had just undergone. He also had no idea where he was, so his first priority was to assess his surroundings, which didn’t take long since there wasn’t much surrounding him.

It was the seemingly magic-powered hot air balloon’s balloon over him and the basket, large enough to fit five passengers and a pilot, under and around him. Other than that, there wasn’t much else, only clear, blue skies, which Ackster looked at with a smile of relief that barely curved his lips.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath to inhale the freely flowing wind. It was so full of life and smells. It was so much better than the damp, earthy, stale, scentless scent of the cursed trap in his mind.

“Um, are you alright?”

But he wasn’t alone in the hot air balloon, thankfully, since he didn’t know how to pilot one.

Ackster opened his eyes and looked at Wilma, who stood on the other side of the balloon, her hand clutching the railing since someone had been about to flip it just moments ago.

“Yeah.”

Ackster’s throat was fine, and if his and Wilma’s clothes were any indication, not that much time had passed since he left the ant nest. But it felt like an eternity had passed right by as he walked through the muddy wasteland. Even if he hadn’t been quite conscious then, he still remembered it vividly. It was like someone had drawn a grey streak through his mind.

During all that time, he hadn’t even thought about uttering a single word, so his talkativity was at an all-time low.

But as the breeze shifted, he got a whiff of Wilma’s familiar scent.

It was what he had occasionally picked up during his walk and was part of what had helped him keep his reason and sanity long enough to collapse of exhaustion and realize something was wrong.

“Thank you.”

Ackster’s eyes, deep as the ocean, gazed straight into Wilma’s. It was the first time he noticed that her brown eyes had a hint of gold in them.

Wilma, on the other hand, was overwhelmed by the clarity and depth of Ackster’s eyes. Just hours ago, they had not been like that. He was suddenly no longer as easy to read as before. But she could still feel the overwhelming sincerity behind his words.

“Not a problem. Anything for my dear investment.”

Wilma wasn’t sure how she had helped Ackster, but she knew that even if she had, she hadn’t done much. So, out of slight embarrassment, she played it off with a light smile.

“Mm.”

Since Ackster clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk, Wilma didn’t say anything. She watched Ackster look at the view while thinking about what could have happened.

Not that there was much that could have happened.

Ackster had resisted his mental breakdown.

No.

His mind had broken down in pieces from the heavy weight it was carrying, that he was carrying on his shoulders. That weight had magnified under his worries and fears, thanks to the trigger that was the discovery that he had been trapped in the dark underground for several months.

But instead of going crazy or losing those pieces, Ackster had come back from the brink of insanity by piecing the fragments of his mind back together.

Wilma didn’t know how he had done it. But it didn’t matter. Ackster was out on the other side of a tumultuous storm, and he was stronger for it.

Ackster’s body hadn’t changed, and he hadn’t physically or literally grown stronger. But his mental strength was on a whole other level.

It was to the point where the side of the Golden Scale that determined the investment requirement had grown to accommodate the necessary investment to move Ackster’s heart.

If Wilma hadn’t already earned Ackster’s goodwill by helping him cross the ravine of his mental breakdown, she would have had to expend significantly more effort to get in his good graces or help him develop further. But it wasn’t for nothing.

It was like a bubble had popped both around the investment side and the return on investment side of the scales. After all, now that Ackster was stable, the scales were balanced.

Ackster’s potential had soared just as much as the need to reach full maturity. The ball of light signaling Ackster’s potential had doubled in size. It had come at the cost of losing a few more colors. But in Wilma’s eyes, it was perfect. Ackster already had too many viable paths to choose from.

It was the first time she had seen someone’s scale grow. But it was clear that it was a good thing. Even if it was the first time her skill had shown her something like it, Wilma knew instinctively that Ackster’s value had grown tremendously. And since he had been worth a lot before, she could hardly wait to see what would happen when Ackster reached the ends of his potential, if that was even possible.

His potential and the limits of his talent and growth had already moved once. What was to say it wouldn’t happen again?

Of course, considering Ackster had almost become braindead, it was very unlikely. But Wilma was expectant. What would Ackster show her next?

Wilma was so caught up in thinking about the results of her skill that she didn’t notice Ackster’s expression changing.

Ackster’s brows furrowed as he looked down toward the ground far below them. More specifically, at the large, black, red, and brown area. It was almost too far away for even his Keen Senses to see. But it looked like ruins.

“What’s that?”

Wilma followed Ackster’s gaze as she looked over the edge of the basket.

“That? That’s the ruins of Jittol.”