“Fortunately, Kiara is a physically healthy young girl.” Dimri said, stepping away from me to scribble something on his desk.
I laid on a bed while the Life Dragon cast a bunch of spells to figure out if anything was wrong with me.
“Unfortunately, however,” he said, turning to face mom and me, “the issue seems to be entirely psychological. I am afraid that this makes my abilities of very limited use.”
Mom frowned in chagrin, then heaved a heavy sigh.
“I understand. Thanks for taking the time to see us despite your busy schedule, Dimri.”
“Not at all; I’ve barely done anything. Please take this.” He said, opening a drawer and pulling out a small tube before handing it to mom.
“This is a drug meant to calm down patients. Give one to Kiara if the panic attacks become too difficult to deal with. Keep the pills out of her reach, do not give her more than one a day, and come to see me immediately if she demonstrates any side effects, no matter how small or insignificant they may seem.” He said before turning to me, bowing his head in shame.
“And to you, young Kiara, I am truly, truly sorry for being unable to help you.”
***
After mom spent the last five minutes just getting Dimri to raise his head, we left his isle for our home on the water island.
As I followed mom through an entrance into the massive glacier, she finally spoke up, as if the silence was too much to bear.
“There’s no need to rush, sweety. For now, I want you to just relax and take things slow for a change. Why don’t you stay home and invite Durreg to come over and play?” she said gently.
“Mhm.”
We descended on the front lawn of mom’s mansion, the one where I’d evolved into a Dragon Shifter on a few months earlier. That was really painful, and yet, even that paled in comparison to my latest evolution.
At that thought, a shiver moved down my spine, and I broke out in a cold sweat. The pain was coming back to me, the sheer agony of my entire body being destroyed and rebuilt, inch by inch. I wanted to scream, but my voice was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t feel, see, touch, hear, or taste anything because the pain was just too overwhel-
“Kiara!”
Mom’s words returned me to reality, as I took in the scene.
I had stopped walking towards the door, and mom was looking at me with concern.
“Don’t worry, mom. I am fine.” I said curtly.
Clearly, she didn’t believe me, but seeing how stubborn I was feeling, she let the matter drop.
“Come on, it’s time for dinner.”
***
“…”
“…”
The only sounds that could be heard were those of the tableware touching the plates. I was eating slowly, and mom was uncharacteristically quiet. The food’s flavors were hardly on my mind as I stared at it absentmindedly.
“Thanks for dinner.”
I got up, leaving my plate half finished.
“Sweety, why don’t you take a pill? It’s there for a reason.”
“No thanks. I am feeling fine. It’s getting late, so I am heading to bed. Goodnight.” I said half-heartedly, heading to my room.
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Mom sighed but left the matter at that.
I changed into my pajamas, turned off the lights, and went to bed, though sleep did not come to me like it usually does. I stared at the ceiling, hearing mom washing the dishes in the kitchen downstairs.
“…What the abyss is wrong with me? Why can’t I get over this?!”
I’d thought that the trauma from my last evolution was gone at the time, especially with the knowledge that I’ll never go through that kind of pain ever again. In the months since, I’ve never thought about what happened, so why did it come back now? And why am I so scared of advancing my class? It’s never hurt before!
“Damn it all…” I whispered in frustration, before turning over and burying my face in my pillow.
***
I was taking a stroll through one of the side tunnels between the great caverns of the first layer. For some reason, the critters that normally filled this place were completely absent.
“Strange…”
As I continued walking, taking in the familiar sights, I came upon an exit to a great cavern. In front of it, a peculiar scene was playing out.
I saw an Abyssal Drakeling sporting grave wounds eating at a purplish wound of an otherwise gory-red, hole-riddled Titanoboa.
“Hmm? Why is this scene so familiar yet so strange…?”
In a moment, I was taking a scene giving me a sense of déjà vu. In the next, I was feeling pain coursing through my body, making me flinch in surprise. The drakeling was eating clearly poisoned meat and was suffering because of it, yet it kept eating away regardless.
“I have a bad feeling about this…” I thought, turning around to walk away from the disturbing scene, only to be met with a wall blocking my path.
“What the hell?!”
Before I could do anything else, the earth beneath my feet rose, encasing me to my neck before turning me around to face the scene from earlier. I struggled with all my might, and yet, I couldn’t make the stone budge.
I tried to use my mana to empower myself or cast a spell to break out, to no avail, as if my entire mana reserve was simply gone. I could not even call on my status or any of my skills and abilities, as if I were a helpless creature from a world without the system.
I endured the pain for a while, before the scene before me ended, and the pain faded away.
“…At least it’s over.” I sighed.
To my surprise, the scenery changed in an instant. At the side tunnel’s exit was a great chasm, and two adventurers stood on a cliff on the opposite side with their backs to me. They were yelling at each other, before the drakeling from before, covered in a new set of wounds, emerged and pounced at them.
A gust of wind lifted the drakeling over the adventurer’s heads, making it overshoot and fall into the chasm. The scenery moved with the falling Drakeling, its agony feeling oddly real to me, before it slammed into the ground, sending me reeling with pain.
An instant later, the scenery changed, and a bipedal young dragon the height of a human child stood at the cave’s entrance, staring at two massive beasts fighting in the snowy great cavern outside. The young dragon suddenly turned away, before a blinding flash of light entered the tunnel, taking the dragon’s arm with it. The child screamed, and so did I, though my chest hurt even more than my arm did, as if my core had been struck by a sledgehammer.
More than that, however, I felt dread creeping up from the soles of my feet.
I had a bad feeling about this.
***
Scene after scene passed, with me experiencing agony increasing ever so slightly in scale, made much worse by the fear and helplessness I found myself feeling. As the pain slowly began becoming unbearable, the fear in my heart grew exponentially with it.
Finally, the scene outside of the tunnel went pitch black, and silence descended on the tunnel. The tunnel slowly began to fade away, and with it, the stone encasing me, leaving me suddenly floating in a black, empty void completely devoid of anything else.
The fear in my heart had finally reached its climax as I tried to look around for a coming threat. My hands were twitching, my throat was parched from the screaming, and my nerves were holding on by a mere thread. Where was the danger going to come from next?
And yet, nothing.
Was my gut feeling wrong?
Suddenly, the tips of my toes began turning to dust, maddening agony making my parched throat scream once more. The disintegration slowly moved through my feet and up my leg, the pain driving me mad.
“No, no, no…!”
I screamed, holding my legs in a desperate attempt to ward off the pain, only for the disintegration to begin with my fingers as well.
My screams died out, as the pain proved too much, with my body slowly crumbling. After my limbs were gone, my chest slowly crumbled after it, reaching my neck at a slow, dreadful pace.
For an eternity, I suffered, as I lost feeling in my throat, then my jaw, then the back of my head. The very last things to go were my eyes, as if I had to see every last shred of my body be ground to dust.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!” I screamed; the memory of the agony still fresh on my mind.
I was sitting up from my bed, drenched in sweat and reaching out at the air in front of me.
In an instant, mom came from the next room, breaking down my door in her rush to get to me.
“Kiara!” she yelled, before stopping by the side of my bed.
My voice died down, as I slowly realized what had happened.
It was just a nightmare.
I held my arms and began shaking, sobbing with pain and fear, as I felt myself being held tightly in mom’s arms.
“Everything’s okay, sweety. You’re alright.” She said, gently stroking my hair.