I'm fine, I really am okay? The painting was not alive, so no one was really hurt. The painting's soul is way too weak to have been considered properly active is what I'm saying, it means it's quite literally the universe messing with me.

I leave the painting behind and walk in a random direction, it doesn't matter, it's all the same hallway. But I don't think that will be the case for long. I can see a tooth lodged in the wall, I can feel the electric lights beating like heart, I can hear a squelching sound from the carpet with every step I make.

Now, here's a question buddy, if you can only build one thing forever, and suddenly you're given one brand-new building block, what do you do?

That's right, you try out that new building block in your design, you slam it at random and see if it looks cool right? What I'm trying to say is that seeing random body parts strung up on every side of this hallway is not particularly surprising. I'm the only "alive" thing so to speak around here so now this universe has incorporated my body in its memory and as such, into its design.

Now, you know what ISN'T normal? The fact I can sometimes see disfigured faces or broken bodies I can recognize, because the only way it can get that is if it somehow got a hold of my memories, which SHOULD BE protected from any outside force.

I genuinely don't think the true god of this place could've accessed my memories so easily, so my UM must be malfunctioning. It's something to add more features on it but modifying and fixing pre-existing ones is...a pain. I hate to admit it but the UM has grown almost beyond my comprehension, and most problems I have with it usually kind of fix themselves by some automated system I have made a long time ago.

The truth is, I don't think I've ever seen it get that bad.

ULTIMATE MENU CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE, PLEASE WAIT UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

I can't even see the basic info, and "currently unavailable" tells me absolutely nothing.

"Hey...heeey..." I can hear a familiar voice behind me, "Aaare we t...there y-yet?" the voice is awkward and unnatural, but it's a lot easier to understand than the previous words from the painting. Of course, I would've recognized those words no matter how badly they were spoken, I would say the effort to speak more clearly was appreciated, but I wish they didn't speak at all.

As I look behind me, I can see a girl with purple hair and a broken neck, her head tilting so far to the right it goes straight past her shoulder. I can see ribs poking out from her arm, muscles that extend out of her skin, and yet it doesn't bother me, if anything I almost find it cute how this universe is trying its hardest to make its own person but failing miserably. Like a child's drawing, it's a far cry from reality and it's hard to criticize without feeling bad about it.

I'm not happy with who they decided to recreate, though.

"Thhhh" she inhales deeply, as if in pain, "Thaaa...thank...you?" she says quizzically, like the idiot she always was. She couldn't really comprehend the fact that someone would be genuinely thankful for her help. You know, she might have been the first person I ever approached out of my own volition, barring the adventurer's guild's secretary.

"I...loov-" before she can say another sentence, her body falls forward and crashes against the floor spreading organs and blood all over the carpet and walls. She doesn't stop moving entirely, her body twitches a little bit, but that's it.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

I go in the opposite direction, I can't waste time like this. I need to fix my menu, but I'll have to do it manually. I can do nearly everything that my menu can do by myself, but it takes more time and conscious effort. As I've said before, skills are like muscle memory for the soul, you need to know how to swing a blade the right way a thousand times before it becomes muscle memory and your body can do the same without you needing to think about it.

But of course the soul doesn't work like a body, so you can't repeat the same movement with it a thousand times and have it become natural, it'll always feel awkward unless you change the soul with say, a skill system. The best way I can explain it is that it's like doing something that you haven't done for a couple of years, you might know the theory but your body forgot, except in this case your body is incapable of remembering in the first place, so it never truly comes naturally to you.

"Hey! H-h-h-hey!" a young man awkwardly walks up to me, the body is still a mess and the walk is more like a waddle, but at least it can move. Unfortunately his left arm wasn't as lucky as his legs and it's hanging uselessly at his side. "Wait... wait for me," he's breathing heavily and I can see some blood leak out from his mouth, he doesn't cough it out and it doesn't seem to impair his talking all that much though. "Great jjjjjjjjob out there!"

Ha yes, the tank of the group, the one that charged in without a single thought and somehow always ended up alive. I think he had a crush on the purple haired girl but his love ended up on me, like everyone else. I wonder what kind of couple they would've made, I think they would've looked great together.

I puke a little in my mouth, I feel disgusting, I should've never been there. No, if I didn't invest everything in charisma I could've had them as simple friends, it could've been all okay. I could've-

It's fine, I left and that's the best thing I could've done, that's the best thing I can do for anyone. A stray thought of Trin comes back to me, how she seemed genuinely sad to see me go, she wasn't sobbing or anything but-

I shake my head, it's dangerous for me to stay in one place for too long, I'm a ticking time bomb and staying for as long as I did was already pushing it. I have to keep moving, so I can't do any more irreversible damage like back then.

The young man pulls me into a tight hug as I try to walk past him - it feels a little gross as some of his internal organs are pushing against me and only one arm is wrapped around my body as the other one isn't really functional - but his intent is still pretty clear.

"h a...p y to b e your-" I push him away and he falls over backward. The moment his body touches the ground, all his limbs detach as if it was a toy whose parts popped out at the press of a button.

I walk past its corpse as I try to ignore the disgusting sounds and voices around me. I really should fix my menu and yet I can't stop myself, I hate those memories but like watching a car crash I can't help but wonder out of morbid curiosity what I'm going to see next. I wonder if the true god of this place understands what those memories mean? Probably not, I think it's trying to figure out what it means by using my reaction and context cues - I can only guess, though.

Despite my best attempt to ignore them, a sound catches my attention. I can hear pages being turned, and it doesn't take me long to figure out where it comes from when I take a glance behind me.

A green haired woman turns the pages of her book every 10 seconds, exactly every 10 seconds. She doesn't look up to me and as I make my way behind her, I can see that the pages are blank, of course they are. I've never bothered reading what she was into and as such I have no memory of what she was actually reading.

She speaks without taking her eyes away from the blank pages, "Why are you bothering me again?" she sighs, her body is actually... pretty accurate, there's a little bit of uncanny valley here and there and the tone is not quite right but it's very close to what I remember of her.

I hate that, of course. It's easier to disassociate my memories of them when I see mangled bodies and failed mimicry, but she's way too close to what I remembered of her and a part of me can't help but want to talk to her as if she was the real thing.

"B-but I just want to be with you!" Her tone suddenly changes from apathy to desperation, "I don't care about that college anymore I just want to be with-" I slap her before she can finish and her head flies right off.

It's not her, it's not her but I wish I slapped her back then too. Not decapitating her like that of course, just bringing her back to her senses. I- I mean, how could she even say that? How could I NOT see that something was wrong? No, I KNEW something was wrong, but I did nothing about it. Because I still somehow thought my impact on the world was inconsequential like before and I decided to avert my eyes because it was convenient.

I can hear her sobbing, even detached her head can still cry and speak perfectly, "I- I swear... I really lov-"

I stomp on her head to shut her up, as the head is crushed I can see that there was no brain in there, only a bunch of eyes and one vocal cord tying them all together.

I'm coming to a horrible realization, I can't leave yet. I'm too mentally unstable right now, so I have to stay here until my menu gets fixed or I'll just end up hurting others.

I faceplant on the bloody carpet, it's squishy and makes a weird sound when I fall on it, like it's made of meat. It probably is, I don't care.

I'll just close my eyes until it gets better, I'll just stop listening until it gets better. I'll just stop feeling until it gets better.

Don't worry about it.