Andrew looked Sarah in the eyes, anxious about how she would react to his request.

The scary-looking woman looked at him with a troubled expression for some time and seemed to ponder his request. Just as Andrew wanted to talk again, she nodded.

"I guess I’m the best option for this job. But I cannot help but feel kind of dirty. Do you really think this is the best choice?" Sarah asked him with a little hope in her voice.

"Remember how the guy we interrogated reacted. Remember what he told us? They are not humans anymore. They are animals." Andrew answered her. He didn’t even see for himself what the man had described. But only imagining the cruelties committed by this group turned his stomach around. "They will find us. And I don’t want to expose my… no, our people, to this risk."

"That’s true…" Sarah relented and let out a loud sigh, but smiled a little. "I just wish we could leave them be. But I guess we would do humanity a favor. Especially the women."

Andrew nodded and laid his hand on her shoulders. "I know it is a lot to ask. But you are the deadliest person we have here. And Alex is too… unstable for this job."

With some worry, Andrew thought about the once-stoic man who became more and more violent and hot-tempered.

"I understand." Sarah told him and patted his hand, which was holding her shoulders. "I guess it will take some more time until I can rest a little. Make sure to cook me a feast when I come back."

"I’ll even cook it personally. I can’t guarantee a great taste, though."

"That’s fine. After what I ate in the beginning, everything tastes divine." Sarah told him with a crooked smile and turned around to leave.

"Can we somehow support you? Do you need any people to go with you or food or…" Andrew hastily said, but was interrupted by her.

"It is fine. And honestly? Apart from Alex and Melissa, everyone here looks like they’d snap apart if I just so much as breathed too hard next to them." She refuted him in a dry voice, while walking away.

He felt a bit offended by this because she somehow insulted him. But it was true. And it showed that she started to care about them.

"Take care of yourself!" Andrew shouted when she was already some distance away.

"Don’t shit yourself!" came her rude answer, and Andrew chuckled a little.

He watched her walk away until she disappeared in the dense forest. It seemed very quiet and lonely without this rude and loud person around. So Andrew made himself busy.

It was time for him to get to level ten. Tobias had already managed to do it. He was mostly secretive about it. He didn't want to share anything about his gains before looking into them himself. So Andrew would have to see for himself what it would be like.

He was going into their only off-limits cave. Alex and Tobias had scouted it out and noted that this cave had a stronger concentration of ambient Magic Power. Because of their horrible experience with the crazed animals around the spatial oddity, they didn't want to take a risk. Who knew how people would react when they were subjected to this for a long time.

But Andrew was confident that this was exactly what he needed for his breakthrough. Since Sarah told them what they needed to feel in order to break through, he had tried numerous times to do so. But he had failed miserably until now.

Every time he thought he was close to feeling the presence of the barrier inside him, it got away like a slippery fish. So he theorized that with the help of a surplus of Magic Power, this barrier might be easier to find.

As the cave was some distance away from their camp, nobody saw him as he entered it. He felt kind of guilty because he hadn’t talked to Tobias about this. But in the end, Tobias was just as new to all of this as he was.

In the first few meters, everything was normal. But the deeper he went inside, the more he started to feel the chaotic ambient energy. It really was very dense here.

He even thought it was possible for the energy to be even denser than it was around the oddity where they found Sarah. Luckily, there weren’t any animals down here, or else they would have a big problem at hand.

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

When Andrew started to feel like he would burst from the surplus energy inside him, he sat down on the dirty ground. It was dark this deep in the cave, so he bumped his head quite painfully on the rock wall.

He shuffled around for some time until he found a more or less comfortable position to concentrate.

He closed his eyes and started to concentrate on the world within himself. Like always, he only saw the black insides of his eyelids in the beginning. But more and more, he started to see and feel the Magic Power.

Normally, it was a small trickle that was barely visible. But now, it felt more like a pressured water stream that was held back by something.

He followed this feeling until he found what was holding it back. And to his surprise, it was different from what he had imagined. He envisioned it as some kind of wall he had to break through. But it was in fact more of a subconscious resistance against the Magic Power that wanted to flow into his body.

So he mentally relaxed himself and let it flow. The resistance was gone, as if it had never been there in the first place. For a moment, Andrew was elated. The Magic Power powerfully coursed through his body, and he felt like he could rip out trees with his bare hands.

But soon, the energy got too much. His body felt stuffed, and it even got painful. With a coughing groan, Andrew hurriedly got up on his feet and started staggering out of the cave.

His sense of balance was completely off, and he saw double. He stumbled and fell to the ground, but he didn’t stay put. With a ragged breath, he pulled himself out of this forsaken cave. All the while, he felt like not only his body but his very being were being ripped apart.

When he finally got out of the cave, the feeling got a little bit better, and he was able to walk again. But he was still in a lot of pain.

"Melissa." He mumbled and focused on the only person who could be able to help him.

He stumbled along the stone wall, not sure if he was walking in the right direction. His body was pulsating by now with every step he took. He felt like he would shatter at any moment.

You are in mortal danger. S*5rching for opti?ns.>

He only barely realized what the system had told him. But even without the warning, he knew all too well that something was seriously wrong with him right now.

He suddenly felt himself being lifted up from the ground and heard dull screams around him. He saw a few figures through his waning sight that were carrying him somewhere.

"Melissa." He tried to tell them. But he wasn’t sure if they even understood him.

In his dizzy state, he asked himself if the system had somehow broken or if he was too far gone.

By now, he didn’t even notice what was happening around him anymore. He was floating in an endless space of pain, with only nothingness surrounding him.

Somebody was talking to him, but he understood nothing.

Suddenly, extreme pain erupted in his chest. He roared but couldn’t hear himself.

And as suddenly as the pain came, it disappeared again. And with it, the stuffy feeling inside him.

"Hold him down!" he heard a female voice shout somewhere to his left.

"Melissa?" he asked in a hoarse voice, finally able to hear something again.

"Can you tell me what happened, Andrew?" she asked immediately, while laying her hands on his chest.

"I… went…" Andrew croaked, but he couldn’t get much more out of his sore throat.

"Shit!" Melissa shouted, but calmed herself down again. "Listen, you had way too much Magic Power in your body. I have no idea how, but I managed to let it out. But…"

She hesitated and came with her mouth closer to his ear. "There is… something in your soul. Like a big lump of darkness. And it is spreading. It is damaging your soul, Andrew. Do you know what it is?"

"Emotions… suppressed…" Andrew croaked out, happy that he got the general message through.

Melissa looked at him for a moment with a confused face, until it lit up in understanding.

"Hold him down!" She commanded the people surrounding them in a powerful tone. And Andrew was pressed down by heavy weights.

"What…?" Andrew became really afraid of what was happening right now.

"I have to let it out somehow, Andrew. It is destroying you from the inside. But… it might hurt. Stay strong." Melissa told him while pressing his shoulder gently, and then closed her eyes.

Her hands just lay on his chest, but he felt them reaching deeper inside him. Directly into his very being. It was a horrible experience.

She rummaged through his soul for a few moments, which almost made Andrew faint again. But then she got a hold of something. Searing pain shot through him as she gripped a part of himself in her metaphysical grip.

"Don’t…" Andrew wanted to warn her, realizing what she held. It was what the system had warned him about. Every emotion that his skills had suppressed until now somehow sedimented into his very soul.

They were mostly horrible emotions like fear, panic, terror, and dread. And Melissa was about to pull all of this out of him.

"Are you ready?" Melissa asked him in a loud voice, but Andrew couldn’t answer anymore. His voice had given out.

"Hold him down! I’ll take it out in one, two, three!"

She ripped her hands off his chest, along with the part of her that had rummaged through his soul. And the lump of darkness inside him spilled outside.

First, nothing happened, and Andrew thought that maybe nothing might happen.

But then he started feeling it. A scream, deep out of his deepest primal self, escaped from his lips, carrying with it unmeasurable terror.

With the last bit of sanity he heard, everyone around him screamed just like he did.

And then everything went black.