Breathing without oxygen.
Even thinking about it felt absurd.
Every basic law Baines had adopted since birth insisted it was impossible. Air was a natural life support system; remove it and the body fails. It was that simple.
And yet—
It was Eye, the most logical decision system in the present world, that suggested it. And because of that, it didn't seem like a desperate gamble or a reckless leap, but as a calculated option.
At the same time, that was what unsettled him the most.
Eye didn't speculate. It didn't hope for a specific outcome. It merely observed, measured, discarded impossibilities, and returned only what had a viable outcome.
If it offered this, then—somewhere in the cold arithmetic of its logic—it made sense.
"…Are you sure?" he whispered, his voice barely disturbing the cavern as he lowered himself onto all fours. His palms pressed against cold stone, knees hovering just above the ground as he positioned himself beneath the statue's legs.
He had asked the question nine times already.
This was the tenth.
[THERE IS A CERTAINTY OF APPROXIMATELY FIFTY PERCENT]
"Fifty percent? But you said sixty the last time." Baines' eyes twitched warily.
[RESULT IS LARGELY UNCERTAIN DUE TO THE UNKNOWN AND UNPREDICTABLE ENERGY. DUE TO THE PREVIOUS NARROW SURVIVAL, THE POSSIBILITY INCLUDES THAT CONSTANT EXPOSURE WILL RESULT IN IMMUNITY.
He exhaled slowly.
"So, you're saying…" His thoughts felt tight, compressed. "Just like how my eyes adjusted to the dark… my body can adapt to breathing whatever this is?"
[HOST IS CORRECT. HOWEVER, IT IS ONLY A POSSIBILITY
'Whatever the case, even if it is wrong, I have to try every option.' His food stock was finite, the pond was not guaranteed to remain in the same state, and the cave was just a shelter, not his final destination.
This was something he would have had to do sooner; eye only pushed him to take action much earlier.
'Just staying here means waiting for the end. Alright…phew. What I need to do is easy. Stand and hold on for as long as possible. Eye, night vision, and zoom. He calmed his racing heart with an exhale as his vision expanded and slid forward, careful not to let his skin scrape stone.
Every movement was deliberate, silent, and controlled. He passed beneath the statue, its carved legs towering over him like a gateway he had crossed too many times to fear.
When his fingers touched open ground beyond the cave's boundary, his chest tightened.
'This is it.'
He took the last crawl and cleared the statue.
"I did it…" he thought.
Slowly, carefully, he rose to his feet.
The moment his weight settled—
Something was wrong.
Suddenly, the world pressed in.
His breath caught as the darkness around him thickened, coiling and folding inward. '…How?' His body trembled while forcing himself to remain calm.
He hadn't made any sound, and there was no external presence. So why? Like a tide, he had stepped into without realizing how deep it ran.
They were already there.
Black smoke unfurled in every direction, surrounding him in a loose, shifting ring, and this time, it wasn't a single tendril drifting curiously toward him, unlike the cave.
There were dozens.
At least thirty.
Each pulsed with a dim gray glow, brighter than before, their movements slow and deliberate—as if they were waiting for something to break.
[DANGER DETECTED: EXTREME CAUTION ADVISED]
'They aren't attacking?' Upon realization, his chest flooded with relief; However, with his relief, something happened.
With the released pressure, his bowels unknowingly released themselves.
He had wet himself.
'Oh no,' Fear gripped his chest instantly.
He never had the chance to respond when tendrils struck.
They had finally sensed his presence, and they plunged into him all at once.
His eyes shot open as cold exploded through his body, sharper, deeper, and more invasive than before. His muscles seized. His breath was locked in his chest. Sensation fractured as if his body no longer agreed on what it was supposed to feel.
His mind stalled. It was just pain blankness.
[HOST IS LOSING CONSCIOUSNESS]
[HOST BODY IS—]
CRACKLE.
The voice cut out.
Darkness surged across his vision, swallowing the world from the edges inward. His right eye went first, drowned in black. The left followed, shrinking to a dim pinprick.
Just before it turned pitch black—
Light erupted.
A sharp blue flare burst from his left eye, brighter than anything he had seen in this place. The smoke recoiled instinctively, curling back as sparks crackled through the air.
[UNGOING SELF-ACT PROTOCOL IN THE EVENT OF EXTREME DANGER]
---
[FORCING INTEGRATION PROCESS…]
---
[HOST-EYE INTEGRATION —>3%...]
---
[COMMENCING SELF TREATMENT…]
---
[PERFORMING EMERGENCY NEURAL SHOCK TREATMENT]
---
Pain detonated through his skull.
A violent current tore through his nervous system, ripping sensation back into his limbs. His body convulsed, jaw clenched tight as he swallowed a scream.
His thought returned, and his awareness snapped into place.
"…What just happened?" he gasped, heart slamming against his ribs.
The smoke around his head withdrew, drawn instead to the blue light radiating from his eye, circling it warily like predators denied a kill.
[USER IS EXPERIENCING SHOCK AND HEIGHTENED FEAR—SUBOPTIMAL FOR CURRENT CONDITIONS]
Baines barely heard it.
His body was still numb from the neck down, cold biting into nerves he could barely feel. The smoke lingered inside him longer than before, heavy and suffocating.
'What am I going to do?' Baines asked himself. It was taking longer for the black smoke to exit his body.
'I guess I can only wait.' In that instant, he noticed something strange,
The air.
It was extremely thin and harsh,
"I… can breathe?" he realized, disbelief threading through the pain. 'Eye was right. This is good.'
But that was that. His movement, however, was another matter.
"I can't move," he thought.
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: NEURAL SHOCK TREATMENT]
[RECOMMENDED ACTION: NERVOUS RECEPTOR BOOST]
'…Receptor boost? I like the sound. Do it.'
Only if he knew that what eye meant was sending that same lightning current throughout his body. Eye had called it a boost, but it was still the neural shock treatment.
Sizzle…
The shock was worse than before.
His eyes almost popped from their sockets as the shock jolted every cell in his body. Electric agony surged through every nerve, forcing sensation into limbs that screamed in protest. He bit down hard, tears spilling freely as his body spasmed.
But it worked.
His fingers twitched.
'I have to go back.' Baines thought as his knees buckled. He dropped to the ground and crawled, mind screaming instructions faster than his body could follow.
Don't make a sound. The statues were so close to him. They would hear any sound from that distance.
Don't struggle. He had to move without so much as flexing any muscle, else the black smoke would take it as struggling, which could lead to a disaster.
Don't stop. The longer he waited, the longer the pain and agony rammed his body with greater intensity.
The smoke tugged at him with every movement, but with eyes' neural boost, he forced himself forward, inch by inch, terror pressing against his chest.
'…I can't do this again.' He almost gave up.
The pain was excruciating. The thought of dying at any moment frightened him.
He wanted to scream; however, he couldn't
'I can't die here,' he begged silently. 'Not like this.'
His vision blurred as tears fell onto the stone.
"…Mother," he thought.
He wanted to see her again to feel her warmth, to hear her voice.
A ten-year-old had no place in such a desolate and dangerous situation, struggling to survive.
But dying alone was worse. It made him strive to survive again.
Endure and survive.
Perhaps, only then would he meet his loved ones again.