The beasts of the Araks Islands were walking and running in every direction, spreading indescribable chaos across the land. Their roar shook the trees, and the sound of their footsteps echoed in my chest, as I sat silently on a high tree branch, trying to survive a chaos where there was no place for reason.
I could do nothing but watch… for it would have been foolish to engage with them in my current state, especially after the injury I received during the first minutes of my entry.
"Damn..." I muttered as I pressed on the wound, the elixir igniting a sharp burning under my skin, while I bandaged the injury caused by beasts of the lowest ranks, as if they only wanted to teach me that this world spares no one, no matter how simple it seems at first.
Suddenly, the system screen appeared before me, glowing with a faint light, cutting through the stillness of my moment and reminding me that everything here is recorded… even pain.
New Missions:
1 - Survive the Araks Islands — 1000 Mana Points
2 - Survive the Shape Mimicker — 50,000 Mana Points
3 - Kill the "Scream Maiden" — 6000 Mana Points
A note appeared beneath the missions, written in red font that warned of danger:
(Note: You must not let the Shape Mimicker touch your face, or else you will be among the dead.
Also, the Scream Maiden — you must cover your ears before hearing her scream, or the same fate awaits you.)
I read the words slowly, as if my mind was trying to deny their meaning.
Shape… and mimicker. Just one touch, and everything is erased.
Scream Maiden… just a sound, and everything ends.
I exhaled sharply and looked at the screen again.
"Great... just great."
I whispered to myself with heavy sarcasm, trying to hold myself together while fear gnawed at the edges of my thoughts.
This was no longer just a test… it was a death sentence disguised in mana points.
I stood up quickly, anger rising inside me as if something deep within had finally exploded.
I clenched my teeth tightly until I almost felt them cracking from the pressure, my fists trembled for a moment then steadied.
I looked toward the forest, teeming with chaos and beasts, and in a low voice as if threatening:
"If you want my death… then you'll have to fight for it."
Then I began to walk slowly and steadily between the trees, and the air around me carried the scent of mana… and the scent of danger.
The beasts began to leap toward me from between the trees, their roars tearing through the air around me, but I felt nothing…
The rage had blinded me.
Without hesitation, I activated body enhancement, and rushed into them like a merciless hurricane.
Every movement, every strike, came from the depth of my rage, no place for mercy… not even for thought.
My sword sliced the air, cut through flesh and bone, and the ground beneath my feet was covered with blood and groans.
I wasn't fighting just to live, I was unloading onto them all those mixed feelings… fear, anger, loneliness.
The beasts turned into scattered limbs, and with every corpse that fell, I felt a weight lessen inside me…
But it wasn't enough.
There was still something burning in my chest.
"Mist…"
I whispered the word as the vision around me began to fade.
The mist began to grow denser suddenly, as if the forest had decided to swallow me, or to hide from me something I was not meant to see.
My eyes flared, trying to pierce through the mist with my gaze, but to no avail.
I turned quickly, and a strange feeling crept into my spine…
My eyes widened in astonishment I couldn't restrain, as if time stopped for a moment, and the sounds around me faded away.
There, just a few steps away, she stood...
I whispered with trembling lips, barely getting the sound out:
"Mother…"
She was standing in front of me, as if she had stepped out of an old dream.
Her black hair flowed softly over her shoulders, and her gray eyes gazed at my face with gentle silence.
That smile… it hadn't changed. The same smile behind which I had always felt safe.
I took one step forward, hesitant, as if I feared she might vanish if I came closer.
"Is… is that you, Mother?"
I asked in a soft voice, trembling between doubt and hope.
She smiled gently and whispered:
"Najd… I missed you, my son."
I froze in place, then all my strength collapsed at once. I fell to the ground, my tears pouring without stopping.
"Mother… is that really you?"
I raised my head, seeing her take one step forward toward me.
"Najd, come to my embrace."
She extended her hands toward me, and her voice… that voice I had never doubted, crept into my depths like a warm breeze, carrying memories that never die.
But something inside me rebelled. Refused to believe. Refused to surrender to the idea that this was my mother, herself, just as she was.
There was a faint, deep voice—not heard but felt—that warned me, unsettled me, held me from within as if it was preventing me from taking another step.
I was caught between two extremes: between a reality that seemed like a dream, and an illusion that felt more real than anything else.
I stood there, not daring to come closer… and unable to bear staying away.
My tears poured endlessly, and I could no longer contain the chaos inside me.
I screamed, with everything left in my chest of pain and rejection:
"You're not my mother! My mother… my mother could never come to a place like this! Not this calm… not with that strange face!"
I took a step forward, my hand trembling, and my voice grew faint but carried a decisive tone, like someone pronouncing a verdict with no return.
"And more importantly…" I continued as I raised the sword before me, looking at her with eyes filled with tears and rage,
"My mother… carries a small scar on her neck. And you… you do not have it."
I tightened my grip on the sword's handle, as if clinging to the only truth that still granted me certainty amidst this illusion.
I felt the weight of the air pressing on my chest, as if the world around me had begun to slow down, and everything lost its usual color.
I looked at her, and the expressions on her face gradually changed before me… it was no longer that gentle smile I had known, but turned into something else. Something dark… frightening.
Strange shadows drew themselves across her features, and her eyes no longer looked at me as "a mother."
There was something else in them, something that didn't belong to this world.
Then she spoke…
"Your mother… weak… weak like you, she would never have been able to come. But I… I saw you first, Najd."
But the voice was no longer the same. It wasn't that warm voice that had almost deceived me just moments ago.
It was a double voice, echoing in my ears like a distorted resonance.
Part of it resembled my mother's voice… exactly, with the same tenderness, the same way she used to call me in my childhood.
But behind it, or beneath it, there was another voice… strange, cold, creepy like a snake's whisper.
It wasn't just an overlap, but an entity trying to sneak into me through the safest voice I had ever known.
I realized in a sharp moment that this creature wasn't only using her form, but her voice as well, manipulating me, trying to make me weaker.
To split my heart in half between doubt and longing. Between believing… or forgetting who I am.
I felt a tremble in my fingertips, and the sword in my hand grew heavier.
It wasn't speaking to me in its voice… but in hers. So I wouldn't dare to stab.
"Will you really kill your mother, Najd?"
The voice came choked between two tones… one whispering with emotion, and the other creeping like poison.
"Do you have the ability to do that… even now?"
My fingertips trembled, but I insisted on remaining standing.
I clenched my jaws so tightly I could almost hear the grinding of my teeth, and tightened my grip on the sword until my joints stiffened.
Then I said, and my voice came out angry, sharp as the edge of a blade:
"You… are not her. You're not my mother. O Shape-Shifter… I will not fall into the trap."
I raised the sword slowly, and my eyes did not turn away from his face, deformed by that false smile.
"And you will die by my hand, only because you dared to take her form."
I ran toward him with all the anger, sadness, and rejection I had. The sword was stretched before me, shining under the dim light, as if it was waiting for the moment of redemption.
But his smile did not vanish… rather, it widened, and his face became more deformed.
Suddenly, his body began to twist in an inhuman way, as if his bones melted inside him. His limbs separated into parts… his right hand split into three, each part of it extending and twisting as if made of living rubber.
He struck me with one of them, and the balance of the ground slipped from under me, I was pushed backward, staggering. The other hand lashed at me like a whip, cutting through the air with a mad sound.
He was no longer a human being… but a deformed creature, playing with the laws themselves.
And I had to fight him… not with my hand only, but with my mind, my memory, with everything that made me distinguish between whom I loved… and the one who dared to wear her face.
I rose from the dust, my body groaning under the weight of the blows, but my eyes did not turn away from their target.
With a swift touch to the bracelet on my wrist, I pulled out another sword, its blade thinner but lighter and more flexible, perfect for both defense and attack.
His first hand lunged at me from the left, so I blocked it with a slanted strike, it recoiled twisted like a rubber toy. Then came the second hand from above, so I raised the second sword and cut it before it touched me, leaving a strange spark bursting in the air.
I was advancing toward him, step by step. He strikes, and I block. He attacks, and I respond. I was no longer running… I was crawling toward him with steady awareness, with a will that does not waver.
I know… I know his weak point.
His head.
That false shape, that borrowed face… if I cut off his head, everything ends.
I struck him with my right sword, then the left, tore apart his twisted limbs, and continued advancing. I could see him clearly now. He was afraid… yes, behind all those fake smiles, he was afraid of my approach.
I advanced with slow, steady steps, I no longer needed to run. I was like someone who had decided the fate of the end.
The two swords in my hands, shining under the glow of the sparks rising from his deformed body, and my chest rising and falling slowly, exhaling steam with every breath… as if I were walking through ice, or through fire, no difference.
My voice came out calm, confident, carrying a tone that knows no mercy:
"You will regret it…"
I paused for a moment, looked directly into his eyes that no longer resembled anything human.
"You will regret taking her form."
He did not respond. Maybe he couldn't… or maybe he finally understood that he was facing someone who is not deterred by memory, nor deceived by features.
I raised the two swords, and everything in me was ready for the final blow.
His hands formed again, rose with a speed unseen, and rushed toward me with sudden violence.
But this time… he did not hit me.
With deadly calm, and without any hesitation in my movement, I cut off both hands with my swords, as if his body had become fragile before me. There was no effort in the two strikes, as if I was only brushing dust off the path.
Then, in one moment, I raised one of the swords, and with a decisive strike, I cut off his head.
My features were tense, hesitating for a moment, as if deep inside me there was a child still hoping that all of this was only an illusion.
But the head fell.
And the body fell behind it, collapsing slowly, lifeless.
And before it touched the ground completely… his face formed one last time.
It was my mother's face.
With the same smile, the same eyes, he said in her voice, that voice that always reassured me on cold nights:
"You killed your mother… how could you do it?"
I screamed, and everything exploded inside me.
My anger, my pain, my regret, my fear.
"Be silent!"
I rushed the sword toward his face, stabbed him, then stabbed again, each stab carrying a word:
"You!"
Stab.
"Are not!"
Stab.
"My mother!"
Stab.
"Despicable… stupid!"
Stab, then another, then I kept hitting until there was no face left to hit.
I gasped, stopped, and the sword was still embedded in the ground stained with illusion and blood.
And the silence around me... was more terrifying than its last screams.
The purple blood covered my face, stained my clothes, seeped between my fingers.
It was warm moments ago, pulsating with false life, but now... it is cold, inert, not much different from the walls around me.
My gaze was dark, empty of any sparkle.
No more tears.
No more anger.
Everything, as if it departed with the head I severed.
I stood in my place, not thinking, not breathing deeply... just existing, as if I had become part of this ruin.
Then, the fog began to dissipate around me, slowly, like someone opening the curtain of a heavy dream.
I felt something moving.
My instinct preceded me.
My hands moved by themselves, and the sword rose at the last moment.
A swift, decisive strike.
A savage scream rose, then extinguished before it could complete.
I had struck a beast that sneaked from behind.
I did not see it... I did not need to see it. My body acted alone.
But I did not celebrate, I did not even move.
Everything seemed distant... and inside me, I was farther than everyone.
I started walking.
Step... then beast.
One strike is enough. No scream, no alertness, no hesitation.
I was cutting them down as wood is cut, carelessly, without even looking at them.
The sword in my hand became an extension of my arm, I did not raise it... it moved on its own.
A beast roaring from the right? Split in half.
Hot breaths behind me? The sword turns and the sound silences.
I no longer distinguished their number... or their forms... or even what they wanted.
I kept walking.
And the beasts fell, cracked, evaporated, melted into the ground.
And my face... as it was, covered in purple blood, my gaze empty, no fear nor victory in it.
Perhaps I was searching for something... or just running away from everything.
But what is certain... is that I was no longer as I was.
I stopped suddenly.
I looked at the two swords in my hands... they were heavy, as if they carried the weight of all I had been through.
Then, without hesitation, I threw them to the ground, and their sound hit the floor of the place filled with blood as if they were bidding farewell to the battle.
With a quick touch to the system cabinet, I summoned two daggers.
They shone between my hands, light, sharp, as if they had been waiting since eternity for their turn.
I moved.
I no longer ran, I no longer fought... but I danced among the shadows.
I split the beasts in half, right and left, as if they had no weight, no resistance.
A stab under the throat, a leap over the shoulders, a direct slash to the heart.
I moved like a killer shadow, no noise, no words, only blood flying around me, coloring the ground, and disappearing behind me.
The daggers became part of my pulse, and my eyes did not see their faces, but their places of death.
Everything around me became slow... and I alone moved with the speed of pain.
After long hours of continuous fighting, while I moved amidst blood, shadows, and remains, I stopped.
I sat down on the ground, my back leaning against a tree trunk. My breaths heavy, but silent.
The daggers still gleamed between my hands, dripping with remains of creatures whose number I no longer remembered.
I looked at my hands.
They were trembling lightly, not from exhaustion, but from that strange feeling... that I was still alive.
A system screen appeared before me, floating quietly in the air, as if saying: Look at what you have become.
Statistics:
Name: Kyle Astorite
Type: Human
Level: 9 → 20
Rank: D-
Mana Points: 20,055,000
Class: Hunter
Ability: Temporary Immortality + Body Enhancement
I stared at the screen for a long time.
I did not smile. I was not surprised. I just looked.
What mattered to me now was not the number, nor the progress.
But that I... despite everything, I was still here.