š¹š¹
The first thing I realized was that I saw nothing.
It was a complete darkness so thick that it took me a moment to understand my eyes were simply closed.
Then the sound hit. It was a violent weight that did not just hit my ears but seemed to fill my entire skull.
TAP.
The noise cut out for a tiny fraction of a second, then it returned.
TAP.
I had never heard anything like this in my life. It was a rhythmic force that repeated again and again.
TAP.
_
TAP.
_
TAP.
_
Yet, somehow, I was kept from breaking so that I could continue to experience it. There was never any peace; the echo stayed behind when the gap came.
It should have been enough to shatter my hearing... but I remained perfectly intact.
Then a sensation crawled all over my body... it was just a biting cold.
TAP.
I was trapped between the blindness and a noise I should not have been able to survive. Just as the chill took hold, the darkness finally broke.
I opened my eyes.
I looked out at this new world for the very first time.
What... is this?
My eyes widened as I observed a phenomenon that defied every law of probability I had ever studied.
The sight was a complete departure from the natural world.
TAP.
The sound was the primary source of my unease.
It... was rain... but how? It didn't make any sense... rain shouldn't be falling like this.
Rain should follow a chaotic distribution, but these droplets hit the earth in perfect synchronization.
Every single one struck at the exact same second.
A stray drop landed on my cheek and moved along my jaw before falling away.
I felt a strange, hollow realization. My subconscious seemed to have anticipated this arrival.
Everything that had occurred leading up to my loss of consciousness felt like a sequence of preordained steps.
TAP.
While lying on the ground, I inhaled. The air was unnervingly raw, lacking the artificial sterility of the islands managed by the school.
TAP.
The noise was becoming overbearing. Silence would have been a luxury.
I quickly dismissed the idea that the White Room was responsible for this environment. My father and his subordinates were constrained by human limitations. They were not capable of the supernatural.
I reached this conclusion almost immediately. This place operated on a logic that bypassed physics: surviving a noise that should have destroyed my hearing, rain falling in a continuous pattern, and the lack of any physical displacement.
In any rational world, the energy required to create a sound of this density would generate a lethal shockwave.
Yet the air remained perfectly still. There was no pressure.
TAP.
I attempted to shift my weight and sit up. My command did not go through the first time.
TAP.
I focused my will a second time, and this time my body rose. There was a noticeable delay between my thought and the physical movement.
It was the same lag as the interval between the falling raindrops.
Now that I was upright, I had a better look at the world around me.
I moved my head slowly to ensure I missed no detail of my surroundings.
TAP.
The horizon was a bleak collection of ridges and uneven mounds that stretched for kilometers toward distant hills.
Greenery was scarce. I saw only small, sickly patches of yellow and green growth struggling in the mud.
My ability to remember seemed to be intact.
I observed the high ground and the ridges as a pebble dislodged from the weight of the water.
TAP.
I saw the movement clearly, but I heard nothing.
...
I noticed a peculiar lack of panic in my being. I was far more comfortable than a human being should be in a place this absurd.
TAP.
The world continued to present new data that defied theory.
Directly in front of me, there was a specific patch of ground where no puddles formed. While the rest of the terrain was drowning, the droplets here vanished instantly.
The water was being swallowed. It did not linger on the surface for even a fraction of a second.
TAP.
I looked down at my own clothes. The shorts and white shirt I had worn to bed were gone.
In their place was a set of garments made from low-quality fabric.
The material was thin and clung to my skin.
The slippers on my feet were just as flimsy and thin.
I reached back and felt the wet earth clinging to my skin.
I felt the impact of the rain, the deafening sound, and the endless echo. This was not a dream or a coma. The sensations were too vivid.
TAP.
This was too detailed for a hallucination. My assessment of this being supernatural was correct.
I sighed quietly. My body had already accepted this reality, just as it had during the moments before I fell unconscious.
I turned my attention back to the place where no water gathered.
Whoever brought me here had no immediate motivation to kill me.
The most logical conclusion was that I was being used for entertainment.
If someone could abduct me from a high-security school and rewrite the laws of nature, they would not lose me in a wasteland by mistake.
TAP.
I began to jump slightly. Even with the strange delay in body, my physical technique allowed for a high degree of control.
TAP.
I jumped, looking toward the more uneven terrain. The rain blocked all vision, but in the fraction of a second between strikes, I could see quite far.
I noticed that the further I looked, the fewer puddles appeared. The count was lessening with every meter of distance.
I supposed that meant something.
I was not concerned with how I got here or the logistics of escape.
There were still some questions I had, though.
Why was the White Room unaware of the supernatural? That man would have done his absolute best to have such a power in the palm of his hand.
I looked up at the sky once.
There was a clear reasoning for me to be here.
This was likely a performance for someone I could not see. I could find no other motivation.
TAP.
I looked back to the dry patch of earth and began to decide on my next move.
What if I just went around it?
I did not like being used in this way.
I was a chess piece for someone else, and they wanted to see which square I would choose.
If I avoided the path now, it would be harder to navigate the terrain later, and I would still be ignorant of the danger.
Going through it was the most efficient choice.
If the goal was to kill me via a trap this soon, they wouldn't have bothered keeping me alive this long.
It clearly wanted something.
But I could not proceed without at least examining the information I had.
I had been purposely delaying the memory until now.
I recalled the voice that had entered my mind right before I collapsed. It was the first hint of this new reality.
[Aspirant. Welcome to the Nightmare ?????. Prepare for your First Trial]
***
?!
As I recalled the message that had been delivered right before I entered this reality, my legs gave out.
I fell to my knees in the mud.
The sensation was not something I could categorize.
It felt as if the core of my existence was being erased and rewritten only to be deleted again.
TAP.
My body was simultaneously burning and freezing. I felt as if I were drowning in air while my bones were being broken. My nerves were being pulled from my flesh and tied into knots.
I searched for a biological cause. I checked for damage to my heart or my brain. I looked for internal bleeding or external bruising.
TAP.
There was nothing.
The source of the agony was nonexistent. It was a biting, sharp violence that lived in every cell of my body, yet it occupied no space.
It did not cause any actual damage, but it forced my muscles to lock and my teeth to grind together until they were on the verge of snapping.
It was a pain that lacked a starting point or a physical center.
My breath came out in uneven gasps. I was huffing against the pressure. I could not explain why this pain was forcing me to cower.
TAP.
I had endured significant physical trauma in the past and I had never been prone to fear. But this felt like my very soul was being shredded by a dull knife.
The intensity increased.
Then it simply disappeared.
The transition was absolute. Not even a lingering ache remained. My body became perfectly still as if the last few seconds had never occurred.
TAP.
The absence of a recovery period was more disturbing than the pain itself.
It proved that my biology was being bypassed by an external command.
I analyzed the memory. I could not explain the mechanism, but after the word Nightmare, something had been censored.
I had a strong feeling that the blocked portion consisted of exactly five syllables.
I tried again. I moved slower this time and forced the memory forward with extreme care.
TAP.
[Aspirant. Welcome to the Nightmare ?????-]
I could not even finish the censored thought before the agony amplified.
My body curled into a ball as I tried to endure the dismantling of my senses.
Yet my eyes held no fear. My mind remained separate from the screaming of my nerves.
I was treating my own body as a chess piece to be sacrificed for information.
To understand the rules of this trial, I would continue to probe the fire until I found the limit.
TAP.
***
Soon, I rose from the ground as the pain vanished as if it had never existed.
TAP.
I started checking my body for any signs of bleeding. Even though the sensation of pain had departed, a physical audit was a logical necessity.
After confirming that my skin remained unbroken, I did not waste energy seeking an explanation for the agony.
It was clear that the architect of this environment intended for the cause to remain hidden.
A chess piece should never point its next square towards the player.
TAP.
I began to walk away.
I felt the thin, cheap material of my slippers pressing against the earth.
The overwhelming noise of the rain drowned out the sound of my own movement, but I could still feel the soft and uneven texture of the mud shifting beneath me.
As I moved, I encountered a small puddle of water.
I stepped to the side and navigated around the puddle to maintain a steady pace as I ventured further into the dark.
Just a few steps later I finally reached the uneven surface where no puddles were forming.
TAP.
The next inconsistent patch was several meters away. This was the only dry point in my immediate vicinity at the moment.
I knelt to observe the raindrops being absorbed more closely.
I did not touch the ground yet. Despite the heavy downpour, the surface remained completely dry.
TAP.
I identified the anomaly.
These specific raindrops were hitting the ground exactly one nanosecond faster than the rest of the rainfall.
They did not splash or ripple. They were pulled into the earth instantly.
I exhaled quietly.
One more step and I would be standing on the first true inconsistency of this world.
TAP.
Going around it was an option I chose to reject. I required data, and the only way to acquire it was to move through the center of the phenomenon.
TAP.
I stood back up and extended my foot, touching only the very corner of the dry surface.
For a fraction of a second, the crushing noise and the echo vanished.
My eyes widened.
The rain continued to fall in front of me, but it was now completely silent.
In that silence, I felt, heard, and saw the ground beneath my foot explode.
I watched the dirt spray in every direction as a creature lunged out from the earth.
Even before the mud reached the peak of its arc, I calculated its trajectory through my peripheral vision. None of the scattering debris was going to land on another inconsistent patch where the puddles were absent.
TAP.
The sound of the rain returned with a violent pulse as soon as the creature emerged.
Once I was certain the environment remained stable, I turned my attention to the monster descending from its leap.
The monster hit the ground standing two meters tall.
The structure of its body resembled a human form only in the most abstract sense.
Its limbs were stretched far beyond natural proportions, with sinew drawn tight over exposed bone. Small, rhythmic tremors pulsed through its muscles.
The most disturbing detail was the head.
There was no face.
There were no eyes, no nose, and no mouth. A single vertical slit ran from the brow to the chin, pulsing slowly beneath a thin, translucent membrane.
The membrane at the center trembled before parting open. Something deep inside the slit shifted in response to the rhythm of the rain.
I felt my heart begin to thump all of a sudden. I looked down at my own chest in confusion.
My biological reaction did not align with my mental state. My heart was signaling a level of primal terror that my mind had not yet acknowledged.
TAP.
I noticed that the droplets falling near the monster were being attracted to its body. They changed their downward trajectory slightly and were absorbed into its skin.
I glanced at the puddle behind me and saw that the stagnant water was not affected.
The creature only drew in the water that was currently falling.
The slit on its face pulsed as it scanned the area before locking its focus toward the right.
TAP.
I looked in the same direction and saw a heavy boulder tumbling down a slope. No sound reached my ears.
I noted the lack of features on the monster, but it clearly possessed a method of tracking.
I looked up at the rain once more.
My heart was a drum inside my chest, hitting against my ribs. My veins were pulsing with a heavy, surging pressure that I could feel in my temples.
These internal sounds should have been beacons.
The creature could detect a boulder falling onto soft mud from twenty meters away. It could differentiate the specific vibration of a shifting stone from the crushing weight of the rain.
Yet, it remained oblivious to my own sound and vibration running just two meters from its back.
TAP.
Why?
If it was tuned to sound, then my heartbeat was a sound. If it was tuned to vibration, then my pulse was a vibration.
There was no physical reason for a monster of this caliber to ignore the heat and noise of a living witness while chasing the impact of a mineral.
Perhaps it was not looking for sound at all. Or perhaps it was looking for a specific kind of sound that I did not yet understand.
TAP.
The monster moved toward the sound at a speed that my delayed vision could barely track. It was a blur of gray flesh and bone.
I saw that a small pebble had fallen just a few meters away from us. It was probably following that.
I noticed another detail. The hole the two-meter creature had left behind began to fill with water the moment the monster stepped away from it.
I continued to track the monster.
As it crossed a puddle, it absorbed a massive amount of water. My eyes were starting to track its movements with slightly more ease.
Its skin seemed to have gotten a little hard.
The monster reached the pebble and long nails extended from its hands. It swung, but it only struck the air because the pebble had already settled.
I looked up at the sky again.
I could not afford to wait and hope the rain would provide permanent cover.
I formulated a plan while watching the monster lunge toward every falling stone.
TAP.
_
TAP.
_
I measured the distance in the silence and confirmed the pattern was not random. I lifted my leg.
TAP.
I placed my foot down slightly to my side. My ankle made contact with the ground first, ensuring that no vibration beyond my own pulse could escape.
The loud noise of the synchronized rain covered the movement perfectly.
I looked toward the monster. I could track him with much greater clarity now.
_
TAP.
In the same way, I took another step.
***
Ayanokouji's heart was bursting in his chest as his eyes moved all over the place.
He had moved just a meter away from his original position.
TAP.
Ayanokouji did the same for a few more meters as he positioned himself for something.
_
TAP.
Ayanokouji was between many puddles yet he wasn't done. He felt his thin slippers sinking into the uneven, wet dirt.
_
TAP.
'Just two more meters and I would be able to implement my plan.'
But as fate would have it, the rain that fell at the same time stopped completely at the same time. The noise and echo disappeared completely.
Ayanokouji didn't even wait to acknowledge the rain stopping as he began running away. He pushed off the balls of his feet, ignoring the lack of friction.
The monster could surely hear his heartbeat now.
The monster, meters away from Ayanokouji, heard someone running away and began to chase.
Ayanokouji aligned himself, picking a precise path through the dark. He sprinted over the mud.
The white piece had prepared a trap for the black piece.
He approached a wide puddle and launched his body forward..His silhouette cut through the air, legs tucking slightly to maintain momentum before he landed on a narrow ridge of slick, muddy earth on the other side.
He had to keep his movements sharp, pivoting on the edges of the water to stay on his chosen line.
His hands occasionally grazed the cold ridges to stabilize his trajectory.
The chaser ran straight toward where the sound was coming from. It did not care for technique, only for the hunger.
As it went through one puddlez The puddle vanished as the liquid flowed directly into the monster's body.
Ayanokouji kept running, jumping over more puddles in his path.
Just for this very instance he was the player and the puddles around him were chess squares.
His heart kept beating fast.
He pushed off the soft squares, his feet working hard against the uneven squares to maintain his speed. Every slide of his slippers was a problem he had to correct in real-time.
The thing followed really fast. Every time it crossed a square, the color was absorbed instantly.
Ayanokouji ran through more squares, the distance between them closing to just four meters now.
He could feel the heavy weight of the stalker behind him.
The creature went through a few more squares in its path.
The distance between them was just one meter now but Ayanokouji kept running and so the creature kept following.
Just then, Ayanokouji stopped running and turned, looking straight at the creature.
The chessboard disappeared. The monster was no longer important enough to be considered a threat.
The thing without eyes ran straight toward the sound of the heartbeat, since the running sound was not there any longer.
It went through more puddles in the way, the water flowing into its form as it reached for him.
***
The monster was running toward me through every puddle in its path.
I had theorized this outcome after observing the way the ground swallowed the rainfall. I saw the creature react to the vibration of the pebble.
My eyes could barely track its movement before. The speed was a blur. As it moved through the liquid patches, the variables shifted.
The creature became slower after absorbing the water. Its skin transformed until it was a casing of hardened stone.
I had positioned myself with the understanding that the last thing I should trust was the environment killing the threat for me.
I was here because of supernatural reasons. To trust in the mercy of supernatural rain would be a lapse in logic.
The rain stopped exactly as I predicted. The timing was irrelevant. I had already completed the primary phases of my plan, so I just ran away.
The monster was slower now. It remained fast by human standards. Its trajectory was easy to calculate.
I couldn't run away any further; just a few more meters and I would enter the terrain of a cluster of such inconsistent ground.
The thing ran through the puddles until only one remained between us.
Without pausing for a single second, it crossed that final gap. More water soaked into its frame. It grew heavier.
I took a few steps back as the creature emerged from the last puddle. Its movements were now predictable.
The slit on its face remained unchanged. The organ pulsing behind the membrane was still the same vulnerable target.
I bent down and retrieved a sharp stone from the mud.
I ran toward the monster.
I had many questions that required answers. Those would have to wait.
First, I was going to open this thing up.
I sprinted forward as the creature swung its nails toward my head.
My body experienced a delayed reaction to my commands. Even then, the arc was easy to dodge.
It was a wide swing. I ducked beneath the strike and grabbed the arm it had used.
The skin was like rock.
I used the leverage of the bones in its hand to propel myself upward. I pulled my weight up. I wrapped my legs around its waist. I locked my hands around its neck.
I held on with everything I had.
The monster tried to reach back and tear me off.
I was faster. I drove the sharp stone directly into the pulsing slit.
The creature felt the impact. It began to thrash its limbs randomly. It was a display of pain. I felt the heat of its warm blood as it coated my hands.
Its claws were still reaching for me.
This would probably hurt me too.
I shifted my weight. I forced the monster to lose its balance.
We fell together. I absorbed the full impact of its mass as we hit the ground. It was several times heavier than a human.
The stone went deeper into the slit as we collided with the earth.
I twisted the edge while the creature threw its arms around in agony.
I applied more pressure. I used all my strength to grind the stone into the opening.
The rock-hard skin of the beast was crushing my own frame beneath it.
It continued to struggle until the movement simply stopped. The entire body went limp.
A notification sound echoed inside my mind.
I exhaled a sigh of relief.
I pushed the heavy corpse aside. It rolled off me. It left a long red stain across my clothes.
[You have slain a dormant beast, Remorse Eater's Vowalker]
I stayed there for a moment and looked up at the sky. The once dark atmosphere had turned into a bright blue.
Steam began to rise from the Vowalker beside me. The body started to soften as the absorbed water evaporated.
It was returning to the gaunt form it had when it first emerged.
My heart continued to beat with violent speed. The threat was dead. My heart did not care.
I rolled over and sat on top of the Vowalker.
I began to scrape the sharp stone against its face. The skin started to peel away in layers.
As I performed this task, I finally had some peace to think.
The message identified it as a Vowalker belonging to a Remorse Eater. It also called it a dormant beast.
This indicated that the monster was not the most dangerous entity in this reality.
I also understood I would get the answer to all of my questions from the Remorse Eater, the owner of the Vowalker.
I kept scraping at the face. I saw the bone of the skull beneath the surface. Once I cleared one small section of skin, I moved to the next.
My heart was still hammering against my chest.
I wondered if the Remorse Eater could absorb the negative energy of the fear I was currently feeling. I wondered if that was the function of the Vowalker.
But it might have chosen the wrong target. I did not hate anyone enough to feel remorse when I think of them. Not even the White Room.
Even if someone were to attack me, I would not be angered but rather feel understanding for them.
In theory, there should be no remorse for this creature to consume. Yet I was feeling fear right now.
It was a fascinating sensation.
I kept scraping the face as my heart continued beating.
The Vowalker was likely just a soldier of the Remorse-
I stopped and took a deep breath.
I slapped myself across the face. My eyes shook with the impact.
I had been noticing this since I first arrived. My thoughts were stuck in a loop. I thought of one concept. A few moments later, I thought of the exact same thing using different words.
It seemed even my ability to think was compromised.
Even in such a dire situation I couldn't help but joke.
Even the supernatural had to nerf me before taking me here.
The message called this a nightmare. By that logic, I was effectively in a coma.
It also called this the first trial. This implied a sequence of events. I did not know if the trial referred to the nightmare or the Vowalker.
Then there was the issue of my body. This frame was untrained, delayed, and emotionally weak.
My clothes had not simply been replaced.
The face in the reflection of the puddles seemed to be mine. Every other detail was wrong.
This version of me was easily frightened. It was untrained, delayed-
I caught the loop again. I had just thought the same thing twice.
I sighed.
To put it simply... this was not my body at all....
I was no longer myself.
******
Chapter 2: First Kill has been rewritten.
If you come across anything in this first nightmare that was already explained here or is inconsistent to the explanation provided here then that chapter has not been rewritten yet.
Peace.