Azrie

I am growing afraid - of the chapters being bad. I think this one is bad... Sorry... I fell asleep and woke up at 11pm, it's 3 am now. I have to go back to sleep... Sorry to disappoint... It has been a busy week, sorry about the short chapters.

His footsteps echoed as I waited for him to come by. There was crying and bawling in the background, not the sniffling I remembered. I blinked, and as if my vision cleared I started to see things better. The barren and dusty ground ⁠— the low light conditions, the dust particles flying by the sun rays that filtered through the broken windows. 

Eh… What was happening? 

My vision was shaking, I looked down… My hands were bloody, drenched in blood ⁠— my skin torn apart and I could see the muscle fibers in my hand. My dagger was covered with black and red blood ⁠— impaled entrails drooping from it. I didn’t remember impaling anything. 

My head hurt, pulsated and bashed. It felt as if my brain just wanted to puncture out of my skull. The entirety of my body throbbed and pained; my nose was running and dripping with my blood. What had actually happened? I could recall perfectly what happened but it all seemed… Too perfect…

Just to make sure I looked down, I couldn’t feel my body that much anymore ⁠— I felt numb. My face slowly looked down ⁠— my clothes were a mix of streaks of black and red, my arm was… broken? When…? It didn’t hurt… My eyes shook for a few moments. 

What was I supposed to do⁠— I had no knowledge on how to fix my arm⁠. 

After a short involuntary sigh, my right arm held my left wrist. I wasn’t the one moving it...

Snap. 

It nonchalantly fixed the bones in my arm or aligned them by tensing my shoulders, muscles, and adding strength to it. But how… No, that wasn’t it. I knew how and why. It was because I was⁠— 

“Looks like you’ve done it.” His cold voice made my raise my head, he looked at me with an unmoving face. He wasn’t reacting nor saying anything ⁠— he said he would come and help. 

I completely ignored his comment and simply opened my mouth ⁠— it was unfair. 

“Why didn’t you come, I almost died!” 

He shrugged. “I see you dealt with it though. I was busy checking other things.” Checking other things?! 

“So, if I died it would’ve been fine by you?!” 

“You didn’t die, and you are standing here. Like that…” He eyed me up and down. “Looks like you barely scraped by.”

I dropped my shoulders. He didn’t care. 

“More importantly, let’s go. We need to collect ⁠— that’s why we are here.” Eh?

“But I already collected…” and killed them...

“Did you look through the rooms?” … I shook my head as I recalled. 

He did a subtle nod and continued walking past me. “Let us collect the rooms.” 

“Yes…” And so, I followed behind him. 

* * * 

Everything was different ⁠— why were things so barren? In such a poor state, everything around was broken, the little furniture that was there was now completely gone, chair legs, table feet, wooden planks… All broken and splintered about… 

The girl from before was weeping on the ground, hitting it with no sense of control, slurring her words. What happened? The collector ignored her and continued walking, before stopping at a… pair of legs?

Why were his legs missing? They should’ve disintegrated along with the body...My eyes started to shake.

◇ ◇ ◇ 

“What’s wrong? Weren’t you going to put me in my place?” I stepped on his face. He was struggling, but I didn’t care. He had to learn. 

“Cough⁠— Once I get up I’ll show you!” He started to push his legs. 

That wasn’t good. I couldn’t allow it. 

STAB.

Screams echoed in the room. 

“It’s a shame I don’t have anything to cut, but this will have to do...” A smile crept up my face. It was certainly fun. 

Screams continued to resonate throughout the house. 

One was removed ⁠— the other one was left. 

◇ ◇ ◇ 

I started to feel nauseous… I started to remember… The feeling of the bone; breaking and snapping; how it became like jelly… how the fle flesh effortlessly came off after the tendons were detached… How it tore off like strings of silk… How his body convulsed up and down, how it shook, how it slightly trembled at times… how many times he passed out… 

It wasn’t just death… it was torture… 

“Looks like fate wasn’t so kind to him.” 

“Yeah…” 

The collector started to look around. And glued on something across the room. 

“Snapped, fingers. Amputated legs… judging by the amount of blood… probably a slow death.” His eyes narrowed. “You didn’t do this, did you?” I had also amputated his fingers...

“I…” I had done it… But I hadn’t… I had no answer for him. 

He looked away. “I see.” He started looking around and turned to the fallen door. “Let’s see his office.” I meekly nodded, I didn’t want to say anything… 

The collector completely ignored the dead girl and entered the office. 

* * * 

A broken spear. 

The office was a mess, there was a hole inside the wall there were red fragments of some kind of stone everywhere. What were they anyway? Half of the office was torn apart, the other half was untouched ⁠— namely his desk and beyond. 

He avoided stepping on the red fragments. “How brutal is this going to get…” I overheard his mutter as sweat dripped down his forehead. As he scanned his surroundings, once again gluing to something. 

Another finger on the ground… When did? Right… When I hit his hand… It was aimed at his knuckle… Incapacitate them… Make sure they can’t fight… Kill them…  

That’s how it worked… 

The red fragments on the ground? They were broken bones and its bone-marrow. Whenever it penetrated with such strength it would splinter everything. I knew and yet didn’t want to acknowledge it.  

That’s how it worked… That’s just how it worked… That’s how my brain worked.

It was scary ⁠— dungeon cores were scary ⁠— They weren’t living beings, they were more like machines instead… Micromanagement, macromanagement… Everything coldly calculated to avoid errors. They were perfect; unflawed machines; coldblooded killers. And more importantly. 

They remembered everything they saw or heard ⁠— even if it was for a split second. I was a broken core… And yet… I could remember things perfectly… my actual thoughts… They were⁠— flawed… Even for a core…

Kill them because⁠— it’s inefficient. They are inefficient. It’s ugly… An ugly sight to behold…

I kept lying to myself… It was inefficient, I was being subjective. And yet it was the best possible route… That’s what made me broken. A broken core. As soon as it happened I realized it. I was a monster… A broken one with feelings… I could enter core processing mode but...

there was no room for subjectiveness in doing so. Subjectiveness on what I was seeing. That’s why everything was so warped… Everything that didn’t matter was marked as visual contamination… Leg snapped was subjective, therefore I didn’t remember.  I was… scared. 

Of myself. 

“Go out, I need to do a few things here.” 

His cold voice brought me back to reality. He was well aware that I had done absolutely everything ⁠— intentionally or unintentionally… It didn’t matter to him… I unarguably was a monster — It was just a matter of time before I got hunted like other monsters...