2nd Life
“What the hell is even going on!” A dark-skinned young girl kicked a rock into a bush filled with bright orange berries.
The smell of the berry bush nearly sent her off her feet from its delicious fragrance. But she didn’t grab one to take a bite. Despite lacking memories of anything about where she was, who she was, and what was even going on, she knew that bright things in the wild equaled poisonous. She might’ve been dressed like some sort of primitive woman from the time before civilization with a one-strap leopard print dress but that didn’t mean she was one! Her memories are gone but thankfully her common sense hasn’t left the building either.
“Waking up in some weird forest with nothing but the clothes on my back. Totally vulnerable to everything and anything out here.” She picked up a thick branch and a rock as she crouched underneath a tree.
She decided to fashion herself a weapon for protection in case she ran into any dangerous wild animals. By using the rock against the sides of the branch near the tip, she could sharpen it into a pointy stick. But she wasn’t a primitive girl! There just weren’t any modern and civilized weapons out here for her to utilize. It was only natural to make do with what was available as a normal girl with common sense.
The rock was sharp enough that it kind of resembled a knife but who would choose to use a knife over a spear? Someone without common sense, that’s who. But just on the off chance that her spear breaks, this rock could be nice as a backup weapon. The thing was, she had nowhere to pocket it. Her dress didn’t come with pockets and she wasn’t shoving anything inside herself. She briefly thought about putting it between her breasts but unfortunately, they weren’t big enough to keep it from slipping through and falling to the ground.
“Where is civilization? Where is civilization? Where is civilization?” She sang to herself.
Traveling through the woods with a spear and no idea where she’s headed. The only thing she could do to keep herself from being bored was sing, chant, and panic at every noise she heard nearby. This only kept her entertained for a little while until her stomach started to grumble and rumble. Now she had to find something to eat. Hopefully, she could find some berries that didn’t look poisonous or fruits because she didn’t know the first thing about hunting or preparing dead animals.
Hours went by without any signs of any fruits or berries, leaving her quite starved and desperate. The sun was about to go bye bye and the moon would soon take its place in the sky. She would have to find someplace to rest soon. Maybe some sleep would take her mind off the pain in her gut. Sleeping for dinner isn’t that uncommon for some people her age. This would be a situation where she felt that restraining herself from eating the leaves off of a tree and going to sleep instead would be for the better.
Up ahead, there was a dark cave near a cold clear pond. The pond could fit around fifty or more humans at max capacity and looked relatively safe in case she ever ran into trouble. Wolves or bears wouldn’t go into the water to chase prey, would they? Wasn’t it only bees that stayed above the water if their enemy went underwater? God, she hoped so.
After taking several sips of the pond water, she went to explore the cave where she could see nothing inside. It only took a few moments for her to instantly regret that decision. In a matter of a single minute, she was soon running out of the cave at full speed screaming her lungs out as an animal was right on her tail. No, she didn’t jump into the pond like she was pondering about earlier.
‘You’re kidding! You’re kidding! I’m so stupid! Of course, a freaking giant lizard would be sleeping inside a cave! It makes perfect sense!’ She inwardly cursed with every breath.
The big lizard wouldn’t pass up a free meal and chased the slow prey. It believed it would catch up to the food in no time but even after an entire minute of chasing them, they’ve yet to stop and it was pretty cold out. Exerting this much energy for prey that seemed like it was more trouble than it was worth wasn’t worth it. If it tried too hard and still didn’t manage to catch the food, it would die of the cold! So, it stopped chasing the meal and slowly made its way back to its cave.
The human on the other hand doubled over and puked out the water she drank earlier after pushing herself beyond her limits. Then she fainted in her puddle of vomit and didn’t wake up till it was morning. What greeted her when waking up was a horrid rancid stench of stomach bile and morning breath. She had puke all over the left side of her face and hair, stomach roaring to the heavens, and stained piss etched on her legs. As the civilized and modern girl she was, she swiftly returned to the pond and dunked herself inside to clean herself.
Without drying herself, she quickly made her way elsewhere to hopefully find people or a way out of this damn forest. Humans weren’t suited to live in the wild anymore. They’ve moved past that point in their evolutionary history. Now they belonged in cities and such. A city sounded much more pleasant than this disgusting terrifying forest.
“God, I'm so hungry...” She groaned.
By this point, even the fat little round bugs crawling on the ground looked like juicy little snacks ripe for the taking. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to just try one bug... Should she cook them or eat it raw? If she wanted to cook them, then she’d need to make a fire and collect a good amount of them that would fill her stomach. But one, making a fire was not something she had experience with, and two, having a bunch of bugs crawling around in her hands without squishing them was going to be impossible. Her hunger was beginning to think for her but she still had an innate dislike for insects.
‘Keeping them alive doesn’t matter. What matters is that I eat their stupid tasty looking meat. Just don’t squish them and it’ll be fine. I have to put something in my stomach or I'm going to go crazy...’ Her eyes frantically looked around in search of the biggest insects.
The best she could find was a single ant carrying a small leaf somewhere. She followed the little ant without disturbing it. While she wouldn’t be able to eat big insects, ants usually number in the hundreds, thousands, or millions in their ant hills. As she was crawling on the forest’s floor following a mindless ant, something stumbled into her during her search for food.
“Skree!” An emerald green fox with a large fluffy tail around the size of a large dog pounced at her.
An instinctive scream rang out from her as she was bit and clawed by the wild beast. Her survival instincts kicked in as she did everything, she could to protect her throat and kick this animal away from herself. It latched onto her arm with its sharp teeth and caused her to scream even louder from the pain shooting up in her arm. She used the small rock from earlier to stab the fox in its eye but it still didn’t release her arm. So, she stabbed it until it did. Gushing blood from both herself and the animal, as its growling and her screaming combined into one horrible symphony between man vs nature.
Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab. Stabstabstabstabstabstabstabstabstab!
By the time she felt its jaw loosen, there was little feeling in her arm. She didn’t realize when she started crying but tears were falling down her face as she dry heaved from killing the animal. The fox was dead and she wasn’t in a better condition. That pond was too far away to try to travel to for cleaning her wounds. It was shameful but dealing with her injuries came first. Why did it have to hurt so badly...?
She moved away from the dead fox with both her spear and rock in hand. With the rock, she started to cut off a piece of her clothing to use as wrappings for her injured arm. Cutting from the top or bottom wasn’t an option unless she wanted to reveal her breasts or vagina to anybody she meets. So, she had to make do with the middle section of her leopard skirt. Exposing her navel didn’t seem like much of a problem when compared to the other two.
After doing an absolutely amateur and horrible job at cutting the dress and patching up her wounds, she grabbed the dead fox by the tail and dragged it away. For nearly killing her, becoming her meal was the least it could do. Right?
Unfortunately, everything started to get blurry for some reason. She tried taking her glasses off, scrubbing her eyes and then putting them back on but that still didn’t work. Why does it take so much effort just to walk now...?
‘Did I eat one of those berries and just blocked it out of my memory...?’
The ground suddenly came straight towards her before everything went black.
That moment when you win 20$ off your friend because you bet the writer would break their own worlds rules and flounder because they literally don't know how to handle their own characters inner thoughts.
it would be more beneficial to me and the readers if you pointed out what world rule I broke so that I could fix it and improve the story.
@FukinDeadBeat Maybe it's because she clearly doesn't remember that she is fighting her heart demon right now, or even that she's already died once. How is this a test of our current Jing if her memory is gone? This isn't our Jing taking this test, memories are what make a person and are definitely what make a heart demon. Its like testing Mario based on Wario's actions, and honestly it is boring. Jing didn't learn anything or make any progress. This whole thing is a pointless waste of our time if its just events happening while the plot and character stands still.
@coldpyr0 My goodness. Don't let me rub off on you people. But yes, that's basically what a heart demon is and was explained in earlier chapters. So yeah, these really weren't progressive chapters and really didn't convey whatever it is the writer seems to think it does.
I was really expecting a lot when the writer described jing bleeding from her eyes in previous chapters. but all we get is basically just bland repetition of the character learning nothing and doing nothing.
@coldpyr0 Memories are not what make a person in this world. The soul is. And of course Jing didn't learn anything, we're just starting.
@lordhump6 It'll all come together eventually and your arguments would be more effective in helping me write a better story for the readers if you provided sources to some of your thoughts. Where did I explain that a heart demon was basically a person's memories?
@FukinDeadBeat hmm, While not explicitly memories was stated in your book, that tends to be the norm from where you drew the source material. Which of course doesn't mean anything for your own writings.
But from previous chapters you have never made this about the soul, and in fact have repeatedly shown it to be your standard setting heart demon, which is entirely about a persons choices and conscious / subconscious feelings. Basically their personal Psyche.
Non of which was followed up on with jing, and in fact jings chapters directly oppose what you have laid out as the norm from all your previous heart demons.
Now sure, Jings not "normal" But honestly NONE of these characters are "normal" as this is a world of spiritual strength and supernatural powers abound.
Honestly I was expecting something of Hu Tao's SCP to filter through into his trial because you've made it very clear the Entity inside that SCP is also inside Hu Tao's space. Yet all you did for Hu Tao was show him everything he'd ever remembered hurting, and him basically saying "Yeah? what's you're point? I chose to do all of that in the first place, what makes you think I did anything I didn't want to do?"
@FukinDeadBeat 'A fear of death, the fear of the unknown, the fear of being forgotten, or the fear of having their karma catch up to them for all the horrendous deeds they have performed in their life.' They have to be able to remember that these fears exist for the heart demon test to have any foundation in reality. And no, saying that the soul makes the person does not hold water. A lot of people give authors some free reign to smudge things but you can not smudge things outside of the story. You can't just tell me the soul is what makes Jing herself to us, because that is not how the human brain works my friend. Your readers don't get some special power to see souls or something just by reading your work. To the reader, the real Jing that we have been reading about is not the subject of these chapters because she has none of the memories or behaviors of the Jing we know. This means that for us these chapters are a pointless waste of time where the main character is frozen in time in the background while we watch a bumbling fool in her place that isn't even learning anything. She is just dying in stupid ways over and over again with no carry-over. Go ahead, just try and tell me what point her dying twice has when she doesn't remember it happening? She isn't growing from it. She isn't learning how to better avoid dying. She isn't getting stronger. She is doing nothing but walking in a circle. Tell me how this does anything to push our MC to grow if they have none of the memories that make them what they are today and don't get to keep any memories from the repeated failures? You do know the whole saying that we are supposed to learn and grow from failures yeah? How is anyone supposed to learn or grow if they don't ever remember failing?
@FukinDeadBeat My only guess would be is that the Entity that is in charge of her is basically just f*cking with her. And here's why. IF what you say is true, and this is about her soul. Than technically that's another f*ck up, because the "system" was claimed to be a literal part of her soul now.
Meaning it would make no sense for it to be left out if this had anything to do with her soul other than the divine baby sitter f*cking with the MC.
@lordhump6 Agreed, these last few chapters haven't introduced anything new to the story and if the MC won't even remember the events why should I bother reading it? If no one in the story remembers the events then it is a dead chapter with zero plot connections and is pointless for me the read much less attempt to see as anything but a story stalling out while the author flounders about to figure out where to go next. And if it is some divine f*ckery then again, why should I continue to care about a test that is just some stupid game to a god-like being? I was actually interested to see what fears Jing had and how she could face them, but Jing is not in these chapters and isn't facing anything right now because this girl isn't even Jing. By your own writing, she hasn't called herself Jing or used any form of name this whole time, which means she is essentially an entirely new character being tested based on someone else's fears. You even had a comment on the last chapter where someone asked if you were adding a new character, that should be a hint that this girl is not Jing to your readers.
@lordhump6
But from previous chapters you have never made this about the soul, and in fact have repeatedly shown it to be your standard setting heart demon, which is entirely about a persons choices and conscious / subconscious feelings. Basically their personal Psyche.
Are you saying that a person's choices and conscious/ subconscious feelings have no impact on their soul? That their soul won't be influenced or impacted by these things? If so, I'll have to disagree. But from what I can tell, I'll need to do an in-depth explanation on how souls work in this world so that the readers can understand more about them. Thank you for commenting.
Honestly I was expecting something of Hu Tao's SCP to filter through into his trial because you've made it very clear the Entity inside that SCP is also inside Hu Tao's space. Yet all you did for Hu Tao was show him everything he'd ever remembered hurting, and him basically saying "Yeah? what's you're point? I chose to do all of that in the first place, what makes you think I did anything I didn't want to do?"
This is a realistic expectation and logical expectation but Hu Tao's heart demons have nothing to with SCP-106. While he is curious of what the hell it is and how the hell did Jing give it to him, nothing about it plagues his heart or soul. So, there was no reason for me to include it in his trial.
@coldpyr0
'A fear of death, the fear of the unknown, the fear of being forgotten, or the fear of having their karma catch up to them for all the horrendous deeds they have performed in their life.' They have to be able to remember that these fears exist for the heart demon test to have any foundation in reality.
They do not have to remember that these fears exist to test any foundation they have in reality. You don't have to know you fear something to fear it. To explain it, how about this: A person that has never seen a snake or know anything about snakes can be frightened of one when suddenly face to face with one and it strikes at them with its fast bite.
Also, the test is to pull these fears, whether known or unknown, out of the disciples in the first place to see if they are "strong" enough to deal with them. Can they handle it or will they break under the pressure?
And no, saying that the soul makes the person does not hold water. A lot of people give authors some free reign to smudge things but you can not smudge things outside of the story. You can't just tell me the soul is what makes Jing herself to us, because that is not how the human brain works my friend. Your readers don't get some special power to see souls or something just by reading your work.
I can tell you that the soul is what makes Jing herself to you because I'm the author. But to try and seriously answer you, but the heart demon test doesn't take place in the human brain. So there is no basis for bringing the human brain into this by saying the human brain would just remember who it is during this test. If that is what you're saying, not trying to put words into your mouth.
To the reader, the real Jing that we have been reading about is not the subject of these chapters because she has none of the memories or behaviors of the Jing we know. This means that for us these chapters are a pointless waste of time where the main character is frozen in time in the background while we watch a bumbling fool in her place that isn't even learning anything. She is just dying in stupid ways over and over again with no carry-over. Go ahead, just try and tell me what point her dying twice has when she doesn't remember it happening? She isn't growing from it. She isn't learning how to better avoid dying. She isn't getting stronger. She is doing nothing but walking in a circle. Tell me how this does anything to push our MC to grow if they have none of the memories that make them what they are today and don't get to keep any memories from the repeated failures? You do know the whole saying that we are supposed to learn and grow from failures yeah? How is anyone supposed to learn or grow if they don't ever remember failing?
This is the real Jing you've been reading about this time entire time. I'm not going to give spoilers in the comments to this reply but I'll do the best that I can to answer you.
Her behavior and memories are completely similar to the Jing from the starting chapters of this story, I'll have to disagree with you on this one.
Her repeats aren't for nothing. They'll play into everything eventually but you'll have to be patient with me. So, just give me some time to show that.
I'm not just wasting chapters on something that won't play an important part into Jing's character or the story's plot. I've been hyping up Jing's heart demon for weeks, it wouldn't make sense just to make it pointless filler.
@FukinDeadBeat
Are you saying that a person's choices and conscious/ subconscious feelings have no impact on their soul? That their soul won't be influenced or impacted by these things? If so, I'll have to disagree.
Then why we are shown this pathetic excuse of a Jing instead of the one we know? It's like we are looking at the one from ch1. From what I see, everything that happened to her till now has no effect on her soul. If it did, we wouldn't have this thing instead of the real MC.
A person that has never seen a snake or know anything about snakes can be frightened of one when suddenly face to face with one and it strikes at them with its fast bite.
This argument is so stupid I don't even know from where to start... There's virtually an infinite amount of things a person could potentially be afraid of, does it means that everybody would be tested for everything there is to see if they were capable of dealing with them or not? Of course not. It did not happen to anyone else but the mc. They just faced something related to them. Talking about bending the already established rules for the sake of the plot.
but the heart demon test doesn't take place in the human brain. So there is no basis for bringing the human brain into this by saying the human brain would just remember who it is during this test.
No? But then, why everyone else does? If the brain isn't involved, where does the test take the information for testing them? Is there a part of the soul that retains memories? If so, why Jing’s does not do that?
Hu Tao for example just experienced everyone he hurt, remembered he did that while knowing who he was and that he was alright with it. The rest as well. Why Jing not? Because plot reasons > story rules.
@FDSIO You put it best, the author is trying to have it both ways. They are trying to claim that the soul is the basis for the test while also claiming that the MC's soul either doesn't keep its memories or its memories are unimportant for the test. If the MC's memories are unimportant for the test why is the test important enough to waste our time with? You asked the original poster to provide more clear criticism yet you ignore all the criticism them and others offered in this comment chain and waved it away that we didn't understand some arbitrary rules of your world instead of just admitting that you didn't write this well because you needed it to be written this way. Jing is the only one who has forgotten everything in her trial, Jing is the only one that completely changed personality in her trial. Therefore, the trial reads like a plothole that was written on accident because you had a goal that is more forced than natural in your own story.