Arlan woke up and the first thing he did when he opened his eyes was to gasp for air. For some reason, he woke up sweaty and breathing hard.
But that was normal, considering he almost died.
Aside from his restlessness, Arlan felt something else. Pain, that was all Arlan could feel in his body.
But it wasn't pain in his shattered arm or in his chest full of deadly lacerations. Instead, Arlan felt pain inside, but it wasn't his muscles or organs.
It was something else, a pain that transcended the physical... it was like a pain in his 'soul'.
But for some reason, his body was healthy, the wounds he had suffered against the invisible monster were gone...but the scars were there.
Sitting up and resting his arms on his knees, Arlan looked around with a tired expression.
'...Here again'
Arlan was once again in the pure darkness that was so familiar, though something had changed since the last time.
In front of him, a dark sphere hovered a few meters above the ground. However, the streams of blue light from before were gone, replaced by an ethereal pillar that stretched from the ground to infinity. In addition, the dark, murky smoke the orb had emitted was no longer there.
Arlan hesitated to approach the orb, for the last time he touched it, he had three strange dreams and woke up in the burning village.
'Just... give me a moment to rest'
Feeling the pain in his body, Arlan began to think about what to do. It wasn't as if he had much of a choice.
The last time he had left after touching the orb, he didn't know any other way out. So, it was either touch the orb or stay in this place forever and risk hearing that deep, dark voice gnawing at his mind again.
To this day, he had no idea what the words he had heard for almost 6 years meant.
"...I need the hearts. What the hell does that mean?"
Who did the voice belong to, what was the meaning behind it?
Many questions without answers, but closer than ever to answering some of them. He had arrived at the place where Specimen 003 was being studied, which was supposed to have something to do with what had happened to him 6 years ago.
"Hahaha... Why does everything have to be so complicated?" Arlan covered his eyes with his hand and chuckled softly.
It had literally been no more than an hour since he had entered the bunker, and he was already close to dying.
Feeling the pain less and less, Arlan stood up and looked at the dark sphere in the pillar of ethereal light.
'Not strange at all'
Arlan stretched out his arms and began to walk slowly, careful of anything that might appear, but he reached the orb, and nothing happened. Neither the miasma appeared, nor was the voice heard. Just silence in the infinite and eternal darkness.
Like last time, Arlan reached his hand through the pillar of light. He felt a warm sensation in his hand and then touched the orb with the tip of his index finger.
At that moment, the dark world began to tremble and Arlan felt his head begin to heat up...as if something was trying to enter it.
Arlan pulled away from the orb and took a few steps back in discomfort, though it wasn't painful, it was too strange a sensation. He felt the warmth he had felt in his head move down to his chest, warming his pounding heart.
But suddenly everything changed, Arlan felt the heat spread throughout his body, but his surprise was greater when he saw that all his veins were black.
It took only a moment, but his blood had turned completely black. If Arlan were to look in a mirror, he would see a horrible scene.
But that wasn't the worst of it, because Arlan didn't have time to feel bad, not when strange symbols appeared in his head that Arlan had never seen before, but somehow understood perfectly.
[First Pillar Acquired]
[Heart of the Dragon Zyrzos the Corrupted]
***
In the cafeteria kitchen, Kaylynn had dragged Arlan to the other side, as far away from the monster's corpse as possible. Not for anything in particular, just because she didn't want to be near it.
Kaylynn took a close look at Arlan's body, his arm was completely torn apart, and it was a miracle that it was still attached to his body.
His entire chest was ripped open, and blood was pouring all over his body, soaking his clothes. Kaylynn was worried about the blood loss, but there wasn't much she could do.
She had never received first aid training, and the most she knew how to do was apply pressure to the wounds to try to stop the bleeding. But Kaylynn couldn't just apply pressure all over Arlan's chest.
All she could do was tear off a piece of her priestess robe and tie it around Arlan's arm. Even if it didn't help much, at least she tried.
But there was something else that frightened Kaylynn, and that was the smell of blood. The sense of smell of the invisible monster was especially bad, but the sense of smell of other monsters was much better and they could sniff them out and track them down.
This cafeteria was the invisible monster's territory, so it wasn't very likely that other monsters would arrive in the next few hours, but looking at Arlan's condition, they would definitely be there for quite a while.
They also had no water or food, so they might starve to death before a monster arrived.
Kaylynn sighed and leaned her back against the central kitchen table, then took one last look at Arlan and closed her eyes wearily.
There was nothing more she could do, and she was completely exhausted. Kaylynn herself didn't know if she had ever been so tired in her entire life, so not even a minute passed before her head dropped and she fell fast asleep.