Ackster trudged on endlessly in the grey world of mud and mist. His body had lost most of its color, and there was barely any discernible difference between him and his surroundings. It was like he was becoming part of the wretched, dull, endless marsh of wet mud.
His legs had long since grown numb and weak, too weak.
Ackster walked just slow enough for the mud to grab hold of his foot. It wasn't more than any other time. But Ackster was too tired to fight it and free his foot from the mud's wet and cool embrace. He fell.
But Ackster's body was at least awake enough to catch his fall. Before he could give the ground a wet kiss, he braced himself with his hands.
'Wait….'
The fall induced Ackster's first thought since he started losing color and turning grey. The thought moved at a snail's pace through his mind, and he barely even registered having it.
The thought and what had prompted it was about to disappear from Ackster's head and, with them, probably the last remaining splotch of color on him.
But a final bout of clarity hit Ackster, bestowing upon him a lifesaving grace. It was like a candle-sized beam of sunlight had pierced through the grey veil clouding his mind and the grey mist veiling his surroundings.
'I'm not supposed to have both hands.'
Ackster brain fought like an old ride-on lawnmower caught in a steep uphill battle.
The two thoughts crawling through his mind were paving the way through the thick mud in their path, opening up for more.
'No. I am supposed to have two, but I don't. I have….'
A third thought that raced to catch up to the previous two entered Ackster's mind.
'I have one arm, one hand.'
Ackster's glazed-over eyes, white like a blind person's, turned to look at his muddy palms.
He had one arm and one hand. He was supposed to, at least. He knew that. He knew it deep in his heart, thanks to the pain that came with the knowledge.
But why did he have a complete now? Was his body healed? Was this grey landscape the price he had to pay for that?
No.
That wasn't it.
Ackster's head ached as he tried to remember, tried to figure out what was going on, tried to find the answers to the flood of questions that welled out as soon as the dam in his mind burst.
The more he tried, the worse the pain got. It went from having bumped his head against a too-low doorframe to someone playing the drums at a rock concert with it in an instant. And it kept intensifying.
But if there was anything Ackster could bear, could endure, could handle, it was pain.
Ackster didn't let the pain within his head or the fact that it was magnifying like the view of a meteor entering the atmosphere impede his progress. He didn't let it stop him from thinking back to what the last thing before this grey landscape he remembered was.
He used the pain.
The pain was the first thing that felt real when not even his body did.
After entering this muddy wasteland, the only thing that had provoked Ackster's senses had been the fatigue of walking endlessly. But even that sensation had gone through a thin plastic film before reaching Ackster, who hadn't even thought about it since his mind was at a standstill.
Ackster used the pain and its realness.
He used the pain of searching for the truth of his mind to remind himself of all the pain he had bore already.
The fight with the poison goblin, his broken arm, and the poison-induced fever had invited him to the world of pain. And he had all too willingly accepted that invitation with all his heart as he sought after pain.
Whenever he got the chance, he chose the riskiest and most brutal solutions to his problems.
The pain of broken bones, lacerated skin, and torn muscle grounded Ackster. It held him in its grip and forced him to confront reality.
He wasn't in some strange dream manifested by his escapism.
He had transmigrated. It was his new reality. And the pain helped him remember that.
It also helped him remember that he was alive.
As long as he felt pain, he lived.
And that was all he wanted. To live.
This pain Ackster felt for the first time in what felt like forever helped bring him back to sanity, to the real world. He was no longer walking on the brink of insanity. He was no longer walking toward his own doom.
Color returned to Ackster, still kneeling in the mud. From the center of his chest, his heart color returned to Ackster's pale skin. The whiteness from having been stuck underground for several months was a stark contrast to the grey world around him.
Color returned to the ratty, yellow rags, stained with blood, that was all that remained of his clothes.
His hair and eyes regained their marine-blue luster, and his eyes especially shone with radiant determination.
His pink lips split up in half a smile as he stood up.
Ackster was back, and so was his color, which had been leeched away by his surroundings.
The only exception was his right arm up to right below his shoulder. It was the only thing as grey as the mud beneath his feet.
Ackster grabbed the seam and yanked his fake arm off of himself. He threw it on the ground, where it collapsed into a pile of dust that melted into the ground.
Ackster might have regained consciousness, and his thoughts and body might be in a good state. But he was still trapped in the muddy wasteland.
Ackster snorted.
He stomped on the ground. The wet mud didn't splash or cave under his feet.
It dried up like the desert. That dryness spread through the wasteland, blowing away the fog with it. And once the cracks in the ground reached further than Ackster could see, they reached the sky, which also began cracking like a glass dome.
All around him, the world collapsed, piece by piece. It all came crumbling down like a house of rice.