After making sure he was far enough away from where he had escaped, and seeing that there was no one around him, Nathan entered a random room.
"Ha... Ha... Ha... ¡HaHaHaHa!"
Nathan removed his mask and started laughing as if he had gone mad, Amelia remained silent not understanding what was going through his head.
His whole face was full of blood, tears of blood were running down his eyes, a trickle of blood was running down his nose and his mouth was practically the same.
Nathan spat the blood he was holding in his mouth onto the floor and threw the mask on the bed, not caring about anything else as he continued to laugh.
"Fine... Fine! So that's how you want to play it!"
Adrenaline was coursing wildly through his blood and his mental state wasn't exactly sane at the moment.
Nathan stood in the middle of the room with a big grin on his face.
"You'll see... just wait. You'll regret not killing me when you could"
He ran his hand over his face and then pulled his hair back splattering drops of blood on the floor around him.
Right now, his mind was ignoring the severe pain he was feeling in both his arms, and in various areas of his body with puncture wounds and burns. But none of that seemed to matter to him.
Nathan tried to calm himself for a couple of seconds, but his heart was completely agitated. No matter how little essence was left in his body, Nathan somehow felt that he could go on fighting forever.
In this moment of madness Nathan felt almost invincible.
He turned his head and looked towards the door.
"I'm hungry..."
He was no longer near the dining hall, so now his only option was to hunt for calamities. So, he let himself be carried away by the emptiness he felt in his stomach and without even bothering to put on his mask, Nathan made his way to the doorknob.
A moment later, his eyes blurred completely, and his consciousness disappeared a second later.
Amelia licked her lips... even though she had no body.
'I'm sorry... but I can't let you go out in that state. You'd better sleep for a moment'
Stealing all the remaining essence in Nathan's body, Amelia suddenly began to feel her consciousness blurring a bit as well.
'I hope that when I wake up... you'll be you again'
***
Nathan abruptly opened his eyes and stood still, staring straight ahead.
'Where am I?'
The smell of blood in the air was strong enough to force him to grimace, plus his body ached horribly. But right now, the pain was the least of it.
Above him, the sky was a blood red color, with a black sun obscuring his surroundings.
Nathan felt dizzy and looked down.
Under his feet, a large number of corpses piled up in a mountain. Dozens and dozens of corpses with all kinds of wounds lay silently, forming an island surrounded by a great ocean of blood.
Nathan swallowed.
Usually his nightmares reconstructed his past, when he died for the first time in the facility or when the boy was strangling him in that abandoned village.
His first deaths at the hands of Boreas when he tried to rob the old man. Even remembering his lonely days when he still lived with his family was torture.
But this nightmare was different, not only because it was something he had never seen before, but because Nathan always thought of his premonitions of death as an ability that helped him, not harmed him.
He was never afraid of dying... no, it was better to say that he had become accustomed to it. But seeing the mountain of corpses beneath him, those thoughts began to waver.
All the bodies belonged to him.
He could see himself reflected in each of the bodies that had all died in different ways. He could even see some corpses from years ago, when he was still a child, weak and immature.
Up to this point in his life, where he was about to turn 18, Nathan had never wondered why he had the ability to see premonitions of death.
His family had praised Noah, saying he had been blessed by the gods.
But which gods?
Was it even a blessing... or perhaps a curse?
Suddenly Nathan felt something running down his face, so he tried to wipe his face with his hand.
Then he noticed that his hand was completely covered with blood. Slowly the blood began to drain from his body, but a moment later his vision changed, and he realized that he was lying on the floor of his room.
Nathan closed his eyes tightly again and covered his face with one hand.
'What a nuisance'
Spending almost a minute on the floor without moving, Nathan stood up with some effort, trying to ignore the vision he had just had, even though his heart remembered it perfectly.
He did not know how long he had been asleep, but judging by the dried blood around him, he guessed it had been a good amount of time.
Nathan sat up on the edge of the bed and finally took a look at his two arms.
'Ah... what a mess'
His left arm was mangled with dozens of cuts, one more prominent than the others circling his arm like a bloody snake.
His right arm on the other hand was riddled with first- and second-degree burns. If Nathan hadn't been covering his arm with essence at the moment Gril caught his arm and burned it, then the burns would have been much worse.
Nathan touched his skin to see how bad his wounds were, and then he bit his lips, enduring the wave of pain that suddenly shot through him.
A couple of seconds later, when the pain subsided, Nathan frowned and the little essence he had regained flowed into his arms.
The essence not only strengthened the body, it also accelerated the healing process... although given the severity of his wounds, Nathan did not know how long it would take for him to heal with essence alone.
The rest of his body was also full of wounds and burns, but he prioritized his arms, which were in the worst condition.
As he felt the essence reaching his arms, the pain flared up again, forcing him to grimace as he tried to ignore it.
Nathan closed his eyes and thought about what to do next.
Just then, a loud sound echoed in his ears, forcing him to cover them in annoyance.
'Ughh'
Almost five seconds later, the sound stopped, and Nathan slowly removed his hands from his ears.
'Again?'
He had heard the same thing before when he was fighting Gril and Tana, just before the mercenary king appeared.
He didn't have time to think about it much at the time, but now he realized that the sound was something similar to the song of a whale. Only much louder and higher pitched.