Chapter 34
Dullness of a Soul
Tara snapped awake.
Her entire body shuddered immediately, her eyes unable to adjust to the falling darkness. It took a moment for the edges of the objects to sharpen enough for her to be able to discern where she was–she was still there, in hell, in the furnace of agony and anguish. Her eyes fearfully wandered to the side and, soon, there she saw him. He sat with his back facing her, back taller than the sky, yet blacker than the abyss itself. She loathed them–the back and the face to its front.
There was little in her heart past the unbearable, mind-bending terror, anger, and pain. Nothing she experienced in her life came remotely close to rendering her lost, a mind snapped and divided from the membrane of reality. Not her first heartbreak, not her brother leaving, not the envy she held for other kids who had mothers… she persisted through them all, head held high, but for the first time in her life she wanted to hang her head to the ground, whimper, and be forgotten.
"How are you feeling?" his voice… his voice didn't carry care or comfort or concern, she recognised. It was cold, detached… a stranger's voice. He didn't even look at her, his back still facing her.
"... fine," she swallowed everything and replied. She'd fallen into the well of awe and he was nice enough to remind her–remind her that she was living in delusions. There was no love between them, no warmth, no concern. Ronald and her and the new kid, Elijah, were just tools to him–and he was their Mentor… and nothing more. He glanced back at her, his reddish eyes calm like a tranquil lake. Expressionless glazed his face, and his lips barely parted as he spoke.
"You want to kill me, it seems," he said. "It's something, at least."
"... it's something?" she knew she should let it go–she should forget, 'forgive', and live on. But she couldn't. "Fuck you, Ethan. No, seriously, I hope you choke on that fucking air that you're breathing and croak like a piece of shit that you are."
"Yeah, it's something," he seemed unfazed by her words or her tone. To him, it seemed as though she was a child throwing a tantrum, and that only served to fan the flames of anger within her. "It's better than licking your snot while wailing away."
"Is this… is this some 'tough love teaching moment'? Some really fucked-up psychological way of doing things? Or is it just you getting a fuckin' boner off of torturing us?" Ronald groaned and slowly started waking up, his red cheeks colouring pale white in mere moments.
"Torturing you?" he looked oddly at her, standing up slowly. "I haven't even begun torturing you."
"W-what?" Tara stuttered in horror.
"In ten days," he said. "We'll either clear that Tunnel, or you, me, Layla, the entire city… we're all gonna end up on the list of the unfortunately dead. I know you think I'm some sort of an invincible God who can just swing his giant dick and kill whatever he wants, but I'm not. If I were, I sure as hell wouldn't log you pricks around.
"So, pardon me, Mrs. Righteous, if I don't have the patience to nurture your weak-ass with love and care and whatever emotional food you need to thrive," he added, crouching in front of her. Though the words were sharp blades cutting through her soul, he spoke them with no malice–there was no anger, no snark, there was nothing in his voice. "You'll either survive, learn, and get good enough to help me in some capacity, or you'll crack and break like a shard of glass. In which case, I'll take Layla and get as far the fuck away from here as I can. Now, with the pointless chattering done," Ethan said. "Get up."
"... w-what?" Tara mumbled in horror. No, she wept inwardly. Not again.
"Get up," Ethan repeated, walking away from the shaking duo. "And attack me. Again."
"N-no, no! At-at least, at least give us a break! Just an hour!" Tara cried out.
"No," Ethan's reply was firm and stoic. "Get up and attack me."
"... f-f-fuck, fuck you, you piece of shit!!!" Tara howled and heaved forward, moving faster than she'd ever moved before. In fact, she moved so fast she misjudged when she'd reach him, causing her swing to be a whole second late. By then, her face was being dented in by Ethan's fingers as he pressed tightly into her skull. Her sight turned bloody-red as wetness besieged her cheeks, corners of her lips leaking blood, her snot scarlet like her tears. She choked for a moment before Ethan swung and tossed her almost twenty feet away, slamming her into the tree. Once again, a burst of pain cracked her senses and her mind bent itself, shutting down. She desperately clung to the sensation of consciousness, wanting to defy him for as long as she could, but failed. Darkness swallowed her.
"Dammit," Ronald gnashed his teeth, forcing himself to stand up. His entire body was shaking, heart swallowed in fear, mind screaming at him to run away–but his legs were cast of lead, and they stood unmoving. Forward or backward.
"... should I come to you?" Ethan asked him with a tilt of his head.
"Fuck you! Come if you dare, motherfucker!" he copied Tara's bravado, though it felt beyond unnatural to curse so violently. Nonetheless, as were the intentions beforehand, the outcomes were also the same–Ethan rammed forward and slammed his knee into Ronald's jaw, breaking it alongside more than half of the boy's face. Teeth flew out like droplets of rain, blood spraying out as though from a fountain, and the boy flew back for nearly ten feet before landing, having fallen unconscious halfway through the flight.
Ethan sighed and retreated to the edge after giving them some first-aid treatment. They were so weak. Though his stats were a bit larger than theirs, it was hardly the cause of such discrepancy. They simply didn't know how to use the newfound strength–they were blind and numb to the nuances of what the numbers represented. It was, in the end, a matter of experience; he had twenty years of battles fought as an Awakened and they didn't.
He did feel bad and guilty. The kids hardly deserved the kind of beating that will likely be the worst experience of their lives for many years to come. But it was either this or abandoning them while he sauntered off with Layla. He couldn't close the Tunnel alone, that much was already confirmed–the colour had begun diluting quicker and more violently. Though that had no connection with the number of monsters inside, it did indicate that their quality vastly surpassed the ones from the previous Tunnel they'd blitzed through.
If his estimates were correct, the average Level of the monsters inside would be 15, with those on the high end nearing 30. And the boss itself will likely be Level 30. It didn't make sense, none of it. The first Level 30 boss was found inside the Tunnel near the city and it went on to claim the title of the boss who went the longest without being defeated. It was such an anomaly that it was a worldwide phenomenon. The difference was in the Tunnels–one was just an ordinary Tunnel that would remain unchanging forever, and another was a potential city-ending hellscape that would break loose if they failed to quell it.
Though he could sit the kids down and numbly explain to them precisely why he was beating them so violently, he felt it would do them more harm than good. A mind cannot be forced by will to adjust, and thinking overtly about it would only serve to exacerbate the problem. He was not only beating them to get them used to the sensation of pain, the kind that would snap one's nerves in the middle of a battle and cost them their lives, but also so that they could get used to their stats properly–they have no gauge of how much damage they can take before actually, physically dying.
In their minds, as in the minds of every other freshly Awakened, they still felt their body fragile. And while for other Awakened that was the case to a certain extent, due to their Class, the Awakened's already insane healing abilities were exaggerated further into the realm of near-absurdity. While they couldn't regenerate limbs if they were torn off, their bodies could sew those limbs back to the body within hours.
Every action upon the body had a value–a numerical value. Getting a leg yanked off dealt 40 damage (very roughly in the baseline) and caused 'Bleed' status that, if not dealt with, would eventually kill an Awakened as it would a normal person. But a normal person dies within minutes, while an Awakened can sustain blood loss for hours before finally succumbing. All of the horrors were evidence of that, but the kids' minds weren't there–they were still indulging in the terror of it. It was natural, however. They didn't want to undergo such levels of pain, but, in all of the ways, they would have to–be that today or the future–so as to allow the mind to adapt properly.
For a moment during their last 'fight', Tara seemed to have picked up on it–she pushed a bit of Blood into her feet and rammed forward out of anger. She didn't do it consciously, but she adjusted real-time to the problem at hand which gave Ethan a bit of hope.
Whether they would be able to break through the 'wall' or not was up to them. He could only push them with savagery and try to force it out of them. The consolation, at the very least, was that they were hanging on still–their minds, stretched thin though they were, held on. Rather than surrender, there was light and fire and anger in their eyes–and that was all he could ask of them. For that anger to fuel them through the horrors and carry them to the other side of it all.