As soon as Zen slept off his medallion which he had slept with suddenly began to glow brightly. Zen's face scrunched up in discomfort in his sleep as his body began to feel hot. The sensation continued for a while before he suddenly woke up due to the heat. Although confused about the heat he wasn't too bothered by it. He went to the bathroom and decided to splash water on his face, for some reason his reflection this time was normal and didn't bother him. Zen although surprised that he had decided to stay quiet splashed water on his face and was forced to react as he saw steam arising from his body. Utterly confused Zen quickly removed his clothes. He himself knew the amount of heat or cold it would take for him to sweat or shiver was almost inhuman but here he was literally boiling.
Zen felt like there was something wrong about this heat he felt like his temperature was rising from the inside out and not the other way around as he could actually feel his insides boiling. Little did he know that if anyone else went through this they'd be screaming in agony right now. He quickly opened water into the large bath tub and set it to as cold as the machine would allow then jumped into it leaving the water to run. He sat down in the tub and tried to keep as much of his body as possible below water however he could feel it wasn't working, he wasn't cooling down at all, infact the cold water's temperature was rapidly rising. Zen attempted to get up to check if there was anything else he could do about the water but a stinging pain suddenly assaulted his mind and he suddenly began to hear voices, not one or two but dozens. Young, old, male, female, there were hundreds if not thousands of them, his mind was in absolute chaos. What made it worse was that a good number of them were screaming in either fear or agony indiscernibly .
Disoriented he slipped and fell backwards. Somehow he fell and his arm slammed against the mirror shattering it into fragments which got impaled into his arm drawing blood. As this happened Zen's eyes closed as he went unconscious. and fell to the ground.
As zen went unconscious the medallion once again began to glow and suddenly all the blood that had been drawn from zen's arm and almost as if by the use of a water ability every single drop flowed towards the medallion and disappeared once it touched it leaving the entire place spotless except for the broken mirror fragments.
Even in his unconscious state the voices didn't let up, screaming and shouting and murmuring indiscernibly. After an unknown period of time the voices seemed to get quieter and Zen began to hear static like from a radio and amidst the chaos he felt like he could vaguely make out a mechanical voice
[System active]
[Quest received]
As soon as he heard that ,zen immediately jolted awake his mind still a bit fuzzy and disoriented. He noticed the pieces of glass in his arm and one by one began removing them however he suddenly realized that the floor was clean and quickly got up and saw that not only was it clean it was dry. Zen also noticed that as he pulled out the glass fragments blood didn't gush out and some of the wounds seemed to have healed up a bit. Confused he decided to take a shower and put his clothes on. As he got out of the bathroom he noticed celia in the room sitting on the couch. As soon as she noticed him a sinister smile appeared on her face which disappeared as soon as it appeared and was replaced by a bright one
"Hey there, where have you been?, you worried me".
Zen was confused, although more about why she was here at this time of the night and he decided to ask "what are you talking about?".
Celia on the other hand grunted and replied
"What do you mean what am I talking about? , anyway that's not important. Wanna have dinner together?"
"Dinner?".
Zen suddenly thought of something and quickly checked his watch and realized that he had been passed out for a whole day, All that stuff that happened was last night and it was already about nine o'clock at night. Although surprised by this discovery he managed to keep a straight face. He looked to Celia's hand and noticed the same basket which she used to bring food for him and felt like it was a bit unnecessary as he had a fridge now and even if the food was tampered with,he had a pretty good poison resistance so he felt there was no need to bring the basket or eat dinner together but he didn't bother speaking up as there was no harm in eating together and agreed.
After they had eaten celia hung around for a bit before she said she was about to leave. Zen took her to the door and as she was about to walk out she suddenly turned around and leaned in as she caught him off guard and pressed her lips against his cheek . Before anything else could be said she quickly ran out of the room looking somewhat exhausted. Zen was left there wondering how this had happened again .
Celia ran as fast as she could and stopped when she was far enough. she seemed irritated
"This damn human,i can't believe that had no effect,i even spiked his food but that was useless as well, and that damn weakening effect of his physique. And the worst part is he doesn't even know about it, it's like he's mocking me.... Well just wait, soon you'll be under my foot. I still don't understand why i can't just beat him up and take him, he's obviously weaker and leaving these marks on him directly is too draining. Seems I'll have to live with it for now but not for long"
Once she was done monologuing she left the hallway towards her room a little bit furious.
Meanwhile zen was in his room and had simply decided to ignore what just happened. He sat on the sofa and couldn't help thinking about how he had spent nearly 24 hours listening to those voices. And he couldn't help but be confused by the events of the previous night. Zen raised his arm and waved it around a few times and noticed it was sluggish just like how he felt. Although he had slept for so long Zen felt like he was still very tired however he felt it was more mental than physical exhaustion. His brain felt foggy and sluggish so much so that he felt like he could still go to sleep despite having slept a day and a night . As bizarre as it was he once again began to doze off but as he began to drift off his mind would get overwhelmed by the hundreds of voices in his mind and he would wake up abruptly. This happened a few times before Zen decided he'd have to stay awake through the night. It wasn't that the voices scared him but the share amount of noise and chaos in his mind was simply too disorienting.
Zen had never had trouble staying awake even for days let alone a single night however he found himself having to do various activities like running around or taking a cold beverage to keep himself awake as it seemed it wasn't just regular exhaustion that he was struggling with. One of the times he was jogging around the room the voices suddenly appeared for no apparent reason and the disorienting sensation caused him to trip unfortunately towards the door which Murphy had mentioned was booby trapped
As his body landed on the door, the area of the door suddenly glowed and as it released a booming noise of crackling electricity and Zen was blasted to the other side of the room. His body crashed violently with the other side of the room and he began bleeding . Zen's eyes were shut, he was unconscious, although not due to the blast, the same as in the bathroom.
Zen tried to open his eyes but realized he couldn't. A female voice suddenly rang out in his mind
" You're in danger, your instincts have been trying to warn you so stop being a fool and listen to your instincts Azrael, trust them".
Zen suddenly realized that he recognized that voice
"Wait isn't that...."
Before he could finish his eyes fluttered open. And he noticed that all the blood was once again gone and his wounds had closed, the blood had been sucked by the medallion although he didn't know that. He scratched his head thinking that he was just thinking of something important but he couldn't remember anything. He shrugged thinking it wasn't that important however he could still faintly hear a familiar voice in his head.