kin, tearing at him with feral hunger.
"I can't... I can't do this," Alex gasped, his voice barely a whisper. He tried to push them off, but his body refused to cooperate. His hands trembled as he weakly swatted at make it any easier to endure.
His body ached, his limbs felt like lead, and
She did so, and found herself in a large hall, with ranks of gilded chairs down its length to a huge, commanding throne at the far end. The tapestries of victory and conquest were on the walls, and the ceiling was painted with murals of a great battle -the demon king at its center.
His eyes immediately fell upon the throne itself, back farther in the shadow of which someone was sitting, a figure who was looking at them-all with an unreadable expression.
There he was, the demon king in person full of presence, seemingly filling up the whole room.
Alex felt a shiver run down his spine as the king fixed his gaze on him-it felt like those piercing eyes looked right through him.
"Approach," thundered the demon king in a deep, sonorous tone of voice.
Alex had taken aback for only a moment, then stepped forward. His heart thumping against his chest, he felt the weight of the king's gaze upon him, the pressure of his expectations.
As he walked down the long aisle, flanked by the empty chairs that seemed to mock his loneliness, Alex could not but think of a lamb being led to the slaughter.
Finally, he knelt at the foot of the throne, his head bowed in a gesture of submission. He could feel the cold, hard marble beneath his knee.
"Rise," said the demon king, his voice softer now, though no less commanding.
"What have you done with your mans today? I can't sense any in you, you little.! The demon king paused in his words.
Alex just stood there with no possibly response whatsoever.
"Guards return him to his cell and monitor him closely," the demon king ordered to his guards before turning back to Alex. "We will meet again tomorrow."
And so, it became every single morning's routine, as the demon king would have him brought into the grand chamber, his eyes dark with amusement as he was siphoning Alex of his mana.
It was an agonizing process, as if his very soul was being drawn inch by inch from his body. The result of it could be manifested in the way the once-powerful frame started to shrink, with the pale and clammy skin sapping his life energies. Framed with dark circles, the sunken eyes rose and fell laboriously.
Alex lay on the ice-cold floor of his cell, his body spasming into a fit of shudders from the after-effects of the day's torment.
"I was going to be something," Alex whispered hoarsely to himself. "I had plans. dreams…"
But all those had died that very day when he had been summoned into this damned world, pulled out of his life, and thrown into this living hell.
The torture never ended. And it would appear this demon king was well-pleased with Alex's misery, using him for nothing else other than being a mana battery-sucking it out, over and over again.
Each session weakened him further, broke him even more compared to the previous ones. Deterioration was something very much attached to Alex right now, his spirit not all that far behind.
And every time it was taken, he knew the demon was drawing a little bit more from him-the man who once was.
His mind began to fog up, and all lines of reality against memory finally blurring out completely. Many times, Alex couldn't remember who he was, let alone why he was fighting for his life.
The demon king would glare at him, curling his lips up into a vicious smile. "How much more can you take, I wonder?" he'd ask in this tone, reeking with amusement. "You're not going to last much longer, are you, hero?"
This word, hero-, finally lashed out at him. How could he be considered a hero since he couldn't protect nor fight back?
Lying in his cell that night, wracked in a cocoon of pain, something inside Alex shifted. Really, he wasn't sure how much more of this he could take. His health was spiraling down so fast, his body failing, his mind barely hanging in there. For the first time, Alex really began to wonder if he would make it out of this thing alive.
The same happened the next day, until day after day, Alex was dragged again into the arena and forced to fight something from his wildest imagination-of strength and speed and viciousness.
With each fight, he got a little more broken, body and mind. In fact, it would appear that the demon king derived more and more amusement with every fight and near-death that Alex went through.
Alex dropped down in the middle of yet another arena-this time, cold stone beneath his feet. Circling around him this time was a pack of snarling wolves, their eyes aglow like embers in the dim light as they followed every move he made.
He hefted his sword-if it could even still be called that-and his hands shook from exhaustion. Barely could he keep his grasp on the hilt, let alone swing with any kind of force.
The wolves then pounced, and he fell back; his actions were slow-like his body refused to listen to him. Every action that he did seemed like a Herculean job to perform with his "trash stats."
His strength, agility, and endurance were sufficiently low that even the most feeble of creatures could overpower him. Every time he tried to dodge or block, a second too slow, a fraction too weak, the outcome was always the same. It was as if the world had already found its verdict on his worthlessness.
The claws of the first wolf raked across his arm, tearing through flesh as though it were paper. Alex screamed in agony, falling onto his knees. His vision blurred, and he could feel the very sting of blood running down his arm.
He tried to rise but the legs buckled beneath his body weight. The other wolves pounced, teeth sinking into skin and tearing flesh with that feral hunger.
"I can't-I can't do this," Alex wheezed, the words barely escaping his lips as he tried to push them off, trying to find a body that refused to budge. His hands shook as weakly he swatted at the creatures. Their jaws tore deeper into his flesh.
Above him, the demon king laughed-a cold, harsh sound that reminded Alex just how helpless he truly was. "Look at you, hero. Barely able to stand, much less fight. How pathetic.
Alex's teeth ground together in frustration. He knew the demon king enjoyed watching him suffer, but that didn't make it any easier to bear.
His body shrieked in protest, his mind spiraling into darkness as the lead weighed down his limbs. The times he fought, the times he took the pain-none of it mattered, only different means of the very same end that had dogged him at every turn of the circle: Failure.
Incapable of stopping the circle: fight, lose, suffer-repeat.