Chapter 7 – The Weeping Forest

  The rain here wasn’t just falling water; it was a punishment.

  The wind howled, carrying the foul stench of rotting leaves and earth that never dried. This storm wasn’t natural. The sky was dark—not from the night, but from the black clouds clotting like a bruise across the heavens. Lightning flashed, briefly illuminating the twisted silhouettes of the trees. Their branches clawed at the sky, silent witnesses to entities enduring eternal torment.

  The Trapped Souls.

  That was what the history books called this place. A village lost in a single night, swallowed by a starving earth.

  I took a step. The ground beneath my feet felt soft and muddy, as if I were walking on rotting flesh. The chill seeped through my clothes, but I let it be. Cold, at the very least, was a sensation.

  Snap.

  The sound of a breaking twig behind me. Not from the wind.

  Even without turning, I knew. Three pairs of eyes, heavy breathing, the metallic stench of blood from gaping maws. A three-headed wolf.

  They say destiny is pre-written. Was your death already recorded there, too?

  "GRRAAA!!"

  The growl shattered the sound of the rain. It lunged.

  My body moved before my mind could issue a command. My right hand reached for the spear on my back. The motion was fluid, automatic, completely devoid of hesitation. I spun, using the momentum of the turn to amplify my thrust.

  Whoosh!

  The spear sailed through the air. It wasn't just a throw; it was a verdict.

  Thwack!

  There was no battle. No drama. The spearhead pierced the center of the creature's chest, silencing all three heads in a single heartbeat. The massive body collapsed, skidding across the mud before going completely still.

  I walked over and yanked my spear free with a wet squelch. I drew my knife, extracted the crystal. Routine. Mechanical. Empty.

  Then, the ground began to tremble.

  Not a normal earthquake. This was the vibration of thousands of tiny feet racing just beneath the surface.

  Squeak... squeak... squeak...

  The sound started faintly, then swelled into a sickening wave of noise. The earth in front of me cracked open, and from the fissure, they vomited forth. Thousands of rats. A sea of black fur and red eyes. Among them, giant rats with glowing crystals on their foreheads led the tide of vermin.

  I took a step back. Out of disgust, not fear.

  "Hahaha..." The laugh slipped out on its own, dry and hollow.

  I took aim at one of the giant rats. Whoosh! My spear launched forward, tearing through the ranks of smaller rats like wet paper before embedding itself dead center in the matriarch's chest.

  One dead. Thousands to go.

  I tightened my gloves. Drew the katana from my waist. Metal slid against the scabbard with a sharp, cold shing.

  I charged straight into the sea of vermin.

  Slash! Crack!

  The world narrowed down to the swing of my blade. Slicing, cleaving, destroying. Rat blood sprayed into the air, mixing with the rainwater, turning the ground even more treacherous. The giant rats lunged with their claws, but they were too slow. Through my eyes, their movements were nothing more than a tedious, slow-motion spectacle.

  I kicked a rat that tried to bite my leg. Its body flew backward, smashing against a tree trunk until it burst.

  Then, the hissing began.

  From behind the trees, hundreds of snakes slithered out. They weren't targeting me; they were after the rats. This forest was a slaughterhouse, a cycle of predator and prey accelerated a thousandfold.

  In the dead center of the chaos—the blood, the rain, the hissing, and the squeaking—I stopped.

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  I reached into my pocket, pulling out a cigarette and a lighter. With blood-soaked hands, I shielded the tiny flame from the storm.

  Fwoosh.

  I inhaled the tobacco smoke deeply, filling lungs that were choked by the stench of death.

  "Haa..."

  I stared blankly at the horrific scene unfolding before me. This was dangerous. This was pure madness. But at least out here, I didn't have to think. I only had to kill.

  The ground trembled again. Heavier this time.

  A giant snake—a cobra—towered over the fallen trees. Its eyes locked onto me.

  A new target.

  I tossed away my half-smoked cigarette and picked up my discarded spear. The muscles in my arm tensed.

  Whoosh!

  The spear buried itself squarely in its left eye. The serpent thrashed wildly, its tail pulverizing the surroundings in a frenzy of agony.

  I broke into a sprint. I vaulted over the backs of the smaller snakes, using the chaotic swarm as my stepping stones. The cobra threw its jaws wide open.

  Liquid?

  My instincts screamed. I leaped high into the air, my sword raised. Venom sprayed into the sky, mixing with the rainstorm to create a deadly downpour of acid.

  Sring!

  The snake's head severed from its body. It fell with a heavy thud.

  I ducked, shielding my head with my arms.

  Ssss!

  My skin blistered. It felt like being burned by lit cigarettes, but all over my body. Hot. Stinging. Searing.

  I gritted my teeth. This... this pain was real.

  The acid rain subsided. Hundreds of rats and snakes lay dead around me, their bodies melting and smoking. I stood up, trembling. My skin was raw red, peeling in places. My breathing was ragged. My heart pumped blood furiously, firing off signals of pure agony to my brain.

  I staggered over to the cobra's severed head.

  "Hahaha..."

  There was that laugh again. The laugh of someone who had just realized his nerves were still functioning. I yanked my spear out, retrieved the crystal, and walked away.

  Every step felt heavy. A fever was already setting in. My body, usually so numb, was now screaming for rest. But I couldn't stop.

  [Illustration: The protagonist sits leaning against a large tree in the pouring rain. His body is covered in burns and blood, a lit cigarette dangling from his lips. His gaze is empty yet piercing, staring out into the dark forest.]

  I sat down for a moment beneath a reasonably thick canopy of leaves, lighting another cigarette with trembling hands.

  "Haa..."

  Before the cigarette could burn out, the ground beneath me cracked.

  Again?

  The ground split open. I fell.

  Darkness swallowed me whole.

  Reflexes took over. I thrust my spear into the earthen wall. I hung there, suspended between the surface and eternal darkness. The walls shifted, closing in, trying to crush me.

  My heart pounded. Adrenaline surged.

  I pushed off, using my knife and spear like climbing pitons. Fighting against an earth that wanted to swallow me alive.

  Whoosh!

  I hauled myself up. But the ground fractured right beneath my feet. Again. And again. As if the world itself rejected my very existence.

  Rumble!

  A massive fissure tore open beneath me. This time, there was no foothold. I was in free fall.

  Flashes of lightning from above were my only illumination as I plummeted into the belly of the earth.

  Thwack!

  My spear arrested my descent just moments before I hit the bottom. My bones felt as though they were about to shatter.

  I was at the bottom of a narrow crevasse. The earthen walls on either side began to close in. Like a set of jaws, chewing methodically.

  In the gloom, illuminated only by the lightning flashing far above, I saw it.

  Embedded in the mud of the trench floor... was an eye.

  Not a biological eye. It was formed of earth, with a pulsating, crystalline pupil. It stared at me. Stared right into my soul.

  The sensation hit me without warning. A primordial loneliness. Pure terror. The screams of thousands buried alive.

  The walls were closing in. I had no time for philosophy.

  I wedged my spear into the edge of the eye. And pried.

  Crack!

  A crystal the size of a football popped loose. I caught it.

  The moment my bare skin made contact with the crystal's surface, the world stopped spinning.

  No, it didn't stop. The world screamed.

  An invisible shockwave slammed into my mind. It wasn't physical pain, but memories. Thousands of memories that weren't mine, forcing their way in through the pores of my hands.

  "The rain... when will it stop..."

  "It's gone! The rats ate everything!"

  "Help! The snake got into the pens!"

  My vision whited out. I was no longer in the narrow trench.

  I was standing in the middle of a dying village. A torrential storm battered my face—not rain, but the tears of thousands. I saw shattered grain silos; inside was not the golden bounty of harvest, but a sea of black rats gnawing away at hope. The terror of starvation. The dread of plague.

  In another corner, I saw an old guard dog. It barked in despair, trying to protect the livestock from snakes slithering through the mud, trying to drive away the rats, trying to hold back the storm. One head wasn't enough. It needed more eyes, more fangs to guard it all. Its absolute loyalty, combined with the sheer terror of failing its master, warped its body, splitting its neck into three.

  That Cerberus... he was nothing but a terrified guard dog.

  Then, the earth violently shook. Not a natural tremor, but a betrayal. The very soil they had tilled, the land they had bled for, was now opening its maw wide.

  Screams. Unanswered prayers. The collective despair of farmers realizing that nature had turned against them.

  That energy... their Willpower, saturated with terror, seeped into the soil. It mutated the rats into monsters, the snakes into leviathans, and the loyal hound into a nightmare.

  "Gah!"

  I snapped back to reality. I was panting, tears reflexively pooling in the corners of my eyes—not out of sorrow, but because my physical body simply couldn't contain an emotional overflow of that magnitude.

  The crystal in my hands pulsed with heat. This wasn't a stone. It was the Heart of the Village, petrified by sheer terror.

  Vertigo slammed into me. My body temperature spiked. Dehydration. Starvation. Agony. All of it blending into a singular cocktail of suffering.

  I took a gulp from my waterskin. It tasted stale, but it grounded me.

  The earthen walls above me were closing in faster now. The flashes of lightning from above had been reduced to a thin sliver.

  My bones were shattered. There was no way I could climb out in this condition.

  I stared at the pulsating crystal.

  I pressed it against my chest. The greater the surface area in contact with my skin, the faster the energy would transfer.

  It felt like swallowing boiling mud. The raw emotions of thousands flooded my system, threatening to tear my sanity to shreds. My eyes widened; the veins in my neck bulged. It tasted bitter—the distinct taste of absolute despair.

  But beneath the bitterness lay an explosive surge of power. My fractured bones burned, forcibly knitted back together by the alien energy.

  Within minutes, the crystalline sphere dimmed, fractured, and finally crumbled into fine sand in my hands.

  I gripped a knife in each hand. I looked up toward the shrinking sliver of stormy sky.

  With the last dregs of my strength, I leaped. Drove the blade into the earth. Pulled myself up. Drove the other blade in. Fighting gravity and the crushing walls.

  One meter.

  Two meters.

  Ten meters.

  My muscles screamed. The friction of the dirt scraped agonizingly against my burns. But I kept climbing.

  Until, finally, my hands grasped wet grass.

  I hauled myself out of the chasm, rolling onto stable ground just as the fissure snapped shut behind me with a muffled, earth-shaking boom.

  My chest heaved. The rain washed away the mud and blood plastered to my face.

  I had survived.

  I sprawled flat on my back against the sodden grass. My ragged breathing was the only rhythmic sound left amidst the fading chaos of the storm.

  Inside my body, however, the war was far from over.

  The energy from the Earth Eye crystal was still circulating. It didn't flow gently; it burrowed deep into my marrow. I could feel my previously fractured shin bones shifting on their own—click, crack—forced back together by an accelerated surge of calcium.

  It was scorching.

  It felt as if my blood had been replaced with boiling mercury.

  This wasn't some gentle, divine healing. It was a violent anabolic fever. My body was cannibalizing every remaining ounce of fat and protein to rebuild the structural damage in a matter of minutes.

  "Argh..."

  I let out a low groan, my fingers digging into the muddy earth.

  Inside my head, the voices were finally fading. The screams of the farmers, the wailing of the children, the frantic barking of the hound... they all receded into a static echo at the back of my mind. Like tinnitus ringing after a bomb blast.

  I forced myself into a sitting position.

  The world spun for a fleeting second before snapping back into focus.

  I stood up. My knees wobbled, but locked into place.

  My nervous system was executing a hard reboot. The agonizing physical pain from earlier had mutated into a ravenous, predatory hunger. My metabolism was demanding its toll.

  I began to walk.

  Step by step.

  Every footfall felt incredibly heavy, as if the gravity in this forsaken place was pulling me down with a newfound intensity.

  And so, a new day dawned.