Chapter 13 – End of the Observation

  In the middle of the night, a car stopped in an isolated area. Tall grass stretched endlessly along the side of the road, rising nearly to a man’s height.

  “Are you really sure about this?” the taxi driver asked, eyeing his sole passenger with visible unease.

  “Why are you so worried? I already paid you generously. And once I get back, you’ll receive the rest,” Bell replied calmly.

  “I’m just taking some photos for my magazine. I’ll be back in less than an hour.

  And if you notice anything strange, you can leave anytime.”

  The driver didn’t look convinced, but he said nothing more.

  Bell stepped out of the car with a quiet sigh. He switched on his flashlight, pointing it ahead while adjusting the backpack on his shoulders.

  How he wished he owned a car at this moment. It would have made his investigations far more convenient.

  Even if he had the money to rent one, he didn’t have a driver’s license, nor the time to get one.

  So he could only rely on greedy, careless drivers, feeding them a ready-made excuse about working for some obscure blog.

  It wasn’t foolproof.

  But it was enough.

  As he moved farther from the vehicle, leaving the comfort of its headlights behind, his silhouette slowly dissolved into the darkness.

  There was already a narrow trail through the tall grass. Bell only needed to follow it.

  As he walked, his surroundings shifted.

  Within the hall of the Dream Domain, he moved closer to the floating dream dust, interacting with it as usual.

  The familiar headache returned.

  A deep discomfort followed something that seemed to rise from the very core of his being. His soul, perhaps.

  In the real world, a subtle shift occurred in his perception.

  Within a radius of twenty meters around him, everything became clearer.

  It wasn’t just improved sight in the darkness. Sound sharpened. Scents intensified. Even the movement of air felt tangible.

  Everything existed within that sphere of awareness.

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  And there was something else.

  Something unsettling.

  Bell had long discovered that this strange ability allowed him to sense “life.” From a certain perspective, it felt almost instinctual, like the natural awareness of a predator sensing its prey.

  And on the opposite end of that same spectrum, the Abyss.

  And the things that came from it.

  Bell narrowed his eyes as he approached his destination.

  Something here made him deeply uncomfortable.

  In the other locations he had investigated, the sensation had been faint.

  Here…

  It was active.

  He remembered the reports.

  Several people had gone missing in this neighborhood. Search efforts eventually led to this place where body parts had been found emerging from the ground.

  Hands. Heads. Even torsos.

  In a strange, unnatural state.

  People had tried digging, hoping to uncover buried corpses.

  There was nothing underground.

  Only soil.

  For any sane person, the story sounded absurd.

  But something had clicked in Bell’s mind.

  During the apocalypse, every Abyss entity hunted humans in one way or another. Each had its own hunting mechanism. Survival depended more on knowledge than strength or speed.

  And this mechanism…

  It resembled that of one of the most powerful entities of the future.

  An entity said to possess a world of its own.

  Very few beings held such power, domains where their rules became absolute.

  The Sandman, Bell’s future self, had been one of those rare few.

  And if Bell had to give this one a name…

  “The Fisherman” would be fitting.

  Considering how it operated.

  And its end goal.

  Bell had never once considered avoiding it.

  If he found it now, before it grew stronger, destroying it would be ideal.

  Crater-like holes littered the ground.

  A silent thought rose in his heart for the victims.

  “They weren’t even considered shrimps to it.”

  The residual energy in the area was nearly becoming an active zone.

  There was no doubt now.

  “It’s really here.”

  Bell also remembered a thought that had surfaced when he first began inheriting memories from his future self:

  Use the mechanism of the Abyss against itself.

  The dream dust inside the Dream Domain could already be considered a Tier 1 entity.

  Bell, however, was still an ordinary human, merely a user.

  When the apocalypse arrived, the dream dust would ascend further in power.

  The memory of being assimilated by it, completely consumed, remained one of the most vivid inheritances from his future self.

  He could not let that happen again.

  He had to find another path.

  Now, standing before one of the future powerhouses of the coming apocalypse, or at least one of its nodes, Bell’s focus sharpened completely.

  Within the Dream Hall, he extended his hand into the floating, glowing dream dust.

  As he concentrated, his perception deepened.

  Another layer of reality unfolded.

  A thin grey mist drifted through the air, forming twisted, chaotic filaments. They stretched downward into the earth and upward toward the sky, as though anchoring two worlds together.

  The moment Bell entered the area, the filaments stirred.

  They tried to latch onto him.

  As if they possessed chaotic minds of their own.

  Bell immediately stepped back and continued observing.

  “This looks like one of its marking mechanisms. A passive one.”

  Just as living beings had vital functions, Abyss entities had theirs.

  Detection.

  Marking.

  Hunting.

  Bell had already prepared a way to circumvent that process.

  He focused harder, drawing more power from the dream dust.

  But this time, he did not enter the entity’s territory himself.

  Instead... In the real world, a blurry figure appeared before him.

  To normal human eyes, it would have looked like an optical illusion. A trick of exhaustion. A hallucination caused by dehydration.

  Yet it was alive enough to trigger that instinctual shiver, the sudden urge to glance over your shoulder in a dark alley, feeling watched.

  Bell observed as the clone stepped into the active zone.

  Immediately, strands of grey mist shot toward it, wrapping around its body like thin threads.

  The clone continued walking.

  Nothing happened.

  No monster appeared.

  No gate opened beneath it to swallow it whole.

  For a moment, Bell wondered if he had been overly cautious.

  The clone eventually exited the area and returned toward him.

  The mist surged outward briefly, as if reluctant to release its target, before retracting to its original boundary.

  But Bell noticed something.

  The grey filament remained attached to the clone.

  Like invisible fishing line.

  “Let’s disperse it,” Bell thought.

  “So it really is just markin, ...for now. The hunting likely begins later. Timing must be a factor.”

  From his memories, he recalled that this entity would eventually create synchronized global incidents; what survivors later called “instances.”

  He sighed in relief.

  The clone dissolved.

  His expression relaxed; Then suddenly froze.

  Inside the Dream Hall, Bell collapsed to the ground.

  His eyes shifted downward.

  Blood.

  It was pooling beneath him.

  His chest was split open.

  From the torn flesh extended a black chain, stretching upward toward a floating mass of dark smoke.

  The residue.

  The binding contract, silent, dormant, until now.

  And it had chosen this exact moment to act.

  (Alternative title: The Worst Timing?)