Carl ran.
Every step ignited fire in his legs, each breath shredded his chest like broken glass. His lungs screamed, but stopping wasn't an option. The shadows didn't chase so much as flow, crawling over walls and ground in slick waves of teeth and claws. Their eyes gleamed like dying embers—always too many, always too close, always watching.
The System's timer pulsed at the edge of his vision:
[49:49… 49:30… 49:12…]
He barked a laugh, breathless and bitter, the sound breaking against the silence of the void.
"Still over forty minutes left? Yeah, sure. Why not a goddamn eternity while we're at it?"
The words barely left his mouth before something raked his shoulder. White-hot pain burned down his side as blood soaked his torn shirt. His body staggered from the blow, instinct screaming, balance failing. He stumbled, tripped, and hit the jagged ground hard enough to knock every ounce of air from his lungs.
A Stone like object dug into his ribs. His throat seized as he gasped uselessly for breath.
He rolled over just in time to see three beasts lunge.
"What did I trip over? It's too dark—too empty to see," Carl hissed, scrambling to his feet. His palms skidded over sharp, uneven surfaces, the void realm's terrain tearing open his skin. Warm blood slicked his hands, making his grip slippery.
They're fast. Too fast. I don't have much stamina left. I need to think of something, now—
His toe caught on a jagged edge, and he went sprawling again.
"Dammit, get up, Carl… keep running until you think of something." His own voice sounded like a stranger's, cracked and desperate.
The System flickered across his vision.
[Stamina: 0%]
[Energy: 3%]
[Vitals: In Need of Repair]
Carl's chest heaved. His lips trembled.
"For fuck's sake, I just wanted to take Kaela on a walk like I promised… My life's already a mess, but this? This is absurd—even for me."
He clutched his side, teeth grinding against the pain. His voice cracked again.
"When did survival become conditional? Why do we have instincts that push us toward our own destruction? Why—why—WHY?"
Something in him snapped. Courage, desperation, adrenaline—whatever it was, it burned like a fuse lit too close to the end.
Carl staggered upright—bleeding, trembling, broken—but this time he refused to keep running. His feet planted into the fractured earth.
"Fine!" he roared into the dark. "You want me dead? If killing me is your punishment for defiance… then get on with it!"
The words tore from his throat like an executioner's drumroll.
He had always admired the painless deaths in movies. The screen never showed the smell of blood, the burn of lungs, or the way every heartbeat sounded like a countdown.
The System chimed:
[Survival Instinct Detected.]
[Skill Unlocked: Shadow Manipulation – Rank F.]
[Quest Issued: Subdue 50 F-Rank Shadow Beasts. Time Remaining: 49:00.]
Carl froze. His ears rang with the sound of his pounding heart. "A new skill? Shadow Manipulation?"
The void around him shifted. His skin prickled as if unseen eyes were burrowing into him. He remembered the faint voice he'd heard earlier, a whisper he'd dismissed as a delusion
The beasts that circled closer looked grotesque, limbs bent at impossible angles, eyes burning with feral hunger. They were worse than nightmares—nightmares ended when you woke. This was endless.
"Subdue? What the hell does that—"
The answer hit him like a collapse. His arms went numb. A coldness like liquid nitrogen surged through his veins, choking him from the inside out. He looked down in horror as his shadow twisted unnaturally across the ground—longer, jagged, writhing like it no longer belonged to him.
The first monster lunged. Instinct surged. His hand flew forward—something snapped.
The beast shattered into a cloud of dark fragments, each shard screaming like tearing metal. The fragments swirled in the air before slamming into his mouth, drawn as if by gravity.
Carl's vision went white-hot. His stomach lurched violently. He dropped to his knees, gagging, bile and blood spilling between his teeth.
The System chimed:
[1/50 Subdued.]
He wiped his mouth with a shaking hand, eyes wide. "Oh no. No, no, no. Did I just swallow…"
Another beast crept closer, twitching, wary—like it sensed a predator where prey had once been. Carl didn't think. His shadow shot forward, jagged tendrils lashing, dragging the creature into him.
The sensation was worse. It was like swallowing glass, like his bones grinding against themselves, like his nerves were being skinned alive from the inside. His scream ripped the air until his throat shredded raw.
[2/50 Subdued.]
"Goddammit," Carl coughed, spitting blood. "This isn't power. This is—" He gagged mid-sentence, laughter bubbling through the choke. Wet. Broken. "—self-harm with extra steps. Someone call my doctor."
The shadows didn't laugh back. They only pressed closer.
More beasts surged forward. Dozens. Their claws screeched across the fractured terrain, sparks flashing as they circled him like wolves.
Carl's body convulsed with each subdual. His veins burned darker, his skin bruising from the inside out. His shadow stretched further, its edges feathering like spilled ink. Every shard of "power" ripped another piece of him away.
His skull filled with whispers. Mocking. Hungry. Endless. They overlapped until he couldn't tell if they belonged to the void—or to himself.
[17/50 Subdued.]
[19/50 Subdued.]
[21/50 Subdued.]
His nose bled freely now, streaking down his chin. His vision fractured at the edges, everything swimming in and out of focus. He swayed like a drunk on shattered legs, yet somehow he stayed upright.
A grin split his bloodied mouth.
"Not dying yet," he whispered, hoarse and ragged. "Not giving you that satisfaction."
The timer flickered at the edge of his vision:
[47:00 Remaining.]
Carl collapsed to his knees, surrounded by twitching, half-subdued beasts. His trembling hands dripped with something thicker and blacker than blood. His shadow spread unnaturally far, writhing, whispering, alive.
He pressed his forehead to the frozen floor and let out a broken laugh.
"I'm not winning this. At this point… death would be mercy. Please—just kill me."
The shadows hissed, their forms leaning closer, voices overlapping in a choir of hunger.
The spike of energy bled into the void itself, a beacon. Shapes stirred at the horizon—larger, darker, older than the beasts he had faced. The air thickened, choking. The ground pulsed as if the realm itself had noticed him.
Carl lifted his head, blood and sweat dripping from his chin. His shadow writhed against his will, stretching toward the newcomers like it was eager—like it wanted.
Something was stirring in the void.
And Carl realized, with horror clawing up his throat, that subduing fifty beasts might not be the real trial at all.