WebNovels

Chapter 8 - Just a game.

The sheer emptiness he felt at that moment was something that no words could truly describe.

It wasn't just silence, it was a hollow void that consumed everything inside him. The emptiness that comes after taking a life, after hearing the sound of the skull cracking, breaking… it was the kind of emptiness only monsters could understand. 

But for him, there was something else to it, a reality that might have twisted his understanding. The thought that Eldoria was just a game… yes, he still felt that, and who could blame him?

To suddenly find himself inside a game and be told it was reality… a life… was something he couldn't quite understand or maybe he just didn't want to understand it.

A game is a game, after all… a game he had played for years, one he had mastered, a world where killing came easily. 

Yeah it was still Eldoria, still an MMORPG game that runs on codes and scripts, still NPCs who are just coded dolls… yeah, just NPCs… a homeless one that was coded in the game… but there was never a homeless person in the game.

This realization came as time passed, that line between game and reality began to blur. He started to realize it slowly but surely. The sound as the knife went into the man's skull, as it broke it, as it went into his brain, and as he pulled it out, it came with the blood and parts of the brain the sound of it… they all felt too real to simply dismiss, yet he did.

He dismissed it, that it was not reality but still a game, a game where he now towered over the body that lay in silence while his blood slowly flowed around him, while the smell of it started to hit his nose, while he tasted it in his mouth… the weight of the knife, the weight of what he had just done… no, he still thought of it as a game and nothing more.

The shield, his comfort, his excuse to stay sane. Because if it wasn't a game… then what was he doing? Just brutally murdering somebody?

Nah, he just took a life that doesn't even exist, that is just code and nothing more… the blood is just cosmetics and nothing more.

So, he felt nothing, because believing it was only a game was easier than facing the truth but even if he tried to believe that, something inside him started to crack.

The world of Eldoria wasn't just pixels anymore it had weight, it had warmth, it had consequences.

That's what Miu meant when she said that there is no path of darkness for Lucius, because he himself is the darkness.

In his mind, this is nothing more than a game, and for someone like him, who has already conquered the game multiple times, there is no way he would see it as real life… like how he felt on Earth, he just can't feel the same.

He knew terror once, truly, bone-deep terror when he lay dying on that hospital bed. After endless surgeries, after every attempt at hope, nothing ever came right. 

He felt it in his parents' eyes, those hollow, desperate eyes that had only ever wanted him to live a long life and there is nothing in this world more horrifying than the sound of life slipping away while the ones who love you are powerless to stop it.

Game or not… deep down, he didn't give a single fuck. The true terror wasn't the danger itself, it was the look in his parents' eyes, knowing he was going to die but pretending everything was fine.

"Huh… it was… easy." He whispered as he gripped the knife tighter and looked down at the homeless man. 

Still nothing. Not a single drop of morality in him, not even disgust from the sheer amount of blood.

[Quest completed: Claim your reward.]

Reward… so it really works like in the game. He thought as in front of him, the window popped up again with a chest in the middle.

[Quest reward: Dagger. Rank [Bronze] [Level: 1]

A dagger for what I have just done… what the fuck is this? He felt more despair about it than the fact that he had just brutally murdered somebody.

"System window." he said out loud, but nothing happened. "Character window?" Once again, nothing happened. "There isn't a character window? How the fuck does it make sense?" He asked himself while still standing in the blood. "Mental state?"

[Mental State: You have successfully obtained one soul. Your mental state has been increased to 10.]

To ten? He looked at the window. So it really starts from zero… which means I'm fucked, huh?

"What is the life expectancy?"

[Life expectancy: 5 days]

"Five days?" He raised his voice as he saw the number in front of him. Five fucking days, but at least it gave him a point to start off.

For five days, I'm still immortal and can do whatever I want… but after the five days, the soul I claimed will cause the suffering… until I kill again. But I can actually survive that…

The thing about the Fool of Death is very different in the game and now in reality, which Lucius actually understood very well, more than the fact that he just murdered an innocent man.

The Fool of Death was called "Fool" in the game because, in the lore, the player wanted to achieve immortality through killing people, like sacrificing their souls to the eternal darkness that grants him immortality. 

And now, it is true then ever.

Lucius needs to kill to keep killing and to stay immortal. But it's in the lore that if he decides not to kill, he wouldn't just instantly die… no, something more terrifying would happen.

All the souls of the beings he killed and slain would start to haunt him, manipulating him, corrupting him causing eternal suffering until he kills himself to break free from the darkness. 

But technically, he can beat it.

Well, not truly beat it, but… if he doesn't kill, there is no immortality. He would be consumed by eternal suffering, but he could live with it, just embrace the darkness and live a life with the suffering and the souls. 

But that would mean he fully embraces the darkness itself… and that would be much worse than being immortal and killing, because that stage where you accept the fact of the darkness is the worst one.

That is what true evil is.

"5 days…" He looked down on the man once again. "I am immortal for 5 days… but immorality sounds too fun…" A faint smile appeared on his face. "I should kill."

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