Alaric awakened once more in the depths of the same dark, foreboding pit he had known so well. But this time, something was different. A strange, almost euphoric lightness coursed through him, an unfamiliar sensation that contrasted sharply with the usual soul-crushing pain. He could see. Truly see.
For the first time in months, the shadows around him dissolved into crisp, intricate detail. Every crack in the cold stone, every flicker of dust caught in the faintest sliver of light, the world revealed itself with startling clarity.
The first thing he felt was joy, and an overwhelming amount of it, then it quickly turned into anger that took a while to suppress.
'What? I feel angry?' Alaric contemplated. Whatever had happened in his mental world had unearthed his emotions buried deep within him. He felt myriad emotions trying to overwhelm his senses all at once.
This was an entirely new feeling for Alaric; he couldn't even tell if this was a good thing or not as he tried to suppress his chaotic emotions.
He came to understand that it wasn't that he didn't have any emotions before; they were just being suppressed. Whatever that awakening was, it had removed this suppression from him, and he could now feel every emotion that was suppressed from his previous life till now. He felt joy, anger, pain, and many other emotions. His greatest regret was the night his village was raided. He couldn't help but think back to what that being had told him.
"…Even if you manage to survive, everyone and everything around you will die. Your whole village was turned to ash because of you, and so will everything you come to touch or value." It echoed in his head now, and he felt responsible for what happened. He didn't understand how he was the cause, but he felt all of this was somehow connected to him.
What hit him the most was that he had almost forgotten about them. How ungrateful he had been to ignore the ones who took good care of him. He even forgot about the one he calls a friend. 'Kong'
A tear was forced out of his eyes. "I will make sure to avenge you all," he declared coldly.
It took him some effort to tame his emotional state.
'Something is different,' Alaric thought, noting the difference in his current vision.
His eyes before now were very special; it was the source of most of his talent. It allowed him to see and comprehend things that others could not. He saw the world differently from others, and before now, he believed it was the source of his enhanced memories and other forms of visual prowess, like his night vision. It was a trait that followed him from his previous mundane world to this mystical one.
Right now, he felt as if his eyes had improved, and his perception of the world had changed. Lying on the cold, hard ground, he could see everything within the pit he was in. His eyes faced upwards. Still, he could see every part of his body and the chains that bound him. He saw the pipe attached to his heart, and upon examining its diameter, he couldn't help but wonder how he was still alive.
He turned left to look at the dark walls ahead of him, instinctively focus on them. He felt his vision expand and zero in on the wall as he started to unravel the atoms that made up the dark material it was composed of.
The atoms danced and vibrated with frequency as they bounced against each other. He felt fascinated by what he was experiencing. He felt no strain from using his eyes like this, so he tried to take it a step further. He focused on a single atom and tried to peer into it. Suddenly, information about that one atom poured into his mind in overwhelming amounts.
Ugh*
Overwhelmed by the infusion of information, he shut his eyes. He understood that he currently couldn't bear so much information at a time. His brain's processing power had increased by a surprising amount, but he still couldn't process that much information at the same time.
He opened his wet eyes again and looked at the walls; this time, he didn't try to glean information about the atoms, but he looked past them. He found himself gazing through the 5-meter-thick walls into the neighbouring pit. It was the same size as his, with the same black material. On the floor, he saw the corpse of a young girl no older than 9 years. She looked shrivelled up as though she had been drained of all her lifeforce, which was accurate, considering the pipe attached to her now still heart.
He couldn't help but feel anger and sadness take root in his heart again at the sight. She is probably someone from another village, stripped of her parents, too. They were probably already dead by now.
He looked further and saw more pits, some with children who were still alive, while the others just had corpses within them. One thing he noticed was that he couldn't recognise any of the children here. He wasn't the only one who was taken from his village, so he was hoping to see some of them still alive, but he found none. Either they were dead, or they were taken somewhere else.
"I am so sorry," he said in a croaked voice, his tone strained.
Looking away from them, he tried to trace the source of the pipes attached to the building, but couldn't as the place was too far from him.
He sighed in frustration before recalling the surge of information he experienced in the mental realm. It didn't seem to belong to him. It was simply there, in his mind, and without actively seeking it, he wouldn't remember it.
Reviewing his memories, he discovered that the information was divided into two parts. One labelled 'Innate awakened knowledge' and the other titled 'Innate technique: will tampering method'.