Time slowed in this nightmare.
Chris didn't know how long he had been hanging from the bone crucifix, arms stretched out, muscles screaming, blood dried into cracked patterns across his skin. He was still half-naked, still bound in the same torn scraps he had looted from a corpse back on Floor 1. That moment felt like a lifetime ago.
The sky in this hell realm had begun to change color.
A seething, molten red bled into the black, stretching like a wound across the heavens. The cursed "sun" of this dimension—the one the god had warned him about—was rising.
The heat it radiated wasn't light. It wasn't even fire. It was hunger.
The warmth of a predator licking its lips.
Chris tensed. He felt it in his skin—the gift he'd stolen from the minion. Flame Resistance. It should protect him. But the fact that he even needed it to survive daylight told him everything.
He wasn't a player in this world.
He was meat.
And this sun was coming to tenderize him.
The world screamed around him.
The "slave" group was already gone—marched into black tunnels to clean, cook, and build the empire of a god. The "lust" group? Chris didn't want to think about them. His echolocation betrayed him, giving him sound without mercy.
He heard bodies dragged.
Heard girls and boys cry out, gagged by things that laughed in tongues he didn't know.
He heard bones break, again and again and again.
He wanted to turn off the world. To turn off himself. But even when he closed his eyes, he could still hear. Still feel.
From the "harvest" group, nothing came anymore. Just a wet silence, broken only by gnashing teeth and the slurping of blood.
And yet he was alive.
Bound, exhausted, sun rising—but alive.
The sun peeked over the horizon.
At first it shimmered—beautiful, even. Like golden oil spilled across a black canvas.
But then the burning started.
Everything flammable nearby ignited instantly. Corpses exploded into ash. Bones cracked with audible pops as marrow boiled within them.
The stone beneath Chris's feet glowed red.
The air itself caught fire.
Chris should have been vaporized. Every instinct in his body screamed that this was it.
But the heat didn't consume him.
It touched him.
Sank into him like a familiar drug.
He twitched in shock.
Not pain. Power.
His skin tingled. His blood boiled, but not in agony—like a forge refining metal. The power he had taken… it worked. His Flame Resistance was holding.
But barely.
And not without cost.
He vomited blood. His vision darkened. His lips cracked into bleeding canyons.
But he endured.
And for the first time, Chris realized…
I'm not like the others anymore.
He wasn't just surviving this world. He was becoming part of it. Twisted, yes. Mutated. Shaped by horror and trial.
But no longer prey.
No longer background noise.
He passed out during the second hour of sun.
When he woke, the sun had retreated, and the sky had darkened to its usual rotten hue.
He dangled there, lightheaded, lips split, muscles shredded, but alive.
And no longer afraid in the same way.
There was no room for fear anymore.
Only clarity.
I'm going to kill that thing.
The thought came without rage. Just certainty. The kind you get after watching everything break and realizing you're still standing.
Chris tested his bindings. His arms ached, but the leather-like cords had dried in the heat, cracking slightly.
The heat had weakened his prison.
A miracle, or maybe just luck. But he'd learned not to trust either.
One of the bones beneath his wrist had grown sharp—probably one of the passive mutations from consuming so many different soul fragments. He wiggled it into position, then began to saw.
Time passed slowly.
He didn't count the minutes. He counted the flesh. Every thin strip peeled from the cord was a step closer.
Every time he felt faint, he whispered his own name like a mantra.
"Chris. Just Chris. I'm still here."
Then came the sound.
Not from the god.
Not from the army.
But from somewhere… deeper.
A slow groaning—like the world was exhaling. The floor shook faintly. Something massive was stirring far beneath the surface.
And it wasn't part of the god's plan.
A whisper passed through the air—so faint even his echolocation barely caught it. A tone. A syllable.
"Regret."
Chris blinked. That word had been spoken to him before.
Hadn't it?
Somewhere—before the tower—in the fire, in the smoke, he had whispered that word himself.
The final strip gave way. His right hand was free.
He caught himself before he fell—legs still bound, but he didn't care.
He had blood in his mouth.
He had fire in his skin.
And he had an enemy.
The evil god hadn't just captured him.
He'd made a mistake.
He'd let Chris see everything. The process. The cruelty. The way his minions fed on strength. How they absorbed it. How they transferred abilities.
Chris now understood the rules of the system better than most.
And that made him dangerous.
He scanned the area again. The closest minions were too far to hear. One wandered nearby, dragging a half-dead demi-human behind it.
Chris licked his lips. His stomach growled—not from hunger.
But from need.
He was changing.
Something inside him wanted to devour. Not food. Not water. But souls.
And maybe, just maybe… that would be his weapon.
His only way out.