Chapter 2 — The Cruel of the New World
"Only the cruelty of the world reveals what man really carries in him. "
Without Name was emptied to the marrow. His muscles screamed with every attempt to move, a throbbing burn settling deep in his fibers, nailing him to the ground. He collapsed on the burning sand that cooked his skin, his hoarse and jerky breath escaping from his chest like a dying rattle. The thirst scratched his throat to the point that even his own saliva seemed to him a foreign and rough substance, an acid torture. Each inspiration was a dry torture, a sharp pain that tore his lungs. Wavy mirages danced at the edge of his vision, blurred and illusory shapes that cruelly mocked his distress, promising him non-existent water, ghost oases.
As he closed his eyes, hoping for a brief respite in this waking nightmare where reality was diluting, a question came to his mind, barely formulated: "Am I really going to die like this? He was not outraged by the idea of dying here, in this endless desert. For him, dying like this or in another way was the same thing, or not. The only thing he wanted to know here was the only reason, nothing more. He had walked tirelessly for two days, without crossing the slightest human trace, the slightest source of water. Only the infinite desert, under a cold and indifferent moon, accompanied him. He looked up at the nocturnal star, this silent witness.
"At first, when I lost my mother, no one noticed me. I was looking for a meaning to all this, I wanted to show the world that he was wrong. But now... Sense or nonsense are nothing more than options, realities that human beings give themselves in the infinity of this world full of possibilities. Even the possibility is only one option among others, and my options are only possibilities, or not. Even to say that everything is relative or that everything is absolute... they are just options, nothing more. "
Then he began to laugh, a laugh of a scathing irony. His heart calmed down, he closed his eyes and said to himself in his heart: "There are never desperate situations, there are only people who despair. Isn't there a saying that the sky will always leave a path for you? As long as I want to walk, there will be a road on which I can walk! "
Then he stood up. It was not the first time he fell into despair. Since he remembered his existence, he had known all kinds of experiences, difficult and good, but there was only one thing that always remained, this sentence: "In the end, only me remains, or not. Now, he didn't even need it anymore, after all, it's an option.
Then he noticed a strange anomaly that caught his attention. A very small luminous square floated stubbornly in his field of vision, persistent with surprising tenacity even when his heavy eyelids were closed. He blinked several times, incredulous, wondering if fatigue was not playing tricks on him, if his mind was not letting go. But no, the square was still there, translucent and vibrating with a soft light, like a tiny window open to another reality. Instinctively, he stretched out a trembling hand, wanting to touch this strange appearance, check its tangibility, but his fingers crossed it without encountering the slightest resistance, as if it did not exist in the tangible world he knew. A feeling of confusion and vertigo, more intense than simple dehydration, invades him. Was it the rising fever, the lack of water that painted absurd pictures in his mind?
Then, he focused on the square with his eyes, fighting against the desire to abandon himself. Suddenly, the small square extended, the edges fading until they occupied all his vision, a floating screen in front of him. Countless fine lines and complex symbols appeared, dancing before his eyes, forming what looked like a strange map, studded with points and enigmatic traces, an unknown topography. Words began to float above this unreal cartography, written in a language that he had never learned but which he instinctively understood, as if it resonated in the depths of his being, an innate knowledge. Then, a painting with clear contours appeared, emerged out of nowhere, as real as a thought taking tangible form. At the top of this painting, his own name was inscribed, floating in a simple but clear calligraphy:
Sans Nom statistics table
* Name: None or No Name
* Age: 18
* Height: 1.63 m
* Weight: 46 kg
* Gender: Masculine
* Hair: Black, which absorbs all the light
* Eyes: Deep black, which look like an endless abyss
* Skin: Cadaveric white
* Beauty: Ordinary
* Clothing: Homeless
Combat statistics
* HP: 50
* ATK: 2
* DEF: 3
* Vit: 4
* TOTAL: 59
Species and class details
* Species: Human
* Type: Adaptive Species
* Species Description: Humans are the most abundant and weakest species in this ultimate world.
* Species Effect: Adapts to everything faster than other species.
* Rank: 0 (Non-existent)
* Description of ranks: The Rank measures your real influence on the world. It is not a simple brute power, nor a cultivation force, but the echo of your actions in the memory of the world. The world itself assigns your Rank - it does not depend on your clan, your status, or what you think you are. It reflects how much you are seen, recognized, feared or followed by the whole of reality. The higher your rank, the more the world reacts to you. You don't walk in the world - you fold it around you.
* Class: Homeless
* Type of Class: Subit
* Description of the class: Homeless beings are worthless people, with nothing, who are just waste of the world.
* Class effect: Their life is twice as hard as that of ordinary people.
Capabilities and defects
* 1. Unique capacity: PREDATOR
* Level: 1 (Sleept)
* Capacity Type: Transgressive
* Description of the skill: This ability is the result of an unnatural union of two species that should never have met. A transgression of the fundamental laws of life. From this forbidden union was born an entity so dangerous, so fundamentally unbalanced, that even the gods themselves, in their infinite wisdom and terrible power, relentlessly tracked it down to eradicate it from the very fabric of existence. Does this unnatural existence represent an unexpected blessing for the world, capable of overthrowing the established order, or an unclean curse capable of consuming it entirely, plunging it into irreversible chaos? Only time, ruthless judge, will be able to decide.
* Sleeping capacity acquired: Absorbing a dead body allows you to steal the person's unique ability.
* Mission to reach level 10 (Awakened): Absorb 0/ 10 bodies to reach level 10.
* Acquired defect: Without dream
* Description: The bearer of this defect can never have a dream.
At that precise moment, Sans Nom felt that the only thing he had left had disappeared. His dream - the totality that is to understand everything, to dominate everything, to surpass everything and to reshape the world at will even beyond everything beyond - has died out. At the very moment he was thinking about his dream, an unbearable, inhuman pain crossed his body and his being. Nameless shouted: "Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! "
"What the hell is this? He whispered, his voice barely audible in the silent and oppressive immensity of the desert. A total disbelief was painted on his drawn features, the abate mixing with the stupor. "I'm dying of thirst and fatigue... that's why I imagine completely crazy things like that. His rationality was desperately trying to cling to a logical explanation, to reject this appearance as the fruit of his failing mind.
He mechanically brought his hand to his dry and painful throat, the feeling of roughness of the sand stuck to his fingers reminding him with chilling brutality of the harsh reality of his situation. The thirst was very real, fatigue nailed him to the ground, and yet... this painting before his eyes seemed just as tangible, in a strange and inexplicable way, defying all logic.
Suddenly, he faints, not because of exhaustion, but because of the heartbreaking pain caused by the uprooting of his dream, the acquired defect: Without a dream.