cchapter 25 the uncanny dive
The sixth step was not a distance; it was a wall.
To an observer, it was merely another inch of sludge. To Fighter, it was a vertical mountain of glass, slick and impossible. His body had reached its limit. The strength required to lift a foot that was half-dissolved into the mire simply didn't exist in his malnourished muscles.
Because of the [Blessing of The Worms], fear was a ghost he could no longer see. His mind was unnervingly clear, but his body was paying the price. His face, once expressive and desperate, had slackened into a pale, porcelain mask.
There is an instinctive, primal terror that awakens when a human looks upon a corpse or a doll that looks almost human, but not quite. At this moment, Fighter was the manifestation of that Uncanny Valley. With his body halfway submerged and his expression frozen in an eerie, vacant stare, he looked like a dysfunctional marionette discarded in the mud.
He paused, his gaze drifting toward Kaizer.
The protagonist was a nightmare of sheer will. Kaizer was at the ninth step—the threshold of the SSA-Class monsters. Only his head remained above the surface. He was moving forward by sheer, gruesome grit—using his teeth, his tongue, and the muscles of his jaw to drag his disappearing existence through the sludge.
From the outside, they looked close. In reality, the metaphysical distance between the four-step "Worm" and the nine-step "Lightning Boy" was a canyon that spanned worlds.
Fighter didn't despair. Despair requires an expectation of success, and Fighter's only goal was freedom. He didn't want to save the world; he wanted to see it.
His ability pushed his perception further. He looked at the sky of the quagmire. It was an eternal, bruised red—the color of a sunset where the sun had already died. The horizon was a soft, ethereal blend of pastel sky and iron-scented mire.
Isn't it beautiful? he wondered.
A sudden, nonsensical curiosity bloomed in the void of his mind. This was a place he had never seen. He felt the quagmire pressing against his skin. It was muddy, yes, but underneath the surface tension, it didn't feel like water. Water is the source of life; this was the opposite.
He felt a distinct layering beneath him. Like water and oil that refused to mix, something else was hiding under the rot.
Fighter: "I want to see what's under the mud. I can feel it... a liquid that doesn't belong."
Rechel: [Please don't do it. I know you are stupid beyond any measurable scale, but if you dive, we will be fully assimilated. There is no 'return' from the depths. Ok.]
Fighter didn't listen. A normal man would have used every ounce of Ethos to push up, to struggle for the surface. Fighter did the opposite.
He inhaled a lungful of the iron-thick air and dived.
[Acting Conditions for Script Activation:]
Near-Death Situation — [Condition Met]
Being a Nonsense — [Condition Met]
Searching for Food — [In Progress]
The rate of assimilation tripled instantly. As he plunged into the dark, the river began to feast. Every individual hair, every layer of skin, every private memory was being systematically harvested by the Endless Quagmire. It was a horrifying scene of self-erasure.
He was no longer walking the path. He was becoming the path.