"What the hell is this place? It's been half a month, and I still haven't seen a single person!"
You Yi had already been wandering this land, torn apart by jagged Originium spines, for more than half a month.
At this point, his form could no longer even be called human. He was nothing more than a writhing mass of dark, viscous matter, barely able to maintain the rough outline of a body.
Hunger was eroding his will.
It was not merely a sensation, but something actively devouring his consciousness.
As a symbiote, he needed a host. He needed emotions.
Any emotional fluctuation could become the sustenance that maintained his existence and fueled his evolution—anger, fear, ecstasy, even a desperate will to survive.
But here, there was nothing except a land warped by Originium and the occasional Originium creature passing through.
There was virtually no trace of humanity.
If he did not feed soon, he felt that before long, he would truly collapse into nothing more than a puddle of slime and his consciousness would dissipate.
He vaguely remembered that this was supposed to be the world of some game.
Fragmented images drifted up from the depths of his memory.
Screens, videos, forums—discussions from some familiar yet distant world about a game called Arknights.
This world was supposed to be called Terra.
But those memories were like reflections on water. At this moment, the only thing occupying his mind was the most primal craving to feed.
"At this rate, I'm really going to disappear."
He clung to the top of a thick cluster of Originium crystals, staring out at the gray, dim landscape in the distance.
The environment was so harsh it hardly seemed fit for habitation. How could anyone possibly appear in a place like this?
Just as his consciousness sank deeper into despair, a humanoid silhouette appeared in the distance.
It was a child.
A Sarkaz girl.
She looked very young. White hair hung in a messy tangle across her forehead and cheeks. She wore coarse clothes that were obviously too large for her, patched and worn in many places.
She was thin to the point of gauntness. Her amber eyes swept warily across her surroundings like a small beast forever ready to flee danger.
That hair color, those red horns, and that striking antenna-like streak in her hair caused a name to surface without warning from the depths of You Yi's mind.
Wis'adel?
It was her, all right. That W—the future Speaker of Kazdel.
But right now, she was only an orphan struggling to survive in Kazdel.
What was she doing here?
You Yi watched as she stuffed something wrapped in cloth into a crack between the rocks, apparently hiding it.
But he could no longer spare attention for that.
At this very moment, wasn't she exactly the host he needed?
A host with considerable potential.
So young—meaning she was malleable. Surviving alone—meaning she must be carrying intense emotions. Fear, resentment, the yearning for power… all of it would make the finest nourishment for him.
He wondered whether this might be the only chance he would ever get in this life.
He slid down from the crystal cluster, creeping forward in the shadows at the fastest speed he could manage.
Just as Wis'adel was about to leave, he stretched out a tendril and touched her ankle.
He sent his voice directly into her mind.
"Do you need power?"
The voice was hoarse, yet full of temptation.
The girl froze mid-step, her body instantly going taut, her pupils shrinking sharply.
"Who's there?!"
She snapped her head down, staring at the puddle of sticky, disgusting-looking matter on the ground. She quickly retreated two steps, then reached to her waist and drew a dagger crudely sharpened from some unknown material.
"I'm something that can help you stay alive."
You Yi continued projecting his thoughts, doing his best to weave his words carefully.
He knew he had little time, and his appearance inspired absolutely no goodwill. All he could do was hope his words would move her.
"It's hard, isn't it? Being alone on this land. The fear, the hunger, and the people chasing after you?"
The girl's lips pressed into a tighter line. The hand gripping the dagger trembled slightly, but her gaze did not change in the slightest.
"Don't you want the power to protect yourself? To decide your own fate?"
You Yi continued his seduction, his voice growing faintly feverish. "You could live freely. You could change things according to your own will—"
"Shut up."
Those two icy words cut him off.
There was not the slightest wavering in Wis'adel's eyes—only total revulsion and suspicion.
"Disgusting thing. Stay away from me."
She slowly shifted her footing sideways, her eyes locked on You Yi the whole time, making sure he remained within her sight.
Then she turned and ran without a backward glance, vanishing from view in moments.
You Yi tried to extend his senses and track her, but in his extreme weakness he caught only the rapidly fading sound of her footsteps before everything fell silent again.
Failure. Total failure.
You Yi collapsed onto the ground, feeling like a patch of mud about to dry out completely.
"So it really wouldn't be that easy…"
His consciousness seemed to waver, while wave after wave of instinct battered at his reason.
The wasteland returned to deathly silence, broken only by the mournful whistling of wind through the Originium crystal clusters.
That girl, Wis'adel, seemed as though she had never appeared at all.
Over the next two days, You Yi's condition deteriorated even further.
He could barely move anymore, only cling to the underside of a comparatively shaded rock, his awareness drifting between clarity and delirium.
He felt as though he was going mad from hunger. He even began to hallucinate. Those fragmented memory-shards flashed more and more frequently, mixed with a frantic craving for emotional energy.
In his previous life, he had achieved nothing. His life had been brief and unremarkable.
And now, in this life, he was going to die miserably in the wilderness too.
What a tragedy.
So be it.
If there was a next life, he hoped the starting difficulty wouldn't be turned up again.
This time, he wouldn't be stubborn about it. He'd pick "very easy" without hesitation.
Just as he was on the verge of giving up, he dimly sensed a small figure lingering nearby, watching warily.
She was nearby. She was observing him.
You Yi didn't know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing, but that faint sliver of hope became the thread that kept his final shred of consciousness from snapping.
Then, on the fourth day, opportunity arrived hand in hand with danger.
Hurried footsteps approached from the distance, mixed with heavy, ragged breathing.
It was Wis'adel.
She looked even more bedraggled than a few days ago. Fresh abrasions marked her face, her clothes had been torn open in one place, and her features were written all over with tension and panic.
"Stop right there, you little bastard!"
Two Sarkaz men in ragged clothes—but clearly adults—were chasing after her, their faces twisted with vicious greed.
"Hand it over!"
Wis'adel gritted her teeth and sprinted forward desperately.
She was obviously extremely familiar with the terrain here, using the Originium crystal pillars and the pits in the ground to try to widen the gap between them, but the difference in stamina was fatal.
Her pursuers were drawing closer and closer.
Almost instinctively, she ran toward the comparatively concealed jumble of rocks where You Yi was hiding.
Her target was, of course, not You Yi, but the bundle she had hidden earlier beneath the crack in the rocks.
As luck would have it, he was close enough to see her pull out the bundle and open it, revealing what lay inside.
It was a crude device with a simple circuit attached.
On closer inspection, it looked vaguely similar to some sort of bomb construction from his memories.
She hid a bomb in a place like this?
All he could say was—no wonder it was Wis'adel.
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