Into the Pain, Part 2
“A mere human daring to reach beyond his station... Foolish... You should have died back when the System first began its farce. That would have been far easier for you...”
Aren’t you being a bit too harsh?
“Didn’t you just think that very thing yourself? Or am I wrong?”
“...”
“Regardless, if you endure this, I have no choice but to grant you your reward... And you will continue to live in endless slaughter...”
I think you’re the idiot here. All life is struggle by its very nature. As long as you’re alive, you fight.
“Keke, true enough... Does that mean you’ve actually steeled your resolve? Ah... no, wait. You’re just terrified. Shivering in your boots...”
What?
“Still, I have a soft spot for cowards... I like you.”
What the hell are you babbling about?
“A word of advice... You ought to enjoy this a little. Otherwise, even if you are reborn through the Womb, you might fail to transcend your grade... Personally, I’ll be rooting for you.”
...You really can’t be reasoned with.
“That’s fine. We don’t need to talk anyway. From this moment, you have a choice... You can crack the egg and leave immediately, or you can endure a bit more agony, do what you intended to do out there right here in this place, and then crack the egg. Which will you choose?”
Make some sense. What’s the difference?
“......... This much should be fine to say......... Even if you perform the exact same action, the result differs depending on where you do it. Depending on your vantage point, you see different things, and depending on what filters your sight, an entirely different world unfolds...”
.........
“A wise choice.”
Can you read everything I’m thinking?
“Isn’t it obvious at a glance? You really are a fool...”
Ha...
“No time to waste. Let us begin at once...”
If Saebyeok had possessed a mouth, he would have screamed at the top of his lungs. He was plummeting from the void of outer space straight toward an immense blue planet.
Holy shit! Fuck, fuck, fuck!
An endless expanse of ocean filled his vision as he fell. The entire planet seemed submerged in water, though it was not completely devoid of land. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, a massive landmass loomed right beside the trajectory of his descent.
A coastline? A cliff? Where have I seen that before?
Before he could drag the memory to the surface, he slammed into the water with a deafening plunge.
Wait, what? I can breathe? Ah... no, do I just lack a physical body? No, that’s not it either. I can move—wait... ah... fuck.
In an instant, Saebyeok realized he had become a creature bearing an uncanny resemblance to an octopus.
Dammit, what’s wrong with these arms? Or are they legs? Something’s broken... I can barely... haah... I’m completely screwed.
He was forced to grow as a deformed larval octopus, and with every passing moment, control over the body slipped into the hands of its true master. It seemed he had only been granted free rein until the original host’s ego had finished forming.
Though every bodily sensation registered in vivid detail, Saebyeok could no longer exert his own will. He was a parasite unable to seize the reins of his host.
The octopus was disabled. Persecuted and driven out by its own kin, it was pushed farther and farther until it finally crawled ashore. Life was grueling at first, but its amphibious existence between the surf and the dry earth wasn't entirely terrible. It managed to scrape by. Yet this planet was far more savage than he had imagined, and to survive, the octopus picked up a long, discarded branch.
Whenever the stick snapped, it scavenged another, repeating the cycle relentlessly until it finally obtained the long bone of a deep-sea monster. It possessed an unyielding hardness the octopus had never known in its own flesh. Frail and lacking the raw brute strength of its peers, the creature had to be three or four times smarter just to stay alive. Through countless trials and empirical discoveries of physical momentum, it developed a method to wield the elongated bone with lethal precision—all without relying on its four crippled tentacles.
No way... Am I watching the very birth of the Cephalopod Spear Technique?
A life adapted to the land, paired with an insatiable hunger for strength.
This octopus was a bloody genius. Holy crap...
Saebyeok couldn't help but marvel. Transcending the physical limitations of bone, its movements pushed unpredictability to its absolute pinnacle. It was undeniably spearmanship. Watching it slash and thrust from unfathomable, shifting angles, no word could describe it other than pure genius.
Yet even on a world that might have known peace once mere survival was secured, war descended. Beneath the waves, a cataclysmic war erupted between crustaceans and cephalopods. Worshipping rival deities, their clash dyed the entire planet crimson almost overnight. The slaughter did not halt at the water’s edge; the shockwaves surged into the shallows, swallowing small islands and coastal reaches. Desperate to drag every available body into the meat grinder, the marine cephalopods sought out the exiled outcasts who had been driven ashore, pressing them into service.
There was no escaping it. Bad blood or not, a cephalopod was still a cephalopod.
Even so, amid the apocalyptic carnage, the prodigy octopus forged bonds with comrades. They too had honed disparate weapons of their own, and while none could match its sheer brilliance, their talents were extraordinary.
Holy shit! This is that scene! Saebyeok recalled the battlefield he had glimpsed in his earlier trance. Wait, but they looked different back then... Why? Because I’m inside the Womb now? Is this what the black flame was talking about?
His exchange with the dark entity echoed in his thoughts.
Did the System filter what I saw before? Dumbed it down to something my human mind could comprehend? What the hell was that?
The war played out just as it had in the vision, down to the bitter, tragic end—even the final suicides.
Incredible...
This time, perceiving everything through far richer, sharper senses, Saebyeok experienced the duel against the wielder of the black spear firsthand. He wasn’t the one fighting, but sharing the creature’s nervous system granted him an unprecedented masterclass. Yet alongside that enlightenment came a suffocating despair.
He thought death would write the final chapter. But as the octopus lay dying on the stained earth, a familiar figure approached.
Shasha?
It was Shasha, clad in monk’s robes. While it was impossible to distinguish reptile facial features with certainty, the newcomer undeniably belonged to the exact same species.
“Sss-st, care to make a deal with me?”
“@#$@#%#$^$%^”
“Of course. But if you sell the Cephalopod Spear Technique, you will have to begin again from scratch, sss.”
“@#$#$^$%^^*&^%*”
“Yes, naturally. And very soon, an opportunity to test your spear arts on this planet... A magnificent opportunity will arrive, sss.”
“!@#@^$%&%^&!@$!&”
“If you survive until the very end, that would be wonderful in its own right. And should you perish, have no fear. I will personally recover the newly established spear technique.”
“.........”
And with that, an unspeakably horrific battle royale commenced. Killing, devouring, slaughtering—swarms of living abominations butchered one another until only a single soul remained standing. In the end, the octopus surpassed even the wielder of the black spear. Yet having burned through every remaining shred of its life force... the octopus succumbed to death as well.
With its dying breath, the creature fixed its gaze upon Shasha, conveying a final, incomprehensible thought.
“Farewell, then, sss...”
The world plunged into pitch-black darkness.
Saebyeok found himself curled into a tight ball, suspended inside something warm and fluid.
Water? It’s warm.
Simultaneously, a primal instinct seized his consciousness: he had to escape. Laying his hands against the unyielding barrier as though his fingers were tempered blades, he slashed outward.
Craaaack!
Swooooosh!
The golden shell fractured, splitting wide as torrents of black fluid spilled out onto the floor. Before his blurred vision stood Jian and Heejin.
“@#$@^@#”
“@#$@$^%$^”
Their words were an unintelligible blur of distorted noise.
“O... @#%#$%”
“Oppa! @#$%@#$%!”
Jian and Heejin rushed forward in a panic, wiping the dark fluid from his skin with towels before draping a thick blanket over his shoulders.
“Oppa, are you all right?”
“Haah... Thank god, thank god...”
“Urrgh... I’m... f-fine.”
His tongue felt swollen, the syllables clumsily tumbling past his lips. Right then, a translucent message materialized before his eyes.
All upgrades have been completed.
???
Deciding that steadying his breath took priority, Saebyeok began drawing deep, exaggerated breaths.
Inhale———exhale.
Inhale———exhale.
In that singular breath, Saebyeok realized he was perceiving the world through an entirely new reality. The subtle density of the air; glimmering, microscopic particles suspended in the void; the distant rhythm past the concrete walls where golems and robots crushed rubble and synthesized materials—every facet of existence surged into his consciousness like a roaring waterfall translated into sensory data.
Yet his mind accommodated the sheer deluge without faltering. It felt miraculous that his human brain could process such a staggering volume of information without frying.
About fifteen minutes after shattering the Womb, his motor control and speech returned to normal.
“Oppa, are you really okay?”
“Yeah... My senses are finally stabilizing. Jian, how much time passed? It felt like an absolute eternity to me.”
Jian hesitated, biting her lip before answering.
“...Three days.”
“Whew... That wasn’t as long as I feared. Thank goodness.”
“Pardon?”
“Hm? Why?”
“No, it’s just... I expected you to say three days felt like forever.”
“Inside that strange golden egg... it felt like I lived through decades...”
“Did you see something else in there too? Just like I did?”
Rolling his stiff neck from side to side, Saebyeok let out a low sigh.
“Yeah... I went through hell and back. Fought in a war, lived through another version of this survival game we’re trapped in—if you can even call this nightmare a game... Anyway, it was completely insane.”
“A game?... Ah... I suppose so. To whatever is watching, it might just be entertainment. Damn it...”
Jian cast her eyes down, her expression wilting into quiet grief.
Saebyeok gently reached out, his hand resting on her head as he stroked her hair.
“Even so, we got lucky. What I saw inside that egg... was a battle royale where only a single creature was allowed to survive.”
“.........”
“An entire planet... It felt even larger than Earth to me. They forced every sapient creature on that world to slaughter one another until only one remained breathing.”
“My god...”
A bitter smile touched Saebyeok’s lips.
“And the craziest part? Most of them participated voluntarily. Everyone had their own motives, their own desperate desires. The System is terrifyingly clever like that—it knows exactly where to sink its claws into human weakness...”
Crash!
The door swung open with a violent rattle.
“Oppa, are you really okay?!”
Heejin burst back into the room, followed closely by a crowd of survivors who had rushed over the moment word spread that Saebyeok had finally awakened.
It took hours of relentless fussing, checking, and questioning before they finally let him go. Having barely managed to wash off the grime, he retreated to his tent, collapsed onto the mattress, and summoned his status window.