355  Volume V – Chapter 73: Awareness of Weakness

The first thing I felt when I saw the one-eyed creature was… fear. Just like… like I’ve felt throughout this whole dungeon. An unfathomable fear that kept growing and growing inside me.

And yet, hope hadn’t gone out of me. Because I… I wanted to live. No matter how bad it was, no matter how impossible it seemed that we could survive… I wanted to live.

I wanted to see Paul, I wanted to see Aiden. To be separated from them like this… wasn’t that… unfair?

Although… life had never been fair. I had experienced it myself, more than once.

Still, I believed I would survive. The reason was simple… It was Adrian. The words he said over and over from day one.

Trust me.

And I did.

That trust was reaffirmed many times as he managed to kill one creature after another, somehow managing to keep us alive.

So, even though we faced a creature as powerful as ever, even though I was trembling with fear, I continued to trust him.

And he did not disappoint that trust. Even though I couldn’t see anything because the cave was covered with clouds of dust, his attack was so powerful that I didn’t even think that the creature could have survived.

And so I relaxed a bit, just a little… until I noticed out of the corner of my eye that Lucia was trying to get in front of me.

Why, the thought crossed my mind. My eyes were still on the clouds of dust, and I was about to turn my gaze to Lucia when, suddenly, everything changed.

A split second ago, there was nothing in front of me, but the next time I blinked… there was a claw pointed at me. And the next second, Adrian was sprinting towards me.

The whole world froze for a moment.

Ah…

But it didn’t last long.

My feet were suddenly knocked off the ground, the air around me seemed to solidify, and I was thrown into a spot I didn’t know where.

I was just beginning to understand what had happened when I felt an extremely sharp pain in my back, and then the pain spread throughout my body. It was like… like I had hit a wall extremely hard. So hard that I collapsed a little bit into the same wall.

My eyes were briefly torn between closing and opening, tearing up from the excruciating pain. Yet, I couldn’t make a sound, except for the agonized moan that escaped between my lips.

When it felt impossible for me to control my body, first, my head was separated from the wall. Then my back, my arms…

I waited to fall to the floor, not caring if my consciousness slipped away… just to get some rest.

But… when I finally completely separated from the wall I was in, what I saw was not the floor. Instead… it was endless darkness.

I had no fear of heights. But what I felt when I was looking at this endless darkness… was something else.

And I started to fall, into the same endless darkness.

I saw Adrian. He was trying to get closer to me. He had his hand out… as if he was trying to catch me. His eyes were full of hope and determination.

But the next second… he was gone. He just stayed up there, unable to reach me… and I kept falling. Then… I finally realized what was really happening.

The creature, Adrian, the pit…

I am… falling into that huge pit.

I tried to turn my head to look up, but my body and the wind in my face wouldn’t let me.

I don’t know why, for a brief moment… I didn’t think anything. I don’t know if I didn’t want to think, if I was tired, or if I didn’t feel like thinking… But I didn’t think.

But it was really only for a brief moment. Because after that ‘brief’ moment, my mind was suddenly filled with one thought after another.

I’m going to die, huh…

This was the first thing that popped into my mind as I fell at full speed toward the bottom of the pit.

I am weak, I have no advantages over the likes of Adrian and Lucia. It was a miracle that I even made it this far… Why did I believe so much that I would survive?

That was the second one.

For someone as ordinary, as powerless as me… it’s a convenient death, actually. By the time I realized what was happening, I was already falling to my death… I was so powerless that it took me too long to realize my fate.

Third…

Was my… life worth anything?

What have I accomplished in life, besides being a powerless coward?

How many people will be sorry for me?

The questions became meaningless after a while, so many one after the other that my mind could hardly process them all at once.

And yet… even though I had accepted my death so much… even though in just a few seconds, who knows, maybe a split second, I would turn into a mash…

I… I still wanted to live.

I felt my eyes tearing up, my whole body convulsing.

There were so many things I wanted to do…

I wanted to spend more time with my new friends, I wanted to see my brother grow up and graduate, I dreamed of finally having a happy life after everything I had been through. I dreamed of Aiden waking up, of us getting older and… getting married.

Now… was it all for nothing?

I wanted to think more, actually. I wanted to rebel, to scream at the unfairness of life… however pointless it was.

But I didn’t have time to think anymore. Because… in the end, the inevitable happened, my fall ended.

A momentary, very fleeting pain spread through my whole body. Finally, I saw a tiny little light shining in the darkness behind my eyes, and then… everything went dark.

*******

“Adrian…”

A voice I knew, too well, entered my ears.

“Adrian…?”

It was beautiful, as always. It felt delicate. Even more delicate than usual. And… fragile. Like a flower that hadn’t been tended for days, ready to collapse at any moment.

On top of that, the fact that she was holding me, that I was in her arms… that I could feel her trembling… It emphasized it so much more.

But I didn’t care anymore. The fact that she was beautiful, that she was delicate, that she felt like she was going to blow my mind… No, her charm really couldn’t reach me the way it used to.

“Adrian… w- we need to move forward…”

Her words echoed in my mind. It was the first time in my life that I had heard Lucia stutter. It was clear that she was as affected as I was.

But…

Even then…

“Please…”

She took my face in her hands, turning me toward her.

His red eyes were teary. Tears were running down her cheek and down her chin. But… despite this, she still had a determined expression. Sad, yes… but also determined.

“Let’s at least get to a place where we can hide, where we can clear our heads…”

Ah, right…

We… we were trying to survive, weren’t we? That’s why we came here…

We were trying to get out of here…

“Adrian, please! Pull yourself together, please… I… I’m sad too, I’m crying too… I can’t accept it either! B- but… But…”

Lucia’s eyes twitched as mine widened slightly. Biting her lip… she literally forced herself to continue.

“Do you want us to follow Sue?”

Right…

I… I said I would protect them both…

I failed. I… I messed up again. I failed to prevent someone from dying, again. No, not only failed to prevent…

I literally let her die.

If I had been cooler when we first met that creature, if I had been sure I had killed it in the first place, if I had grasped its true purpose when it lunged at Sue and Lucia, if I had pushed myself and been faster afterward instead of taking so much time to get up… If I had done just one of those things, we would have been fine.

And yet… what did I do?

I… I let Sue get thrown by that creature, I let her fall and… I let her die.

It’s my fault, which means…

“P- please…”

But…

But I still have someone to protect, right?

Maybe not as much as Sue, but… Lucia is weak too. She’s counting on me, relying on me to get her out of here. Just like… like Sue.

I… I didn’t live up to her expectations, I betrayed her trust.

I failed.

But it’s not over. We’re still here, still in this hell…

“I… am sorry…”

I pushed Lucia’s hands away from my face, stretched a little, and then tried to stand up with difficulty. My whole body was trembling, so much so that the moment I stood up, I felt like I would collapse again. But I managed to stand up anyway.

My eyes drifted to the pit for a moment, to its endless darkness… I thought of Sue’s fall. The way she slipped through my fingers right in front of my eyes.

It took me two minutes to make a hole in the wall, just like the one I made when we first entered the cave. Lucia was silent the whole time, not saying a word. Only when I called her again did she stand up and enter the hole.

10:21

I clenched my fist, wiped my eyes on my clothes, and didn’t look in the pit again. I looked for my spear, and found it… Then I approached a random wall.

Lucia was still where she was. Maybe she was watching me, maybe her eyes were in the pit… I don’t know. But I didn’t want to look at her, I didn’t want to make eye contact.

“I’m sorry, I… I lost myself, I forgot where we were for a moment.”

I transferred my mana carelessly to my spear and my muscles, then attacked the wall. Cracks appeared on it, some pieces of rock rolled to the ground.

“Let’s… rest a little, like you said.”

It took me two minutes to make a hole in the wall, just like the one I made when we first entered the cave. Lucia was silent the whole time, not saying a word. Only when I called her again did she stand up and enter the hole.

We blocked the entrance with big rocks, just as we had done last time, and pitch darkness fell over us.

We didn’t speak a word. Minutes passed, then hours… Hours of absolute silence.

The dungeon awoke to a new day, the creatures returned one by one. Each one of them was strong, maybe even stronger than that one-eyed one… but none of them tried to dig into our hiding place, none of them noticed us.

Hours went by without us making a sound. And I kept thinking, blaming myself…

Yes, I have someone else to protect…

Yes, we are still struggling to survive…

Yes, our primary goal of getting out of this dungeon has not changed…

But… surviving doesn’t mean that much anymore. I… I just… want to get out of here.

I don’t want to lose Lucia the way I lost Sue. I don’t want to get her killed. All I want is… to get out of here somehow.

Because… I know I’m incapable. For this dungeon, for the creatures in it… I’m not capable enough on my own. I’m… simply powerless. I thought it was different, I believed before that I could really do this on my own… but no, I can’t.

So… I want to get out of here as fast as I can.

Because… if what I’m afraid of happens again, if Lucia dies in front of my eyes… like Sue… I don’t know what will happen to me, what I’ll do. Thanks for reading 🙂

WindskyW

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