Read Novel Full Chapter 476: In Search of a City in the Abyss
Chapter 476: In Search of a City in the Abyss
It's been a month since I ended up in the abyss, and it's been far worse than I expected. Scarce food, no water, dangerous monsters, and whatever food I managed to find provided very little nourishment.
On top of that, the system informed me that time in the abyss "doesn't" exist!! Time here is so abnormally dysfunctional that one second here could be millions of years out there, or years out there could be billions of years in here.
That creates a huge risk. On the day I get out of the abyss, everyone I love might already be ancient, some dead and others still alive and looking the same due to their abilities, but who waited for an incredibly long time! Or, I could leave the abyss and for everyone else, not even a single second has passed!!
It's absolute madness! And it's even crazier to think that I might even appear in the past! Because time is so absurdly dysfunctional that me leaving this place could make me appear even before I originally arrived in this world.
Although it's a madness I don't have time to ponder, because I need to focus on surviving in the abyss. Besides, I've noticed a strange fact ever since I got here.
'Why the hell do the monsters seem to target me?' Almost every monster I've encountered here in the abyss during this first month seems to become extremely focused on me.
At first, I thought it was normal, but when I'm attacked by one and another creature shows up, the weaker ones form alliances to take down the stronger one, yet they still maintain a clear focus on making me their target immediately afterward, even when I'm the one forming brief alliances with another monster.
I've found several intelligent monsters here, probably between level 100,000 and 400,000, and their focus on me was strange. Since I was stronger, they should have fled, but they didn't.
"..." I stop for a moment, looking at the sky. It's completely black, without any sun or moon, though somehow the dark environment has its own illumination that allows me to distinguish things.
But what matters is the sound, the sound of a large quantity of liquid. It makes me run toward the noise until I reach a natural fork in the forest and see a massive river.
But all the water in the river isn't water; it's a viscous, bubbling black slime. It's the first liquid I've seen in this environment since I entered the abyss.
'So this is the water of this place...' I see things swimming inside it, while a large predator approaches the bank where I'm standing, staying in the water, seemingly waiting for me to enter or get too close so it can attack.
'Seems like a dumb predator... unlike the intelligent ones.' I approach the water, and when I'm close, the thing inside leaps out, trying to take a bite out of me.
It looks like a huge crocodile, but its legs resemble something more like an insect's, its body is strangely pot-bellied, and its tail looks like a scorpion's.
I lean forward, grip the bottom and top of its jaw, then twist it sideways and pull, tearing its body in two all the way to its belly. I pull it out of the water and toss it onto the land, looking at its body.
'Looks really disgusting... but I can't waste food...' I crouch by the water, scoop some up with my palms, and put it in my mouth to taste, but the moment it touches my tongue, I spit it out.
"SO BITTER" My body shudders from the disgustingly bitter taste. The consistency of the water is so viscous it's unpleasant.
'...' I stick my tongue out, seeing smoke rising from it. The water, as unassuming as it looks, is also acidic, and it's a relatively strong acid, though weaker than the acid from the parasites before.
"If I try to cross the river by walking, by the time I reach the other bank, my legs will be down to the bone." I start devouring the monster I pulled from the water while thinking if I should follow the water's course.
Normally, living beings gather near water, but I don't know how that works in the abyss. Still, it would be good to find a permanent food source for myself.
'I wonder if I should try to find a city... or if it's safer to live in the forest...' Both choices have problems that make me hesitate.
Living in the forest means having to hunt for food constantly without any real breaks, while running the risk of encountering a monster so powerful and dangerous I'd die without even a chance to escape.
Whereas in a city, even if such a monster existed, I could still flee, because the abyssal monsters couldn't fight and use all their powers freely inside the city, as it would make other monsters target them for destroying things they shouldn't.
But the problem with the city is the exact opposite. It's full of monsters you can kill if you're careful and don't cause a mess, but precisely because it's packed with monsters, at any moment someone could try to devour me stealthily.
"Regardless of the choice, they all have equal risks... so I should choose the one with the most profit..." That would be hunting for a city, because despite the danger, it will be full of monsters I can try to eat if they're much weaker than me, and thus I can steal characteristics from the abyssal beings.
I bet no monster cares if another monster is being killed in the city, as long as nothing is destroyed or anyone is inconvenienced, which is perfect for me, since I'm good as an ambush predator.
"But... how do I find a city?" I murmur, starting to walk along the riverbank after finishing the carcass of the monster, which, by the way, tasted horrible, like rotten meat, charcoal, and burnt rubber.
"..." I make the clothes created by Pandora Yandere open up in the back into wings. The outfit remains as short and tight on my body as always, but it's actually really useful.
The extra eyes help a lot in perceiving attacks before they get too close, and the outfit's milk drainage helps me get the nutrients my body is lacking.
In other words, I'm surviving on about 30% of what I need from my own milk and the occasional hunt, with the monsters I hunt serving to keep my body producing the milk that provides me with fat.
'Maybe someday my body will adapt, and I'll need a much smaller amount of food and fat to keep my metabolism functioning normally...' I start to fly, but I fly low since a few days ago I saw flying creatures high up, and some kind of giant winged beast devoured them instantly, and I know that thing was strong.
So flying high just exposes me to flying beasts, and the flying beasts are harder to spot than the ones on land, since most monsters in the abyss are black/dark gray, which allows them to disguise and camouflage themselves in the environment.
'Well, I guess I'll just follow the river for a few hours...'
...
...
...
"Alright, this is your classroom, you bitch! Stay here!"
"Gaahh" I'm thrown forcefully to the floor by one of those things that look like the Demon King. My body shudders with discomfort as I look around the room and see some of my classmates.
"Hey Hana... looks like we ended up in the same classroom..." Vanessa says while looking me up and down. I bite my lip, getting up and seeing several others who were tortured with me in the room, all of them terrified and wearing school uniforms like mine.
"..."
"Don't look at me with all that rage. It's not like I'm to blame for what happened," Vanessa says, and I see the only vacant spot is next to her; the others are occupied by classmates or by those numbered things.
I sit down beside her in silence. I can't forget the horrible torture I went through, the feeling of wanting to die without actually being able to die, my dismembered body being burned by flames while the flesh sizzled.
Along with the screams of those who were being tortured with me, and in the end, that torture stopped only for the standard torture, "school," to begin.
"The teacher will arrive in an hour. Until then, we have free time... anything you want to ask?" Vanessa speaks to me without any of her past arrogance. She seems more broken than I am.
"...W-What's going to happen to me..." I ask, taking a quick look around, afraid of being dismembered again.
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing, as long as you follow the over 100 rules of the school. Each rule has a punishment attached, of course. Not breaking a single rule is impossible, so what will happen is simple: you will be tortured at some point."
"The rules are so absurd that you'll break them at some point and will be tortured accordingly... and unlike in Japan, where you had power in school, here we can't have any power whatsoever."
"The numbered girls don't befriend us. They consider us 'invaders,' hateful beings who stole their goddess's attention." She speaks of that aberration with reverence, as if the Demon King were truly divine.
"And why weren't you being tortured like us!?" I ask, frustrated. I heard about the tortures the others endured, each worse than the last! Being cooked alive in a bizarre soup while being devoured.
Having a bizarre plant grow inside their bodies while they were alive, and then there were the ones my group went through, which were equally horrible. But I heard that Vanessa didn't experience any of that, besides the school torture she's part of now.
"...The Demon King apparently got bored. After torturing me with the sand worms before killing me, she didn't want to waste time coming here to this place to torture me."
"So she left my torture to the numbered girls, who are the inhabitants of this place. After a lot of torture and me trying to follow the rules, I managed to make a deal with the delinquents," she begins to explain.
"It turns out the inhabitants of this place are... very... how to put it... standardized. They divide into groups and functions and never deviate from that pattern. For example, the delinquents act in a specific way and never change, causing trouble in school, skipping classes, secretly committing cannibalism in certain spots, or stealing small materials from important rooms."
"Then there are the teachers. They teach and that's it, but if you anger them, they'll deliver some truly horrible tortures. Then there are the outsiders, girls who walk around the city and live a 'normal' life, but without really doing anything."
"Each group has distinct tortures they perform, and if the group is influential, it can protect you from certain things. The delinquents are the third strongest group in the school, below only the teachers and the student council."
"In our agreement, I belong to them. I do everything they ask and let them play with my body. In return, they defend me from the rules of other groups..." Vanessa admits to having practically become a slave to the so-called delinquents.
'Is it that woman with the spiked club?' It's the same girl who appeared on the sports field at the beginning, the one who walks around with what I can only call a club with spikes.
"..."
"You look at me with disgust... but know this, Hana, there's no escaping the torture, only reducing it if you're obedient. I suggest you sell yourself to some group. Maybe they'll enjoy playing with you and protect you from the rules."
"Thanks to the delinquents, out of the over 100 rules, I only need to follow 37 of them... I'm safe from the rest because they defend me..." Vanessa shudders as she says this, tears threatening to fall, but she wipes them away.
"And above all, Hana, never retaliate. No one can protect you from that rule. If you try to hit anyone here, you'll have problems and be sent to the principal, who is the absolute top of this world..." Vanessa looks at the clock on the wall.
"Rule 56: From a certain time in the classroom, all conversations must cease so the students can hear any announcements from the administration. So I won't say anything more, Hana." Vanessa falls silent as a quiet signal sounds.
"But what about..." I try to speak, but all those things sitting in the chairs look at me at once. Their stares send a shiver down my spine, forcing me to be quiet. They seemed to ignore our conversation before.
But the moment the signal sounded, they all immediately tried to see if anyone was breaking a rule. The other truly human classmates who heard our conversation are in complete silence.
'Dammit... why did I have to end up in this hell... damn Demon King...' I just left the worst torture only to fall into another torture that will never stop.