Nadir Zenith

And I got to test that feeling many more times as I kept getting wounded and nearly dying. That was also where I learned that I truly had no human limitations as I knew them. Oh I had limitations, but they were most certainly not human anymore. Regenerating from just a head over the course of three months, barely sustained by rolling and eating my own body, was a valuable lesson.

And yet, I still counted myself as beyond lucky. After all, I had survived that.

And then I had made it to level four. Where the free men and women go to be right bastards to each other. Not a surprise, but at least there wasn't an invisible instant death or free use sign floating above my head. I seriously had no idea how those damn nobles always knew I was of the 'servant races'. We didn't even look different in any way that mattered.

My luck held strong and I only got into twelve knight fights, minor scuffles, before I found The Enclave. It wasn't my first time seeing magic, war golems, ancient relics, or pistols. But it was the first time I wasn't 100% sure they were going to be used against me to try and kill me.

I was adopted into the biggest gang on the floor, mostly because they accepted everyone because they didn't care about inner gang deaths or politics or if you were part of multiple gangs. They train you, you do what they say, or they kill you. Nice, simple, easy. Like The Park.

I had grown by leaps and bounds there. My shitty magic becoming a true force on it's own, darkness like everyone else, but focusing on speed of movement. Darkness wasn't inherently fast but it was everywhere. It was omnipresent. Moving one 'darkness' to another 'darkness' was ridiculous. That's not how it works. Others decided to teleport using this methodology, a valuable skill, but the limitation was yourself. I chose speed. Sliding through the dark.

That, my senses, my fighting style, my own weapons, I improved beyond what I imagined was possible, and then even more so beyond that.

Before long, I found myself an elite. That was a hard fought title to earn. You had to survive. My past could fill a book or three. Goddess, books, seeing actual books was just... being an elite came with perks.

It was a good time. A hectic time. A killing time. So much slaughter. And then I had enough. I said I was leaving and that was that.

They tried to stop, but how they did it scared me. The big boss herself, Grelythe, talked to me. But not alone. Her rival gang lord, Vilsik and a myriad of other truly, truly powerful leaders of the fourth floor came to me.

Came to me and tried to beg me not to do it.

Can you imagine how scary that is? People who would kill you for insulting them, begging you not to make a choice, seemingly actually worried about you. It broke my head. It made me scared. Really scared. What was stopping them from just killing me? I had asked, not only that, but the why of it all.

They couldn't explain, not really. Oh they told me, told me I wasn't human, that knowing and knowing weren't the same thing, that it was unescapable fate if I did this. That it would haunt me forever. That killing me may actually be a mercy but... they felt an instinctive urge not to kill one of their 'own.' They did not mean gang member or merely species.

Almost all of me wishes I had listened.

I left and went up, up, up. I skulked harder than anyone has ever skulked.

It was not an easy or quick trip, but I did it. That was all that mattered, that I completed my journey back up.

And then I was purified and I knew the truth.

I wasn't this boy, I wasn't this body, I wasn't any of this. I was the darkness, that blackness, that hollowed out of core of a soul. It was now my body, now my mind, now my memories but I had never been this human. I was something else.

And those sensations slammed into me. A human has a particular breed of mind. As does an insect, as does a wolf or a deer. We are all different.

Having my own races innate senses pulled out of me into the daylight was, agonizing. By being known, I became myself. But ourselves don't like to be known, it goes against what we are. Once you see us, see our real and true souls, it hurts. It hurts in a way that isn't anything anyone could ever explain. A permeant part of you is broken, forever, for good.

Oh and then it gets worse, because not only has your soul been rended, but you're still dying to purification.

I limped back to Black Pool, a new weight crushing me. I had passed by all those defenses and never questioned their existence fully. They were there to keep us, keep our infestation in. And yet, it was worse than that. Because we couldn't leave. Not only was I permanently broken, I was stuck in Black Pool, forever. The sun, the blue sky, the green grass, it was all barred to us.

It left me weak, weak in a myriad of ways, but I also now knew what I was. With my broken soul, I knew what I was. Names, classifications, that wasn't important. There was no way to describe literally knowing your inner self. You just knew. On the practical side of things, it made me nigh undefeatable by anyone not the same. Stronger, faster, less restricted, less affected by magic, less affected by physical means, more otherworldly. In all the meanings and senses of the word.

And yet, for all my power, strength, and more, I was trapped here. Part of me imagined a good future, a change over, erasing the nobles and leading to societal revolution. I knew that was a fool's hope. The people here weren't humans, they were a combination of us thrown into human bodies. Where I now felt.... more neutral to things that were atrocities to me, less caring about the misery, that didn't work for the others. I hadn't even noticed it but everyone was horrible. That wasn't an overstatement, everyone was genuinely a terrible being, including myself. Murders, rapists, those were the lightest of our crimes. Even having experienced it myself, I had still done it to others. Only now could I feel even the smallest potential for, well, good? Not the right way to say it. Positivity, peace. I could live a few years without murdering, stealing, or sexually assaulting someone. Literally, literally no one else could do that except those who were 'unlocked'. There was a reason the fourth floor was made up of gangs and not kingdoms.

That was just another blow really. Stuck in Black Pool, purified, and now able to be positive, but with no access to it, I get why the others begged me not to go. It was worse than I let on, so much worse. I could already feel the true torture of the soul rendering setting in. And yet, I can see why they had merely begged me not to go. Just the idea of letting someone else be destroyed like this was... wrong. Not "wrong." Wrong.

Innately, soulfully, wrong. I couldn't bring anyone up here any more than I could methodically rip off my skin, eat my own eyes, and carefully, calmly, strip away my muscles until I was bones.

But deep within me, a fire still burned.

The journey back was laughable, mesmerizing even, in its horror. I was stronger than I had ever been but there were others. Nobles on the first floor who had experienced the same as I had. I pasted them by and learned that my hatred hadn't changed. But I now questioned it further. Was the nobles society ideal? No. No, as I looked upon those that I had envied, I recognized the truth. They were not yet 'Us'. Not yet. I had gone around almost. A second revival in a way, breaking free of my human form.

How amusing that in breaking free of it, I was able to access more emotions, only to be denied them.

With strength at a level I never knew, I traveled back. The others, the gang leaders, all looked upon me and wept. Before, the seen would have filled me with fear from confusion. Now, I understood. Ignorance was bliss. The ramifications were still spreading through me, only going to get worse.

And it did. It got so much worse.

These leaders now felt like family and they helped me. But I recognized the broken souls in all of us. Our species was not meant to be seen, even by our own selves. We were cursed and trapped. Death would've been better, a thousand times better.

As I felt myself truly breaking little by little every day, I plotted. I still wanted to escape, to flee, to get the hell out of here.

And if up hadn't worked, why not down?

I wasn't the first to try. I wouldn't be the last.

I went down into that darkness and everyone thought I was going to die or never return. I thought the same. What I found down there denied comprehension. Safe to say, the void had it's own entrances this close to reality. A cousin of the dark, but not the same. And even further still, by luck and chance, in more of a dream like state than anything else, I came upon a jewel. It was a gift, all of reality contorting to give me it. I knew not for what. I knew not why.

I grabbed it and my whole world changed.

It reunited what was lost, fixing my veil, my soul. If that was all, it would have been a blessing unlike any other. But it did more. I could feel it, reshaping me, changing me. Less human, more me. And a way out. I knew it the moment I had touched the jewel, it led to a way out, if only I could make use of it.

The rest of my world was a blur, but that was nothing new for levels five and six. The only odd part that I found myself back on level four. Back on level four and with my mind failing me. I was loopy, broken, insane. But I felt for my family, the smallest part of happiness I had really obtained, and went to the enclave.

That small ember was snuffed out.

I brokenly explained, exclaiming that the jewel led out. Years had passed, I was the only one that had ever returned. They believed me, Grelythe believed me.

Goddess have mercy on fools, she believed me. And then she tried to kill me.

She failed. Fixing took time, reconstruction took effort, the purification wounds becoming more and more prominent as my power was leeched. My mind getting worse and better. A paradox that seemed to consume me. I felt both more aware than I had in years and less. Consumed within my own thoughts. Remaking my mind was part of the process but doing so meant death.

Days passed as I fled, staying on the move, elites after me. All of Black Pool would soon know or suspect what I had. A true way out, a true way to be free of our accursed existence. To walk among the light without destruction, to bear ourselves away from a permeant life of gloom and misery.

Three had passed.

Today has passed.

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I woke up with a gasp. I looked around myself, blinking, shocked to be alive. That had been, insane. I chuckled lightly. The only reason I had survived was definitely because of my rather, extensive use of mind bending drugs. Some, foundation, to build off my experiences. Everything had just been luck, from start to finish. I looked around for the jewel, not finding it. I suppressed the panic that threatened to cause, even ignoring my black flesh. I found it embedded into my palm. It seemed gloves would need to be common going forward.

I shook my head. Gloves? I was going to need more than that. An entire robe. No, more.

Because everything had changed. My form was no longer human, merely humanoid. I looked more like a living shadow than anything else. My entire form was nearly ethereal but it didn't matter. Truthfully, I didn't care. I was weaker, much, much weaker. But I had my mind back and the jewel from below with me.

It was time to escape the darkness.