Chapter 9: (SAFETY?)
I bolted out the door, heart hammering in my chest, expecting the shadowy figures to stop chasing me once I put enough distance between us. But they didn't. They kept coming. In a desperate attempt, I lunged straight at one of them. I raised my sword high and swung with all my strength, hoping to stop them. But the blade passed through its body as if it were nothing but air. The figure tilted its head slowly, then it smiled.
"What…? It didn't work!?"
Before I can catch my breathe, another shadow lifts its arm. A spear cuts through the air with a sharp whistle, flying straight toward my forehead. whooosh! My mind freezes, but my body moves on its own—my hand shoots up, trying to cover my head.
Thud!
The spear slammed into my raised arm. The only thing stopping it was the old cloth wrapped tightly around it. The impact made my arm bleed and tremble as the tip struck the bone, and the force shoved me back a step.
"Ouch!!!"
The moment the spear bounces off my wrapped hand, I didn't wait—I turned and run. My legs kick off the ground hard, almost slipping on the hard ground as I sprint deeper through the trees.
"Ha… ha… ha…!" My breath tore from my chest, ragged and uneven. "How am I supposed to kill them if they can't die when I slash!? Then if physical damage can't hurt them… what can!? I don't have any magical offensive skills I can use, also my skills will took too much mana. And my mana capacity is too low to use them effectively."
"And they… they keep changing their attack patterns every time I regress, making it even harder to avoid being killed. It's like they move purely on instinct… and I have to rely on mine just to dodge their attacks!"
My footsteps pound. Dried Leaves and twigs crack under my every step. Branches whip against my arms as I push through the trees, not daring to look back.
System Showed up.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [ SYSTEM NOTICE ] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Target Identified... Name : [ UNKNOWN ] Title : [ UNKNOWN ] Race : [ UNKNOWN ] Threat Rank : [ UNMEASURABLE ] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
HP : ???
AP : ???
Mana : ???
Strength : ???
Speed : ???
Durability : ???
Intelligence : ??? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Weakness Detected... Sunrise ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━Warning: Unable to fully analyze the target. Information is incomplete. Extreme caution is advised.
"What—sunrise? Seriously!?" I shout between gasps. "Ha… ha… then how am I supposed to survive!?"
My lungs burn as I jump over a fallen trunk, almost tripping. "There are still five hours before sunrise!" I yell, voice cracking. "Five hours! I can't run for five damn hours!!!"
"Damn it… ha… ha… damn it!" I clutch my chest as I inhaled and exhaled. "System! Give me something! Any useful information!"
But there was only silence. The only sound was the leaves rustling as the figures slowly moved closer, step by step towards me.
The system window flashed in front.
[GET OUT OF THE HILLS AND PLAINS]
Immediate evacuation is advised.
"For… what reason!? Ha… ha… ha…!" I panted, clutching my side. "Why now?!"
[ INFORMATION RESTRICTED ]
The requested information is beyond
your current authorization level.
"Arrggg Fine...! Wait… wait, the river!" My mind raced. If there's any chance to survive by leaving the plains and hills, then that place has to be the river!
I changed direction and headed toward the river, but the path was even thicker with weeds and branches. I slashed through the plants in front of me and kept running, pushing forward as fast as I could. My legs burning with every step. Sharp rocks stab into my bare toes, and spiky weeds and vines tore at my hand, face, feet and calves. Each breath came ragged. "Ha... ha... this is so exhausting! The vegetation is too dense!" My arms swung wildly, pushing and pulling the weed, vines and branches out of the way,
Halfway there, I risked a glance behind me. And there are over fifty shadowy figures chasing me. But the shadowy figures with bow stood poised, bows drawn taut, arrows nocked and aimed straight at me, "fuck!!!." arrows rained down. Seventeen shafts, fly through the air toward me. They struck the ground with sickening thuds, sending splinters of dirt and stone flying, each one landing dangerously close to my body.
Twang!!! Twang!!! Twang!!!
The sound of bowstrings snapping echoed in my ears like gunfire. My heart hammered in my chest, every beat threatening to throw me off balance. I twisted and ducked, feeling the wind of arrows brushing past my skin, grazing my arms and legs, tearing small parts of my clothing. Dirt and splinters stung my face, my hair plastered with sweat. but I pushed forward, forcing my legs to move faster despite the burning ache in my calves.
"Hngh…!!!" I screamed, my voice cracking as I forced my body back and forth, twisting desperately to dodge arrow after arrow that whistled past me. But still with my best effort, still one able to hit my shoulder. My shoulder bone and muscles trembled, exhaustion clawing at every movement, but I refused to stop. Sweat stung my eyes, mixing with blood from my scraped skin, as I pushed forward. "Ha… ha… haah! I… I'm so close…"
A sharp whistle of another arrow hit my calves, SHHHK!!! My legs buckled under my exhaustion and pain, a new shadowy figure with a big war hammer raised its weapon and struck my head CRACK-THUD! Half of my face was gone. Darkness swallowed me whole once again, but faster this time.
[YOU DIED]
When I opened my eyes again, I was back in my room, gasping and soaked in sweat. My chest heaved. I had failed… again.
I tied the shirt around my hand again, pulling the knot tight. The other cloth I wrapped around my chest, pressing it flat to stop at least a few arrows or spears from going straight through me. My hands were shaking, but I forced myself to keep going.
"Again…" I muttered. "I'll do it again… until I get out of here."
I pushed the door open and bolted outside.
As I sprinted. My feet pounded the ground, each step sending a shock through my toes. The clothes I wrapped around my body managed to block some arrows—thunk, thunk, thunk—but not all. A few still pierce through the fabric and grazed my skin, leaving slash and bruises.
"Haa… haa… damn it…!" I stumbled, then forced my legs to move faster. "Just let me reach it… just once! Damn it!!!"
Again and again, I died.
Again and again, I revived.
By the 46th time, blood soaked through the cloth on my back where three arrow had pierced straight in. Every breath felt like its squeezing my chest. But I didn't stop running—I wouldn't able to stop even if I want to, because even if I stop to rest even a second I will die once again.
And finally… I reached it. The river. "Finally... ha... ha..."
Before me is a clear, icy-blue water rushing steadily, its surface sparkling under the moonlight. Small ripples danced across it, catching the light like diamonds. The sides of the riverbank were scattered with pebbles and rocks, while tufts of grass sprouted unevenly between them, brushing against the water's edge. The air was damp and cold, carrying the faint scent of some type of a flower.
"I… I made it…" I whispered, knees trembling. "I finally… made it…"
But then—
The footsteps behind me stopped.
Every single one of them.
I slowly turned my head.
The shadowy figures stood just a few meters away, frozen in place. Their smiles—those terrifying, twisted smiles—were gone.
"What…? Why did they stop…?" I asked.
Their expressions changed instantly. Their eyes narrowed slowly as they stared at me with growing anger, as if I had stepped into a place I was never meant to see—as if I had crossed a boundary no one was supposed to approach. That single act alone seemed to insult them beyond reason. I could hear the grinding of their teeth, jaws clenched so hard it sounded like they were trying to crush their own teeth.
“What’s wrong with them...?” I whispered quietly, my voice trembling in exhaustion as their eyes locked onto me with growing anger.
The system window suddenly appeared right in front of my eyes. and now its color had changed to green.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ SYSTEM NOTICE ] ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [ SAFETY ACHIEVED ] The target has successfully crossed to the designated safe area. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Status : STABLE
Threat Level : CLEAR
Current State : SAFE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
No hostile presence detected. You have finally reached the other side.
My legs finally gave out. I dropped onto my knees, clutching my chest, trying to breathe through the stabbing pain spreading from my back.
"Finally… I can rest…" I gasped, my voice shaking. "Ha… haa… system… why do they look angry this time? They were smiling before. Why did their expression change?"
[Historical Data can't be given]
I scoffed, biting down on the pain as I pressed a hand against my pierced back. "If you won't give me any hint, then fine… but my body—haa—my body won't stop shaking. It hurts. My back hurts. My lungs feel tight. I feel… weak."
[Owner, why do you seem unaffected by dying multiple times? Are you immune to it, or have you simply grown accustomed to the experience of death?]
I stared at the glowing text, disbelief spreading across my face.
"What kind of question is that…?" I whispered, my voice trembling with exhaustion. "Immune? Accustomed to it? Of course not. Why would you even think that?"
I leaned forward.
"It's painful every time," I said quietly. "Like the first. Like the tenth. Like the thirtieth. Like the thirty‑sixth to the fortieth. It hurts exactly the same. And I swear—no one can ever get used to dying."
The system stayed silent.
"There is no creature that doesn't feel pain when they die," I continued, the words spilling out of my mouth. "Death is pain. Pain is death. One exists because of the other."
"You won't understand it… because you're a system. You can calculate death, record death, announce death—but you can't feel it."
I lifted my trembling hand, watching it shake uncontrollably. "But I do," I whispered. "Every. Single. Time. Those weapons strike my flesh, blood pouring out of my wounds and my pain tolerance doesn't get better—I just… regress. I don't get stronger"
"The brain tries to numb the pain, but death still hurts. It always hurts. You only grow mentally from repeating it—not physically. You can tolerate it, but it never easy to ignore, once you start bleeding."
“It was rough. It was so painful. I was terrified. It hurt so much that I thought I was going to die over and over again, and that it would never end. But I’m glad I’m safe for now. I can finally rest my body and my mind without being chased. I’m so tired... and everything hurts.”