Chapter 2

Cho-i stared blankly at the sight, her face streaked with tears. Then she almost fell as her strength gave out. Her neck was slashed by a Mantis’s foreleg, and chunks of flesh fell off. She panted and made a decision.

“H-Hyeonchan, Hyeonchan. Save me.”

She pushed the shield with all her might.

[Casting skill ‘Pushback’!]

As the Mantises moved away, she abandoned her shield and started running frantically towards the entrance. It was only a C-Rank shield, and she had another one in her inventory, so losing it didn’t matter.

“Wait, let’s go together! Please! Don’t do that!”

She ran with her vision constantly blurring due to tears. The Mantises were chasing closely behind her. Their forelegs kept brushing against her long hair.

“Cho-i!”

Nara screamed. All the teammates were outside the iron door. Cho-i reached out her hand to them.

“What? Are you guys crazy?!”

“You’re the crazy one! Get out of the way!”

“We need to close the door quickly!”

Even before Cho-i could get out, they grabbed the door to close it.

“No!”

She screamed, but then, thud. The door closed in front of her, and darkness enveloped her.

“Open it, please. Open it!”

She let out a long sound that was somewhere between a scream and a sob, pounding and pulling at the door they had gone through. But the door wouldn’t open even a little, as if it was being held from the outside.

At that moment, bang! A sound came from beside Cho-i. The swarm of Mantises had chased her all the way here. Cho-i frantically started running down the left path. A Mantis’s foreleg brushed the end of her hair. She managed to escape somehow. She was out of breath, but she couldn’t stop. Because the moment she stopped, her heart would stop too.

“Light…”

Then she saw a light in front of her eyes. There was something at the end of the left passage. Cho-i couldn’t go back. She hoped there wouldn’t be any more Mantises and ran towards the light, reaching it.

“This is…?”

What appeared before Cho-i’s eyes was a Giant Mantis Skeleton. The entity looked like a god of the earth. Or perhaps like the bones of a giant dinosaur. She momentarily forgot the situation and stared blankly at the entity, then, with a rustling sound and approaching footsteps, she frantically looked around. Was there anywhere to escape? Please. And what caught her eye then.

“That, surely!”

She ran. Into the belly of the giant Mantis’s bones. Something was definitely sparkling inside.

‘Hidden item!’

With just that, maybe she could get out of here safely. She rushed forward with hope, smashing the giant skeleton with her sword. The Mantises, who she thought she had put some distance between, were back behind her. She threw herself towards the sparkling object. And grabbed it.

“If only I had this!”

The item was a small ring. Without even checking the item, she immediately slipped it onto her finger. Then, ding, a system window appeared before her eyes.

[Parasitic Ring EX-Rank]

Cho-i cheered inwardly. But the entity also briefly displayed a description window below, leaving her speechless. The item had no skills or additional stats. Only these sentences were listed.

[+Participates in the wearer’s growth. +Participates in the wearer’s life. +Regenerates the wearer. +Cannot die until hatched.]

And.

[□□□ □□□ □□□ □□ □□□ □□□□□.]

She couldn’t understand the sentence. An unreadable sentence appeared and disappeared. What in the world is this? Cho-i’s hands trembled. She might have questioned the unreadable sentence, but Cho-i was in such a hurry that the meaningless sentence didn’t register. Because this item couldn’t resolve the situation. No, on the contrary.

“Screech!”

Eventually, the Mantises chasing Cho-i pounced on her. There was nowhere left to run inside the large belly. The Mantises swung their sharp forelegs to tear at her, mutilating her. Her screams were incessant. Amidst the chirping cries of the monsters, her cries and screams erupted like madness.

“It hurts! Ugh, help me! Ah!”

She reached out her hand into the empty air, but there was no one to help her. Cho-i’s body was mutilated, blood flowed onto the floor, and an unknown red mass scattered. Thud, her outstretched hand dropped. And at that moment, the ring on her hand glowed. Ding.

[It interferes with the wearer’s life. It interferes with the wearer’s regeneration. You cannot die until hatching.]

Soon after, the light faded, and her mutilated body began to regenerate. She gasped, taking a breath and finding new life, but.

“Aaah!”

She had to scream again. To continue living without any power meant.

“Ugh, ugh, he, help…”

It meant she would only be endless prey for the Mantises. She crawled forward. And was impaled by a Mantis’s foreleg and dragged away again. She wanted to escape but couldn’t. The Mantises thus devoured her, a piece of meat that endlessly regenerated, to their heart’s content. Perhaps until they grew tired of the taste.

Help me, help me, help me. Only her endless voice continued. Seemingly breaking intermittently. Mixed with groans and screams, it went on and on, for a long time.

She spent hours, days, perhaps years, being torn apart by the Mantises, dying and coming back to life, dying and coming back to life again. She wished her body would become numb, but she had to endure the pain entirely, literally ‘living’. For so long, until she lost her mind.

***

She didn’t know how much time had passed. All the nerves in her body should have died, but the pain of ‘regeneration’ wouldn’t let her go. How long has it been? How ‘long’ have I been alive? She asked, but there was no one to answer. She opened her mouth.

“I want to die now. I’m going to die.”

Cho-i muttered that as her stomach was being eaten by the Mantises. Her voice was hoarse and cracked, and her entire body was gnawed by the Mantises until her bones were exposed. Cho-i lay in the belly of the Mantis’s giant skeleton with hollow eyes. She didn’t know how much time had passed. She wished that the giant Mantis would wake up and digest her as she was. She turned her head to avoid reality. I want to die. I want to die. I don’t want to be in pain anymore. She saw her sword lying far away. Then, a thought occurred to Cho-i’s dying mind. Do I really want to die?

‘If I don’t want to die.’

Her eyes widened. In fact, she didn’t want to die. She wanted to die so badly, and at the same time, she desperately wanted to live. She wanted to die because it was too painful. If it wasn’t painful, she wanted to live. That simple logic seeped into her mind. She wanted to live without pain. She wished the pain would disappear. She wished everything that caused her pain would disappear. If so.

‘I should just kill them before I die.’

She crawled with her body, which was being regenerated after being completely eaten. She made a final struggle. The Mantises followed, stabbing at her arms and legs, but she didn’t care. She stubbornly crawled and grabbed her sword.

“Eat this, you bastard!”

It was a cracked scream. She plunged her sword into the Mantis’s head. With a screech, a Mantis fell. At the same time, a system window rang.

[You have defeated a monster! Your strength has increased by 1!]

“What is this?”

She looked at the Entity with half-crazed eyes, then rolled her gaze.

“My strength is increasing? That’s strange?”

Hunter’s Stats were not something that could be raised so easily. They could only be raised by encountering special situations during combat or by using special items. The Entity was a stat. But then.

“My stats go up by one for killing a Mantis?”

Cho-i tilted her head further and further to the left, then stopped abruptly. And she opened her mouth. Something came to mind. The words, ‘It affects the growth of the wearer.’

“Ah, ah, ah.”

Maybe she could get out of here. She could escape from here. A rusty and broken hope emerged. Even if the process was difficult, she was confident. She had been continuously being devoured here. She once again swung her sword at a Mantis that was eating her leg. And when the Entity spun around and cleanly cut off the Mantis’s neck, the system window rang again.

[You have defeated a monster! Your accuracy has increased by 1!]

She grinned. She could get out. She could get out. She could get out! She stood up on her exposed bone legs and began to cut down the Mantises that were devouring her. At that rampage, the Mantises that had gathered around Cho-i simultaneously rushed at her. They cut off her arms, slashed her legs, and stabbed her neck with their long forelegs. But she did not die. Every time she tried to die, the system window rang and informed her of that fact.

[It interferes with the wearer’s life. It interferes with the wearer’s regeneration. You cannot die until hatching.]

“Ahahaha!”

She laughed like a madwoman. There were hundreds, thousands of Mantises here, but she no longer feared them. No, it would be more accurate to say she had lost her fear. So she began a brawl with thousands of Mantises. Her head was torn, her legs were cut, her neck was severed, and her heart was pierced, yet she survived. One, two. Three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten…

Her arms and legs didn’t stop, slashing, stabbing, stomping, and crushing the Mantises to death. In the middle, her sword broke, and she used her bare hands to tear and chew the Entities to death. The sound of her stats increasing with each Mantis she killed made her head spin.

I could have done this much too, Hyeonchan. Hyeonchan. My boyfriend. You damn son of a bitch.

Her brain was increasingly consumed by madness. And the more it was, the faster her arms, legs, and the Broken Sword became. The same few hours passed. Days passed. And so, perhaps, years had passed.