Guilt

'Why do I have such guilt within me? Why are there so many corpses here? Why is she throwing accusations at me? Was it me?'

Kaiden's thoughts sank deeper, just like his knees sinking into the quicksand.

Kaiden looked somewhat dejected into the white, slimy substance.

"What have I done?"

Pulling his legs up, he tried to escape from the sticky stuff in his melancholic state.

He kept questioning what he had done. But hope dies last. The girl seemed still conscious due to the curses she hurled.

Steps followed, increasingly hurried steps.

Was he too late to save her?

Her half body was still within reach, two hands stretching out, yearning for help.

He first rushed to the seemingly stronger hand with a bit of the forearm visible.

"Come on, damn it!"

After a short struggle and effort, he saw more of the arm, but it seemed completely charred and damaged. Pulling further, the upper body also appeared entirely burnt.

The smell of burned and decaying human flesh hit Kaiden's nose, causing him to recoil, but he had to do something. He reached for the arm and neck, but no pulse could be heard.

"Damn,"

he muttered to himself while hastily looking at the other person.

Kaiden's ocean-blue eyes widened, and again, he berated himself.

"Where was he now?"

Kaiden screamed at himself again, running back and forth desperately trying to find the hand that was sticking out earlier, but his efforts were in vain.

The only thing he gained from it was injuries from broken fingernails, some torn and some ripped off. Kaiden was in an internal conflict.

He couldn't understand what was happening. Were his actions justified, or were these unnecessary murders he committed, or was it even him?

Kaiden sprinted to the last person, the girl who cried with tears stained in red. She coughed up blood, but her weeping gaze changed to a look filled with anger and revenge when she saw Kaiden.

"Don't worry, I'll help you,"

Kaiden shouted as their eyes met.

Inclining his arms towards her, he tried to grab her shoulders and lift her, but before he could do that, another smoke cloud emerged, this time, however, focused on Kaiden's eye.

Kaiden, who only wanted to help, forgot that they had apparently been fighting before, understandable with all the guilt the young man carried.

Yet, precisely these feelings were his downfall.

The beam went directly into his still healthy eye, making him see only black.

"Argh!"

he screamed, not seeing and unaware of what awaited him.

Followed by a seemingly thrown against a wall.

Arms against the wall, he wanted to move them to rub his eye, but he couldn't.

'Why?!'

he thought loudly in his head.

Kaiden didn't want to believe it all the time. Killing others without any real reason.

"No, there must be a reason, I would never make such foolish actions!"

Kaiden's eye burned, and he felt the injuries that had appeared seemingly out of nowhere all over his body.

"There must have been a reason! Yes, I'm not at fault for anything,"

Kaiden tried to convince himself and tell himself that there must be a reason for it all.

What he wanted was just to get his memories back.

But why did he lose them again?

Simply put, he got back his memories, but because he lost them right after, before 30 minutes were up, they were also deleted with the memories he got back.

Memories come and go based on the time they were received, not their overall value as memories.

If karma points had been credited an hour after his major recovery, he would still have them.

But he would have lost them just as quickly if he had received a week's worth of memories and then lost them, even if he had earned a karma point after a minimum of 30 minutes.

However, Kaiden didn't know all this.

How could he?

He was, after all, the victim of memory loss.

"I can't see anything, damn it."

Silence fell.

"Is she also gone?"

With a melancholic voice, he looked into the deep distance with black and sightless eyes.

Light tears kept increasing, and he bit his tongue and lips, causing self-inflicted pain.

"I just wanted to help..."

Kaiden's somewhat depressive demeanor seemed somewhat familiar.

"Am I falling back into old times?"

saying it loud to himself,

"No, I mustn't. I have to become stronger and better to give my brother a good life."

Looking up again, he added in his thoughts,

"Only then can I rest in peace and atone for my sins."

Using brute force, he tried to free himself from the sticky white silk threads.

"The past remains in the past, the future in the distance. To achieve what I want, I must do something in the present, now!"

Guilt overwhelmed him, but he transformed it into anger and thus strength.

"Damn you, you sticky stuff!"

He cursed, not understanding what it was.

Getting angrier and stronger, his face turning red, matching his eye with a hint of black.

Blood still dripping from his face, he screamed and leaned further forward.

The silken material becoming looser.

Cracks could be heard lightly, getting wider and wider, until Kaiden already leaned forward several centimeters.

The threads hanging down and becoming finer, thinner, hinted at weariness and weakness.

Eventually, the right side tore completely.

Hanging only halfway, he turned his whole body and let himself fall backward.

His weight, approximately 80 kilograms, made the silk threads shudder and wobble;

eventually, Kaiden fell backward, though not far as his legs were somewhat stuck in the quicksand.

Arms on his legs, he pushed himself up and pressed his legs, clad in dark gray pants, upward from below.

Straining, he groaned from effort and pain.

From a different place far from the cave, a voice laughed like it hadn't in a long time.

"So, there are young folks with character and diligence after all, huh?"

A beeping sound echoed. 

[Exam is over] 

[Arena is being transformed to its original state] 

[Survivors: 24/43] 

[Team 1 survivors: 5/5] 

[Team 2 survivors: 4/5] 

[Team 3 survivors: 0/5] 

[Team 4 survivors: 2/5] 

[Team 5 survivors: 3/5] 

[Team 6 survivors: 6/6] 

[Team 7 survivors: 4/6] 

[Team 8 survivors: 0/6] 

The seemingly white substance receding everywhere like a hologram falling apart.

Somehow, it looked relaxing. Kaiden's eyes became paler and more tired. Breathing rapidly, he supported himself with his arms on his legs.

Huff, huff,

"What's going on here?"

Kaiden's face questioning looking at all the others as he let the hologram pass before him.

"An exam? Survivors and teams? But where was my team?"

He looked for the others he had previously told his story to.

Eyes getting tired and breathing heavier with short intervals of bloody coughing, he searched the area.

"There they were."

With a bit of a clenched and slightly angry voice, he said to himself,

"Why weren't they with me?"

Processing the new information in his thoughts, he continued to look around.

With little strength and further bouts of bloody coughing, he gazed into the distance beyond the others his age.

He saw a blond man in his mid-thirties, as he guessed.

'Why was he laughing?'

Kaiden's eyes closing further and becoming heavier, he sensed and saw vaguely as the ceiling moved.

Eventually, he fell with the feeling that the blonde old man was to blame for all these things.