Past and Present?!

[Back to the past…]

My name in my past life was Michael.

I was an orphan found in front of a church that also ran an orphanage.

The first years of my life were relatively alright, being looked after by the kind pastor and the sisters in the church. I was never in need of love and always had it in abundance.

Although, because of my scrawny stature, I was picked on by a few mean orphans as well, which I guess is all natural for kids to do, especially when you have to look at other kids with parents. You tend to hold anger towards your own parents, and the only outlet is the other kids around you.

Me, though? I was the big brother for the other younger children, and I didn't see the reason to behave like that, as I already had love from the pastor and sisters in the church, not caring if my parents left me or not.

I carried on being a punching bag for the kids in the orphanage until I could go to school. Which I was excited for, as I could maybe find some friends there that wouldn't bully me.

Oh, was I wrong about that? School was just a form of torture from day one, making the orphanage look like heaven.

Getting shoved into lockers, having my head flushed in a toilet, and even on one occasion having dog crap placed into my locker.

On occasion, I was called a fat pig for being overweight because of a medical condition. Along with other less savory words.

And this was just in middle school, not even high school.

Everything continued to get worse and worse as life went on. I completed middle school with psychological issues and proceeded to high school with less than stellar expectations. For which I was right to do as high school was even worse.

Bullying became physical, and on some occasions I had to go to the hospital to spend the night with broken bones or internal bleeding.

The orphanage didn't have enough money to pay for my medical bills, so I had to resort to finding a part-time job.

This just made my suffering worse, as I had to juggle school and work while at the same time looking after the smaller kids in the orphanage.

All of this was done while I was barely able to pass high school, which caused me not to have enough money to go to college, which was already off the cards because I didn't even have the grades required for it.

I ended up finding myself in a run-of-the-mill job, sending money back to the orphanage while drowning myself in food.

This is where my story ended: in an apartment, dying of a heart attack since I had no one close to me, surrounded by piles of empty boxes of takeaways.

—

[Day 6… In the office…]

Kylie was busy tearing up because of Abel's story, as she felt terrible for him having to go through all those horrible experiences.

"So what should I call you now? Abel or Michael?" Kylie said while wiping the tears out of her eyes.

"You can still call me Abel, as he is still here as well as Michael. Our souls just fused, I guess. But does this mean that you aren't afraid anymore?" With a hopeful look on his face, Abel asked Kylie.

"Yes, it's fine; I'm sorry for overreacting towards you." Kylie said with a smile.

"Phew! That's a relief. I'm glad that I still have your trust, Kylie. It's a really dangerous world out there, and I think we could use all the help that we could get."

Kylie looked at Abel while smiling and thinking inside, 'I'm glad I didn't turn him into charcoal!'

"Okay, with that out of the way, we should plan what to do next. Why don't you eat and drink something while we wait?" With that mentioned, a grumble was heard from Kylie, causing a blush to slowly creep up on her face.

"Mmm." With a nod, she took out a packet of chips that they had found while searching.

While she ate, Abel started to talk: "We need to search on the other side of the floor and clear everything out, including the Infirmary."

"But what if there are other dangerous monsters on the other side?" Kylie asked after swallowing a mouthful of food.

"Well, even if there are monsters that are dangerous, we still need to face them. The other floors are even more dangerous than this one, so we need to be prepared to face stronger enemies. We can't hide away." Determination was evident in his voice, showing that he knew that there would be a difficult challenge ahead of them.

Kylie started to squirm with worry but was too afraid to say anything else, as she knew if they wanted to have a chance at survival, they'd have to face even more dangerous monsters and possibly even humans.

Seeing Kylie in this state, Abel spoke again: "Don't worry too much; we will be careful while searching, and I also don't think that this floor has any more powerful monsters within it."

Kylie just nodded and continued to eat while different thoughts raced through her nervous mind.

When she was done eating, they both got up to leave the office when they heard the familiar sound of nails clicking against the tiled floors.

Stopping in their tracks, they looked at each other while Abel placed a finger over his lips, signaling to be quiet, and showed her his palm to signal to stay put, which Kylie understood.

Trying his best to keep quiet while opening the door, Abel freaked out internally when it made a slight click when he turned the handle.

The clicking of nails also abruptly stopped, causing tension to rise in the air until the clicking resumed, but when he heard it coming towards him, he panicked but realized that he should just prepare for the worst.

So he got a tentacle ready using Corrupt, along with his trusty broken stick, in case something went wrong.

As the clicking got closer to the door, Abel backed away from the door, readying the stick in his right hand while the tentacle materialized around his feet.

Seeing the black nails coming through the gap in the door, he made the tentacle of mist go forward.

Slowly, the door opened, revealing the desiccated arm of the zrendza.

As soon as a tiny bit of the zrendza's head was shown, Abel made the tentacle of corruption go forth to disintegrate the brain, also leaving a bit of the mist to muffle its voice so its screams didn't attract any unwanted company.

As soon as the mist came into contact with its head, the zrendza opened its mouth to scream, but all that came out was a muffled scream as the mist worked to stop any sound from coming out of its mouth.

It began to writhe on the floor, scratching the door frame and the door.

When it finally stopped moving, there was just a quietness that pervaded the corridor that was filled with an unknown tension.

Abel wasn't going to forget the lesson that he had learned from facing these things, only accepting his experience and leaving the body, waiting to see if there were any other zrendzas within the surroundings that would attack them.

[Lvl Exp. Gained: 4XP]

Time felt like molasses as it passed by, excruciatingly slowly as Abel waited and listened until finally what he was waiting for came to pass: three noises as if something lightly dropped from somewhere were heard, and Abel got to see one of the culprits right in front of the door as he got three tentacles ready to face them.

The one in front of the doorway readied itself to pounce on Abel, but without having the sight capable of seeing within this dark space, it didn't realize the danger it was exposing itself to.

It dashed at speeds Abel wasn't able to keep up with, as his stats were extremely poor.

The zrendza flew through the air towards the hateful creature that killed its companion but was soon in excruciating pain as it flew straight into a tentacle of black mist, causing it to lose balance in midair and roll across the ground as it proceeded to writhe in pain like its companion had done from the pain within its mind.

Abel, who was extremely close to the zrendza, was scratched by the writhing creature, but as he had to stay focused, he gritted his teeth through the pain and was determined to keep the three tentacles active with his Corrupt skill.

As he backed away from the dangerous creature that was struggling to scream on the floor, he heard two more clicking noises coming towards the door.

Looking towards the doorway with two tentacles that were made of mist, Abel was ready to unleash the skill at any moment.

The sound of the nails clicking against the tiles slowly approached the door, causing Abel and Kylie to get more anxious, while Omi was yawning while lying on Kylie's shoulder.

Two hideously decrepit faces came through the door with malicious grins seemingly permanently plastered on their faces.

Abel was about to attack when a System message popped up, causing him to get distracted.

[Lvl Exp. Gained: 4XP]

'Ah fuck…' As two tentacles of a pitch-black mist dissipated because of Abel's lack of focus, this was his last thought as the two enemies crept forth, making clicking noises...