Madness(III)

Amon truly felt helpless; this time, there was no bitter laughter to mask his despair.

After years of relentless effort and countless tribulations, he realized he was nothing more than a pawn, moved across a board whose existence he had never known.

He wanted to lash out, to scream at the injustice of it all, but deep down, he lacked the strength to do so.

Life on Earth had never been easy. To say he and his father endured tragedy after tragedy was an understatement.

When he was just three years old, his Gift of decay awakened—long before anyone knew about the planetary awakening.

His father, strangely enough, didn't panic. Instead, he provided Amon with special gloves. To fully conceal the truth, his father even managed to grant Amon the status of a disabled boy, explaining his absence from most public outings.

But even then, tragedy struck repeatedly.

At seven, he accidentally killed a group of classmates with his ability. At fifteen, he unintentionally took the life of one of his two dojo masters during a hand inspection.

As a boy, he was left shocked and traumatized. For a moment, the world stopped, and he felt his heart shatter, its broken pieces sinking into an endless abyss of black.

The guilt was inhumane, and to this day, he refused to use his Gift of decay unless absolutely necessary.

But this was only a fraction of his story. As he sat there, frozen, old memories resurfaced. His life flashed before his eyes, and he felt a profound emptiness he couldn't describe.

"Ah…"

The summoned undead began to move, slowly advancing toward Amon. The wait was agonizing, and each second felt more grueling than the last.

'No…'

Amon felt their cold, lifeless hands grip and pull at his flesh. In mere moments, thousands of undead were upon him, clawing and grasping.

The sensation was sickening, an utter violation of his being, but there was nothing he could do as his dignity was trampled underfoot.

More and more undead flooded the dome, and before he realized it, he was submerged in a sea of them, his vision consumed by their mass.

Suddenly, he felt a jaw clamp onto his neck, the teeth tightening to tear away a chunk of flesh. It didn't end there; all the undead began to bite, tear, and break him apart.

The agony of his flesh being slowly torn off was excruciating. The cracking of his bones and the puncturing of his organs were even more horrifying, driving Amon's mind to fluctuate between madness, calm, and sorrow.

Though he had endured unimaginable pain over the years, these undead made him feel like the helpless seventeen-year-old boy he once was, lost in a forest, unaware of the fate awaiting him.

He felt just as powerless as he did then, and the bitter rage and frustration only grew as the helplessness was etched deep into his very existence.

Due to the undead's slow pace, by the time they had bitten off a chunk of flesh, it had already regrown. By the time they fully severed a limb, it was nearly reformed, making his suffering endless.

<Partial Aether Property is awakening. Growth has been stimulated…>

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Amon had completely lost his mind. The worst part wasn't even the endless assault of rotten, broken teeth digging into him and tearing him apart. It was the excruciating slowness of it all.

His warped perception of time caused by the dungeon only heightened his suffering, each moment stretching into an eternity of pain and despair.

<Growth has been stimulated…>

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The undead had all partially fused, becoming a gigantic mound of cancerous rotten flesh and broken bones with Amon's seemingly immortal body at its core.

Like this, the dome shattered and this blob of flesh began to move.

What Amon hadn't known was that there weren't only a hundred floors. There were a thousand.

Slowly, this cancerous blob of flesh made its way through the floors and levels, defeating and devouring all it could as it only seemed to have one task in mind—devour and grow.

On the other hand, Amon wasn't aware of any of this though he was very much conscious and able to feel his body at all times.

After a while, the pain left the realm of the physical, and illusions overwhelmed all his five senses.

Auditory illusions tormented him with phantom sounds—whispers of malevolent voices and the haunting echo of distant screams.

Sensory illusions plagued his skin, making him feel as if he were being caressed by icy tendrils or scorched by invisible flames.

Visual illusions distorted his sight, morphing shadows into grotesque figures that lurked at the edges of his vision.

Olfactory illusions assaulted his nose with the stench of decay and burning flesh.

Gustatory illusions tainted his mouth with the taste of blood and ash.

Each sense betrayed him, weaving a nightmarish tapestry of suffering and confusion.

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Endless, infinite, and eternal.

Those were the only words that could describe Amon's cycle.

Currently, he stood within the realm of his own mind, having partially severed his connection to his body in a vain attempt to lessen the pain.

His naked body floated within a void of endless black, void of anything else other than him.

His eyes were empty and so was his mind, reflected by the void that had become the realm of his mind.

Floating there, he simply waited. He waited for death to take him into its embrace—no, he prayed for it. He sought it. He desperately needed and wanted to die.

Death, life, time, suffering—it had all become one singular warped fresco he'd fused with.

His mind had crumbled alongside his body as the only memento of his existence was a tiny speck of light, represented by the naked figure that floated in this same void.

[Father…]

Mordred's tears had been endless not because she too could feel the physical pain but because her mind was so deeply attuned with Amon's that she could practically see and touch his emotional state.

[Father…]