**Section 1: Collapse & Realization**
Kimura lay sprawled across the fractured ground, every ragged breath dragging molten fire through his lungs. His fingers twitched against the rubble, slick with blood that no longer gushed, but oozed sluggishly—thick, dark, and clotting against his torn skin. He raised his ruined hands before his eyes. The knuckles were split, skin peeled back, nails cracked to the root. His left wrist bent at an angle no living man's wrist should bend. The sight was grotesque, yet his battered mind barely registered it. Pain had long since numbed into something duller, heavier, a creeping shadow that promised only one end.
Where the golden skeleton's corpse should have lain, there was nothing. Only blackish-golden wisps of energy drifted upward, dissolving into the violet sky like smoke from a dying fire. The creature that had nearly ended him, that had stripped his flesh with every strike and arrow, was gone—as if it had never existed at all. He wanted to feel pride. Triumph. Relief. But all he could summon was a hollow laugh, cracked and pitiful.
"Heh… I guess I won, though," he whispered, his voice a rasp of torn vocal cords. "Not that there's anything to be proud of."
His head lolled to the side, eyes drawn to the strange, alien heavens above. The sky pulsed with hues of purple and deep indigo, swirling as though mocking his survival. Stars—or what looked like stars—winked faintly, but none carried the warmth of the night skies he once shared with Saki, when they would walk hand-in-hand down the quiet streets after his deployment, whispering dreams for their future. That sky was gone. This one only laughed.
Blood bubbled at the edge of his mouth as he coughed. He spat it out, the metallic tang biting his tongue. His vision swam, dark spots closing in around the edges. He pressed his palm against his chest, feeling the jagged shards of broken ribs grind beneath his skin. Each breath felt like a knife drawn slowly through his lungs.
"Heh… guess my revenge won't be completed anymore," he muttered, and another wet cough shook him, spraying his chin with fresh crimson.
His body screamed its protest in every nerve. He cataloged the damage, soldier's instinct tallying what a medic would have called catastrophic: shattered bones, torn muscles, punctured organs, rivers of blood spilled with no replacements left in him. His body was a sinking ship riddled with holes. No treatment. No salvation. Just the slow drowning in his own red tide.
"I can feel them…" His voice trembled, but he forced the words out, as though speaking them could carve them into memory. "Broken bones. Damaged organs. Lungs full of blood. Muscles torn apart. Veins shredded. Even my blood… it's turning to jelly inside me."
He laughed again, a bitter, broken sound that quickly warped into a sob. The laugh didn't belong to a man anymore—it belonged to something at the edge of madness.
---
**Section 2: Despair & Self-Hatred**
Kimura's breath rattled, shallow and uneven, as though his body debated whether it was worth the effort to keep him alive. His vision blurred, then sharpened, then blurred again. The fractured ceiling above him split into twin images, trembling in his field of view, like even the world itself wanted to abandon him.
He turned his head slightly, every movement a punishment. His cheek pressed into the dust and grit of the floor, but his eyes… his eyes refused to look away from the darkening heavens. Somewhere beyond that twisted sky, his wife and daughter's faces lingered in memory.
Saki's gentle smile, her laughter when she teased him for always returning from the barracks with bruises and scrapes. Airi's small hand tugging at his sleeve, begging for another bedtime story. He had promised them—promised with his very soul—that he would always protect them. A soldier's word. A husband's vow. A father's bond. And he had failed every one of them.
Tears cut through the dirt on his face, hot trails of shame. He bit his lip, hard enough to taste blood over blood. His voice cracked as he forced the words out.
"I'm sorry, Saki!" His cry was raw, guttural, the howl of a beast cornered by its own weakness. "It was all my fault! If I had been stronger—just a little stronger, just a little braver—you wouldn't have suffered! Airi would still be alive! Still safe!"
His chest convulsed, sobs clawing their way free from lungs already drowning. The tears blurred his sight, but his mind painted the scene clear and merciless. Saki's body, ruined by Vanko's lust. Airi's tiny screams as she was devoured. The memories burned hotter than the broken bones, hotter than the knives stabbing his lungs.
He clenched his ruined fist until the bones protested. "Today… I broke every promise I ever made. And for that—I hate myself."
The words bled from him as freely as his life. For a long moment, the only sound was his ragged weeping, mingled with the faint hiss of his blood soaking into the rubble beneath him.
"Even with all this pain," he whispered, his voice shaking, "the pain of separation from your loved one remained the strongest."
That truth carved into him deeper than any wound. His body might have been breaking, but it was his soul that had already shattered.
Beside him, the golden skeleton's body, what little remained of it, crumbled into nothingness. Its pieces evaporated into blackish-golden wisps, curling into the air before vanishing as though consumed by the sky. The battlefield of his survival erased itself piece by piece, until only Kimura remained—alone, broken, and drowning in the unbearable silence of his own despair.
---
---
Chapter 3 – Trial of the Scaletron Dungeon
Part 3
A voice — deep, articulate, echoing like a bell struck inside his skull — rang out within Kimura's mind.
[Congratulations. You have completed the trial of the Scaletron Dungeon.]
Kimura's eyes snapped open wide. "Who's there!?"
Before him, a pitch-black translucent screen shimmered into existence, its edges glowing faintly with an otherworldly light.
[Trial Level: Easy]
"Tch!" Kimura spat, lips curling in disbelief. "Easy? Do you bastards think this was easy for an ordinary human like me!? With wounds tearing me apart, facing monsters like that!?" His voice shook with rage, defiance crackling through his tone.
The screen flickered once. Then new words etched themselves in blood-red script.
[You have fulfilled the requirements to become a resident of the Dimension of Endless Nightmares.]
[Do you wish to become its hunter?]
[Y / N]
Kimura's breath caught. His body trembled, though not from fear — but exhaustion, delirium, disbelief. He barked a hoarse laugh.
"Heh… I finally lost it." He closed his eyes tightly, forcing a bitter grin. "Knew it. Shouldn't have read all those sci-fi books from Saki's otaku collection. My mind's gone. This has to be another hallucination."
But the screen did not fade.
Instead, it returned, its letters burning brighter.
[Do you wish to become a hunter of the Dimension of Endless Nightmares?]
[Y / N]
Kimura snapped, fury and exhaustion colliding in his chest.
"Give me some slack, will ya, you shitty sci-fi system!" he roared at the empty air. "Can't you see!? I'm about to die here!" He staggered, blood dripping down his lips. "Do whatever you want, you illusionary space parasite!"
His vision dimmed. His body finally gave out. Kimura collapsed onto the broken stone, unconscious.
But the screen remained. Its glow trembled, as if responding to his last desperate outburst.
[Acknowledgement has been received…]
Skwish.
The letters rearranged themselves.
[Beginning the process in 10… 9… 8… 7…]
The space around Kimura's fallen body began to ripple. Small tears split reality, jagged cracks spreading across the air like shattered glass. From those rifts, a suffocating miasma poured forth, black and oily like liquid sludge. Malicious energy seeped out, crawling toward him in streams, coiling over his unconscious frame.
It pulsed. It devoured. It merged.
The countdown ticked on.
---
**Section 4: The Cocoon of Nightmares**
The countdown echoed across the broken battlefield, though there was no mouth to speak it, no throat to give it form. The voice simply was, vibrating against reality itself.
[…7…6…]
The ground around Kimura trembled. Hairline cracks split the stone beneath his body, glowing faintly with violet light. The cracks pulsed in rhythm with the screen's words, as though the world itself had become a heartbeat.
[…5…4…]
The air tore. Thin seams of space unraveled around his body, like slits cut into reality with invisible blades. From them oozed a black sludge, thick and tar-like, dripping with the weight of despair. It stank of rot and burned metal, a stench that clung to the lungs and clawed at the senses.
The first drops splattered across Kimura's chest. He didn't move. His eyes remained shut, his body limp, utterly unaware.
Then more came—pouring, gushing, flooding out from the rents in space. The sludge slithered like a living thing, crawling up his arms and legs, coating his bloodied uniform, drowning the crimson stains in liquid shadow.
[…3…2…]
The mass began to rise, shaping itself around him. A cocoon. A sphere of shifting blackness, veins of sickly purple writhing across its surface like the roots of some alien tree. Every pulse of light made the air shiver, as if the dimension itself recoiled in disgust.
The sludge hardened, layer by layer, until Kimura was gone—swallowed whole inside the sphere.
[…1…0…]
"Da-dum."
The sound echoed. Once. Then again. Louder.
"Da-dum. Da-dum."
The cocoon *beat*. Like a heart.
Each throb sent ripples across its surface. Black ichor bubbled outward, evaporating into a fine mist that carried the scent of ash and iron. The ground beneath it cracked further, unable to bear the weight of the unnatural presence.
Inside, Kimura lay unconscious, his broken body suspended in weightlessness. The black liquid seeped into his wounds, worming through torn veins, fusing with shattered bones, stitching ragged muscle. It was no healing touch—it was invasive, parasitic, a rewriting of flesh and soul.
His chest convulsed as the ichor invaded his lungs. His hands twitched as veins bulged, turning dark beneath the skin. His eyelids fluttered, but he did not wake.
Outside, the cocoon pulsed harder. Faster. The heartbeat of something "new".
[The process has started.]
The screen's words etched themselves in the air again, final and absolute.
The battlefield fell silent. The golden skeleton's last motes of energy faded away, leaving only the grotesque cocoon and its steady, living rhythm.
"Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum."
Every pulse carried the promise of rebirth—
Or damnation.
---
That ends Section 4.
---
**Section 5: The Heartbeat of Nightmares**
The cocoon pulsed, steady, relentless.
*Da-dam.*
*Da-dam.*
*Da-dam.*
Each beat shook the abandoned ruins around Kimura's unconscious body. The earth beneath him cracked, forming jagged lines that glowed faintly with purple fire. Dust trickled from the shattered ceiling beams, falling like gray snow.
The cocoon's surface rippled as though alive, veins writhing under its skin. The black sludge had hardened into a shell, slick and grotesque, but the heart-like rhythm made it feel disturbingly organic.
From inside, muffled breaths escaped. Kimura's chest rose and fell shallowly. His face, pale and blood-soaked, twitched as if locked in some terrible dream.
And in truth, he was.
Within the cocoon, his mind floated in endless black. No ground. No sky. No body. Just the weightless abyss pressing down. The silence was broken only by faint whispers, thousands of them, hissing in tones both alien and human.
*—Hunter.*
*—Suffer.*
*—Devour.*
*—Kill.*
Each word lanced through his skull, echoing against the raw edges of his broken consciousness. He tried to resist, tried to call out for Saki, for Airi—but his lips moved without sound.
"Even with all this pain," his own voice whispered back to him, hollow, detached, "the pain of separation from your loved one remained the strongest."
A shiver tore through him. The voices multiplied, overlapping like a chorus of nightmares. He saw flashes: his wife's final scream, his daughter's small hands reaching for him, and Vanko's grin—mocking, eternal.
The abyss shifted. A single burning symbol appeared in front of him, enormous, impossible: a jagged circle split by an endless spiral, dripping shadows like molten tar. It pulsed in rhythm with the cocoon outside.
[The Process Has Begun.]
The screen's words slammed into his mind like hammers.
[Step 1: Reconstruction.]
Kimura's broken bones snapped and twisted within the cocoon. His ruined lungs inflated violently, then deflated. The fragments of his shattered ribs dissolved into liquid shadow, only to re-form sharper, stronger. His veins boiled with black sludge, carrying miasma instead of blood.
His body convulsed, but his mind remained shackled in the abyss, forced to watch the transformation as though through someone else's eyes.
[Step 2: Binding.]
Chains of light and shadow coiled around his soul. They seared his fleshless form in the void, anchoring it to something vast—something far older than this world. He screamed silently, but the abyss swallowed his cry.
[Step 3: Corruption.]
The symbol in the void bled outward, its spiral cutting across the dark. His memories twisted, replaying over and over—his wife's death, his daughter's cries, his helplessness—until rage became the only thing left.
The cocoon throbbed harder, the heartbeat louder.
*Da-dam.*
*Da-dam.*
*DA-DAM.*
The ground cracked wider. A nearby wall collapsed, stones clattering like bones. From the rubble, rats fled squealing, as if some primal instinct warned them to run.
Outside, the purple veins across the cocoon glowed blindingly, searing symbols into the stone beneath it. The air thickened with choking miasma, heavy enough to make the space itself tremble.
Inside, Kimura's mind reached its breaking point. His voice, hoarse yet sharp, roared across the abyss:
"VANKO! You… will be the first and last life I take before I join them in heaven!"
The spiral symbol flared in answer.
The cocoon's heartbeat thundered once more—
and then, silence.
Stillness.
The entire ruin froze, as though the world itself was holding its breath.
And then—
*CRRRAAAACK!*
A single fracture split across the cocoon's surface, glowing like molten gold streaked with black.
The Cocoon of Nightmares was hatching.
A big screen ap
(End of Chapter 3)