His legs felt like they were made of wet concrete.
"This is exhausting," Kuro muttered through clenched teeth, forcing one foot in front of the other across the cracked, desolate terrain.
Smoke still curled lazily from the scorched earth behind him — the aftermath of a fight he had barely survived.
He pushed forward anyway. Debris scattered underfoot; shards of rock and blackened fragments of whatever poor creature had decided he looked like an easy meal.
His eyes were sharp despite the exhaustion etched into every line of his face, scanning the horizon with the practiced vigilance as he had already learned the hard way that dropping his guard meant waking up dead.
When he reached the bottom and turned to survey his surroundings, he immediately regretted it.
"...It looks like the next checkpoint is pretty far from here," he observed, his voice carrying the tone of a man who had run out of the energy required to be properly annoyed.
He turned, and his expression soured further. "...And that explosion..."
The crater yawned before him — massive, jagged, and deeply, personally offensive. His own handiwork.
The kind of thing that looked impressive in the moment and incredibly inconvenient immediately afterward.
"...Left a huge crater to cross." He stared into it.
"If only I could fly out of here."
He crouched at the rim, resting his forearms on his knees, and looked down into the pit.
"Well... it seems I have no choice but to use it."
"Here it goes," he said flatly, stepping over the edge of a ravine and jumping straight down the crumbling slope.
Above him , concentric dark rings formed infront of him while a black orb with a single point of light at its center formed behind him , heavy rotations of force warped the air around them, and propelled him forward at an exponentially increasing speed.
PSEUDO SYNCHRONON
The sky above him split apart with a sound like the world tearing at a seam.
"Whoa—!"
Something vast and fast and very much alive came at him from above — a creature of layered scales and membrane wings, its multiple dark eyes fixed on him .
"Cool..." he lampooned .
Even as the thing's breath hit him like hot rot, he had the audacity to look fascinated.
"It looks..." He watched the smoke clear. "...So cool!"
The creature blocked another creature of tge same form ,above it as the creature moved from his view the creature further above ,aimed at him .
"Huh," he said.
The creature's face ...if you could call it that , hovered inches from his,as it opened its 'beak' .
"What the—that was a decoy?!"
The creature's eyes bore down on him, black and absolute.
It slammed into him with enough force to send them both skidding across the rocky ,disolate plain , a tangle of limbs and wings and one very put-upon young man.
Kuro, somehow still conscious and largely intact, looked up at the creature pinning him down.
The creature snapped its jaws near his face. Kuro tilted his head out of the way with the calm of a man who had developed a very specific relationship with imminent death.
The creature had him in its claws, and it was squeezing. Kuro's voice came out strained but determined, arms braced against the scaled appendages clamped around him as it drove him into the rock below with a resonant crash...
"Not yet," Kuro said, with the quiet resolve of a man choosing stubbornness as a survival strategy.
He pushed back against its grip, fingers digging into scale and sinew, his body straining against the weight of something far larger and far less tired than he was.
-pop, pop, pop - each one blooming into a column of displaced earth and white smoke. The creature bucked and thrashed, its footing gone Kuro, now gripping it , used his might to throw the massive creature into the distance ,
he looked out at the spreading carnage with the serene expression of someone watching a sunset.
"From now on..."
"...Never..."
"...shall I allow myself..."
"To die."
"Not anymore!"
The creature's follow-up attack passed through empty air.
Where Kuro had been a moment ago, there was nothing. The beast's great head swung around in confusion, its rows of eyes scanning ... and then Kuro was there,
the creature let out a massive beam of pure energy-aimed at kuro , one hand braced against its back as something small and orbital hummed in his grip.
"Hm... this place..."
"Is already..."
The orb in his palm pulsed — slow, heavy, patient. A flat plane of shimmering energy expanded outward from it in a wide crescent, carving through the landscape and connecting with the creature mid-lunge.
The thing hit the ground in a heap, its wings splayed.
"...Making me reach my limit."
He 'released' the discharge of energy.
This was kuro redirecting the discharge back at the bird like creature ,The discharge hit the ground below with a series of sharp detonations .
The sky above them was pale and still. Rocky spires jutted from the earth below like broken teeth.
He watched the disc dissipate. Below, the creature lay still.
Spent. Something about that sat differently with him than it should have.
"Now... I wonder where that creature came from."
He exhaled through his nose, looking down at the motionless beast with what might generously be described as sympathy.
"Sigh."
He turned. The landscape around him was the same barren hellscape it had always been...
volcanic rock, dust, an oppressive sky. Nothing had changed. Except that he was, somehow, even more tired than before.
"It's still pretty far from here. Flight is out of the question, too."
He looked at the distant pillar of light - his checkpoint, his direction - and started walking.
"I guess I'll just walk."
He walked without stopping. His injuries showed no signs of recovery - each cut stayed open, each bruise stayed dark, his body refusing to grant him even the small mercy of a closed wound. He didn't look at them.
Looking at them didn't help.
What he hadn't yet realized was that injuries didn't heal in this place - not by natural means. There was only one method available to him. One he hadn't decided he was willing to use.
"I've covered some distance, but it seems like I'm moving further from the checkpoint."
He didn't stop walking.
"Even if I come back from death, that doesn't exclude the pain that comes with it. I must avoid it at all costs."
Behind him, cracked into the earth where he'd fallen, the faint hum of the resurrection sphere , remained.
"Where was I going before I got attacked?"
He paused, squinting at the horizon.
"Oh yeah... I need to head that way."
And he turned, and he kept moving.
He walked for so long that the loneliness grew its own weight.
Time moved strangely in this place - seconds stretched into what felt like days, the light never quite shifting, the terrain never quite changing. And yet he just kept moving forward. One foot. Then the other.
Until, between two towering formations of dark rock that framed the path like the entrance to something ancient , a silhouette of a male figure stood .
Kuro slowed him pace as he approached the formation .
"Who stands there."
"If you can understand me, make yourself known."
The figure didn't flinch. Tall, wrapped in layered robes the color of aged wood, a wide-brimmed conical hat shadowing the upper half of a face that gave nothing away.
He looked like he had been standing there for a very long time, and were entirely unbothered by that fact.
"Are you another enemy?" Kuro asked, the fatigue in his voice losing none of its edge.
From beneath the shadow of that wide brim, the figure's eyes met his - and something in their expression shifted.
"You must be Kuroshiraga Arufa. I've been waiting for your arrival. For now, I shall accompany you."
"I'm a friend... for now," the figure said, measured and calm.
"You're severely injured. Consider Taking a rest, boy ."
Kuro stared at them, then looked down at himself - the open gashes, the blood dried in streaks, the ruins of his shirt. He looked back up.
"'For now'?" he said. "Are you going to betray me later, then?"
"Your injuries are near fatal," the figure replied, without answering the question.
"I suggest you rest." A pause, almost casual.
"You look a bit exhausted."
Kuro narrowed his eyes.
"Fine," he said.
There was something unnerving about this person - the stillness, the way the hat cast just enough shadow to make their expression perpetually unreadable. And yet Kuro didn't tense up.
He filed them under
"probably not immediately lethal" and let himself sink to the ground, resting his forearms across his knees.
Before the question could form properly, something appeared in front of his face.
A small vial. The figure had moved without sound.
"Wow, he's fast," Kuro noted internally, tracking the motion a half-second too late.
"Drink this," the figure said. "It will help with making your wounds heal."
Kuro looked at the vial. Then at the figure. Then back at the vial.
"How do I know it's not poisoned?"
"Then you'll die if it is," the figure replied, pleasantly.
The figure's tone didn't shift even slightly. "There's only one way to find out."
he took the vial with the strange clear transparent liquid in it . and galped it all down without restraint .
"Well?..." he muttered, glancing sideways.
Kuro blinked. "...Is the poison working?"
From somewhere near the ground, a creature Kuro hadn't noticed before - small, grotesque, one very large eye blinking - confirmed:
"Indeed. "
Then, before he could answer, the figure's hand shot forward - and Kuro found himself grabbed with the particular efficiency of someone who didn't need to ask permission for physical contact and wasn't going to start now.
"What is this..." Kuro started.
"What are you doing," he said flatly.
"Isn't it obvious?" the figure said.
"You son of a-..."
The figure's eye fixed on him,rather calm .
"I need answers from you."
"UNDERSTOOD?"
"First question..." The figure crouched to Kuro's eye level, the brim of their hat tilting forward. One sharp eye caught the light.
"How long do you think you've been in this place?"
Kuro's expression shifted - the question landing somewhere tender.
"How long...? I don't know."
"How many times have you died?"
A long pause. Kuro stared at the ground.
"How many times have I died...? Hm."
"I think I lost count."
He lay somewhere between consciousness and exhaustion, looking up at whatever this world used as a sky.
"This place is so weird... I've been here for I don't know how long. Oh yeah... how many times did I die... let me think."
"Maybe a couple hundred times... I don't know." He laughed once, short and hollow. "I can't fight back now. I can't even focus properly."
The chains around him - or the memory of chains, the weight of them, the sensation of being pulled from every direction at once - pressed inward.
"When was the last time I had a nap? I'm exhausted. I guess I overexerted myself. Now I'm afraid the strain is catching up to me."
"I should..."
then every thing went black as kuro died.
[RESURRECTION PROTOCOL INITIATED]
Analysis of subjected vessel initiated...
Analysis complete.
Malformation detected.
Internal damage detected.
Multiple bone fractures detected.
Compound soul detected.
Curse detected.
Possible chimerism detected.
Seal detected.
Psychological trauma detected.
Proceeding to restoration...
Beginning restoration.
Restoration complete:
Malformation, internal damage, bone fractures fixed. Stamina restored.
Total Restoration incomplete.
Error encountered.
Analysis of compound soul -- denied access.
Analysis of curse --denied access.
Analysis of chimerism --denied access.
Analysis of seal -- denied access.
Unidentified entity issued warning.
Analysis aborted.
Proceeding to resurrection.
Resurrection complete.
Underlining Trauma unexpectedly maintained.
"Rise and shine, kid." The voice arrived before the light did.
"Say, mind explaining what those marks are?"
Kuro surfaced from the dark slowly, his senses arriving one at a time. He blinked.
The figure was there, close, their eye tracing the dark markings visible across his torso and arm - the ones that had been there when he first woke up in the wrong world, the ones he'd spent two chapters pretending not to think about.
"A curse, perhaps?" the figure murmured.
Kuro pulled himself upright. The pain was gone - actually gone, not just numbed. He rolled his shoulder experimentally. Flexed his fingers.
"Well... why don't you mind explaining what those scars are instead?" he said.
"I'm leaving. Is that the way out...?" He was already moving toward the edge of the circle beneath him - the intricate formation of glowing runes and geometric lines that had been glowing softly since before he woke up.
"Too bad, kid." The figure didn't raise their voice.
"We can't leave."
Kuro stopped at the edge of the circle. Below his feet, the carved lines pulsed, patient and luminous.
"Because of you, I had to use one of my resurrection circles to heal your internal injuries and restore your mental state."
"If you step outside the resurrection circle, the other circles below will activate,"
the figure said simply, gesturing downward.
"Since this is the domain of a superior Dreadspawn, I had to make a deal. And so-..."
Then kuro turned back to him.
"Before I leave... Who gave you permission to kill me"
Kuro said while Still looking down.
"didn't you notice you were oozing Ryoku all over the place?"
"To activate the resurrection circle, I needed concentrated amounts of dark matter... which is where we are."
The figure's gaze moved to the environment around them - the pale, corrupted landscape of a domain that existed between worlds. "Dark energy..."
"...That made nearby creatures , randomly attack you... Oh? Did you also forget you lost your perception of time, too?"
Kuro looked down. Beneath the platform - beneath everything - dozens more circles were visible, layered onto the earth, their light faint .
"Wait..." the man said.
kuro proceeded to step on the incantation circles below
the incantation circles then glowed brightly and both Kuroshiraga Arufa and the mysterious man with a wide-brimmed conical hat disappeared from where they stood .
...
Far away ... somewhere in the disolate plains of makai , far beyond the cracked terrain and the glowing circle and the conversation happening within it ... something watched.
It did not have a face, exactly. It had an eye.
A single, vast eye set into a structure of latticed organic geometry ... whorls and hollows and concentric rings of matter that suggested a skull the way a dream suggests a place.
Around it, smaller orbs drifted like satellites, with a single eyeball like sphere . each one staring in different direction ,
the creature was surrounded by towering towers made of obsidian in front of the creature was a platform , on that platform was a large incantation circle,
and on that platform where two figures... one very tired, one very still.
And one Watching back.
— END OF CHAPTER III —