It was the 8,675th second when I went inside the blood-red fog that covered what I assumed was the base of this mountain.
It only made it harder to breathe, in a surprising manner.
One would assume that the oxygen amount would be increasing as I went down this enormous mountain, but what I realized as time went by was that oxygen had never been the problem.
It was the viscosity of the air.
Such an enormous amount of gore and blood gave way to a sort of mist that was viscous, like a liquid.
So the fog surrounding the mountain was never actually fog.
Rather, it was a sea.
This sea of blood vapor made it almost impossible to breathe for anyone within, I was lightheaded and my resolve was shaking.
It was a miracle to have gotten so far in the first place, anyone else would have gone mad from the very start and likely—
I stopped that thought there.
This was a pattern I often saw.
It was a manner of thinking triggered by obstacles in one's way that felt impossible to get past.
This lead to a shaky resolve, and then to the self stroking of the ego to get rid of the guilt and shame one would feel when they inevitably gave up.
Giving up was the key word.
The single objective of this sequence of thought and self reassurance was because the mind was getting itself ready to give up.
That was why I always cut those thoughts short the moment they surfaced. Letting them grow was dangerous.
It wasn't like I could climb back up now.
I spotted a mangled upper arm near me, reached to it, took a bite and threw it far away into the distance after I did. The flesh offered no resistance, quickly splitting apart as I chewed it.
I was used to this now.
I also tried to think as little as I could about the dead bodies sustaining me. Being used to it did not make the situation comfortable…
With only an imaginary clock in my mind to keep me company, I continued my descent into the pseudo-sea of blood.
8,732
8,733
8,734
My mind was completely turned off. I was a machine, devouring, advancing.
I knew that if I let myself listen to my thoughts at all, I would lose.
I did not want to lose.
8,954
.
9,738
.
10,521
My mind was getting tired, and so was my body.
Just then, what I had feared from the very start of my journey happened.
My hand slipped.
I fell onto my side, and unfortunately for me, it didn't stop there.
I started rolling down the steep mountain of corpses among the viscous blood vapor.
Every tumble knocked what little air I had out of my lungs. I felt exposed bones dig into my flesh, scattered pieces of teeth that lodged themselves in my skin.
My right shoulder was dislocated, and my left elbow was bent in an unnatural angle.
There was nothing I could do.
The moment I lost all hope I had, the inevitable happened.
My head smashed into a skull.
Everything went dark.