First came disbelief – faint and rising like a tremor through the gathering. All of them, every single one, were awakened at the bottom tier. At most, they'd participated in a dungeon raid once. Maybe twice.
And now, lying headless before them, was their only supposed expert. Killed in a single attack by a knight radiating an aura of bloodlust so thick they could practically choke on it.
It wasn't looking good.
"Crap, we need to get out of – "
The man in cheap armor didn't finish. His words – along with his plan – were cut off by the chilling groan of stone doors swinging shut.
Now they weren't just trapped in the temple. They were trapped in this room.
Eyes clouded with fear turned toward the blonde-haired man who was supposed to be Mia's partner. Alzine.
Aldric turned too, thinking: Surely, if not her, he has the situation under control.
Alzine stood rooted in place, gaze locked on the massive knight. Not with cold calculation. Not with raging vengeance or even anger. Just raw, primal terror – the kind that far surpassed what the rest of them felt.
Almost as if he knew something they didn't.
Well, crap, Aldric cursed internally as he looked around. If the knight decided to attack again, no one here could oppose it. But for now, it seemed content to stand motionless. Aldric wasn't sure why, but he felt certain it was because no one had moved yet.
"We'll have to kill this bastard if we want out of this creepy temple," the man in cheap armor declared, voicing what everyone was thinking.
Thinking it was one thing. Execution was another.
The current group was comprised of weak, low-ranked awakened. Basically the worst possible team to send against a dungeon lord.
"Fine," the man in the chest plate said defiantly. "We can just rush it. Overwhelm the thing. We've got the numbers."
He wasn't wrong. Thirty-six awakened had been brought on this raid. When they heard his words, they saw hope in them. Individually, they couldn't scratch it. But all at once? Better odds.
Aldric knew their plan was the quickest route to death. He felt a strange sense of déjà vu, as if he was absolutely certain that the moment they moved, they'd all die.
This left him with two options. Tell them this unreliable information based on nothing but gut feeling – and if they believed him, no one would move, leaving them stuck until a way out fell from the sky. Or remain silent and let them try. Worst case: they die and he survives. Best case: they actually take it down.
Aldric found more logic in the second option.
"Okay, let's do it then," the man in cheap armor agreed, gripping his spear tightly.
"On my mark."
All the awakened readied themselves. Hearts hammering with fear and anticipation.
"Attack!"
The man's bellow drew an echo of defiant screams as they charged the knight, preparing to hit it with everything they had.
Then, with a movement that defied perception, the knight swung its blade.
It cleaved through half a dozen of them.
That singular act – just one swing – transformed every charging attack into terrified scrambles for survival. They scattered in every direction like ants exposed to sudden light. And though they didn't know it, this particular action spelled their doom.
"Stop running!" Aldric shouted, trying to save their lives. If they all died uselessly, escaping would only get harder.
But they were too preoccupied with their flawed attempts at survival, drowning in their own screams, to hear him.
These idiots.
Aldric looked around, forcing himself to remain as still as possible. His eyes scanned the chamber for something – anything – a way to survive.
He found nothing.
With no external salvation available, he decided to see if he could save himself.
"Status."
The blue screen flashed before him.
━━━━━━━━━━
[ ALDRIC VOSS ]
━━━━━━━━━━
Markings: [The Remainder] [A False Existence]
Affinity: [Null]
Rank: [Warrior (0)]
Xai Energy (XE) Reserve: 10/10
Returns: (__)
STATS
| Strength: [2]
| Agility: [3]
| Durability: [2]
| Intelligence: [10]
| Memory: [0.3]
| Xai Control: [0]
━━━━━━━━━━
His stats were worthless. They wouldn't win him a fight against a decent boxer, let alone a dungeon lord. So he didn't seek hope there, but in what had changed. In what he didn't understand.
"List markings."
━━━━━━━━━━
[THE REMAINDER]
The universe will continue on, again, and again, and again. And yet, you will still remain. Expelled from the principles of causality, albeit a silent orchestrator of it.
Effect: You will be sent back to the last set time point after death.
━━━━━━━━━━
[A FALSE EXISTENCE]
You should not exist at any point in reality. And somehow, you do.
Effects: ?
━━━━━━━━━━
[You have been rewarded: One Checkpoint.]
━━━━━━━━━━
[CHECKPOINT]
The ability to save any point in time to return to after demise. When a checkpoint is saved, it is final. You will be unable to go any further back.
━━━━━━━━━━
Aldric read through the text with cold, calculating focus, burning with desperate intensity. Most of what he read would normally make no sense. But he had no time to be clueless or doubtful.
If he understood correctly, [The Remainder] allowed him to come back after death to a set time point. But to set that point, he needed to use a checkpoint. Basically like a video game.
Aldric looked up. Only seven awakened remained alive. The knight would run out of victims soon – leaving only him.
He wished he could set a checkpoint somewhere safe. But he didn't have that luxury.
This moment, right now, felt like his only path to survival.
"Yes, set checkpoint."
[Checkpoint has been set.]
---
The screams, much like the awakened themselves, were dying out. From thirty screaming men and women, they'd been reduced to fifteen. Soon after, eleven. Now only five remained.
Aldric had already set the checkpoint. So as absurd as it sounded, even if he died, he'd return unharmed. Which meant he could take the risk of remaining completely still and see if that was enough to survive.
He watched Chest Plate scurry to one side of the room, shock mixing with dread as he wondered how the man was still alive. He'd been one of two who'd led the charge against the knight – and ultimately led everyone to their deaths.
Perhaps when the others ran defiantly forward, he'd sneakily backed away. He'd made everyone believe his words except himself.
The real question was whether his deception would aid his survival. As Aldric watched him tumble and narrowly avoid a sword swing that wasn't even aimed at him, he doubted it.
Still, it had kept him alive as one of three survivors. Unfortunately, he was now the only one of the three still moving.
Soon enough, with deadly swiftness, the knight sliced through Chest Plate's body.
As Aldric watched the final flicker of life leave the man's eyes, he realized this was the moment of truth. He glanced at Alzine, who – like him – hadn't moved an inch. Whether from superior intelligence or simply because he knew something the others didn't mattered less now.
Instead, Aldric watched with hammering heart as the knight moved toward Alzine with the same slow, eerie grace.
That alone terrified him. The knight wasn't blind, relying on sound as he'd originally thought. It knew Alzine was there. Which meant it knew where Aldric was too.
Now it was simply a matter of what it would do about it.
Would it spare those who remained still? Or were they merely being saved for last, after the squirming ones were dealt with?
With every resounding thud of the knight's footsteps drawing closer to Alzine, it felt like a countdown to either horrific realization or comparatively pleasant discovery.
The question hung heavy in the air alongside their hitched breaths.
Then, with a gesture that made Aldric's blood run cold, the knight raised its longsword. Before he could process it, the blade arced down in a decisive swing, snuffing out Alzine's life.
As the knight looked up from its kill and turned its gaze to Aldric, the answer to his question became bold and clear: He was a dead man.
That couldn't be changed. He was blatantly incapable of doing anything about it.
So as Aldric watched the knight approach, only one thought crossed his mind: When I die, will I return as promised?
The knight loomed before him now – large, imposing, impossible to ignore. Yet Aldric couldn't bring himself to look directly at the monstrosity.
He waited for death.
It didn't come.
The knight hesitated.
Not once had Aldric seen it do so. It always killed with detached duty, almost robotic in its efficiency. It simply killed. Nothing more.
So what was happening?
"The lost men whisper to the gods pleas of redemption, and for that sin, the Firsts spill the blood of the gods on the very altars where they were worshipped... Why?"
The knight's question hung in the air. On the surface, it made no sense to Aldric. But somehow it resonated with him strongly. Not that he understood it – far from that. But something else. Almost as if he'd heard the question many times before.
No... something's wrong.
Why would it resonate with him? Why would he feel this way? It made no sense. He couldn't remember ever being asked that specific question. And it wasn't just the question itself that felt off. There was something about the knight's voice, the way it spoke the words. Everything carried an eerie familiarity.
Then Aldric realized, with a horror that made him tense and shudder: he had heard that question before. In a future he'd forgotten.
Though he didn't remember, this couldn't be the first time any of this had happened.
Since I set the checkpoint... I've already been dying?
His face contorted into a grim expression. Now it was less about if he'd died and come back already – there was no question about that. What terrified him was how many times he'd done so.
How long had he been stuck in this loop?
Crimson spurted. His own blood.
With eyes slowly going pale and lifeless, Aldric fell backward, hitting the floor with a thud. His lower half remained standing.
[You Have Died.]
[You have obtained realization.]
[You have saved new Core Memory.]
[Core Memory slot has been filled.]
[Memory upgraded +0.1.]
---
The screams, much like the awakened themselves, were dying out. From thirty screaming men and women, they'd been reduced to fifteen. Soon after, eleven. Now only five remained.
Aldric had already set the checkpoint. So as absurd as it sounded, even if he died, he'd return unharmed. Which meant he could take the risk of remaining completely still and see if that was enough to survive.
"Wait..."
Aldric froze, staring at his hands in disbelief.