By the time he reached the courtyard before the tower, Aaron's fists trembled. He started feeling anxious. The mark on his palm had turned pitch black, pulsing like a heartbeat. The doll faces on his skin were impossible to understand. Smiles that looked like cries. Tears that looked like laughter. Emotionless yet overflowing.
He clenched his hand anyway.
"I am ready," he whispered to himself, forcing a long breath into his lungs.
He had already made his decision. He would not fight. Not today. Not with his body half-broken and his wounds still burning. He only wanted to see the monster from afar. Just a glimpse of the Blemish King. Nothing more.
Even that thought sent a shiver down his spine.
The nightmare spell sealed inside the doll remained a mystery to him. He still hadn't used it. Never tested its limits. Never learned what it could actually do.
The system gave him no information regarding it, with no certainty for Aaron to hold onto, he was a bit anxious.
But his intuition spoke louder than any prompt.
Something deep inside him whispered that the doll would work only once. It will be a desperate card to be played when death had already reached out to take his throat. And even then, victory will not be guaranteed.
He really wanted to deject the god for giving him a gift he wasn't sure would be helpful, but he chose to refrain from it. Who knows what might happen if one tests the wrath of a god.
'Damn it. Looks like my luck is running out.'
Aaron was limping, his chest nowhere near healed. Even though he had leveled up quite a bit, the pain was still intense.
"Well, I think I am stronger than before… at least now I can walk, right…"
He looked towards the looming tower ahead.
He swallowed hard. The fear did not fade, but he moved anyway. Step by step, as if each step was chained to his will.
"I got no choice..." He muttered to himself.
The courtyard was silent. Too silent. Stone statues of kneeling men lined the tower's entrance, each frozen in eternal prayer.
A small rat scurried around the statues, carefully navigating the ruins.
At first he thought they were carved. Then he carefully examined it. The glistening trails down their cheeks were wet and fresh tears.
'I hope they are not alive...'
His breath tightened. For a moment, he wondered who was the sculptor. The statues were made as if someone put a soul inside each of them.
"Fascinating..." He whispered into the empty corridor.
But before he let his mind wonder, he called the system and took out the jar and smeared the salve across his forehead. The paste stung. Sharp sting like from bee. His mind steadied, as if someone tightened a string inside his skull.
He studied the statues again, taking in every detail. All of them were kneeling with their hands pressed to the floor, heads lowered, tears carved along their faces with unsettling precision. It was not just the kind of crying meant to symbolize sorrow in art but more of a representation of something grander than human; it looked like someone had witnessed real suffering and reproduced it exactly.
Something that every man could relate...
Even Aaron felt as if he had joined them in their sorrow, as if it was his own.
He examine them further.
The craft was pure precision.
He found that there were no breaks in the stone and no signs of struggle.
Whatever these figures represented, they had not been forced down.
"A choice for servitude."
"But to whom?" Aaron questioned with a puzzled expression.
'These men are not enslaved here. It is more like they chose it themselves, to be weeping for a cause… interesting…'
His whiskers perked up in curiosity.
Aaron looked further.
He tried to understand the arrangement. The statues formed a circle, all positioned toward an empty space in the middle. They were placed with intention. It was a formation, a ritual, or a hierarchy.
"Is this some sort of ritualistic magic here?" Aaron asked the system.
[The Weepers Servitude: A ritualistic magic developed by the Ernest Empire...]
[The user lacks the authority to know more.]
'Finally. I was waiting for it,' Aaron said inwardly, amused.
He settled on a name because the purpose became clear. It was a court. A place where judgment or worship took place. And if every figure here was weeping, then there was only one conclusion that fit what he was seeing.
A weeping court.
The thought felt correct, not poetic. It matched the structure, the arrangement, the emotional weight carved into their expressions. But the moment he named it, the atmosphere around him shifted.
"Ahhh, something bad is going to happen now."
He readied himself and looked around warily.
He remained still.
A heavy door at the base of the tower creaked open.
"Here it comes, Old man. Get yourself ready."
He stepped inside.
A wide hall stretched before him. The throne sat at the far end, assembled from countless bones. Not just white and dried but instead fresh, like they have been harvested just now. Tendons still clinging. Some parts still twitching. The owner sat on top of it like a king of corpses.
The Outer Sector Boss.
Blemish King, Ammat
The system suddenly spoken into Aaron's ears.
[You are in the presence of a shard holder.]
A giant of a man. Limbs stitched from different bodies. Skin a patchwork of colors and scars. His head adorned with a necklace of severed hands, fingers stiff, some pointing, some curled as if still holding weapons. His eyes glowed with deep hunger.
System intervene again;
[Identification Complete: The Holder has a Cruel Shard.]
The giant sensed a visitor at his palace.
"You carry the witch's mark," the giant said. His voice rattled the bones around him. "So she sends another one. Another little offering to cut her burden."
"This time it's a rat!"
The giant burst into laughter. His belly shook like a beating drum, and the pattern etched across it made it seem as if he was casting hypnosis, but that was not the case. It was only an illusionary effect.
Aaron stayed silent.
At least, he appeared to be silent.
'He can talk!!'
'Should I try to reason with him?!'
'But he looks so evil… and the shard… cruel. Something feels ominous here.'
'I was just a scapegoat for her then… damn witch!'
'Wasn't the plan was just to do reconnaissance?'
The Giant suddenly lunged into the air, almost touching the roof of the his tower.
Aaron rushed forward, claws hidden for now.
The boss came down and with a single motion and swung a massive cleaver carved from stone. The strike hit the ground where Aaron stood a moment before. The entire chamber shook.
Dust rained.
Aaron rolled aside and slashed at the tendons behind the giant's knee. The claws sank deep. Black-red blood erupted. The giant fell to one knee but grinned, as if enjoying it.
"What did that old hag offer?!"
Aaron did not hesitate. He darted in again, aiming for the throat. The giant grabbed him mid-air and slammed him against the pillar. The impact jolted his bones. Pain spread down his spine.
He coughed, vision flickering.
The Blemish king roared, "Die Rat!!"
Ammat lifted the cleaver again to split him in two.
Aaron summoned the doll.
It materialized with a faint rustle of fabric. The face contorted. A wave of terror burst outward. The fear of death. Aaron saw it hit the boss instantly. His arm wavered. Muscles froze. The giant trembled, eyes widening. The cleaver dropped to the ground with a deep thud.
But soon, the giant's eyes regained their sharpness, and he tried to reached for his cleaver.
At that moment, Aaron screamed, "Nightmare!!"
He did not know whether the upgraded function would activate, but something inside him told him it would, so he shouted the name with everything he had.
The giant's eyes went dull again, losing their glowing hue.
Aaron slid down from the giant's grip and sank his fangs into the exposed wrist. Blight surged. Yellow poison traveled through the veins like wildfire. The giant roared and punched him across the chamber. Aaron crashed into the bone-throne.
Cracking ribs. Breath gone.
He got up anyway. The boss staggered, the blight scorching from inside him, flesh twitching in grotesque spasms.
Aaron ran again and stabbed, puncturing the heart. The claws sank until Aaron practically dig himself inside its heart.
The giant froze.
Blood poured. Thick. Hot.
Then he laughed. Even while dying.
"Even a rat now want Moksha... amusing."
The world started shaking again. The boss dug inside his own heart and pulled out Aaron and grabbed him by the head, trying to crush it. Aaron snarled and bit into the giant's forearm, injecting blight again and again until the monster's flesh liquefied. The grip loosened.
The giant collapsed. His necklace of severed hands tumbled across the floor like brittle toys.
Smoke rose from the corpse. Limbs twitched. Not fading like the deformed creatures before. Not dissolving into mist. Still a body. Real. Solid.
Aaron dropped to one knee, breathing hard.
He whispered.
"Corpse Memory."
After leveling up, the Corpse Memory skill had changed. Now he did not have to eat the corpse manually. The blight broke it down into fragments that surged into Aaron and were absorbed directly into his soul.
A black ripple ran across the floor. The corpse convulsed. The flesh on the giant's arm melted and flowed like mud, racing toward Aaron and climbing up his body.
Bones cracked, muscles reformed, memories surged.
Screams. Battles. Faces. Betrayals.
Aaron gasped, clutching his head.
"How many begged to escape this place?" he whispered to himself. "How many became monsters because they tried to survive?"
When the memory flow stopped, the corpse was nothing but a skeleton. Still intact. Still staring upward like it expected resurrection.
Aaron stood.
He walked to the necklace and grabbed it without looking back.
The mark on his palm darkened further. Almost swallowing the skin.
He felt something brush against the inside of his mind. A voice from somewhere far away, yet close enough to touch.
Through the fog of thought, the witch whispered.
"Step through the mirror when you are ready, little mouse. The inner city awaits."
He looked at the bone-throne one last time.
He wondered if every creature here started human.
He wondered if he would end the same.
Then he walked away...