Darkness surrounded him, so deep and thick that he could feel it play on his skin like heavy breathing. He turned, and for an instant he saw the door and through it he saw Darius Faulkner frowning as if he couldn’t see him in the darkness.
Ace walked towards the light. He couldn’t help it, he didn’t know darkness could be that dark.
But the door closed and sothing yanked him away.
His scream was lost in the silent dark. He lost his sense of direction as everything blurred.
Suddenly he began to see shapes in the darkness, at first it was almost vague, lines and things that seed too far for his eyes to catch.
But then he saw sothing, a shape that was coiled around, heavy head resting on its great paws, scales that seed to be made of inky darkness. Horns that seed to be impossibly long.
And then there were the chains, bright silver that drew the eyes, chains that wrapped around its limbs.
Then the thing opened its eyes and stared right at him.
Ace scread. He saw the void in those eyes. Emptiness that seed to be filled with madness. Madness and power he couldn’t comprehend.
His head turned heavy as if sothing was trying to crawl through. His chest tightened and his whole body shuddered.
He t the creature’s eyes and it felt as if his whole being was being ripped away, shredding.
And still the force continued to drag him. More shapes blurred by but this ti he had learned his lesson.
He closed his eyes tightly against them.
He didn’t want to see the things in the dark.
After a long ti he realized that he had stopped moving. "Huh?"
Ace opened his eyes and the bright rays that stabbed into them were sharper than swords. He closed his stinging eyes and pressed his hands to his face to shield them from the light.
"I’m there?"
He stood up and realized what a big mistake it was when he fell back on the ground almost imdiately. His mouth was dry and his throat itchy. But he did the first thing that ca to his mind, he quickly expanded his perception as far as he could.
He was already in Sector Delta and he didn’t even realize it earlier!
Ace almost cursed aloud as his whole body tensed. He had detected danger, soone or sothing was close to him.
He went very still.
His perception focused on the thing.
"Human like, on my right, dangerous, power levels unknown but they could kill easily especially in the state I am in right now!"
He didn’t say anything as he erased his presence.
"Oh? You can even make yourself disappear. But you’re still here! Is your technique incomplete? Is this the sa technique you used on your shadow?"
Ace opened his eyes, he was still blinking but he forced his eyes open anyway.
It was human all right, but not all of him was human.
He was like a beastman that’s usually ntioned in fantasy books that Ace had read before. But this one was a combination of yellow monkey and man.
Ace blinked even faster. This place is populated by beastn?
He picked himself up from the ground, careful not to be too fast because of his still unbalanced coordination. But he kept his eyes on the monkey man.
He was the only presence around that he could feel.
"Why are you looking at like that? You don’t have anything valuable on you to steal and you don’t look like good at, there’s almost no power in you. I have a policy, you know. I only eat things with juice in them. Of course that’s if I’m not hungry."
Ace felt a chill down his spine. The way the monkey man spoke, it was as if it was the norm to eat others and it was Ace’s fault for just lying there.
"I’m really glad I got the tattoo space storage instead of the ring, I would have lost my things already."
"Lucky for I ate today, a fight between two territories and so many dead. Before they could reel their dead in, I darted in and out and snatched a lot of them." His, it, his mouth curled in disgust. "If not I would have settled for you. That’s not appetizing at all."
Ace didn’t know if he should be offended or not.
"Is being weak here an I don’t have enough juice? Not enough power or what?"
"You can’t speak? Don’t tell , you’re also one of those dumb ones I’ve been eting lately. I’ve been running into them lately that I haven’t collected enough stories to fill myself."
"Stories?" Ace asked, his voice croaked.
The monkey man clapped. "Ah! You’re not one of them! Yes. I go around collecting stories and eating. Those are the two things I know how to do best."
Ace sat back on the ground, not because he trusted the monkey man but his legs weren’t that stable and he wanted to gain back his strength as far as possible.
His eyes never left the monkey man and his hand was ready to draw his sword from the space storage within a mont’s notice. "Are there a lot of stories around this place?"
The monkey man’s face changed as soon as he asked the question, his eyes hardened and sothing ancient seed to look out from the eyes before it vanished. "Once, there were lots of stories but now there aren’t many stories.
"Only dead stories that a lot of people did not believe in. I’ve heard so many stories that I doubt there’s any to satisfy so I go around to collect."
Ace nodded. "Why are you telling all of this?"
From the beginning, the monkey man had been overexplaining everything that he said in such a way that Ace suspected that it was a calculated move.
The monkey man leaned forward. "Because I can sll that you have a lot of stories in your heart. That’s why I did not kill you. No, wait, it should be because you would taste bad but also how could I know how you taste without eating you?"
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