Frank was a little taken aback when he saw the name Death appear in his status message. He couldn't help but curse inwardly as his eyes caught the words "…smiles mischievously…" glowing across the screen.
The realization hit him hard—he must have lost something the moment those messages appeared: "You have lost 50 health. You have lost half of your life." His chest tightened, his breath catching in his throat. The words were not just instructions—they were a challenge, a test of his resolve.
Death itself had acknowledged him, smiling at the price he had paid. His body felt weaker, drained, yet his spirit trembled with anticipation. He couldn't dwell on the loss; the sacrifice was already made.
Now, within the span of three seconds, he had to decide what he wanted to escape from—or everything he had given up would be for nothing. The question lingered in the air like a blade at his throat: What do you want to escape from, Frank?
Without hesitation, Frank replied the moment the question appeared before him:
[Soul beings]
There were several reasons why Frank chose Soul Beings as his answer. First, he wanted confirmation—was he truly back on Earth, or still trapped in some liminal space between worlds? Next, he needed to know whether the soul beings were still hunting him, shadows of death that refused to let him go. And lastly, he hoped—desperately—that the skill would carry him to a place untouched by their presence, a sanctuary where soul beings could not reach.
The decision was not made lightly. He had sacrificed half of his life force to activate Escape, and now every word mattered. His choice was both a test and a gamble, one that would determine whether his suffering had meaning—or whether it had all been for nothing.
What happened next struck Frank like a hammer. The system's response was immediate, and it left him reeling:
[You can't escape from the "soul beings", Frank, because your fate is directly entwined with them and the only way you can escape from them is if you had never become a soul being yourself or if you can change from being a soul being to being a regular human.]
[The time of your skill has been fully elapsed.]
[You have escaped!]
Frank's eyes widened, his pulse quickening. Shock coursed through him, followed swiftly by anger. The words felt like a cruel joke, mocking the sacrifice he had just made. How could he escape if his fate was bound to the very beings he feared?
The contradiction gnawed at him—he had lost half his life, yet the system claimed he had escaped. Questions flooded his mind, each heavier than the last. What did it mean to be entwined with soul beings? Was his existence forever chained to them? And if so, what exactly had he escaped from?
Frank didn't know what to say. If he were still a clueless newbie to the way the world worked—or to the twisted, unforgiving nature of the Darkovian way—he might have been far more surprised than he looked now. But experience had hardened him.
Even though the system hadn't given him a straightforward answer about how to escape the soul beings, he leaned on the insight he had gained from his meditative state. He studied the reply carefully, dissecting each word as though it were a puzzle meant for him alone.
What he discerned was more than just shocking—it was unsettling. The message didn't resolve his doubts; instead, it multiplied them.
Immediately, before Frank could reply to the question directed at him by the meditation skill, a thought ran through his mind. The entire process felt strange—first, Death had taken note of him the instant he activated the skill, and second, the way Escape behaved was nothing like he expected.
It didn't function like a simple ability; instead, it seemed to act with a will of its own, almost like a human being—or worse, a soul being. That realization unsettled him. Because of these oddities, Frank decided to check whether his meditative skill was still running.
If it was, he could use its heightened clarity to take a much deeper look into the inner workings of Escape, to uncover whether the skill was truly alive or simply bound by rules he had yet to understand.
So when the skill gave him a reply, Frank realized he wasn't merely reading words displayed in his status. He was listening—listening to someone speaking directly to him. And that was what gave him the greatest shock. The voice wasn't Death, nor any human, nor even a soul being. The one answering him through the Escape skill was none other than himself.
At first, Frank refused to believe it. But when he listened closely, when he opened his eyes, he saw it: an ethereal figure, faint and incomplete, shimmering at the edge of perception. Its presence was fragile, almost fading, yet undeniably there. The entire figure was coated in a dim, fading blue spirit, a spectral glow that pulsed like dying embers. And as Frank stared, his heart tightened—he realized he had seen that spirit before.
It was then that Frank remembered—the spirit had appeared before him once before, shortly after he upgraded his Meditation skill to rank E. On that day, the being had confronted him directly, declaring without hesitation that it was Frank, not just Frank but the best version of Frank.
As the memory unraveled in his mind, Frank was struck by a chilling thought: if this spirit figure of himself was now trapped inside a skill, did that mean someone had deliberately sealed a piece of him away? If so, who had done it, and for what purpose? And even more troubling—how was he supposed to release that fragment of himself? Did he even want to release it, knowing how arrogant and unsettling the spirit had been?
All these questions pressed against his mind, heavy and relentless. But Frank pushed them down, burying the uncertainty beneath his focus. There was something far more important demanding his attention—the matter of escaping from the soul beings.
Although Frank had read what the message had said, he didn't fully understand it initially so Frank decided to reread the reply his skill had spat out in order to understand it, and probably use a fresh set of eyes to figure out what was written, however he couldn't hold the rage boiling inside him.
He was furious, and beneath that fury lay a crushing despair. The realization hit him like a blade—he had wasted fifty points of health, sacrificed half his life, and now stood in a dangerous situation with his vitality slowly declining, all for a useless piece of information. The Escape skill hadn't saved him; it had only opened his eyes to a bitter truth: he was destined to keep running from his mistakes.
Memories clawed their way back into his mind. He remembered how foolish he had been, how reckless. If only he had never picked up the phone… if only he had never robbed that bank. Regret weighed heavily on him, each thought a chain dragging him deeper into despair. Yet no matter how much he cursed his past, the truth remained—he had to live with his mistakes, because they were now a part of him, entwined with his very existence.