# CHAPTER 25: THE PILLOW AND THE NATURE OF EXISTENCE
---
Touching his belly, he could feel it round and full, and the sensation of his stomach being filled. This was the first time he had experienced this. Normally, when food entered his stomach, it was digested immediately, converted into illogical energy—not like now. His stomach was somehow truly digesting like a human, rather than converting food into energy right away. Strands of illogical energy were being slowly extracted from the food, spreading throughout his body, merging with the illogical energy soaking through his blood vessels.
He was intrigued by the new sensation, but along with it came a big question: *How was I injured so badly that my digestion became like this?*
Feeling his stomach full, Subject 198 instinctively lay down on the rough ground to give his stomach time to digest, directing his eyes toward the sky. The moon and sun were currently appearing together—the sun was setting, at the horizon about to sink, flickering faintly. The three moons were appearing dim and hazy. Over time, the three moons became clearer and clearer, and the sky was also gradually darkening.
He stared at the moons intently. At the same time, in his head, the wandering thoughts about life were gradually quieting down. Subject 198's mind began to slowly become still. Drowsiness came gently, as if lulling Subject 198 to sleep. His eyes slowly closed, bit by bit, until they were shut tight.
By instinct, Subject 198 curled up, using his three arms to hug his folded legs, lying in the position of a newborn baby.
It could be said that this was the best sleep he had ever had—that could be affirmed. His previous sleeps had almost never been good. The pressure of survival weighed on his mind, and someone, when he slept, forced his brain to stay active, checking everything around him—probably like a dolphin sleeping. Now, when the worries were gone and Noci in his head was hibernating, Subject 198 finally had his first deep sleep.
You may not know this, but the duration of sleep doesn't determine too much of the quality of body and mind recovery. What truly affects quality—and whether the brain completes its work of recovering the body or mind—is determined by the feeling of safety and comfort. Being truly comfortable genuinely improves your sleep efficiency. It's no coincidence that people say sleeping with someone you love makes you healthier.
His sleep could finally do its job—recovering and healing the wounds throughout his body. The brain's recovery work was not taken over by the illogical energy source, and his brain was purging neurotoxins and processing emotions.
Subject 198's stomach was still doing its job—digesting food, converting it into strands of illogical energy, merging with the illogical energy throughout his body in every blood vessel.
Time passed. His stomach digested more and more food into energy. At some point, as if it had absorbed enough, the illogical energy lying in each blood vessel—the thing that maintained his illogical existence—began flowing back into Subject 198's two hearts, gathering there.
At the same time, Subject 198's two hearts began to slow down. Slower and slower. At one point, both hearts stopped beating entirely, making no sound at all.
But Subject 198's body acted as if nothing had happened—his lungs still breathed, his brain still worked, and his other internal organs—he didn't know if he had any—were still doing their jobs.
Time continued to pass.
One hour passed.
Two hours passed.
Three hours passed.
By the sixth hour, his lungs—which were still breathing, even working better—began to slow down, until it seemed they would stop like his heart. Then they suddenly burst back to life. The nearly extinguished breaths began taking deep breaths—air flooded into every corner of the lung cavity, inflating it. Subject 198's breaths grew faster and faster, accelerating with each passing second—to the point where they might have been faster than the time his lungs could extract oxygen from the air.
At some point, they stopped increasing and began to slow down, until they returned to a normal breathing rhythm before finally settling.
Subject 198's two hearts also began beating again, pumping blood throughout his body, along with the illogical energy, and two small fragments like pebbles, just slightly larger than red blood cells, in the blood.
The illogical energy spread throughout his blood vessels. Vague, uncertain, but it seemed to be beating.
He opened his eight eyes slowly. His mind was clearer than ever before. Along with it came a refreshing sensation spreading through his body—as if he hadn't truly slept in a long time.
By instinct, Subject 198 inhaled air into his lungs. A choking sensation came—as if something was stuck in his lungs. He began coughing through the six holes in his chest, increasingly violently. By instinct, he tilted his body so the six holes faced the ground, coughing and hacking, trying to expel everything from his chest. Only when his chest and lungs felt empty did the coughing stop. Instinctively, he took a breath—when the air entered his lungs, the feeling of his chest being filled came. A strange refreshment spread through his body. Along with it, a cool sensation spread through his chest—like inhaling a breath in winter. From there, the coolness spread throughout his body.
His lungs felt brand new. Like the first days in this world, he hadn't noticed. But after the adaptation period of eating the thick glass mud in the early days, because there wasn't enough energy, the cells in his lungs that should have been regenerated like the rest of his body through the illogical energy were instead only regenerated into scar tissue, weakening their function. Now, when his lungs returned to normal, he could finally feel the previous congestion.
He breathed in and out continuously for a while before stopping. He looked at what he had coughed up.
It was a pile of dark yellow phlegm, like something stuck in his throat all day, and inside it were tiny pink fragments wriggling like leeches.
If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
*Well, what the hell is this?*
He squatted down and focused his eyes to look closely.
*Is this my lung tissue? Why is it black?*
Curious, he reached out to touch it, and the lung tissues stopped wriggling, lying still as if dead. He poked it with his finger.
*Soft, like jelly.*
Ignoring it, he stood up.
He took another deep breath.
The refreshing feeling spread through Subject 198's brain again.
He enjoyed the new sensation until his body adapted, and the refreshment of his recovered lungs faded.
He remarked:
"Wow, deep sleep is amazing. I should really focus on getting more sleep."
Standing up, the feeling in his muscles and bones was still the same, but something was different.
*What is it?*
*Is this an aftereffect of my sleep, or are my bones and muscles actually stronger?*
Looking at the pile of phlegm and lung tissue, he decided to bury it.
He walked to the weapon storage—calling it "storage" was an exaggeration; it was more of a corner where he dumped his tools. He bent down and picked up the shovel. He also glanced at the monster in the middle of the camp.
*It seems like it's gotten better.*
He walked closer to see clearly. Through the transparent nail-like shell, he could see the muscles awkwardly reconnecting. Though not enough to do anything, it was better than before. Thinking that, he returned to the weapons and picked up a mallet. But first, he had to bury the phlegm.
He walked over, used the shovel to dig a hole, and put the phlegm and lung tissue in. Then he walked back to the monster.
He said in his mind: *"Sorry for doing this, but I can't let you die right now. I need you to live a little longer. I can't set you free either."*
*Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!*
The weakly connected muscles were destroyed once again.
With each swing of the mallet into each tentacle, the monster screamed as if it didn't understand why it was being treated this way.
During the process, the pure white eyes, like those with cataracts, suddenly grew black dots, staring directly at Subject 198.
For the crustacean-tentacle monster, its view of Subject 198 wasn't particularly hostile. Aside from being disgusted by Subject 198's four grotesque legs, its view of Subject 198 was fairly neutral.
To it, Subject 198 was a threat, an equal enemy, a prey, and a battle.
All its emotions toward Subject 198 were natural, without any personal animosity.
It understood that losing meant death. It could accept it because it had lost. Being eaten was fine, because fighting was for eating—that was natural law. But this...
The monster—a new sensation arose in its throat. A lumpy, dark, strange feeling directed at Subject 198. A feeling unlike anything before—hatred. Hatred for this creature. A desire to kill this thing so intense that it forced its eyes to develop, regardless of whether it would die faster, just to be able to stare at Subject 198 with hatred.
Subject 198's eyes met the few remaining eyes on the monster's tentacles. He saw it growing black pupils and using them to stare.
Not a single sound came out. It just stared. But it was surely more terrifying than any bizarre scream it had ever made.
Subject 198 could feel the hatred in those eyes—a great and terrifying hatred.
Ignoring the eyes staring at him, knowing this would repeat every time, and those eyes would grow more hateful, he walked to the food storage and prepared to eat breakfast.
He used his Silas hand, bending it to swallow a piece of blood-glass moss powder.
The bitter taste spread through Silas's throat, and his tongue. He felt like spitting it out, but he stopped and continued eating, swallowing into his stomach.
At the same time, he wrapped Silas around one of his own legs and began gnawing on it as if to wash away the bitter taste of the blood-glass moss.
You know, when eaten in moderate amounts, it was okay—it could stimulate the taste buds in the throat. But eating it as a staple food was hard to manage. But he had to eat—this was his staple.
*There has to be a solution.*
Deep in thought.
*Hmmmm...*
*What if I make it tasteless like the energy bar? Even though the energy bar tastes like cement when put in water, eating it normally gives no taste because its structure changes. How strange—I just compressed it. Truly illogical.*
Thinking and doing. He walked to the mold used to cast energy bars. It looked a bit warped from the first time he made it, but it should be fine.
He put the glass powder into the mold. He picked up the wooden block—or was it stone? Ah, it was stone-wood—and pressed it into the mold, using seventy percent of his strength to press down. He didn't use full strength because he didn't want it too hard—he didn't want to create another energy bar. He wanted to create something that still had taste, just less intense. He had to press several times before stopping. The texture felt right—like a chewy piece.
He picked up a corner, looked at it—it felt quite flexible. The texture was chewy, but not to the point of being like an object—more like noodles. Deciding to test the flavor, he fed it to Silas.
A bitter sensation spread throughout his mouth. It wasn't more, but rather more concentrated—far more bitter, bitter to the point where his instinct was to vomit it out and he couldn't hold back. The contact area was smaller, but the bitterness lingered.
*Ugh ugh ugh...*
*What is this taste? It's horrible. I guess it hasn't crossed the structural transformation threshold yet.*
He walked to the half-eaten leg from earlier and continued gnawing, using it like milk to wash away the bitterness. Except he was using his own meat, which made the bitterness spreading through his mouth linger.
It wasn't until his leg was almost finished that the lingering bitterness finally stopped. At the same time, his stomach was filled and digesting.
Although the meal didn't go smoothly, the feeling of a full stomach relaxed him. He lay down to let his body do its work. Subject 198's mind wandered through the sea of information in his head—information he didn't understand, only knew existed. Stopping his mental wandering, he directed his attention to Noci in the corner of his mind. He noticed Noci's recovery was still poor, but better than before. Probably nearing the threshold to wake up.
Do you remember that Subject 198 has eyes on the back of his head? Aside from giving him 360-degree vision, the downside was that when he lay down, those eyes touched the ground directly. And pressing his eyes against the ground wasn't a pleasant experience—it hurt.
Unlike his previous sleep, this time he was conscious enough to feel the pain.
Bothered by this, he sought a solution. He needed something to at least stop the pain and not disturb his sleep.
*A pillow.* He didn't know where this information came from, but it was in his head—might as well use it.
He thought he could make a pillow, even though he didn't have enough materials like cotton or bird feathers for the ancient version, but he could create something similar.
He walked to the food storage and picked up a leg. He began by making a long cut with his knife, then decided to skin his own leg. He lifted the skin and used the knife at the base, pulling and cutting a line, separating the skin from the meat inside.
Alright, he had a pillow cover. He used a few needle-like glass fragments—actually taken from glass-moss, the only thing with needle parts for stitching.
He left one fairly large opening.
Next was the pillow's filling. He used the knife to separate large chunks of meat, then made cuts and waited until the blood drained out, then put in about one-third. Then he added hand-monster hide—the gray one—as a lining. Then he added more blood-drained meat, then another layer of hide. Finally, he stitched it up. There, he had a pillow. The remaining blood was for the blood-glass moss to grow.
While he was in the middle of stitching the final pieces of the pillow, a voice full of unusual spirit rang out:
Noci: "Hey, what are you doing? What is this for?"
Happy that Noci had awakened, he eagerly showed off the pillow he had made:
"Look, this is..."
Suddenly, the flood of memories that Noci had taken to digest overwhelmed his brain, as if he were experiencing them again.
He raised his hand to his chin, deep in thought.
*"Is my consciousness... still my own?"*