"Hah...!"
I jolted awake, greedily gasping for air as if I had just escaped death by drowning. The sight of the temple altar and silver chalice I had seen just before losing consciousness was now gone. I found myself sitting on a stone cot, cushioned by a pile of strange leaves that felt surprisingly soft.
While holding my still-throbbing head—the lingering dizziness from suddenly passing out earlier—my eyes cautiously scanned the surroundings.
This narrow room was illuminated only by the flames of two torches mounted on the left and right sides of the doorway. Amid the dancing light, I could make out the silhouette of someone standing perfectly still. I had no idea how long he had been silently watching me.
"So, you're finally awake... How are you feeling?" the silhouette said. His deep voice echoed softly through the silence.
"My head is killing me. Where am I?" I asked, rubbing my temples as I tried to endure the stabbing pain.
"Haha. Congratulations on successfully stealing that water," he said, accompanied by a dry, forced laugh. There was intense anger restrained beneath his voice.
"Stealing? I don't understand what you mean!" I replied, my brow furrowing deeply.
I immediately felt around the area beside the stone cot, searching for whatever object he might think I had stolen. Nothing. There wasn't a single thing near me. Even my pants pockets were empty—remember, I had been naked when I fell, and now I was only wrapped in some kind of cloth.
"There isn't anything here, so why are you accusing me of stealing?" I asked again, feeling both curious and annoyed at being accused so randomly.
"Stop pretending to be stupid! You've stolen one of our most precious treasures!" His voice suddenly rose. His emotions seemed to explode as his massive hand clenched into a fist and slammed hard against the stone wall beside him. BANG!
The room immediately fell silent again. The man stepped forward until half of his face was illuminated by the torchlight. "How long are you going to keep pretending to be stupid?! You drank every last drop of the water from that chalice! Do you even know what that water was?!" he shouted angrily.
"Oh... You mean that water?" I let out a long sigh, suddenly understanding where the conversation was going. "I drank it because I was thirsty. Besides, it was just ordinary drinking water sitting out in the open. Why do you have to get so worked up over it?" I replied, trying to explain what seemed like a perfectly innocent and reasonable explanation in my mind.
The man froze. His eyes widened in disbelief.
"What? You drank it... without knowing what it was?!" he asked again, his voice trembling as if making sure he had heard me correctly.
I simply nodded slowly in response. Was I supposed to take a sample to a laboratory first and check its mineral composition before drinking it?
The man took a long breath and roughly rubbed his face, trying to suppress his anger again. "Answer me. Where did you come from, and how did you get here?" he interrogated me. This time, his voice sounded much calmer, although the intimidating aura around him remained.
"I don't know myself. Suddenly, I woke up in this room. Weren't you the one who brought me here?" I concluded confidently. This old man must have carried me here while I was unconscious.
"That's not what I meant, you idiot!" he cursed, his temper flaring again at how slowly I grasped the meaning of his question. "I mean, how did you find these temple ruins?!"
"Ah, so that's what you meant," I muttered, nodding repeatedly in understanding.
With a cautious expression and a serious face, I began telling him about all the insane events I had just experienced.
I explained the sequence of events from the beginning—from the moment I found myself falling through a gigantic bottomless pit, the painful landing that left me waking up in shallow water near a waterfall, to my decision to explore the cave, enter this dark temple, and ultimately drink the water from the silver chalice because I was thirsty.
The man listened carefully to my story. He merely nodded slowly, occasionally stroking his beard as he processed every word that came out of my mouth.
As the pain in my head slowly began to subside, I remembered the question I had left unanswered. "Where exactly am I? And who are you, really?" I asked again, demanding an answer.
The old man sighed, then slowly turned around. He walked toward a chair—or, more accurately, a roughly carved chunk of stone—and sat down casually. In front of him was a square stone table that looked just as hard and uncomfortable.
As he sat down and the torchlight illuminated him, the dark shadows that had been hiding his face finally disappeared completely. Now I could see him clearly. The deep wrinkles on his face made it obvious that he was no longer young—I estimated him to be around sixty to seventy years old.
His face was adorned with a thick beard that extended straight down to his chest, matching his long silver-white hair, which was left loose and fell all the way down his back. His nose was sharply prominent, resembling the features of someone from the Middle East.
However, what caught my attention the most was his pair of ears, which were slightly pointed upward. Combined with his tall, upright posture—roughly twenty centimeters taller than me—I could only come to one conclusion: he was an Elf. The clothes he wore were nothing more than a simple, worn-out robe covered in mysterious stains. His hands hung casually at his sides.
He crossed his legs and stared intently at me with his green eyes. "From what you've told me, it seems you're not a human from this world."
I was stunned. "What do you mean? Is this place some kind of spirit world... or the afterlife?"
"More or less," he confirmed, slowly nodding with an utterly innocent expression.
My shoulders and head immediately drooped. "So it's true... I'm actually dead," I said, lowering my head in resignation. So this is really the end of the road for me. My dream of living happily with this muscular new body was apparently nothing more than wishful thinking.
"Well, more or less. I was the one who just cut your head off when I realized you had drunk all the water," he said firmly, his tone as casual as someone discussing today's weather. "But it seems you managed to come back to life because of the new ability you obtained."
Wait. What?
Come back to life? He cut my head off?!
My brain immediately short-circuited. Was he just joking to frighten me? If I had actually died by decapitation, I should have felt excruciating pain, or at the very least remembered the flash of the sword that killed me!
I hurriedly felt around my own neck in panic. Intact. No stitches. Not even a single drop of blood!
"I suppose you're still confused by what I said," the old man continued, his laugh sounding slightly dry as he watched my ridiculous reaction. "To be precise, this isn't the afterlife of your world. Somehow, you were transferred from your original world to this one."
My brow furrowed deeply. My heart pounded between horror and confusion. "Of course I'm confused, old man. I'm very confused by what you just said about me managing to 'come back to life'!" I replied, unable to hide the anxiety in my voice. "Let me make sure I understand. You said you cut my head off. You mean literally, right? My neck was severed? Then how did I come back to life?!"
"Remember the water you drank from the chalice?" the old man asked in return, his gaze sharpening.
To make sure, I immediately raised my hand and pulled my right earlobe. Instantly, a transparent blue screen projected itself across my vision. My eyes widened in horror as I stared at the new line of text glowing in my list of Passive Skills that I hadn't had a chance to read before.
[ PASSIVE SKILL: IMMORTALIST TERRA ]
Tier: Godlike / Creator's Blessing
Effect: Allows the user to revive even if their physical body has been completely destroyed or separated by a great distance.
Absolute Requirement: At least one part of the body must be in direct contact with sand or soil.
I quickly pulled my left earlobe to close the screen. My mind suddenly became clear. No wonder I felt so dizzy before passing out. So that was the process of reconstructing my body after my headless body was forcibly put back together by this skill!
"You... can see this screen too?" I asked suspiciously, staring intently at the Elf.
"I can tell simply by looking at you," he replied flatly, concealing a secret behind eyes as calm as a still lake. "When you collapsed and your head was separated from your neck, I was initially very surprised to see your bleeding stop and your flesh knit itself back together. But after I saw your new ability... I finally knew what kind of water you had just swallowed."
I swallowed. "You mean... you didn't know what that water was before?"
My question seemed to press the wrong button. The man's expression immediately hardened. His eyes showed a mixture of anger, profound regret, and intense disgust. He let out a long sigh, his voice trembling as he began to speak.
This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
"I was once a royal physician," he said, his eyes staring distantly through the torchlight. "I spent my entire life studying the art of medicine. During that period of prosperity, I became extremely arrogant. I considered myself equal to the gods, believing that every disease in this world must have a cure."
He adjusted his posture. His broad shoulders now seemed to sag beneath the weight of centuries of regret.
"Until one day, my king was overcome by a terrible fear of the one disease that could never be cured: Death. He ordered me to travel the world in search of a cure for mortality. I spent decades traveling the world. One by one, the knights who protected me fell, dying from age and disease, while my knowledge was unable to help them in the slightest."
The man fell silent. For a moment, the only sound between us was the crackling of the torch flames.
"I gave up. On my journey home, a terrible storm destroyed my ship. The last thing I remember was my body being tossed about in a dark sea, and when I opened my eyes... I had washed ashore in front of the entrance to this temple."
He stared intently at me. His gaze seemed to pierce all the way to the depths of my soul.
"In the midst of my confusion, a bodiless voice whispered inside my head. The voice only told me that the cure I had been searching for all this time was inside this temple. However, it never told me what kind of cure it was, nor what it looked like or what it did. All I was given was one absolute task: guard the chalice until someone came three thousand years later to claim what was inside."
I frowned. "So... for three thousand years, you guarded that water without knowing what it actually was?"
The man nodded slowly. "That's right. At first, I tried to touch it. Many times." His tone became bitter, cutting into my heart. "I tried to lift the chalice. I reached my hand toward the water. I even once forced my magic to penetrate something I couldn't see. But I always failed. It was as if an invisible wall separated my hand from the object."
His fingers clenched tightly until his knuckles turned white. "The harder I forced my way through, the stronger something pushed me back. No matter how much power I used, I couldn't even touch a single drop of the water inside. In the end, I stopped trying and simply guarded it."
"For three thousand years, the chalice was the only reason I remained in this place. Not because I knew what was inside it," he continued, his eyes fixed on me with piercing sorrow, "but because I knew something incredibly precious was waiting for you there."
I swallowed. "Wait... waiting for me?"
"That's what the voice told me." The old man let out a long sigh, lowering his head deeply. "And now... I finally realize how foolish I was."
I frowned, not fully understanding. "What do you mean?"
"For three thousand years... I guarded the thing I wanted most in this world, something I couldn't even touch." He gave a bitter smile, looking at me with an expression that was both heartbreaking and filled with disgust. "The cure for mortality.
The absolute immortality I searched for by sacrificing the lives of my people. And when the person who had been awaited finally arrived... you drank it simply because you were thirsty!"
I stood there stiffly in silence.
For some reason, that final sentence hurt far more than his shouting earlier. The man standing before me had spent his entire life searching for immortality, only to be forced to guard that immortality for three millennia without ever being able to touch it, only to watch some foolish young man like me drink it as casually as ordinary well water. The cosmic irony was too cruel.
"What makes it even more annoying..." he muttered softly, his voice trembling as he struggled to contain his bubbling anger. "...is that I didn't even know what kind of disgusting immortality I had just given you until I cut your head off and watched you come back to life."
I lowered my head, not daring to answer. My normally critical mind had suddenly gone dull in the face of the old man's tragedy. I felt that the glass of tasteless water I had drunk had apparently been worth far, far more than I had ever imagined.
The old man fell silent. His emerald-green eyes stared sharply at me, as though stripping me bare to the soul, while his fingers occasionally played with his white beard.
After several agonizing moments, he let out a long sigh.
"I should have continued killing intruders like you. However, since killing you would only result in you coming back to life, I briefly considered torturing you repeatedly until I grew bored."
I was stunned. How cruel is this old man! How could he actually consider torturing me simply because he knows killing me would be pointless?!
"I've decided what kind of torture suits you! Hahaha!" he said, suddenly laughing cheerfully.
Inside my mind, horrifying scenarios began spinning wildly. Maybe he'll slice my body apart piece by piece? Or skin me alive? Or force me to drink so much water that my stomach explodes?!
"However..." He stopped laughing, a faint smile now appearing on his aged face. "After hearing your unfortunate story—falling from a hole, knowing nothing about what was happening, and accidentally ending up here before drinking that water—I decided to cancel the torture."
I let out an enormous sigh of relief, my shoulders sagging. It felt as though I had just escaped the gallows.
"But before that, there's one thing you forgot to mention in your story," he continued. "What's your name?"
"I don't have a name," I answered briefly, remembering my new identity in this world.
"Ah, how interesting. So No Name really does mean someone without a name, or more precisely, 'Nameless,'" he replied quietly.
I jolted. "How do you know that name, old man?"
My heart began pounding again. Since arriving in this world, I had never once spoken that foreign name to anyone except the Number 6 system.
"You don't need to know how I found out. I don't remember ever promising to answer your questions," he said, his expression becoming serious again as he firmly closed off his secret.
I swallowed hard, suppressing the mixture of irritation and fear inside me. Silence once again settled between us.
However, from the story of his past that he had just told me, I began to realize a thread connecting us that was deeply painful. We were both unfortunate beings, chewed up and spat out by our respective worlds.
This world might be brutal because it was filled with monsters and magic, but its rules were straightforward: whether you were strong or weak was determined by fate and your own efforts, much like the power system described by Number 6.
It was the complete opposite of my old world. A world that claimed to be "civilized," yet was far more rotten in reality. In my world, people were forced to spend decades sitting in education, then measured and judged like livestock through a series of cold psychometric tests, merely to prove how worthy they were of being exploited.
I remembered my life as an internal auditor. I spent my time making exhausting business trips out of town, crossing straits by ferry, moving from one remote branch to another for weeks at a time, all just to seek the truth and straighten out the system.
We were monitored and confined by a rigid digital attendance system, expected to always remain honest and disciplined. But what was the result? Trillions in government funds that should have fed the poor were still being stolen by savage officials.
And in the end, when I actually succeeded in uncovering the biggest corruption scandal in my country, when I stood up for the truth... all I received in return was betrayal, and the blade of a dagger from my own colleague piercing my heart.
"We really are both cursed, old man," I finally said, looking at him again with a bitter smile. "So, do you know what region we're in?"
Khizar chuckled softly, his laughter sounding hollow. "Unfortunately, I don't know either. During my expedition across the entire continent three thousand years ago, this was the only place that never appeared on any map."
"Then... after being trapped here for three thousand years, didn't you ever try to find a way out?" I asked in surprise.
"I've searched for one countless times," he complained, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "But there isn't a single route that leads directly to the surface. This cave is a gigantic labyrinth with countless branches, and every branch is home to various kinds of vicious, hungry monsters."
"Monsters?!" I swallowed hard. My empathy suddenly evaporated, replaced by panic.
"Yes, monsters. But the good news is that every monster that dies will leave behind an energy crystal from the remnants of its soul," he said calmly. "Those crystals are extremely valuable. Out there, ordinary people trade them for gold coins, or refine the energy inside them into power potions and materials for armor that delays death."
I blinked. The game logic in my head immediately kicked in. "You mean... when they die, those monsters drop items in the form of EXP crystals that can be absorbed directly to increase your level?"
Khizar stopped walking. He slowly turned around, staring at me with a deeply furrowed brow and an extremely strange expression. His emerald-green eyes examined my face from top to bottom, as though I had suddenly grown a second head.
"E-ex-pee? Level? Item drop?" Khizar repeated my words in a stiff, spelling-out tone. "What kind of arcane language did you just speak? Did you hit your head particularly hard when your neck was severed earlier? Or did that sacred water just damage your sanity?"
I was stunned.
"Listen, young man," Khizar continued in a lecturing tone. "That crystal is a physical object. The energy inside it is wild and dangerous. You have to extract it slowly using alchemy, or take it to a reliable blacksmith. No sane person can 'absorb' power instantly just by holding it, let alone use the imaginary terms you just mentioned."
Wait a second, my mind screamed.
I stared at Khizar's genuinely confused face. My analytical mind began putting the pieces together. He doesn't know what a level is. He can't see the UI screen! That means the system interface and the existence of Number 6... can only be seen by me?
I swallowed hard. If I kept telling people about Number 6, experience points, or the system floating before my eyes, people in this world would surely think I was a lunatic who had lost his mind! This had to remain my absolute secret.
"Ah—n-nothing, old man! Forget it, I was just talking nonsense!" I replied hurriedly, forcing an awkward laugh as I waved my hand. "What I meant was, I can't fight at all! Let alone fight monsters! If I'm attacked, I'll definitely just die for real!"
"Hahaha!" The old man's laughter suddenly exploded, echoing loudly off the temple walls. The horror he had just described seemed to evaporate completely. To him, my panic was probably the funniest joke he had heard in three millennia. "Then the problem is solved! Starting today, I'll teach those soft hands of yours how to cut up their flesh and harvest those crystals!"
"Ah, wait! We just met and don't even know each other! You even cut my head off without me realizing it the first time you saw me!" I hurriedly reminded him, slowly stepping backward.
"You're right, we don't know each other yet." The man completely ignored my refusal. He stepped forward confidently, pulled back his worn-out robe, then extended his rough, muscular right hand, its veins prominently visible.
"Then, Nameless Young Man, allow me to introduce myself... my name is Khizar, a High Elf. And from this very moment onward, I will torture you by teaching you everything I know so that you can survive in this cursed world."
Good grief, I complained internally. I stared at his outstretched hand with mixed feelings. My great secret about Number 6 was now firmly locked inside my head.
My encounter with Khizar at the bottom of these nameless ruins would become the beginning of the bloody wheel of fate I was about to experience.