The journey down hadn't been any easier for Rob. On the contrary, it had drained him even more than the climb upward. It felt like swimming against the current. Each movement demanded more strength, more effort, as if gravity itself had been altered to push upward.

  And this wasn't just a vague observation—the change in his energy levels was undeniable evidence of that.

  [Access energy: 70%–110%]

  He had needed nearly double the energy just to descend the same distance.

  That's why he now sat slumped, half-seated, half-leaning against a small, bulbous area jutting from the wall. His perch was uneven. His body was soaked with sweat. Rob looked like he'd just run a marathon, and in a way, he had.

  By his estimation, he'd retraced the same stretch they'd climbed, but in less than half the time. He could've stopped to rest somewhere along the way, but he didn't. After all, hadn't he left the blind boy behind on the grounds of needing to move quickly? He had meant what he said. Rob didn't waste time unless it was absolutely necessary.

  So he pressed on without pause, only stopping if he encountered someone or stumbled upon something unusual, which wasn't that often.

  The only people he came across were near the starter area—those who had arrived like he had but either couldn't or wouldn't climb. Rob didn't linger around them; he knew no help would come from their direction. They were either completely lost in denial and madness or so weak that even if he tried, there'd be nothing he could do for them.

  The sound of fluttering wings pulled him from the storm of images in his mind.

  Casting his gaze to the side, he caught sight of a stunningly beautiful bird. The otherworldly creature was adorned with radiant golden feathers that shimmered with a subtle luminescence. And atop its head rose a crown-like crest, glowing with the hue of sunlight.

  "Oh, it's you again," he muttered.

  The bird gazed back with two orbs of molten gold-like eyeballs, just watching him silently.

  Rob had been moving from side to side, trying to explore more of this unexplorable wall, when all of a sudden, he had an unsettling sensation of being watched. The bird had materialized out of nowhere, its intense gaze tracking his every move with unnerving focus.

  And it creeped him out.

  The eerie creature was like a ghost, vanishing and reappearing without warning. At first, Rob feared it was stalking him—and that he might be its next meal.

  But then he realized that couldn't be true. The creature didn't behave like a predator. It was too small, had no talons, and if it had truly meant to hunt him, it had already missed countless opportunities.

  It had never shown the slightest hint of aggression. It simply observed Rob from time to time, as if expecting something.

  Eventually, he just accepted it as another thing of this mad world, and learned to live with its stalking. Sometimes he even talked to it when the loneliness became too much.

  Feeling that he had rested enough, Rob resumed his search for a landing—or better yet, a settlement.

  Lower and lower he went, and the system was clearly not happy about it.

  [ALARM: Descending further will result in increased energy consumption. It is highly advised to ascend for optimal energy acquisition.]

  This wasn't the first message of this nagging system, and he doubted it would be the last. In fact, the first so-called "alarm" had appeared the moment he took his initial step downward—and it had kept repeating ever since.

  But Rob paid it no mind. He knew the system didn't want anyone going down in the first place, yet he went anyway. Why should he follow the instructions of an AI that, for all he knew, was his kidnapper?

  About half a day later, Rob finally stumbled upon some semblance of civilization. It was a strange, undeveloped, rudimentary gathering, but far from anything he would call a real community.

  After skirting around a soft, empty patch of terrain, he came face to face with a cluster of crude structures—what could loosely be described as a vertical village.

  The place was little more than a disorganized collection of shallow caves carved into the wall, each one covered with a thin cloth, offering only a modicum of privacy.

  Rob stopped a few meters away from the primitive dwellings and stood there for a long time. At first, he'd intended to approach and speak with the residents. He had already consumed the Tongue card, so communication wouldn't be a problem.

  So why did he feel like he wasn't welcomed there at all?

  They had clearly seen him coming, yet none of them acknowledged his arrival.

  No welcome. No warning. They did nothing.

  Some heads bobbed outside of their cave-like holes, while others sat or stood on wooden boards bolted into the wall. They simply stared at him—cold, expressionless—some with narrowed eyes, as if his presence was an inconvenience.

  The glares only grew harder when he showed any signs of nearing.

  "To hell with this."

  He descended the last few yards and took a straight line to the closest person, which happened to be a gray-haired old man with a wrinkled bony face.

  The man's expression danced between confusion, worry, and finally settled on anger as he noticed Rob approaching. When Rob caught the death glare the old man shot his way, he instinctively wanted to change course and find someone else. But he didn't.

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  He only braced himself, fully expecting that he would be ignored, or worse, insulted and shouted at.

  What he didn't expect was for the old man, unprovoked, to leap up, wrap all four limbs around him, and proceed to choke the life out of his neck.

  Rob was just an arm's length away. He was too close to react fast enough. In an instant, the man's bony fingers clamped tightly around his throat. his snarling, wrinkled face neared to mere inches from Rob's. his aged features twisted with fury and something more unsettling—anticipation.

  At first, he didn't panic. He assumed shrugging the old man off would be effortless. The man wasn't armed. Actually, the difference in strength and physical ability in general was laughably in Rob's favor. He'd been in dirty fights before, and this should've been no different. Right?

  Wrong.

  Rob twisted his body, or he tried to. The hateful old jerk had clung to him like a bat. his limbs a vice of bone and fury, he chained his body in a way that left no room to fight back. Rob's fists had no distance to build power, his legs were useless without ground beneath him, and most of the attacker's body was hidden behind his own.

  He was completely neutralized. the old man, on the other side, was doing that with the precision of a Berson who had hunted this way many times before.

  Rob gasped, instinctively opening his mouth wider to suck in more air. The cold chain-like hands coiled around his windpipe denied any breeze the right of passage. He had no idea why the bastard had attacked him. he didn't care. If he didn't break free soon, he was dead.

  Worse than that, his odds were slipping with every second his lungs stayed empty of oxygen and his brain starved of blood.

  Desperate, Rob envisioned letting go of the wall. He was spiteful enough to let the void be the only victor in this fight—a shared fall and fate into death's embrace.

  as the edges of his vision blurred and a brutal pounding began behind his eyes, he came too close to just doing that.

  But he didn't let go, at least not yet. Instead, he slipped his right hand down toward his thigh. Feeling the hot, ragged breath of his would-be killer on the back of his neck, he swung his right fist upward in one desperate motion. He slammed it into the man's eye with every ounce of power and momentum he could muster in this tight space.

  The man let out a blood-curdling scream. the pain weakened his chain-like grip. not because of the power of Rob's punch, but for the dinner fork currently buried in his eye.

  Seizing the moment, Rob didn't hesitate. He shoved backward with all his remaining strength, dislodging the man's body from his own and sending him, thankfully alone, hurtling into the void below.

  Like a broken vacuum gone berserk, He gulped down air in ragged, greedy breaths.

  Yet soon, the intoxication of oxygen faded quickly, and with it came the sobering weight of reality.

  He had murdered a man.

  And setting morality and his own feelings aside, he had committed the crime in full view of many witnesses—witnesses who most likely included the old man's family, neighbors, and friends. They wouldn't care who struck first; they would want revenge, and they would take it.

  Rob slowly scanned the few dozen onlookers, their eyes fixed on him with a mix of horror and confusion.

  "I didn't mean to," he said, his gaze jumping from frozen face to frozen face.

  "He wanted to…"

  "I didn't have a choi—"

  But they didn't listen. And he didn't stay to plead his case.

  He fled, fueled by fear—and guilt.

  At first, he considered climbing back up, but the space directly above his current position was bare of any handholds, nothing to grip. He would have to maneuver around it, and that would take time.

  Time during which the horror in the watchers' eyes might harden into anger and wrath.

  So, he kept going down, trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and his soon-to-be pursuers.

  But… they never came.

  Rob kept expecting to hear someone shout, "Murderer!" at any moment. He braced himself for the one—or maybe several—who would surely try to stop him, determined to deliver justice by tearing it from his body along with his soul.

  And yet, the opposite happened. He left in complete silence, not interrupted nor questioned at all. He even imagined relief written on the faces of a few of the people there.

  However, he didn't trust his cursed mind, and he descended as quickly as he could. Just because they didn't follow didn't mean they had forgiven him. It only meant they were sending their version of the police after him—and soon, they'd be on his heels.

  And before long, his fears came true.

  He heard them first, so subtle like a cat stalking a mouse. So quiet that he didn't even notice them until they were barely the length of a small bus away.

  He turned, startled… and confused. Why had they sent a little girl after him?

  Had they spread out to surround him more easily? Or… did they simply believe one girl was enough?

  He didn't know—and didn't want to find out.

  He pushed himself harder, forcing his muscles to their limits. He didn't want to die, and he doubted he'd get a trial if he surrendered to those barbaric otherworlders.

  "DENY THE RED?"

  The pursuing girl shouted after him, the words sounding like a question and statement at the same time.

  He ignored her. Either he'd misheard, or she was spouting nonsense just to slow him down.

  But she didn't relent. No matter how fast Rob moved, no matter how hard he pushed himself, he couldn't shake her. She kept pace with him effortlessly, as if she walked on land while he was crawling on the ground.

  "I deny the red."

  "I deny the red." She said it again, shouting louder for him to hear, as though the issue was the delivery of her statement, not the nonexistent meaning in what she was spouting.

  What was even more infuriating, he was almost certain that she could catch him anytime she wanted, but for some unknowable reason, she didn't. Instead, she just kept her distance, shouting this annoying phrase over and over.

  "Do you deny the red?"

  At last, Rob reached the end of his patience. He stopped moving and screamed up at her, voice ragged with frustration.

  "I fucking deny the red, the orange, and the blue! Just say what you want or leave me the hell alone!"

  That apparently satisfied her, at least enough for her to leap down a few times with feline grace, reaching so close that Rob could feel the warmth radiating from her body.

  She was a petite girl in light clothing that had clearly seen better days—stained with dirt and torn in many places. Rob saw no reason for wearing such clothes, but he didn't judge. As for the girl herself, she had a slender body with a face that might have been beautiful, if not for the grimy mask-like skin she had.

  He panicked, bracing himself for the knife he was sure would be driven into his chest. Surely, that was why she had come. Maybe she was the daughter of the man he'd just killed.

  "Stop. Wanna talk," she said, her voice firm but calm as her hazel eyes studied him with unsettling focus.

  He didn't stop. He kept moving, still believing escape was an option.

  "I didn't want to," he muttered. "If he hadn't tried to choke me, I wouldn't have—"

  He trailed off, a lump rising in his throat.

  "What? Oh. You mean that shameless bag of bones?" she said, rolling her eyes. "Who cares about him? You know, I might've taken him out myself. He was a pain to be around anyway."

  That made Rob freeze mid-step, one hand half-raised, mind stuttering.

  "What do you mean 'Who cares about him'? That was a human being, and I killed him," Rob finally snapped. "What mad world do you live in where you just go around murdering people because you don't like them?"

  "So what?" the girl replied, her tone genuinely confused. That, or she was the most skillful of actors.

  He wanted to argue, to call out how insane she sounded, but he held himself back. Maybe that was her plan, keeping him talking while the others closed in.

  "What do you want?" he asked instead, inching to continue his descent. He was done with this madness.

  "Why are you going down?" she countered, her question too casual to be that simple.

  "I don't think you've been following me all this time just to ask me that," he spat, not interested in chitchatting with someone who might lunge at his throat any second.

  The girl studied him for a moment, then smiled. Not a warm, friendly smile, but the kind of smile that came with wicked fangs and hungry teeth.

  "That confirms it," she said with glee. "You're a Prime."