Rob had an idea. A crazy one that he wasn’t sure was possible, but he’d try it anyway.

  In a recently acquired shelter, he lay against the tunnel’s side. Removing the bloody, dirty rags he used as bandages, and looked at the wound.

  He didn’t like what he saw.

  The wound looked like a decaying part of a corpse more than an injury on a living body. He bit his lip. The mere gentle touch of air felt like burning fire on his open skin. He needed to act fast.

  Not just because the wound was very bad and getting worse, but also because the damn threadeyes seemed intent on killing him. Rob’s choice to enter these underground tunnels was a curse and a blessing at the same time. They did provide him opportunities to better and longer hide from the threadeyes, since it was a great interconnected, multi-layered network of underground channels and tunnels. On the other hand, Rob had walked into the maw of the beast with his own legs.

  It turned out he hadn’t encountered these advanced forms of moving corpses because they were all here, taking the underground as their living place.

  And they were way smarter than the crawling corpses. Not long after he entered their lair, they closed all the exits leading above ground. Rob would know; he had checked every last one of them, finding no less than twenty of those horrid things lying around.

  They didn’t stop there. After ensuring their prey wasn’t going anywhere soon, they sent parties of three to five hunting him down. And just like that, the chasing game resumed underground—this time with many more chasers and many more places for him to hide.

  And Rob faced the same problem again. He couldn’t just flee. There would come a time when his body would fail him. So he had to fight back before that happened.

  And to fight, he had to be healed.

  Opening the energy screen, Rob selected an energy card of 2 points and consumed it. Soon, an addicting, reinvigorating sensation coursed through every fiber of his being.

  He let out a small sigh of pleasure. This amazing sensation of energy running across his body like a warm current of water never grew old. It never failed to bring him bliss and contentment—no matter how many times he experienced it, no matter how many cards he consumed. It was always the same.

  It relaxed his body, emptied his mind of all thoughts, and freed his heart of all worries.

  He just tried to elongate it and savor the otherworldly experience.

  Except when he was running for his life, of course.

  But this time was different. He couldn’t let the energy do its magic and wait. With no small amount of reluctance, Rob didn’t relax his body this time. And his mind, which usually would be dormant and tranquil, turned sharply focused. He wanted to capture and examine every part and change in his body.

  This time, he didn’t want to just relish the refreshing feeling of energy. Instead, he had to strive to sense the energy itself working inside his body—to know from where it entered and what ways it took to move inside him.

  And hopefully, as a result, he could manage to control it. Not much—just enough to direct more of it to one part of his body. He should be able to; Rob knew it. The system had supposedly given him some kind of technique to do just that.

  In theory, the energy should follow his will once it entered his body. This was what he understood about his technique, Will of Greed. Energy in his body should do as he desired.

  And it did.

  Just not as consciously as Rob needed. The energy literally only followed his desire. Rob didn’t command it. There was no purposeful control, just pure, burning desire.

  Rob, unfortunately, had noticed that too late. It had taken him arriving at the verge of dying a few times to finally get it. Only when his desire for life was strong would the energy actively heal his body. On the other hand, if depression claimed his mind—if his yearning for survival ever waned—he risked truly dying not long after. The energy would stop healing him, giving his semi-lethal injury and the fatal exhaustion the chance to catch up to him.

  He breathed deeply, focusing inward. He consumed another 3 energy points and tried to guide the resulting rush of energy toward the open wound in his stomach.

  He wanted nothing more than for his injury to heal. That was what he told himself. He repeated the thought in his mind again and again, wishing that the energy would listen.

  Then the snakes of energy tingled across his skin and bone, an undeniable portion heading to his wound.

  He felt it clearly, yet he wasn’t happy. This was not the first time he had managed to do that. He needed much, much more of the energy to gather in the injured area to actually make a difference.

  “Hey there, little bird, could you help with something, please?”

  Rob addressed the bird, hoping it could somehow help.

  He expected to plead plenty. He was prepared to speak a lot to get the bird’s attention. And more likely than not, the bird wouldn’t respond.

  But how happy he was to be mistaken. The bird almost immediately showed its present attention by sending a wave of encouraging emotions.

  “Really, you would help?” Rob said, pleasantly surprised. “This is actually great. Well, listen… don’t you kind of control that magnetic force that makes me jump around, right? I wondered if you, I dunno, maybe teach me to control the energy in my body. Or maybe you could just do it. I want to gather lots of energy around the wound, so it can help me heal it or something.”

  The more Rob talked, the more embarrassed he felt. In the end, he visibly cringed, knowing that more likely than not, he was blabbering nonsense.

  The bird, however, didn’t mock him. It didn’t help, either. Instead, it did something that made his blood run cold.

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  It sent an image to his head.

  Rob hung his jaw, astounded that the silent bird could communicate with something other than emotions.

  Then, he was angered. The bird had sent him the image of his family. The same one he had just visited around the dinner table.

  “How did you—?”

  Rob hissed, feeling like something precious had been stolen from him.

  The bird only replied with the emotional equivalent of a shrug.

  Rob fumed with wrath. He wanted to scold the bird. To reprimand it. To teach it that privacy should be respected. But he couldn’t. He had to bottle it all in. He needed it to heal himself, and he had asked for help.

  “If I just wasn’t—” Rob began to say, then his eyes widened in realization.

  The bird was one devious little rascal. It neither gave him a direct control method nor simply did as he asked. What it did instead was point out an obvious method to strengthen his desire.

  “How cruel,” Rob laughed bitterly. “But how fitting.”

  Desire and fire were alike. Neither could burn brightly without fuel. And just like wood feeds fire to grow, Rob had to feed his desire something to explode.

  And the bird had handed him that fuel on a silver platter. It was his negative emotion. Anger, sadness, powerlessness, and longing—these emotions and more filled Rob’s heart whenever he thought of his family. And if he could just link these feelings to his desire to heal himself, his energy would do wonders.

  So Rob did just that. He dove into Frozen Light. He relived every happy moment and joyful occasion. Heavy feelings mounted in his chest and cheerful memories played before his eyes.

  Until he could no longer take it. Until he was about to truly and utterly break. Only then did Rob stop. He canceled Frozen Light and consumed a 6-point energy card.

  Then he let go. Rob cried, tears silently escaping his eyes. He didn’t intend to, but it was too much. The sadness, the powerlessness weighed too heavily on his shoulders. It threatened to bend him, to shatter the last of his sanity. In that exact moment, Rob teetered on the edge of the abyss of despair.

  Rob didn’t fall through. He chose not to. Instead, he turned all the despair into determination. He used the negative and crushing emotion to build his resolve. He burned it all to fuel his desire.

  He would be back—they would just have to wait for him. Then, he would tell them all about his amazing adventures and the otherworldly things he saw and experienced. And in order to do that, he had to live. He must live and get out of this hell. He must explore and have adventures. Must see as much of the mythical and magical as possible to brag about when he returned home.

  His desire stronger than ever, Rob didn’t waste the chance and directed it to heal himself. It wasn’t hard, not at all. Rob didn’t have to lie to himself or persuade his mind that much. He understood the fact that not healing his wounds meant no chance of pursuing his desire—and that made the healing itself an inseparable part of that desire.

  Hence, the energy obeyed.

  With no resistance, all of it rushed toward the festering wound. Vacuum-sucked into that area, Rob could feel the energy draining from every inch of his body. Not just the recently consumed card, but also all the remaining energy in his body raced toward his injury.

  If Rob had eggs right now, he could probably fit five in his wide-open mouth.

  “It worked!”

  Rob had subconsciously doubted himself. That didn’t mean that his desire was any weaker because of it, but it meant he questioned whether his desire and will could truly affect the untamed energy in his body.

  As it turned out, it could—and it did. Not long after, Rob examined with morbid curiosity the unexpected change in his stomach.

  Strangely enough, disappointment was the first emotion to claim Rob’s face upon clearly seeing the healed wound. Well, maybe healed wasn’t the appropriate word to use in this case.

  Because the scene Rob deeply wished for never came. When he had that daring idea of utilizing energy to treat his wound, Rob imagined himself putting a magically glowing hand over his injury, his flesh closing and mending under his fingers.

  “Alas,” Rob said, poking with a careful finger the bluish-led new skin covering the wound area.

  Although Rob didn’t manage to fully treat the wound, what he did was no less effective. The energy gathered in huge quantity around the injured place, cleansed the wound, got rid of a growing infection, and created a bluish-white seal to cover the wound.

  So in the end, the wound was still there. The difference was, it was now clean, didn’t hurt like hell, and no more blood was coming out anytime soon.

  Rob sighed, trying to look at the half-filled cup of water. “At least now I can go kill a few of those thread-eyed bastards.”

  This brought a genuine smile to his lips. But soon, the smile stiffened on his face. Rob stared, bewildered, at the quickly decreasing numbers on the energy bar.

  “What’s going on?” Rob questioned, his puzzlement turning into annoyance. “Stop, stop, stop.”

  Rob was crazily losing energy. If it continued like this, his energy reserves wouldn’t last an hour—maybe less. And Rob wouldn’t be a moron if he didn’t figure out the reason by now.

  The energy seal cost a lot, it seemed.

  “Perhaps I’ll kill more than a few of those bastards after all.”

  Rob had to acquire more energy cards very soon. If he didn’t, the few hundred EP he had accumulated wouldn’t last more than two days.

  “I bet those thread ghouls would drop way more EP than their mindless brethren.”

  Back then, Rob didn’t get to extract any energy card from the one he beheaded. He didn’t even think to check for any. The only thing on his mind was: run, run, and run. Plus, he didn’t crush the vile beetle inside the head, so he probably didn’t even fully kill the creature.

  He would be sure not to repeat the same mistake. He would pulverize the foul creatures and he would enjoy doing it.

  Rob didn’t have to look far before he encountered the patrolling threadeyes. They were probably searching for him. And if he had delayed a bit, they would have arrived at his hiding place.

  He magnet-sensed them first. There were three of them—a number Rob estimated to be very manageable for his current healed condition.

  Holding his breath, Rob waited for them to cross the next tunnel. A few more steps and they would place themselves directly under his unforgiving claws.

  And a moment later, they did just that. The first of the three crossed the tunnel and Rob kept silent. Then the next two followed, only a small half-step between the two humanized monsters.

  Rob canceled his magnet pulling and dropped from the ceiling, talons extended before his chest.

  His plan was cool and simple: fall with his legs coiling around the neck of the last to cross, kill it quickly, pull himself upward again, and land behind another threadeye to make quick work of it too. And just like that, he would finish two in no time. The last one would be an easy prey.

  Or it would have been… if his plan had actually gone through.

  Rob misjudged his landing. The threadeye just raised its head only to welcome Rob—ass first—colliding with its face. As a result, they both went tumbling to the ground in a mess of murderous limbs.

  “Curse it!”

  Rob wrestled the dead corpse with all his might. He didn’t want to get stabbed again. And at the same time, he wanted to stab the monster first. So he had to make sure the sharp weapon in its cursed hands didn’t get near his body. And he had to make sure to kill it before the rest came to help kill him.

  After what felt like forever, Rob ended up on top, shredding the creature’s head—along with the large beetle inside it—to minced meat. He didn’t do it fast enough, though. Sensing the two looming entities directly above, he quickly rolled to the side.

  Rob watched with terror as the knife sank into the floor where he had just been a moment ago. The attacker barely missed him by mere inches.

  The second attacker didn’t miss, though. Its knife landed with a thud in the corpse Rob pulled above his body as cover. Rob, of course, didn’t expect only one to attack while the other watched. Therefore, he covered himself with the disgusting corpse for the few moments he was defenseless on the ground.

  After that, Rob didn’t give the two bastards more time to stab him. He pushed with all his physical might and magnet power the dead body above him, sending one of his assailants hurling to the far wall with it. Then, fast like an arrow, he leaped toward the remaining one. In a storm of talons and kicks, he ended it in no time, cutting its neck and crushing its skull.

  Looking to the last one, Rob was dumbfounded. The abomination rose from the ground, somehow gazed at him with its eerily empty threaded eyes, witnessed him in the final act of killing its companion…

  …and then it turned its back and ran away.