I opened my eyes.
The first thing I felt was the cold spreading across my skin as rain struck my cheek, slid along my jawline, and soaked into the collar of unfamiliar fabric resting against my neck.
My vision adjusted slowly while darkness above me settled into focus, revealing a sky I did not recognize stretching endlessly overhead.
The rain around me did not fall in a natural pattern, since every drop descended at the same moment and struck the ground together before pausing briefly and repeating again with the same rhythm, producing a heavy and uniform sound.
Even the scent in the air felt strange, since all the islands under ANHS were properly sanitized, yet the air here carried the smell of damp soil and stale wind without any trace of the controlled environments I was used to.
I looked around carefully, searching for any sign of modern life while scanning the surroundings for walls, wires, lights, or even a simple metal pole.
There was nothing.
I shifted slightly while my fingers curled into the soil beneath me, pressing down to confirm the texture of the ground.
The earth felt solid and real beneath my hand.
However, the place surrounding me felt completely unfamiliar.
Wherever I was now, it had nothing to do with the world where I had fallen asleep.
The last thing I remembered was sitting quietly in my room while an unusual wave of fatigue spread through my body.
That level of exhaustion had never occurred before, especially when I had not eaten anything unusual and my vitals had remained stable throughout the day.
Despite that, the pull toward unconsciousness had grown steadily stronger until no amount of resistance had been able to stop it.
And now I was here.
I exhaled slowly before pushing myself upright, immediately noticing that my body reacted with a slight delay as my hands moved slower than expected while the pressure from my elbows reached the ground half a second later than it should have.
The imbalance continued through the rest of my body while I raised a hand to my face and checked my arms and shoulders, confirming that it was still my body and my face even though the muscle mass and overall strength had clearly been reduced.
When I glanced downward, the change in clothing became immediately obvious.
The white T-shirt I had planned to sleep in was gone, replaced by a fitted black tunic clinging tightly to my chest while rain darkened the fabric further.
The trousers were different as well, hanging loosely around my legs before disappearing into worn boots whose stitching appeared crude and uneven, suggesting that they had been sewn by hand rather than produced through modern manufacturing.
I flexed my fingers slowly while watching the movement of my hand, noticing that the reduced strength and slight delay remained consistent across every motion.
My reach felt slightly shorter and my balance required small adjustments to stabilize, which confirmed that the changes were not temporary sensations caused by confusion or fatigue.
Dreams rarely reproduced physical limitations with that level of consistency, especially when those limitations affected strength, coordination, and reaction timing at the same time.
Which meant this situation had been arranged deliberately.
...
That voice didn't echo around me. It didn't come from anywhere I could point to.
It simply appeared in my head, as if someone had spoken straight into my thoughts without needing to pass through sound.
I tried to remember exactly what it had said.
[Aspirant. Welcome to the Nightmare ?????. Prepare for your First Trial…]
And right when I reached that part... there was a missing word—something inside my head twisted.
I winced, grabbing at the side of my skull. The pain was sudden, as though it had been waiting for me to try.
But it wasn't like any normal headache or strain. It didn't come from muscle tension or nerves.
It felt as if the memory itself had been booby-trapped. The second I got close to it, the trap triggered.
What struck me more than the pain was how clearly the rest of the message remained in my mind.
Nothing about it had faded. I could recall it perfectly, every word up to the point where the final one should have been. That single piece had been removed so completely that the absence itself felt unnatural.
I tried again, slower this time, forcing the memory forward with care.
[Aspirant. Welcome to the Nightmare ?????—]
The moment I reached the missing word, something inside my skull tightened.
My throat seized before I could finish the thought. A strained sound slipped out against my will, rough and distorted, the result of air forcing its way past clenched muscles.
My hands rose to my temples.
The pain returned immediately, deeper than before. It did not spread outward or pulse at the surface. It pressed inward, grinding against the center of my mind with deliberate pressure.
Then it stopped.
Not gradually. One moment the pressure was there, digging into my thoughts, and the next it vanished completely. No lingering ache. No echo of discomfort.
Just absence.
I inhaled slowly and held the breath for a moment before letting it out again.
Whatever followed the word "Nightmare" had not merely slipped from memory. It had been sealed away.
Each attempt to reach it triggered a response from something buried in my mind. The resistance was too precise to be natural.
Which meant someone had done something to me.
I lowered my hands and studied them.
They looked familiar enough. The proportions were correct, the shape of the fingers nearly identical to what I expected. Yet the moment I flexed them, the difference became obvious.
There was a delay.
It was small, barely noticeable at first, but once detected it became impossible to ignore. The command formed instantly in my mind, yet my fingers followed a fraction of a second later.
I shifted my stance and felt it again.
My balance was wrong. The center of gravity sat slightly out of place, forcing subtle adjustments whenever I moved. When I leaned onto my left leg, the joint resisted with faint stiffness, enough to make me compensate without thinking.
This body resembled the one I had trained for years.
But it did not behave the same way.
Someone had altered both my mind and my body with deliberate precision. The differences were small, but they affected every movement.
I exhaled slowly and allowed my shoulders to loosen.
Fine.
If this was the body I had been given, then I would learn how to use it.
The rain continued falling with unwavering consistency.
It neither strengthened nor weakened. Every drop struck the ground with the same measured rhythm, producing a steady pattern that never changed.
After a few seconds of listening, the uniformity became unsettling.
Weather did not behave this way.
When I lowered my gaze to the ground, something else caught my attention.
There were no puddles.
The rain struck the soil and vanished instantly, absorbed before it could gather or spread. No water collected between the uneven ridges of dirt. No thin streams formed along the slopes.
The ground simply consumed it.
I looked toward the horizon.
The landscape stretched outward in uneven waves of blackened terrain. The hills were scarred and cracked, some appearing scorched from within. Strange formations covered the earth, spirals and ridges pressed deep into the surface.
Fragments resembling bone protruded from certain places. Others resembled ash hardened into permanent shapes.
This was not the aftermath of slow decay.
Something had passed through here and erased life completely.
The silence that followed carried an odd weight.
The air itself felt attentive.
I turned slowly, studying the distant terrain.
The wind brushed past my clothes but stirred nothing else. There were no trees to bend beneath it, no leaves to rustle. Even the sparse patches of grass remained almost perfectly still.
Yet the sensation of being watched continued to grow.
I could not determine where it came from. Whatever observed me was not close, but the presence lingered at the edge of perception.
My hand moved toward my belt out of habit, hoping whoever had placed me here possessed enough mercy to provide a weapon.
My fingers met empty air.
I remained still for a while, reviewing everything I had observed.
The rain that fell with mechanical precision. The pain triggered by the missing word. The delayed reactions of this unfamiliar body. The stillness of the environment.
None of it existed by coincidence.
This place had not been created to imitate reality.
It had been constructed with purpose.
Not to deceive me, but to test me.
Whoever had arranged this environment did not want me dead, at least not immediately. They wanted me to act. To react. To make decisions within a structure they controlled.
Which meant the test had already begun.
There was no map. No instructions. No clear starting point.
But I had been brought here deliberately.
And that meant the expectation was simple.
Move.
I stepped forward.
Grchh.
The ground squelched beneath my foot with a wet resistance that felt wrong the moment it happened. The sound lingered a fraction longer than it should have.
My body froze.
For a moment nothing changed.
Then the ground shifted.
The rain continued falling with the same steady rhythm, but beneath that pattern something else began to move. A dense stirring rose from below the surface, building pressure under the soil.
The earth ruptured.
A violent eruption of black mud and shattered roots burst upward, spraying across my legs and arms. From the center of that blast, something surged into the air with explosive force before crashing back to the ground.
The impact sent mud splashing in every direction.
My vision focused immediately.
The creature stood between me and the distant hills, its limbs spread wide, claws buried deep in the soaked earth. Its posture remained hunched, but the tension in its body suggested immediate readiness.
It stood well over two meters tall.
The structure resembled a human form only loosely. Its limbs were stretched beyond natural proportions, sinew drawn tightly across exposed bone. Small tremors ran through its muscles, responding to vibrations I could not detect.
But the most disturbing detail was its head.
There was no face.
No eyes, no nose, no mouth.
A single vertical slit ran from brow to chin, pulsing slowly beneath thin flesh.
The membrane at its center trembled before parting open with a faint clicking sound. Something inside shifted in response to the rhythm of the rain.
It was not searching.
It was listening.
I did not move.
My breathing slowed instinctively, each inhale controlled so it would not disturb the air. My weight shifted inward, distributing pressure across my feet so the ground would not betray my position.
The creature had not reacted to my presence.
It had reacted to the sound.
Its head tilted slightly, following the echo of my step. The claws on its hands scraped gently through the mud, tracing patterns across the surface as though reading faint tremors left behind.
The rain continued striking the ground with perfect rhythm.
That consistency created danger.
Any disturbance in the pattern would stand out immediately.
To a predator guided entirely by sound, that difference meant everything.
I watched the creature carefully.
Its body remained coiled, ready to lunge at the next sound it could locate.
But it waited.
It needed confirmation.
I stepped backward once, driving my heel into the mud at a shallow angle so the pressure dispersed quietly.
The creature twitched.
It had not heard the step.
It had noticed the missing sound.
Sensitive.
But not omniscient.
That margin was enough.
I lowered myself behind a jagged ridge of black stone, fingers brushing through the mud until they closed around a thin shard of slate. The edge was sharp and the weight sufficient.
I held it, waiting.
The creature shifted again, claws clicking faintly against hidden rock beneath the soil.
Then something small changed.
One of the stones near my position had been collecting identical droplets for some time. Eventually the accumulated weight caused it to tilt.
The movement produced a faint scrape.
The creature reacted instantly.
Its entire body stiffened before it launched forward in a blur of motion. The claws came down with brutal precision, splitting the stone apart and scattering fragments across the ground.
There was no prey.
Only broken rock.
While it struck empty ground, I moved in the opposite direction.
Each step sank into the mud at the exact moment a raindrop struck nearby. The sound of my movement dissolved into the endless pattern created by the falling water.
Without the rain, the situation would have forced direct confrontation.
Judging from the sensitivity of its hearing, it could probably detect my heartbeat in silence.
The creature paused, claws buried deep in the soil. Its head twitched, searching for confirmation that never came.
It relied almost entirely on sound.
That strength also limited its perception.
I tightened my grip on the shard of slate and threw it behind the creature.
The stone struck a shallow puddle.
The splash was subtle, but the shape of the sound differed from rain.
The creature reacted without hesitation.
It spun and lunged toward the disturbance, striking the water with violent force that scattered droplets into the air.
But when its claws met the ground, there was nothing there.
The absence forced it to pause.
This creature possessed intelligence.
And that was precisely why the trick worked.
Its mind tried to resolve the contradiction. The expected target was missing, yet the sound had been clear.
Confusion slowed it.
Hesitation followed.
And hesitation created opportunity.
I closed the distance carefully.
Not with reckless speed, but with movements placed precisely between the beats of rain striking the ground. Each step aligned with the pattern so the sound dissolved before it could be recognized.
By the time I reached the creature, it was still adjusting its position.
I moved behind it and climbed onto its back.
The motion was controlled down to the smallest detail. The surface of its skin felt rigid beneath my hands, hardened enough that my weight barely registered.
My fingers found the seam running down its head.
The flesh there pulsed faintly beneath the surface.
There was only one vulnerable point.
With a sharp motion, I drove the shard directly into the center.
The creature jolted.
No scream escaped it, only a violent tremor that ran through its entire body. A jagged burst of static noise cut through the air.
Its arm snapped backward, claws searching blindly for me.
I hooked my leg around its waist and pressed closer against its back, placing myself beyond the easy reach of its hands.
The claws dragged along my side, searching for position.
One stopped near my head.
I did not panic.
I waited.
If it intended to drive those spikes through my skull, then the one element I still controlled was gravity.
The decision formed instantly.
I shifted my weight backward.
Both of us fell.
The impact slammed through my spine, forcing air from my lungs, but the creature's body crushed down onto the shard embedded in its head.
My hand twisted the stone deeper.
The reaction was immediate.
Its body convulsed violently, limbs thrashing as mud sprayed outward. One claw sliced past my throat without strength behind it.
Then warmth spread across my hand.
Blood.
The creature's movements weakened quickly.
Within seconds, they stopped entirely.
I remained still for a moment, listening carefully for any change in the environment.
Nothing moved.
My breathing steadied.
The kill had been clean.
Still, the delay in my body's reaction had nearly turned it into a mistake.
A quiet sigh escaped me, edged more with irritation than relief.
This body would require adjustment.
Every action demanded calculation, once in intention and once in execution.
The corpse slid off my side and collapsed into the mud.
Silence returned.
The rain continued falling with perfect rhythm.
But I already knew.
That creature had only been the beginning.
Soon afterward, the rain stopped.
It ended abruptly, the pattern cutting off in the middle of its endless rhythm. The final droplets struck the ground, and then the world fell silent again.
Above me, the clouds began to separate in a slow spiral.
A pale light filtered through the opening sky. If it was a sun, it lacked warmth and color, casting a dull illumination across the ruined landscape.
Still, the change marked the end of the encounter.
My gaze drifted down toward the corpse lying in the mud.
I had survived the first confrontation.
But the trial was far from over.
My thoughts returned to the voice I had heard before arriving here.
I had been in my room, half asleep but still conscious. The drowsiness had pressed against my mind until the knock at the door broke the silence.
After that, everything collapsed.
Darkness followed.
Then the voice.
I repeated the message carefully, avoiding the censored portion.
""Aspirant. Welcome to the Nightmare. Prepare for your First Trial.""
Saying it again changed nothing.
The missing word remained sealed.
Still, the meaning was clear enough.
Nightmare.
If this place truly was one, then by definition I was still asleep.
Time outside this space no longer mattered. My real body might be unconscious for seconds or hours.
The rules here operated independently.
And the phrase that followed carried another implication.
First Trial.
Which meant more would follow.
The question was not whether I would face them.
Only how quickly I could adapt.
And how far this world intended to push.
[You have slain a dormant beast, Remorse eater's Vowalker.]
My eyes narrowed.
A message had appeared.
There was nothing visible in front of me. No voice echoed in the air.
Yet the information existed in my awareness with absolute clarity.
So the creature had only been dormant.
I exhaled slowly and rolled my shoulders, letting the tension leave my muscles. The delayed reactions remained, but my body had begun adapting to the unfamiliar timing.
While stretching through a few controlled motions, the name surfaced again in my thoughts.
Remorse eater.
An unusual title.
It sounded theatrical.
Which suggested something more important.
Remorse Eater.
Most likely the boss.
The structure resembled a game after all. Messages, classifications, enemies.
If remorse was meant to matter here, then whoever designed this place had misjudged their opponent.
I had none.
No guilt waiting beneath the surface. No regrets left unresolved.
I had accepted every decision necessary to survive long ago.
If this world intended to break people through psychological weakness, it would require more than a name and a monster.
Still, the title served as a warning.
And if the first creature had been dormant, the next would not be.
If this truly operated like a game system, then there should be a way to access it.
The thought slipped out of my mouth before I considered it.
"System."
Nothing happened.
"Ability tab."
Silence.
"Information."
Still nothing.
I waited a few seconds in case the response required time.
The world remained quiet.
A faint sigh left my lips.
Either there was no visible interface, or I simply had not discovered how to access it.
Yet the voice had come from somewhere.
Which meant a system existed in some form.
I continued experimenting.
"Magic."
"Tab."
Every word that came to mind received the same result.
Nothing.
Eventually I stopped trying.
Which meant one thing.
For now, I was navigating this place blind.
And if someone else possessed knowledge that I lacked, then that difference would become a disadvantage.
One I would have to correct as quickly as possible.