"Aghhh..."
Benny groaned as light assaulted his eyes. His body was in pain. Everything ached. Every muscle, every bone, every inch of skin felt like it had been torn apart and poorly reassembled.
He tried to move his fingers. Nothing. He tried his hands. They barely twitched. He tried to move his head to look around, to understand where he was. His neck responded like a broken machine, stiff as rusted metal. The movement was glacial, painful, and ultimately useless.
So he could only stare at the ceiling above him, trying to piece together what had happened.
And more importantly, trying to remember who he was.
That thought struck him like a physical blow. Who was he? Where had he come from? What was he doing here, unable to move, lying in what felt like a pool of something cold and wet?
He felt like he'd forgotten something crucial. Not just details, but fundamental pieces of himself. His identity felt fragmented, like a broken mirror where you could see parts of the reflection but not the whole picture.
What happened to him?
---
What happened was something quite unique, something that occurred nowhere else in the world except within the depths of labyrinths.
The power dwelling inside him, the ability called "The Will of the Weak," was something that existed only in these cursed places. It was a phenomenon tied to the labyrinth itself, to the System that governed reality within its walls.
This power had maintained him during his death. He'd been barely alive at first, clinging to consciousness by a thread. But by them his body had died completely, all biological functions ceasing. But his soul lingered in the, in between space, caught in the liminal void between the abyss, what some called the afterlife, and the mortal world he'd inhabited.
The most unique aspect of this World System power was its ability to revive the person who possessed it. But it only applied when death occurred within a labyrinth itself or some other labyrinth. The rules were absolute and inflexible.
He could theoretically live forever inside a labyrinth. As long as he remained within its walls, death was temporary, an inconvenience rather than an ending. His time was suspended within those walls. But the instant his natural lifespan expired outside the labyrinth, if he ever left its boundaries, he would die permanently. No revival. No second chances.
Benny was still young, though. He still had decades and perhaps centuries of his natural life remaining. So the benefit was effectively endless. He could die a hundred times, a thousand times, and as long as it happened within the labyrinth's territory, he would return.
There was, however, one major drawback to this absurd power.
When the revival activated, a part of his memory was lost forever. Not random details, but significant pieces. Experiences. Relationships. Knowledge. The System took payment for letting him borrow the power of resurrection in the currency of identity.
Each death, each revival, would strip away more of who he was. If he died enough times, he would eventually become a blank slate. A living body with no past, no memories, no sense of self. Just instinct and the vague awareness of existence.
It was a horrifying price. But it was also the only thing keeping him alive.
Hence why he was currently so forgetful. Hence why fundamental questions like "who am I" felt impossible to answer.
---
He'd actually been given a choice. The World System itself had presented him with an option when his soul floated in that void between death and resurrection.
He'd been nothing at that moment. Just a soul floating in the emptiness of space, though whether it was literal space or some realm inside his own dying mind, he couldn't say. The place was neither dark nor light. It simply was. Everything was absent: emotions, feelings, thoughts, physical sensation. There was nothing. He was nothing. Just awareness without context.
Then that thing appeared before him.
It was gigantic, incomprehensibly vast. A screen, holographic and impossible, stretching across the void. He had no eyes in that space, no physical form to perceive with, yet he could see it. He could perceive it. He could make sense of the symbols and words displayed on its surface.
How? He didn't know. It just was.
The screen showed him two choices, presented with clinical simplicity:
[OPTION 1: Remain in the Void]
Accept death. Rest in peace. Freedom from struggle, pain, and existence. No more suffering. No more fear. Just eternal absence.
[OPTION 2: Return to Life]
Revive in the labyrinth. Continue struggling. Fight to survive another day. No guarantee of success. No promise of escape. Just the opportunity to keep trying.
There was no judgment in the presentation. No divine voice urging him one way or another. Just the cold, mechanical offering of choice.
To stay here forever and be done with it. Done with the pain, the fear, the constant struggle to survive in that nightmare place. To finally rest.
Or to return and struggle some more. It didn't matter what he was trying to achieve, what goals or dreams or desperate hopes he'd been clinging to. The System didn't care about motivation. It only offered the choice.
Stay or go. Die or live. Give up or keep fighting.
Benny, in that moment of pure awareness without the weight of memory or emotion, made his decision.
Without hesitation, without second-guessing, he pressed the button for Option 2.
Return. Revive. Live.
The reasons why were lost now, erased by the very resurrection he'd chosen. But the choice had been made. And the System honored that choice.
---
Reality snapped back into focus with brutal force.
His body regenerated, flesh and bone knitting back together according to the blueprint stored in his soul. Wounds closed. Broken bones mended. Dead tissue was replaced with living cells. The process was neither pleasant nor quick, but it was thorough.
He returned to his previous state, the way he'd been before the fatal injury. At least physically.
But his memories of the experience were gone. Erased. The payment was rendered for services provided.
The more he died, the more he revived within a labyrinth, and the more he would lose of himself. Eventually, if he died enough times, he would become that blank slate. A person without a past, living only in an eternal present.
But he'd made his choice. Even if he couldn't remember making it now.
Even if he'd forgotten why living mattered more than resting.
He'd chosen to struggle. Chosen to survive. Chosen to keep going despite the cost.
And now here he was, lying in the darkness of what he'd eventually realize was the rat kingdom's deepest trash pit, unable to move, unable to remember, but alive.
Alive when he should have been dead.
---
Unable to do anything but stare at the ceiling of wherever he was, Benny closed his eyes.
The pain was overwhelming. The confusion was worse. Everything hurt, and he didn't know why. He didn't know where he was, who he was, or what he'd been doing before waking up in this place.
But he knew one thing with absolute certainty.
He was tired. So impossibly tired.
He wanted to rest. Not forever, not the eternal rest the System had offered him. Just regular rest. Sleep. Recovery. A moment of peace before whatever came next.
He wanted to return to the comfortable place he vaguely remembered. Not the void between death and life, but somewhere else. Somewhere safe. Somewhere that felt like... like...
The memory slipped away before he could grasp it. Like trying to hold water in cupped hands.
So he simply closed his eyes and let the exhaustion take him. Not death, just sleep. His body needed time to finish healing. His mind needed time to adjust to the gaps in his memory. His soul needed time to settle back into the flesh it had temporarily abandoned.
He slept, and in sleeping, began the long process of remembering who he used to be.
Or perhaps, given the nature of his resurrection, of discovering who he was now.
The labyrinth had claimed him. Killed him. And then, impossibly, gave him back, birthed in the labyrinth itself.
But nothing in the labyrinth was ever truly free. Every gift came with a price. Every resurrection had a cost.
Benny had paid that cost without knowing it. And he would pay it again, and again, and again, every time death found him within these cursed walls.
The Will of the Weak had activated. The revival was complete.
Now came the hard part: surviving long enough to figure out what surviving was even for.
---
In the cosmic headquarters, Admin Magnus observed the completed revival with satisfaction.
"Well," he said to Manager Arian. "That went better than expected. Full physical restoration. Consciousness recovered. Memory loss within acceptable parameters."
"Should we inform the god now?" Arian asked.
"Yes. Let him know his prospect has successfully revived. Though I'd recommend not mentioning memory loss. He tends to get upset about the drawbacks."
"Noted."
Magnus watched the data streams showing Benny's vital signs, all returning to normal ranges. The unique skill had performed exactly as designed. Death within a labyrinth triggered automatic resurrection at the cost of memory.
It was elegant, in a cruel sort of way. Life for identity. Existence for experience. An endless cycle of death and rebirth that gradually hollowed out everything that made a person who they were.
"Do you think he'll figure it out?" Arian asked quietly. "That each death takes more of him away?"
Magnus shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. But even if he does, what choice does he have? Die permanently, or die repeatedly and lose himself piece by piece?"
"That's not much of a choice."
"No," Magnus agreed. "But it's the only one the SYSTEM offered. And he already chose to take it."
They watched the sleeping form in the dungeon darkness, this human who'd been given an impossible power at an unbearable cost.
The Labyrinth's Reaper was born. Though he didn't know it yet.
And in the depths of the rat kingdom, surrounded by filth and corpses and the evidence of his own death, Benny slept peacefully, dreaming of things he could no longer remember.