Benny was caught off guard by the suddenness of the question. It wasn't like his focus had been on the child. His attention had been drawn to the man, to his struggles and his pain. Why was the child being highlighted in the question? Was this a trick?
"I don't know. I don't know who the child is."
Sitan smiled and almost giggled. He liked toying with humans, and this one was particularly fun. Especially since he was someone without a memory of the past. A blank slate to write suffering upon.
Benny in his younger years had seen far too much. So much that he may have forcefully and mentally blocked such memories from ever resurfacing. And Sitan wanted to stir those memories awake by showing him fragments of the past. Since he couldn't directly access this boy's memories, not without suffering the wrath of the World System again, he went the roundabout way.
But how did he gain such memories when the person was no longer among the living? Simply, it was because he took the deal with the System that the admin had proposed to him. He already paid his due, sacrificing his freedom permanently. So now he would use it to fuck with the boy. A memory that wasn't Benny's own, but was deeply related to him nonetheless.
It was such a roundabout method, but Sitan wanted Benny to suffer. Agonizing pain for being the reason he was sealed back into the tomb. Although Benny didn't realize this, didn't understand his role in what had happened.
Sitan laughed at Benny's confusion. "Hahaha! Wrong answer, human! It is time for you to die."
Even that was an act designed to get a reaction from Benny. But Sitan could see that this only left the mortal confused. Only a little emotion showed on his face. Seriously, what is wrong with this guy? Where was the fear? Where was the desperation?
Benny was unable to do anything in this space. This realm wasn't generated by his own mind but by a medium that Sitan had full control over. He was trapped in the fallen god's domain.
The god's face contorted slowly, transforming from its divine countenance to something demonic. The features shifted and warped, becoming the twisted visage he had almost worn when they first met. Benny knew something was entirely wrong with this being who claimed to be a god.
But he was unable to do anything in this space. He was locked in here, powerless.
Then death came. Not from his own experience, but thrust upon him.
He was quickly transported to a battlefield. Chaos surrounded him. The clash of steel. The screams of dying men. The smell of blood and shit and fear.
He had become a soldier in a war. Confused, he wasn't able to react properly. Only then did he realize that he wasn't entirely the one controlling this body. He was a passenger again, but this time in someone else's nightmare.
Then a stab came.
"What the fucking hell!" he tried to shout, but the voice didn't come out. Only a groan escaped his lips. He looked down and saw the spear buried in his gut. He saw the one who stabbed him clearly.
It was the man whose body he had entered before. The father. The one who had left his family to fight in this war.
And right now, Benny was an opposing soldier. An enemy of that man.
But why was the pain being amplified for him? Why did it feel like his organs were actually being pierced? Simply put, it was because he was a foreign entity inhabiting another body's soul. The pain receptors didn't know how to process him, so everything was magnified tenfold.
He held onto the spear with trembling hands and stabbed the man in return. His body moved on instinct, on the soldier's training and desperation. Before finally, he had fallen. The lights went out. Darkness swallowed him.
Then he was sent to another body near the man.
It had gone on in a loop. Every time, the agonizing pain of being stabbed was amplified. Being clashed against. Having his body parts lopped off. Feeling the cold bite of steel through bone. The wet heat of blood pouring from wounds. The gasping inability to breathe with punctured lungs.
Over and over and over.
He died as a young recruit, barely old enough to grow a beard. He died as a grizzled veteran with scars covering his face. He died as an archer shot through the throat. He died as a cavalry soldier trampled beneath horses. He died as a commander run through from behind by his own desperate men.
Each death brought him closer to the man. Each perspective showed him a different angle of the same horror.
Then finally, he was sent back to the body of the man who had survived. The one who had stabbed Benny's previous host. The father.
He was now a veteran. Something within him had drastically changed. Not just physically, but mentally as well. He wasn't able to mentally heal from the scars and the PTSD of fighting in the war. He began hallucinating, having schizophrenic episodes that came without warning.
He saw the perspectives of those he had killed on the battlefield. Every face. Every scream. Every moment of their deaths played in his mind on an endless loop.
He had earned five gold coins for his kills. Blood money. That was just the bounty for enemy soldiers. He had survived for so long that by the time the war ended, he had become something twisted. Something sadistic. The man who left to protect his family had died somewhere on that battlefield. What came back was something else entirely.
And Benny saw it all from the man's point of view. He felt the madness creeping in like ice water in his veins. He felt the pleasure that began to accompany each kill. The way the man started to smile when he drove his blade home.
Now the man has returned home. And all he saw was his house destroyed. The roof had caved in. The walls were crumbling. His wife and child were no longer there.
He ran to the neighbor's house and screamed, panic already settling into his chest like a stone. His voice was hoarse from disuse and from too much screaming on the battlefield.
His neighbor hesitated and trembled in fear at his sight. Why? Because the man never cleaned the blood stains off himself. He went straight home still wearing the evidence of war. He was still full of bloodlust, and it radiated from him like heat.
"Dong," the neighbor said carefully, taking a step back. "Your wife, she is no longer here. The moment you left, they struggled for a while. Yes, the money you gave her, she used it sparingly at first. Until the day it ran empty. She found odd jobs to work, cleaning houses and mending clothes."
The neighbor swallowed hard, his hands shaking.
"But it seems behind all of that, she did something even I never expected her to do. She gambled that money away. She never used the silver coins you gave her for their living. She used it for her own pleasure. Your boy, he was also sold by her to pay off some debt to the gambling house. Now she's in another town, living with some merchant who took a liking to her. You know the next town over, Kagyan. You'll find her there if you really want to know."
Dong, as he was called by the neighbors, felt his stomach churn. He almost slapped his kindhearted neighbor for telling him such lies. But he held his hands at his sides, clenching them into fists until his nails drew blood from his palms.
It seems he had a need to visit the next town.
Though the story ran much deeper than what was told, it was being shown from the perspective of another. So the truth was partially hidden, filtered through bias and incomplete information. The neighbor didn't know everything. Couldn't know everything.
Then the scene ended once more.
Benny was sent to another dark place, the pain amplifying, the horror building. Something was stirring inside of him. Something buried deep that wanted desperately to stay buried.
Then Sitan appeared once more. This sadistic devil laughed and asked him the same question as before. Something that seemed totally unrelated to what Benny had just experienced.
"Did you enjoy the show, mortal? Hahahaha. Now it is time for you to answer the question. Who is that boy?"
Benny couldn't answer. No, he was still feeling the effects of being stabbed and teleported from one body to another just to be killed again and again. Then coming back to the perspective of the father, which seemed to have amplified whatever trauma he was experiencing before.
The pain. The madness. The loss. It all crashed over him like a wave.
"I... I... do... not... know..."
Benny collapsed in this spirit realm. His consciousness flickered like a dying candle.
His body in the real world was bleeding from the eyes and nose. Dark rivulets running down his face. His brain had overheated from this much information being forced through it. Too much death. Too much pain. Too much memory that wasn't his own but felt like it should be.