For the next nine days, nothing happened.
Literally nothing.
I had no visitors, no monsters, no mysterious adventurers stumbling into my yard. Not even a gust of wind interesting enough to comment on!
Oh god! I was so bored I thought I might actually die again, from sheer existential emptiness! So, naturally, I tried to keep myself busy.
First, I played drum beats using the sound of my windows opening and slamming shut.
I even got a rhythm going. Fast on the left side, slow on the right, then a double-beat combo with the shutters. For a moment, I almost convinced myself I was composing a sick beat!
Unfortunately, I got a little too into it.
Slammed one window too hard, and crack!—the hinge snapped clean off! The poor thing tumbled down into the weeds.
"Uh oh... that doesn't look good!"
So I stopped after that, and switched to playing with my torches.
I turned the torches on. I turned them off. One by one. All at once. In complex patterns. In absolute chaos.
Why? For absolutely no fucking reason!
Look, I just needed something to keep myself sane, alright? It was terminally resinless behavior, okay?! I was losing my fucking mind!
I even tried to write a novel inside my head, cooking up all sorts of weird plots and S-tier catgirl waifus. Somehow, by chapter 325, the plot disintegrated, and I ended up making everyone pregnant…
But... ah... there was no one to read that masterpiece, so it was all just pointless brain rot.
Eventually, I resorted to the ultimate desperation move: counting the grass in my overgrown courtyard!
12,423 blades.
Yes. I counted. Every. Single. One!
Fantasy Grass Order: Unlimited Blade of Grass Works!
I even started assigning them names. "Sir Lawncelot" was my favorite. He stood just a little taller than the others, swaying like he knew he was the main character. Next to him were "Sigreen," "Cu Chulawn," and "Grasstolfo."
The vines were hopeless though. I couldn't count them. There were too many twists, too many overlapping strands. It was like trying to count a bowl of spaghetti without a fork.
Still, even the most ridiculous tasks helped pass the time. And that's when I noticed something strange.
There were no animals here.
Not a squirrel. Not a bird. Not a single buzzing insect.
Was it because nothing lived here to begin with? Or were the local wildlife avoiding me? Could they sense that I wasn't just a pile of rocks?
Or maybe... I was cursed?
Honestly, at that point, I would've welcomed a plague rat just to have someone to talk to.
Anyway, the counting and torch-flickering helped me to kill some time. The rest of the time, I... slept?
Well, sort of.
I wasn't sure what "sleeping" meant for a building. I didn't have eyelids to close or a heartbeat to slow down. But sometimes, I'd slip into this blank, quiet state, still aware of everything, but too lazy to process the data. It was like putting my hard drive on standby.
It helped me pass the time without thinking too hard about how much my new life sucked.
Yeah... imagine spending the next thousand years like this. No one to talk to. No games to play. Just stone and silence. Isn't that a fate worse than death?
Aaaah!
NOT LIKE THISSS!!!
…
Well…
Since that thought was terrifying enough to crack my foundation, I decided to repress it and stay positive. But, well... the dread crept back in from time to time. Every time it did, I felt a phantom scream building up in a throat I didn't have.
Still, staring at the sun helped.
Haha... perk of being a castle: I could stare at the sun all day without burning my retinas. Mostly because I didn't have retinas. That blob of burning, bright plasma was actually more beautiful than I'd ever realized.
The same was true of the moon. In this world, the night sky was crisp and majestic, free from smog and light pollution. The stars were like diamond dust scattered across black velvet.
Anyway, that was it.
Thanks to the beauty of nature, I managed not to go completely insane for nearly ten days.
*****
But then, on the tenth day, something changed.
Something interesting.
Ahaha!
Finally!
It rained!
And not just a little drizzle, it was a full-on, apocalyptic storm!
I had been lying there, counting stars one by one. Then suddenly—bam!—a sea of black clouds rolled in to crash the party!
It happened fast. One moment, it was a calm, breezy night. The next, totally chaos!
Thick clouds swallowed the stars. Thunder rumbled across the hills like war drums. Lightning slashed the sky in wild, jagged scars. The wind roared through the trees, and sheets of rain came crashing down on my roof like the gods were stress-testing my structural integrity.
I didn't get cold, of course. I was a castle, so even if it fell to -100 degrees I could still survive!
And needless to say, man, I loved storms!
Because now, there was something oddly fun, almost therapeutic, about it. For once, the world felt alive. After nine straight days of static silence, I was ready for a little violence.
Still, to protect my property, I shut my windows tight to keep the water out and just watched the show.
But then—
BOOM!
Lightning struck.
Direct hit!
A blinding flash. A deafening crack. Suddenly, a chunk of my roof detonated, sending slate and stone debris flying across the courtyard.
And it hurt like hell.
I screamed. Like, genuinely screamed! Which made no sense?! I was a building! I didn't have nerves!
But somehow, I felt it. And it wasn't just a little static shock. It felt like getting tased by Zeus himself! My entire frame buzzed and shuddered with residual energy.
Still, look on the bright side: I was built to last. One lightning strike wasn't going to condemn me.
Smoke rose from the impact site, rain sizzling against the scorched stone. I could still feel the lingering sting, but my walls were standing.
And then, unexpectedly—
<+10 Points Earned!>
Well, would you look at that?
Hell yeah. I finally got something!