Chapter 1: Almost Got Casrated?!
The last thing I remember was the heat.
It was a searing, white-hot flash that tore through my chest, followed by the metallic, copper taste of my own blood spray. I was on the ground.
The desert sand gritted between my teeth while the sound of my platoon's gunfire faded into a dull, distant hum. I was a Commander. I was a soldier.
I was supposed to be the one bringing my boys home, not the one bleeding out in a ditch while the sun scorched my eyes shut.
'I am dead,' I thought. 'I definitely died. No one survives a 7.62 round to the lungs at point-blank range.'
So why did it feel like someone was dragging a serrated blade across the inside of my skull?
My eyes snapped open, but the world was a blurred mess of flickering orange light and suffocating gray shadows.
I tried to gasp for air, expecting the wet, rattling sound of a collapsed lung, but my chest felt... fine. It was thin, weak, and shallow, but there was no hole in it.
"Where... where am I?"
I croaked the words. My voice sounded wrong. It was too high, too young, and it cracked with a dry, desperate thirst.
I tried to move my hand to my chest to feel for the wound, but my arm wouldn't budge. I jerked, a bolt of panic finally piercing through the fog, only to feel the biting sting of coarse hemp rope digging into my wrists.
I was flat on my back on a surface so cold it felt like it was sucking the soul right out of my spine. I looked down as much as I could. My limbs were splayed out and lashed to the corners of a heavy, blood-stained metal table.
"I thought I died," I whispered to the ceiling, my mind racing.
"I swear to God, I was shot. I felt the impact. I felt the heat."
"Oh, you are awake? The medicine wore off sooner than I expected."
The voice was oily and thin, like a snake sliding over gravel.
I turned my head to the left. A man was standing there, silhouetted by the glow of a few dozen tallow candles.
He wore heavy, midnight-blue robes embroidered with silver thread that seemed to shimmer like moonlight. He was hunched over.
His face was a map of deep wrinkles and liver spots, and he was currently sharpening a long, curved piece of steel.
"Youth really is a marvelous thing, is it not?" he continued, not looking up from his work.
"Most would have been out for another three hours. Well, it matters little. You will not be needing that medicine anymore anyway."
"Where am I?" I demanded, trying to put the authority of a Commander into a voice that sounded like a frightened teenager.
The man finally looked up. His eyes were milky with cataracts but wide with a terrifying, manic fervor.
"Oh ho ho! You are in the hallowed chambers of the Church of the Eternal Eclipse. You should be honored, child. You were found starving in the gutters, and now, you are to be the vessel for a higher purpose."
The Church of the Eternal Eclipse.
The name hit me like a physical blow. It did not just ring a bell; it set off a deafening alarm in the back of my brain.
I knew that name. I had spent countless nights in the barracks reading a trashy web novel called Hunter Odyssey just to keep my mind off the war.
In that book, the Church of the Eternal Eclipse was a group of fanatical lunatics who kidnapped orphans to turn them into 'Acolytes.' In reality, they were just lobotomized, magically-enhanced suicide soldiers used to cause chaos in the background of the story.
And if I was in Hunter Odyssey, that meant the world was currently being 'saved' by that piece of shit idiot, Neville Hennesy.
Neville was the protagonist: a guy with more power than brains who spent half the book letting villains go because of 'mercy' and 'second chances.'
Those same villains would then go out and slaughter thousands of civilians while Neville moped about the 'burden of heroics.'
I hated that character. He was a naive, self-righteous liability who only survived because the author gave him enough plot armor to stop a tank.
If I am here, then I am a nobody, I realized.
The headache returned, sharper this time. The memories finally started to click into place, a separate life merging with my own.
I was Draven Mordis. No family. No money. No talent. I was a literal extra, a background character destined to be a footnote in a chapter where the 'Hero' finds a pile of bodies and cries about how sad it is for five minutes before moving on.
"Wait," I said, my military training forcing the panic down into a cold, hard knot in my stomach. "The Church... you kidnap people. I remember. What are you going to do to me?"
The Priest stepped closer. The smell of incense and rotting meat followed him like a shroud. He reached out and stroked the side of the table with a hand that felt like dry parchment.
"The mutation process is taxing on the spirit, Draven. To ensure total devotion to the Eclipse, we must remove the distractions of the flesh. We must sever your ties to the base desires of man so that you may be filled with the void."
He picked up a jagged, rusted scalpel and a pair of heavy metal tongs from a tray I hadn't noticed before. He began to walk toward the foot of the table. His eyes were fixed on my groin with a clinical, disturbing intensity.
"What?" My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird.
"No. No, no. You are going to castrate me? You are saying I am losing my dick to a rusted blade in a basement? You will give me an infection before you even finish the job, you senile old freak!"
"Infection is just the flesh resisting the holy light," the Priest replied dismissively, his voice remains calm and maddeningly rhythmic.
"Consider it a sacrifice. Once the flesh is quiet, the soul can hear the stars."
'Think, Draven. Think.'
I was a Commander. I had escaped a POW camp in the middle of a desert. I had led men through hell. I was not going to let some cultist take my manhood and my mind in a damp dungeon.
I pulled at the ropes with everything I had. I tried to use the weight of my body to snap the bindings, but this body was pathetic.
It was malnourished and frail. There was no muscle mass. There was no leverage.
I looked around the room, searching for a tactical advantage. A loose stone? A sharp edge on the table? Nothing. The Priest hummed a low, discordant tune as he positioned himself between my legs.
He reached for the hem of the rags I was wearing. The cold metal of the scalpel brushed against my inner thigh.
"Do not worry, boy," he whispered, leaning in close. "It only hurts until the soul breaks. Then, there is only peace."
No. It is not ending like this. I survived the battlefield, I survived a bullet to the lungs, and I am not dying as an 'extra' on a butcher's block.
I squeezed my eyes shut, focusing every ounce of my will. If this was a novel world, there had to be a way out. I reached into the void of my own mind, screaming for a weapon, a miracle, or even just a distraction.
The Priest's hand tightened on my leg. He raised the rusted blade, the candlelight dancing off the jagged, dull edge.
'Move. Move. Move!'
Suddenly, a sound like a crystal shattering echoed through my mind. It was so loud and sharp that the Priest actually jumped, looking around the room in confusion. But the source was not in the room. It was in my eyes.
A translucent blue screen, glowing with a cold, digital light, flickered into existence inches from my face. It was sharp, clear, and utterly alien to this stone dungeon.
[System Alert: Anomaly Detected]
[Integrating Soul of 'The Commander'...]
[Current Survival Probability: 0.00%]
[Emergency Sign-in Protocol Initiated to prevent Host Death.]
The Priest froze. His hand trembled as he stared at me, or rather, at the light reflecting off my pupils.
"What is this? What is that light coming from your eyes? Is the medicine reacting with your blood?"
I did not answer him. I could not. My entire vision was consumed by the interface as a single, golden button appeared in the center of the screen.
[Sign-in available at: The Altar of the Eternal Eclipse.]
[Would you like to Sign-in?]
'Yes', I screamed in the silence of my own mind. 'Sign me the hell in!'
[Ding! Sign-in Successful!]
[Location: Altar of the Eclipse (Grade: Dark/Rare)]
[Reward: S-Rank Talent: Vector Manipulation (Evolvable)]
[Processing Reward... Initializing Tactical Interface...]
The world did not just change. It sharpened. The fog of the medicine and the panic evaporated instantly. I did not see a room anymore. I saw a map of forces.
I could see the exact Newtons of tension in the hemp ropes. I could see the gravitational pull acting on the Priest's robes.
I could see the kinetic potential of the rusted blade in his hand. More importantly, I could feel the vectors of my own body, invisible arrows of force waiting for my command.
The Priest shook off his fear, his face contorting into a mask of religious rage.
"Witchcraft! You were supposed to be a blank slate! I will cut the devil out of you myself!"
He raised the scalpel high, aiming to end the process with a single, brutal thrust.
I looked at the blade. I looked at the forces holding me down.
For the first time since I woke up in this nightmare, I did not feel like a victim. I felt like a Commander who had just been given the keys to the ultimate artillery strike.
"My turn," I whispered.