The Green Crystal River sparkled brilliantly beneath the first cold rays of the winter sunlight.
The smooth, crystal-like stones lining the wide riverbed reflected a vibrant green light up across the flowing water.
In truth, those stones were not genuine crystals at all.
They were merely the hardened waste remnants produced by the unique crystal fish inhabiting the river’s depths.
A massive, three-deck wooden ship slowly sailed along the winding Green Crystal River, heading deeper into the endless, dangerous wilderness of the Green Crystal Forest.
Beneath the main deck, rows of heavy iron and wooden metal cages filled the dim, suffocating lower hold.
The cages resembled oversized, cramped dog kennels, stacked tightly side by side and even atop one another in columns.
The entire subterranean area continuously echoed with a deafening noise.
Shouting.
Hysterical crying.
Desperate praying.
Begging for mercy.
The guards patrolling the narrow wooden pathways between the cages remained completely, chillingly indifferent to the suffering.
Occasionally, one of them would lazily strike a prisoner’s reaching hand with a club whenever it extended through the bars.
Inside one particular cage near the bottom layer, Vergil slowly groaned back to painful consciousness.
The very first thing assaulting his senses was the putrid smell of the hold.
Sweat.
Urine.
Human waste.
Rotting food rations.
He instinctively resisted opening his eyes immediately, keeping his breathing shallow.
Instead, he focused his full attention entirely on the layered sounds around him, trying to analyse and understand the situation first.
The surrounding cries and desperate, fragmented voices already revealed enough about his environment.
And the constant, rhythmic swaying beneath his body confirmed the rest of the equation.
He was no longer on solid land.
Only then, once his mind was steady, did Vergil slowly open his eyelids.
In the dim, flickering lantern light, he saw a rough wooden ceiling hanging only a few feet directly above his head.
The cramped cage itself barely allowed him enough vertical space to sit properly without hunching his spine.
Behind him and on both sides stood thick, solid wooden reinforcing boards.
Only the front face of the cage remained open, sealed shut by thick, vertical iron bars.
I’ve been captured and imprisoned.
Vergil quietly lowered his gaze to inspect his body.
He wore absolutely nothing except the new winter pants he had just bought in Rock Hill Town; his new sweater, shoes, and his precious leather package were gone.
He remained completely, utterly silent.
Right now, gathering actionable information mattered infinitely more than useless panic.
Leaning his back carefully against the wooden wall, Vergil listened quietly to the surrounding voices of his fellow captives.
But despite the endless, exhausting noise filling the hold, nothing truly useful or specific reached his ears.
No clear destination was mentioned.
No explanation for the mass kidnapping.
No clear clues about who had blindsided him.
Eventually, unable to physically do anything else in his confined space, Vergil closed his eyes and waited.
Time passed agonisingly slowly in the dark.
To maintain his focus and keep his sanity intact, he began counting every single passing second internally.
Thanks to his foundational Visualisation Skill, his mental concentration remained unnaturally stable and sharp.
One second.
Two seconds.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
Tens of thousands.
Eventually, after reaching exactly 158,968 seconds of continuous calculation, pure mental exhaustion finally overtook his brain, and he fell into a deep sleep.
When Vergil woke up again hours later, the ship was still moving steadily down the river.
He quietly reflected on something surprising about his internal state.
This was the absolute first time across his training that he had ever completely exhausted himself using the Visualisation Skill.
Previously, he had always stopped his visualisation sessions well before reaching the point of mental fatigue.
Maybe this extreme overexertion is actually a hidden method to train and expand the Skill’s capacity.
Right now, locked inside an iron box, he possessed absolutely nothing else to work with.
Perhaps he had been captured by a shady faction to become a nameless slave labourer.
But that realisation changed absolutely nothing about his core directives.
At present, blind physical resistance against a ship full of armed guards was entirely meaningless.
His overarching priority remained exactly the same as it always had been since his rebirth.
Survive.
Grow stronger in the dark.
Stay alive long enough to engineer a flawless escape later.
Even if he truly became a slave for a time, he would endure the humiliation temporarily.
Because dead people never escaped anything.
And to escape eventually, he first needed to accumulate undeniable, overwhelming strength.
For now, the only tool available to train in this dark hold was his Visualisation Skill.
So, Vergil quietly closed his eyes and began counting the seconds all over again.
This time, his focus deepened, and he finally lost consciousness at exactly 159,599 seconds.
When he woke once more to the sound of grinding wood somewhere nearby, Vergil immediately resumed counting in his mind, once again pushing his limits further.
Time slowly and agonisingly passed in the dark.
Unknown to Vergil, his own stomach had long begun consuming itself from raw hunger, his fat reserves depleting.
The endless, frantic shouting inside the lower ship hold gradually disappeared over time as spirits broke.
Eventually, only a heavy silence remained, broken occasionally by weak, raspy cries begging for a drop of water or food.
Vergil continued counting steadily, maintaining his mental anchor.
But this time, after reaching only 4,589 seconds, a sudden wave of deep exhaustion overwhelmed his brain, and he fell asleep again.
It was far less time than his previous sessions.
His starving physical body simply no longer possessed enough baseline caloric energy to sustain prolonged, intense concentration.
Suddenly,
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Vergil jolted violently awake to the sound of heavy iron rods slamming against iron bars, accompanied by loud shouting.
“Wear this, and you’ll get food!”
He heard heavy leather footsteps approaching closer through the narrow, unlit pathways between the rows of cages.
Soon, the top of a patrolling guard’s leather hat entered his narrow field of view.
Only now did Vergil fully realise the geometric layout; the cages had been stacked directly atop one another.
He occupied an upper cage in the column.
Beneath his wooden floor sat two additional cages containing other quiet captives.
The guard slapped the iron bars of Vergil’s cage impatiently before tossing a dark, folded object inside through the slot.
Vergil carefully and instantly memorised the guard’s facial features, etching them into his mind.
The man repeated coldly, his voice echoing off the timber,
“Wear it properly, and you’ll get fed.”
Then, the guard moved toward the line of cages directly opposite them and repeated the exact same process.
Vergil slowly crawled forward and picked up the dark object from the floorboards.
Even in the dim, flickering lantern lighting, he quickly recognised what it was.
A thick, black face covering.
He stared silently at the coarse black cloth for several seconds, contemplating the tactical shift, before quietly sighing.
He had absolutely no choice if he wanted to survive the night.
Instant, absolute darkness swallowed his vision completely.
Several minutes later, he began hearing the heavy sounds of metal locks opening one after another across the hold.
“Come out, line up!”
Then came dull thuds and grunts of physical pain.
“Behave yourself, trash!”
“Do that again, and I’ll throw your corpse directly into the river!”
The chaotic sounds of brutal beatings and defiant screams echoed continuously throughout the hollow belly of the ship.
“I’ll never submit to you, bastards!”
“Kill me if you want!”
“I WILL KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF YOU!”
Eventually, the sounds of clanking iron keys gradually approached Vergil’s specific cage.
He quietly waited in the pitch black, relaxing his muscles.
Then,
Clank.
His personal lock snapped open.
A rough, calloused hand reached inside and grabbed his bare ankle tightly.
“Come out.
Down.”
Vergil obediently shifted his body, allowing the guard to guide his descent from the high cage onto the damp wooden floorboards below.
The exact moment his bare feet touched the ground, another guard tightly and securely tied a coarse rope around both of his wrists.
Seconds later, he felt a hard, uncompromising tug pulling him forward.
Vergil immediately followed the momentum, keeping his balance.
“Stairs,” a guard warned sharply from behind.
“Lift your damn feet.”
Vergil carefully obeyed the command.
His foot soon landed against the edge of a steep wooden step.
Following the pulling force of the rope and the surrounding echoes of moving bodies, he gradually descended a long gangplank until his feet finally touched solid ground.
Land.
Still completely blindfolded, Vergil continued walking in a single-file line.
Then suddenly,
“Stop.”
The forward pulling force halted abruptly.
Several unfamiliar, deeper voices echoed nearby in the open air.
“Open your mouth.”
“Wider, you idiot.”
“Shut up and drink.”
“Make noise again, and you’ll get absolutely nothing.”
A rough, strong hand suddenly gripped Vergil’s jaw, forcing his mouth open.
“Open up.”
Vergil obediently opened his mouth without a shred of resistance.
Moments later, an unknown, lukewarm liquid was poured directly down his throat.
The taste was absolutely terrible, metallic and bitter.
But the moment it reached his empty stomach, the unbearable, gnawing hunger eased slightly.
Only slightly.
At best, it perhaps fulfilled five per cent of his body’s desperate nutritional needs.
Several minutes later, another authoritative shout rang out.
“Move out!”
The coarse rope tugged forward forcefully again.
Vergil resumed walking, entering an unfamiliar territory.
Sharp, stinging pain gradually spread through the unprotected soles of his bare feet as they scraped against rough ground, yet he continued moving forward silently.
At the exact same time, his hyper-focused Visualisation Skill carefully counted every single step he took.
Every sharp turn.
Every subtle change in compass direction based on the wind against his neck.
Eventually, after a long march, the group finally stopped once more.
Several minutes of silence passed before the tight ropes around his wrists were roughly untied by a guard.
Left alone, Vergil slowly raised his stiff hands toward the coarse black face covering and removed it.
He immediately squinted from the sudden, sharp brightness, his eyes watering.
But almost instantly, his sensory training made him realise something felt entirely wrong.
The quality of the light was different.
This was not natural sunlight.
Vergil slowly looked straight upward, his neck craning back.
His mouth opened slightly in rare, unmasked astonishment.
Above him was not the open winter sky.
Instead, a massive, jagged rocky ceiling stretched endlessly overhead, deeply embedded with enormous blue crystals glowing softly to illuminate the entire cavern.
I’m underground.
Deep inside a massive cavern system.
A heavy, cold feeling settled deep inside Vergil’s chest.
Designing a successful escape route immediately seemed far more difficult now than it had on the surface.
In the surface world, countless geographic directions existed to flee, hide, and lose pursuers.
But underground?
A subterranean cavern likely possessed only a handful of viable entrances and exits.
And every single one of them would undoubtedly be guarded heavily by professional forces.
Vergil quickly shifted his focus to examine his immediate surroundings.
Only now did he fully realise that he stood within the very centre of a giant underground arena.
The other young captives surrounding him mostly appeared to be around his own age, plucked from various regions.
Some shouted angrily at the walls, their pride still intact.
Others collapsed into desperate crying fits on the dirt.
A few even screamed panicked phrases in completely unfamiliar languages that Vergil did not recognise at all.
He ignored their emotional outbursts completely, conserving his energy.
Instead, his clinical attention focused entirely on the architecture of the arena itself.
Armed guards stood in tight formations along the surrounding spectator stands, holding gleaming spears.
More guards lined the perimeter of the arena floor, weapons drawn and ready.
Behind his group, the massive iron doors they had originally marched through had already been sealed completely shut with a heavy thud.
Vergil’s dark mind immediately began producing grim, analytical possibilities.
A forced battle royale.
Orchestrated gladiator death matches.
Targeted training fights against starved magical beasts.
Countless cruel scenarios flashed through his thoughts one after another, each worse than the last.
Then suddenly,
A loud, booming voice echoed powerfully throughout the entire expanse of the cavern.
Vergil instantly turned his head toward the opposite side of the grand arena.
High above the spectator stands stood an elevated, heavily decorated viewing platform.
A young man slowly stepped forward onto the stone edge, looking down at them.
The exact moment Vergil saw his silhouette, he instinctively engraved the man’s facial features deeply into the core of his memory.
For only the second time across his life, Vergil genuinely, undeniably wanted to murder someone.
The young man possessed immaculate golden hair, pristine pale skin, sharp green eyes, and a high, aristocratic nose.
Even without ever truly interacting with high nobility before in this current life, Vergil instinctively recognised the aura.
The man carried himself like absolute, untouchable royalty.
Everything from his fine, silk-lined clothing to his relaxed posture radiated a sense of absolute superiority.
The golden-haired young man smiled faintly down at the dirt before speaking. Find the original chapter at g.com.
“Everyone,” he announced calmly, his voice smooth and clear, “welcome to my private training camp.”
An instant, chaotic uproar erupted among the terrified captives on the floor.
“What the hell is this place?!”
“Let us out right now!”
“Who the fuck are you?!”
Then,
“Silence.”
The single, spoken word echoed through the stone like a sudden crack of thunder.
At that same split second, Vergil suddenly felt as though gravity itself had multiplied several times over.
His knees buckled, and his physical body instantly sank downward slightly against the crushing weight.
A withered, older man had appeared silently out of the shadows, standing right behind the golden-haired noble youth.
The old man spoke coldly, his aura radiating immense spiritual power.
“Remain silent and listen to the master.”
Moments later, the terrifying, suffocating pressure disappeared completely, leaving the youth gasping for air.
The younger noble smiled once more, completely unbothered by the display of force.
“Everyone,” he continued pleasantly, as if nothing had happened.
“What I’m about to say next is extremely important to your survival.”
A dead, terrified silence filled the wide arena.
The young man slowly spread his arms wide, gesturing to the environment.
“By now, you’ve probably noticed something odd about the landscape.”
“You are no longer residing in the Surface Realm.”
“You are currently located inside the Underdark Realm.”
He gestured casually toward the massive, glowing crystal cavern surrounding them.
“One of its many unmapped cave systems, to be entirely precise.”
“And this specific location possesses only one single exit to the outside world.”
His pleasant smile widened slightly, showing white teeth.
“Which happens to be heavily guarded by our elite forces.”
Uneasy, panicked murmurs instantly spread like wildfire among the huddled captives.
The young noble continued speaking calmly, ignoring the fear.
“So please, do not waste your precious thoughts on plotting an escape.”
Dead silence returned to the arena floor again.
Then, the young man clasped his hands elegantly behind his back and smiled down at the sea of captives.
“Now then…”
“Let’s discuss the exact reason all of you were brought here today.”
The young noble slowly paced across the stone platform high above the arena floor.
“You will all be thoroughly trained here in advanced combat skills.”
Vergil’s eyes narrowed slightly in the dim, crystal-lit air.
Combat training?
At first, he wondered if they were being prepared as expendable death squads or vanguard fodder for a war.
But he quickly rejected the idea based on psychological logistics.
No.
They had been captured, blindfolded, and transported across realms like simple livestock.
The arrogant young man would never trust enslaved commoners enough to guard his back or carry weapons in his name.
Which meant only one logical conclusion remained.
They were investments.
Training them in martial techniques would simply increase their baseline financial value before they were sold to the highest bidder later.
The noble youth continued calmly, his voice projecting across the cavern.
“Two years from now…”
“You will all fight for your survival within grand gladiatorial arenas.”
An instant, violent uproar exploded throughout the arena floor.
“You sick monster!”
“We’re human beings, not animals!”
“You can’t get away with this!”
Indignant, terrified shouting spread everywhere like a wave.
But the young noble merely smiled, entirely amused by their helpless defiance.
“Don’t look so utterly disappointed.”
“The rigorous training and lethal combat may actually make you significantly stronger than you ever could have become in your pathetic villages.”
His smile widened slightly, a glint of dark amusement in his green eyes.
“And perhaps one day…”
“One of you might actually become strong enough to engineer an escape.”
“Maybe even strong enough to stand before me and kill me.”
The young man spoke casually, almost playfully, as if inviting a challenge.
Surprisingly, many of the hot-blooded captives gradually quieted down after hearing those words.
Some even showed a faint, desperate flicker of agreement in their eyes.
Strength.
No matter how horrific the underlying circumstances, the promise of power remained an irresistible temptation in this world.
Then suddenly, the young noble clapped his hands lightly together twice.
Immediately, dozens of neatly dressed women carrying large silver trays appeared all around the edges of the spectator stands.
The trays overflowed with hot, aromatic food.
Fresh fruits.
Well-done roasted meat.
Thick loaves of bread.
The young man smiled warmly, like a benevolent deity.
“You must all be incredibly hungry.”
“Go ahead.”
“Eat your fill.”
But without a single word of warning, the heavy silver trays were suddenly overturned by the attendants.
A literal rain of food plummeted directly into the dusty sand of the arena below.
Instantly, absolute chaos erupted.
The starving, broken captives rushed forward like wild, feral animals, completely shedding their humanity.
Vergil joined the physical movement as well, driven by his own starving stomach.
But unlike the desperate crowd, he deliberately and calculatedly stayed near the outer edges of the frantic chaos.
Rather than fighting directly over the heavy central piles where the strongest boys converged, he quickly and efficiently snatched abandoned fruits and scattered pieces of meat left entirely untouched nearby.
Brutal fights immediately broke out everywhere around him.
Punches.
Blind kicks.
Agonised screams.
Dark blood splattered across the dry sand over mere scraps of food.
Still, more food continued raining downward from the viewing stands above.
Vergil relied heavily on the evasive footwork of the Rock Wolf Technique to weave through the pockets of violence efficiently, without engaging anyone directly or wasting energy.
Minutes gradually stretched toward a full hour.
Eventually, the feral feeding frenzy slowly died down as one captive after another collapsed, thoroughly exhausted and panting, onto the arena floor.
Vergil quietly observed the grim surroundings from his perimeter position.
Many of the youth now bled openly from split lips, broken noses, and heavily bruised faces.
And nearly all of them stared at one another with growing hostility, suspicion, and deep-seated hatred.
High above them, the young golden-haired noble smiled pleasantly, satisfied with the psychological fracturing.
“Now that everyone has eaten and settled your initial hunger…”
“Your very first test will officially begin.”
A deep, grinding mechanical noise suddenly echoed powerfully throughout the entire expanse of the stone cavern.
Rumble,
The massive, heavily reinforced iron gates leading directly onto the arena floor slowly began sliding open into the dark bedrock.