For a good minute, not a single word was spoken, and more than anything, Rafael truly felt nothing.
He had just been told that the one thing he valued the most... his balls.
He knew he should be fucking terrified. Any normal person would be begging by now, trying to bargain, promising whatever the fuck she wanted just to keep his balls.
But nothing. Rafael just tried his best to make some kind of sense of this entire fucking situation.
She had kidnapped him from the middle of Fersay. She had somehow used magic where magic shouldn’t even fucking work.
Nothing about her made sense... up until Rafael realized that there could only be one answer to it all.
"You’re an NPC—"
"I am a player, just like you."
Her voice cut him off, and with that, his face went blank for a second as he stared at the featureless white mask.
Out of everything he had expected her to say, that sure as fuck wasn’t it.
"Trying to piece it together, right?" Her voice came again. "Who am I? How can I use magic in the Safe Zone? Why did I help you? You know there’s more to this than just torturing you."
She paused.
"So let me tell you."
The runes surrounding Rafael suddenly flashed once... and with that single pulse, all of his nails were ripped out from his fingers and toes.
Rafael screamed, but there was no sound. His throat moved, his chest tightened, his mouth remained wide open, yet the room stayed completely silent.
His body didn’t.
And as the blood flowed down from his chained hands to his face... the pain was unbearable... a pain he couldn’t even give a voice to.
"I know you, Rafael. We’re the same, just like RentIsDue."
The runes flashed again.
Rafael’s mouth was suddenly forced wide open, and before he could understand what was happening, three of his teeth were ripped straight from his gums.
Blood immediately filled his mouth and spilled over his lips as his body twisted against the chains.
"He adored you, you know. He wouldn’t shut the fuck up about RafaelTheGreat. Every exploit you discovered, he knew about it. He thought you were a fucking genius, and more than anything, he wanted to do what you did."
Every time Rafael’s consciousness began to slip away, something seemed to drag him back, forcing him to remain awake, forcing him to feel every fucking second of it.
And through all that pain, all that suffering, her voice remained perfectly clear.
So close.
As if everything else could fade away, but she wouldn’t let him escape a single word.
So pure and undistorted that it felt as though she were whispering directly into his mind.
"Then Eldoria became real, but he didn’t change. He kept searching for exploits and fucking around with things he didn’t understand."
Something in her voice changed as she stepped closer to Rafael.
"My little brother died a few hours ago. And now I finally get to meet his hero."
She wrapped her hand tightly around his throat.
"Fire."
The pain in that moment was beyond anything his mind could process. From head to toe, he was engulfed in fire... and somehow, he couldn’t pass out.
Rafael’s mind kept reaching the point where everything should have gone black, but something dragged him back every single time to experience all of it.
His hair caught fire first, burning into his scalp before the flames spread across his face and down his entire body.
His skin turned black, peeling away as burned pieces fell onto the ground beneath him. His face burned with it, slowly becoming impossible to recognize.
Then, suddenly, it stopped.
The inferno disappeared, leaving Rafael hanging there, his entire body burned black and unrecognizable.
Then her voice came again.
"Restore."
Flesh formed over exposed bone, burned muscle repaired itself, and skin stretched across it. His teeth grew back.
His nails returned. Even his hair was exactly as it had been before. His heart started beating normally again, while his lungs and organs repaired themselves inside him.
As if none of it had ever happened... he hung there once again, completely unharmed.
Then she suddenly raised her hand, and Rafael’s arms were ripped from his body, followed by his legs.
"Restore."
They returned.
She raised her hand again, then healed him, only for another part of his body to be cut off once more.
She kept repeating it.
Cutting him apart, burning Rafael’s body, and then restoring him. Doing it all over again.
At some point, everything went black.
Rafael’s mind could no longer understand the pain. He couldn’t tell if his arms were still attached. Couldn’t tell if he was burning or healing. Couldn’t even tell where the pain was coming from anymore.
He just felt it.
And every now and then, her voice reached him through it all.
"Restore."
"Fire."
"Restore."
Then pain again.
But eventually, even those words stopped meaning anything.
Pain, healing, burning, cutting... it all became the same, then, at some point, there was nothing.
Rafael didn’t know how long he had been like that, and as his vision slowly returned, he just stared at the stone floor beneath him without understanding what he was looking at.
His body was whole again. His arms were there, his legs, his skin.
And the chains were gone.
He didn’t even remember them coming off. He didn’t remember falling to the ground.
He just knew that he was free, and as he looked up, there she was, standing in front of him.
"B-bit...ch..."
After all that silence, that was the most meaningful word that came to his mind.
And she seemed to like it... at least, her laughter suggested she did.
Though not for long, as she pulled a sword from her side and threw it onto the ground in front of Rafael.
"Come at me."
She didn’t need to say it twice.
Rafael grabbed the sword and forced himself to his feet. His fingers tightened around the handle, and without even thinking, he charged toward her... or at least wanted to charge.
He took one step and his left leg was cut clean off below the knee, but before he could even register the pain or hit the ground, his leg was back.
"Come!" she shouted again.
Even though Rafael didn’t understand what the fuck was happening... he had a trick up his sleeve.
He fucking threw the sword at her while simultaneously launching himself toward her.
But the sword he threw... turned back in midair, and as Rafael launched himself forward... he launched himself straight into the sword.
"Oh... poor Rafael. Are you okay?"
"Agh—aghh..."
Rafael gagged desperately, both hands pressing against his neck as blood gushed through his fingers, but the blood just kept pouring.
"You still don’t understand, do you?"
She asked as she watched him suffocate on his own blood.
"You and my brother weren’t the only ones playing the game differently. I followed in your footsteps too... just a bit differently... yet I still couldn’t save him."
She held her palm toward him.
"But this was just a little taste of what awaits you."
[Forbidden Curse Acquired: Curse of the Ancient Dungeon.]
[While inside the Ancient Dungeon, only your own hand may end your life.]
"Go and suffer."
[You have entered the Ancient Dungeon.]