"One last inquiry." Jaelziño Guzmán tapped his fingers on the metal iron bed without emotion. "Reserve Yago Sevitalyon, how do you feel?"

“.”

"Answer me, Reserve. Otherwise, I'll assume you're ready. ”

The boy nodded silently.

At this moment, he was wearing a restraint robe, lying on the cold iron platform, looking nervous.

It's certainly impossible to say that he's not nervous – why isn't he?

He agreed to Carlil's words and became a reservist, but he still didn't know much about what was going on around him. And, just two hours later, he was lying in a dark room.

His hands and feet were bound, and the iron platform was cold like the corpse of a deceased, which not only made him very uncomfortable, but even made him unable to feel his back. He felt like he was sweating all the time, but he had no evidence of it.

"Good." The medical officer walked up to him and tapped his finger on his forehead. For some reason, he wore iron gloves, and the touch of metal made Sevita feel a pain in his forehead.

"You already know what's going to happen next, Reserves, right?"

"The twentieth operation?" Sevita turned her neck and looked at the medic.

The latter's gaze was still emotionless, and he just nodded slowly: "Yes, the twentieth operation is also the first operation." ”

"Am I going to be dissected?"

"Not yet."

"And what will you do to me?"

"I'm not going to do anything to you, Reserve, you're not at the stage where you're going to let me do the surgery for you." Jaelziño grinned, his smile very cold, and he tapped his finger on Sevita's forehead again, with a little more force than before.

"And the best thing you should do right now is not to ask questions, but to keep your mouth shut and wait quietly."

"Will shutting up get me through surgery?"

"Not necessarily."

"Then why should I shut up?" Sevita stared at him. "You keep knocking on my forehead, why? Jairziño GuzmánChief Medical Officer? Is there something wrong with my forehead? ”

"Perhaps." The medic stared back, his voice soft. "But I'm not sure if you have a problem with your forehead or a problem with your brain."

"Would you like to make sure?"

"Not for the time being, I'm afraid I'll be infected by you, reservist." Jaelziño lowered his head and pressed a button on the side of the platform.

It began to change angles, taking Sevita from lying flat to standing upright. He didn't really touch the ground, his feet dangled in the air, and the iron platform itself was tied firmly to him in conjunction with his restraints. For a moment, Sevita almost thought she was lying in a coffin.

Of course, this did not prevent him from refuting the words of the medical officer.

"I don't have a contagion, that's what you said before, respected medical officer."

"I'm going to make mistakes too."

Jaylziño glanced at the recruit again, who had spoken a little too much, and suddenly felt a burst of amusement.

"Save your energy and stay calm, Reserve. It's true that I don't hate this kind of personal attack with you, but do you really think I can't tell you're nervous? Shut your mouth and wait quietly. ”

Sevita did as she was told, and he was truly silent for a moment before speaking again—stammering.

"It's so cold." He shuddered, his teeth chattering and his eyes rolling up. "Why. It's going to be so cold, Medic? ”

"That's right." Jairziño Guzmán said with a blank face.

He turned his head to look at a pair of eyes lit up in the darkness. Phil stepped out of it and nodded at him. They walked out of the room, leaving the cold and loneliness inside to Yago Sevitaleon to bear on his own. And there were already two people waiting in the aisle for a long time.

They were of similar height, similar in appearance, and even in a similar way of standing. At the moment, they are looking inside through bulletproof glass.

Fell approached them and whispered a report that the voice of the Chief Think Tank sounded very different from what he had ever heard, with a chill that came from nowhere, as cold as his blue eyes that lit up at the moment.

"Everything is normal, original, instructor. Reserve Yago Sevitaleone has already begun to dream. ”

"So fast?" Conrad Coetzes raised an eyebrow, looking a little surprised. "I thought he would wait a little longer before he fell asleep."

"Fast is a good thing." Carlil said to Fell. "How, how does it feel to manipulate rituals?"

"It's peculiar." Fell replied slowly.

"I don't know how to describe it, instructor. The formations themselves were hungry for psionic energy to light them up, and I seemed to be just a generator, and I could feel the psionic energy leaving my body, entering the ritual array, and gradually building up my sleep. But I can't do much more than that. ”

Carlil nodded at him, "That's enough, Fair. Such. Best. ”

He turned his head back, and behind the bulletproof glass, a pitch-black but scarlet light was already on.

Conrad Coetzes closed his eyes, arms crossed, muscles tense.

May you succeed, Reserve Yago Sevitalyon. He said silently in his heart.

——

As always, cold, never borders, never-ending cold.

The wind blew indifferently from the far end of the miserable white world, and everything was silent, not even the sound of the wind existed. Sevita was wrapped up in the cold, but she didn't particularly care.

He could clearly feel that he was dreaming, which was eerie, but it didn't prevent him from being shocked by the sight of the dream.

In front of him was a majestic mountain range, covered with a thick white ash that made everything seem to have only one color, one color. And this color is lifeless and instinctively uncomfortable.

Are those things ashes? He asked himself, and then immediately disproved that idea in a matter of seconds - no, no, not ashes.

Be. Ashes.

Yes, ashes.

Sevita began to walk forward. He remembers what happened earlier, when Chief Medical Officer Jair Guzmán said he was going through the twentieth operation, which was actually his first operation.

Sevita didn't understand why they had reversed the order, but he seemed to have caught some subtle threads now.

He walked along the mountain range, all around him silent, extremely silent. Sevita tried to make some noise by walking, but he failed. Even if he deliberately stomped his feet, there was no sound in this white world.

The boy exhaled softly, slightly uneasy, instinctively trying to pull his fingers to ease the anxiety. It was his habit in the past, and he did it whenever he felt uneasy – and this time, he succeeded.

Sevita immediately realized that something was wrong.

Isn't he wearing a straitjacket? His hands were crossed and tied together, and he couldn't pull each other at all

He looked down, and realized that the clothes on his body had changed completely. At this moment, he was wearing a white robe with straps on his hands and feet. His boots are also white and look brand new.

Sevita crouched down and touched it, the touch coming back from his fingertips was dry, and he thought it was some kind of skin. He stood up again, a feeling of bobbing around his waist.

Sevita reached for a jug hanging from her waist and a scroll of paper that looked ancient. Its surface is so rough that it almost makes you feel like you're hurting your fingers to the touch.

Sevita silently took the kettle and shook it, not hearing the swaying, but the quality of the kettle itself had told him something. He unscrewed the cap and took a small sip.

The water itself had no taste, but it was too good for the water he used to drink. Sevita immediately closed the knob and hung the kettle back to her waist. He took the parchment again, spread it out, and began to read.

"Walk over the White Mountain to the City of the Dead, Yago Savitarion."

“.”

Sevita frowned.

Eternal night is above—what does that mean?

He pursed his lips, looking a little annoyed. But he put away the parchment roll anyway, put it on his chest, and began to walk forward.

The mountains were silent, eerily quiet, but Sevita walked forward without hesitation. At first, the road was fairly smooth, but it quickly became bumpy. The slope rises steeply and begins to get more and more intense.

Sevita also went from simply walking to a difficult one, and by the end of the day, he was almost crawling, relying on the help of his hands to continue his ascent. It took a lot of effort for him to crawl a short distance forward.

He tried to rest for a while, but the rest did not restore his strength. He had looked up to see how long he was still from the top, but no matter how much he tried, the distance on the road did not seem to have narrowed.

The boy stopped in annoyance, climbed the side of the road with one hand, and took out the kettle with the other. He gritted the screw cap with his teeth and took a second sip of water after that.

In an instant, Sevita's spirit was lifted, and the physical exhaustion disappeared in an instant.

- What's the situation?

Confused, he closed the screw lid of the kettle again with his teeth, but he still didn't put the idea of taking another sip and trying it into practice. Doing so may answer his question, but it may not.

Rather than wasting a mouthful of hard-won precious water for an answer to a question, Sevita felt that he might as well keep the answer to that question.

He began to continue upward, and the assisted crawl finally turned into a climb after a critical point. Sevita sensed this through the slope and the change in gravity, but didn't turn his head back to see if his perception was correct.

Are you kidding.

Yago Sevitaleon licked his chapped lips in exasperation, tasting the remaining blood.

Turning back now is no different from suicide - he won't test his willpower for no reason, it's okay not to watch, if he does, God knows if he will have the courage to continue this climb?

After all, he still has a city of the dead to go to.

The boy gasped, took a deep breath and began to continue upward. There was not much water left in the kettle, and he knew it well. It was not as heavy as it used to be, and he had to climb the mountain before the water inside it dried up completely

If he can't, he'll die.

Sevita wasn't afraid of death, but he didn't think he deserved to die here. So he kept going up, and in the process he kept cursing in his heart.

After a while, his fingers began to become sore, and every time he moved and exerted force, he would bring pain in his wrists and forearms. His legs too, bent to exert force turned into a terrible torture.

His knees began to protest, and his muscles swollen and pounded along his heart. He gasped for breath and stopped, took the jug with trembling hands, and drank the last sip of water.

The saliva smelled of blood and indescribable bitterness, as if the embodiment of pain was unpalatable, but Sevita swallowed it stiffly.

There was a burning pain in his throat, as opposed to his hands, which were beginning to grow steady.

Sevita bit the kettle, took a deep breath, and began to climb upwards.

He didn't look up anymore, he had no more water to drink—he climbed, and he crawled. He was so angry and in pain that his muscles seemed to be torn apart, but he was still forcing himself to climb.

There was a strange willpower that bound the body, prompting him to refuse to stop.

Why stop?

Damn it.

Yago Sevitaleon cursed in his heart - why should I stop? You bastards, you throw me in this kind of shitty place, and call it surgery?

I think your brains should be operated on! The first person is to let the hell-medic come! Inexplicably, he kept tapping my forehead with his fingers, did he use my forehead as a table envoy?!

Before he knew it, he had forgotten that it was a dream and began to devote himself to it.

He was angry, sleepy, tired, aching, confused. Not knowing when the climb was going to end, he opened his mouth and took another deep breath, but the kettle slipped between his already stiff masseter muscles.

Sevita sneered and said nothing, the emotions churning in his heart at this moment surpassed a certain limit, and he finally roared angrily.

"Bastard!"

He hissed and roared at the seemingly never-ending summit, his voice reverberating like thunder in the otherwise silent peaks. And he himself didn't even notice it.

With red eyes, he continued to climb, resentful—and then, in the next second, the object in front of him suddenly twisted. An extremely strong feeling of weightlessness came over him, causing him to scream uncontrollably.

He fell, then abruptly returned to the ground.

There is no pain, just a sense of peace of mind after landing peacefully. With a blink, Sevita climbed up from the ground, and saw a ruin shrouded in darkness. There was a faint light flickering in front of him, what looked like a street lamp.

The boy bowed his head in silence and began to grope his body, and he quickly confirmed one thing.

His injuries and exhaustion were gone, and the parchment roll on his chest was hot.

He immediately took it out, and the ancient scroll of paper was now glowing, as red as if it were burning. The characters are pitch black, and the edges are twisted as if they were burning, which is very eerie.

"Congratulations, Reserve Yago Sevitalyon. You have successfully crossed the White Mountain and reached the City of the Dead. Next, you'll need to make your way through the city to the Altar of the End. There, you will witness everything. ”

Again? What's the end?

Sevita's face jerked, and she instinctively wanted to curse again, but she immediately stopped. For no other reason, he heard a whisper. This kind of voice is all too familiar to him.

They are not human voices.

Yago Sevitaleone clenched his fists in silence and began to take a deep breath.

Also, but it's not advisable to wait, I'm going to stay up late today to write tomorrow's update.

(End of chapter)