Nameless Death POV
Nameless Death appeared inside a forest.
The sky was a deep shade of red.
The trees were black and rough, twisted like old bones, and their leaves shimmered in a sickly purple hue.
It was silent, far too silent for a place so vast and unnatural.
Nameless Death stood still beneath the crooked canopy with a calm expression.
“So I need to leave this place in 15,000 years?”
He focused, trying to sense everything around him.
The forest stretched endlessly, but it wasn’t empty.
There were powerful beings in every direction. He could detect five extremely powerful beings within a radius of ten thousand kilometers.
He quickly cut off his senses when those monsters reacted.
Any longer, and they would’ve noticed him.
Ten thousand kilometers was barely anything for monsters like them.
It would take them less than a second to close that gap.
“I need to move before they come here to check what was looking at them.”
He moved at high speed.
Since he had no techniques, he moved with pure physical might, and destroyed hundreds of miles in a split second before he realized what he had done.
He was then forced to run at a speed that did not harm to forest, or the monsters could track the destruction to him.
The scenery never changed as he ran.
No matter how far he went, it was the same black bark, purple leaves, and that oppressive red sky.
It began to wear on him, which was weird since something told him he was supposed to find Death comfortable.
He kept running for several minutes.
The scenery made him wonder if the whole Site was a forest, or if the forest itself simply spanned across unimaginable distances.
Eventually, he slowed down.
He paused beneath a broken tree, where the trunk was hollowed out and gnarled like a twisted horn.
He looked around, then up, and exhaled softly.
“They shouldn’t be able to find me from this distance.”
Now that immediate danger was off the table, it was time to focus. He sat on a large root and began piecing together the current situation.
“I need to leave this Site,” he said to himself. “To do that, I need to reach its edge. Walking in a random direction is probably enough.”
That part was simple. The hard part came next.
“But from what Dren said, I need to be peak Stage 4 to be strong enough to leave.”
A frown settled on his face.
“Stage 4… he said the Berserker Death Elementals here would fuse into me and raise my existence level to that point.”
His frown worsened.
The idea didn’t sit well with him.
Losing his self, or allowing his own self to be distorted by merging it with others was the last thing he wanted.
He would rather grow stronger by himself, and fight his way out.
“I should check what I have left and can use to fight. There must be something…”
His voice grew smaller and smaller the more he looked.
Physical Body: Perfect condition. But at his current level, physical attacks barely worked against anyone worth fighting.
Soul: Strong. But what good was that when he had no soul techniques to use?
Core: Untouched. But since he was not a God, his Core was a useless decoration. It could not manifest into a the material plane (reality).
“Okay. No need to worry. I should have something…”
He closed his eyes and focused inward, entering the deeper structure of his being.
Seed of Existence.
The Outer Layer… was empty.
It had no techniques, concepts, enlightenments, or memories.
He checked the Inner Layer.
…Still empty.
This was where elemental affinities, traits, blessings, and sacred treasures were stored.
He was sure he had them, but now everything was missing.
“Was I an idiot?” he muttered. “I can understand removing important things, but who removes their Elemental Seeds? Everyone has them.”
A sarcastic thought popped up in his mind, one that didn’t belong to anyone else.
You’re the dumb fuck, not me.
You think I had time to see what I was removing or not?
No one was actually speaking to him. But it felt like the version of himself who’d wiped those memories clean would’ve said those words to him.
“Dumb what? Who uses crass words like those?”
Nameless Death rubbed his brow.
“Well… I haven’t checked everything yet. Maybe the Central Layer of my Seed of Existence has something.”
It was his last hope.
Not everything stayed in one layer of a being.
Simple memories lingered in the body.
Important ones transferred to the soul.
Crucial ones—memories that defined a person—could reach the Core.
And if something was truly irreplaceable, it might reach the Seed of Existence.
The Seed had three layers.
The Layers were almost impossible to access, and even by the owner could not acess the Inner Layer.
But it was also near-impossible for anyone else to take something out of the layers.
Even Grim Reapers couldn’t touch the memories stored in Seed of Existence when preparing a soul for reincarnation.
That was the logic he was betting on.
“If I have something in the Inner layer,” he said, “it shouldn’t have been removed.”
He reached out with his Intent, and probed the Inner Layer, and he received a piece of good news and bad news.
Good news: he confirmed that himself—the version of him that existed before this mess—hadn’t been able to access the Central Layer either.
So whatever was in there, probably still was.
Bad news: he still couldn’t access it.
“Goddammit,” he muttered. “I need something to fight with.”
At that exact moment, a faint chime echoed in his head.
A translucent screen appeared in front of him, text written in clean, silver letters.
[Connection to Universal Codex System is online.]
[Would you like to establish the connection?]
He stared at the screen with frown.
“What is this?” he muttered. “And how did it come up just when I asked for something I could use to fight?”
Coincidence?
He didn’t believe in those.
He narrowed his eyes and condensed his senses this time, scanning the immediate area with full focus, and tried to check is someone was surveilling him.
He did not find anyone.
“Dren said he hoped I’d make it out in 15,000 years. That means he was guessing. If he could know exactly when I’d leave, he wouldn’t need to guess.
“So he can’t surveil me here, then who this the owner of this message?”
He stared at the screen with Intent Vision but didn’t touch it, or allow it to access his existence, which he could sense it waiting to access.
If it was an enemy offering him power, accepting it might play into their hands.
His doubts were cut short when he felt a foreign presence invading his mind.
“What is this? When were…. my mental defenses breached?”
He clutched his head in pain.
The foreign presence had been invading his mind since the moment he entered the forest. He just had not noticed it.
Fight. Kill. Murder. Fight. War. Evolve. Blood. Fight. Attack.
A shudder ran through Nameless Death when thoughts that did not belong to him surged his head.
Unlike the things gained from Darkness, these thoughts were fusing into his existence, and warping his very being.