Slumbering Sloth

Vikram looked at his surroundings, and all he felt was all kinds of wrongness. There was something about the village that screamed death.

As Vikram edged cautiously along the narrow village road, his gaze fell on a small lump lying ahead. He halted, his curiosity piqued, before stepping forward with measured care. As the details came into focus, his eyes widened in shock.

It wasn't a lump at all—it was a small child, curled up into a ball and silently sobbing. The child's tattered clothes blended so perfectly with the dusty road that Vikram had mistaken it for an inanimate object.

Vikram shook his head and moved forward. He was not stupid enough to believe that this child would be normal. If he remembered most of the entertainment industry, then this child would probably have turned into a zombie. 

Vikram slowly inched forward, and the sobbing stopped, Vikram looked at the notification hovering above the child's head.

[Neurotic Halfing]

Vikram frowned and let out a weary sigh. As if sensing his presence, the child slowly turned its head. The sight that met Vikram's eyes made him clench his jaw in horror. The child had no eyes; its sockets were filled with impenetrable darkness. Its mouth, if it could still be called that, was a grotesque ruin—melted and deformed, unable to fully open, as if something unspeakable had erased its humanity.

Vikram gritted his teeth and readied his axe. He looked at the halfling and hesitated. This was a child at first...

[You have been slain.]

[Please select a respawn point.]

[The Cave has been selected]

Vikram respawned in the cave and sat a bit to digest and process what was happening. The halfling was so agile that it only took a single moment of carelessness from Vikram to capitalize on it. 

It had stabbed a knife into Vikram's throat, and Vikram couldn't react to it. No, it was not that Vikram couldn't react to the speed, but that Vikram was distracted. 

Vikram felt as though he had learned a big lesson. If this was in the real world, there would be no respawns, and he would have been dead, with no one knowing him, and not even people around him knowing in what pathetic way he had died. 

Vikram was doubtful that people would remember him after a month or so, and that scared the shit out of him. Vikram wanted to be relevant, he wanted to be known, and he wanted to be recognized, and dying like that was just the opposite of what he wanted. 

Vikram took his axe and rushed through zombies and the caster, finally reaching the statue. When he came close to the statue, the blue phenomenon happened again, but this time, the statue was already repaired. 

[Level: 1]

[Realm: Blood Refining Realm(Early)]

[Strength: 1-->2](200 Souls)

[Agility: 1-->2](200 Souls)

[Vitality: 0-->1](100 Souls)

[Muscle and Bone Density: 1-->2](200 Souls)

[Blood Beast Energy: 0-->1](100 Souls)

[Stat Points: 0]

[Souls: 200]

Vikram paid for Vitality and Blood Beast Energy, the latter part, he didn't know what the heck it did, but making all his stat balanced made Vikram's heart ease up. 

Vitality increase was relatively harmless, even pleasuring to be exact. It was as though Vikram was inside a nourishing hot or cold bath, but Blood Beast Energy was too traumatizing.

Vikram felt as though instead of blood, hot boiling water was running through his veins. But after the enhancement, Vikram, just like the last time, felt anew. 

He saw the world from a new perspective, and he felt like he could move a truck. Vikram went inside the Adthal Village and found the halfling. Now that Vikram's attention was full on the Halfling, Vikram was embarrassed that he died to this thing. 

It didn't take a full-weight swing to empty the health bar on this thing. Vikram eased up and tensed up again because he was hearing a crescendo of giggling all across his surroundings. 

He looked at his surroundings, and a cold shiver ran down his spine as he looked at multiple hands and heads poking out and looking at him with empty eyes, and giggling. 

Vikram gulped and gritted his teeth, and shouted to the skies to shake out his fear. 

[You have been slain.]

[Strength: 2]

[Agility: 2]

Vikram felt that he could kill all those abominations, but the more he killed, the more overwhelming it became. The damn midgets were agile as well as slippery. 

[You have been slain.]

The midgets didn't have an ounce of self-preservation, and they stuffed the knives in their hands into the most vital spots.

[You have been slain.]

The last time, the little midgets stabbed the knife into his little general, and Vikram permanently banned that memory from his brain. The level of pain that coursed through his body... 

Vikram shuddered violently, as though trying to shake the memory from his very being. He couldn't ignore the peculiar sensation that followed each respawn—a faint, indistinct wave of energy passing through his body.

He didn't know what it was. Logically, he should have been terrified, burdened by the trauma of dying over and over. But instead, he felt strangely invigorated. With every respawn, his mind and body seemed to reset, leaving him refreshed, as if cleansed of the horrors he had endured.

So Vikram made an educated guess that it had some mild calming and restrictive effect on trauma or anything that had a bad effect on the mind. 

Because if Vikram analyzed the situation, he knew that there was no human body that could handle the trauma of dying over and over. The human body was not supposed to handle multiple deaths back to back. 

These experiences would make all the evolutionary information stored inside the human body go haywire. And then there was the trauma. The sheer variety of ways he had been killed was a torment of its own was an another matter altogether.

Vikram respawned and killed all that had movements outside the village and entered the village again. Now, Vikram did the only plausible way he could get away with this situation. 

He went towards the statue, upped his Muscle and Bone Density to 2, and tried again. Even though he was having an easier time culling the damned imps, he ultimately died. 

The thing was, no matter how hard his skin and muscles became, his eyes, ears, and brain would always be a vulnerable place. And these bastards would always target these regions with their knives. 

It was really getting frustrating, but suddenly, Vikram received a notification. 

[Do you wish to Exit the game?]