Cold.
I felt nothing but the cold. It was merely a signal, a warning emitted by my body, not particularly painful. My consciousness seemed to float on the edge of a lukewarm sleep, and it felt easier to simply surrender to it without resistance.
My vision was pitch black. My body was encased in soil. It seemed I was underground. Quinn was not here. She had likely been crushed to death by the earth and sand. As the price for losing Quinn, my stock of eggs had been drastically reduced. I only had a few left to count.
I suppose I should be happy to be alive. I was saved by luck, including the fact that I had instinctively defended with full-power Ken, and that the price of death demanded by my Vow had stopped just short of taking everything.
The cold robbed my body of its freedom. It was as freezing as if I were encased in ice. At first, I thought I had sustained severe injuries and the damage was paralyzing my senses. But my senses hadn't gone mad. The temperature was actually dropping.
I didn't know what was happening, but if I stayed here, I would only wait for death. Born and raised in a tropical climate, it seemed I was weak against the cold. Regardless, I had to dig through the soil to get to the surface.
Without maintaining Ten, I couldn't move even a little. I managed to push through the soil, aiming upward, but the closer I got to the surface, the colder it became.
There should be a sun above ground. Shouldn't there be a wasteland wrapped in sweltering heat? Why was it getting colder and colder? was I climbing up or digging down? My stamina was draining, and my activity limit was approaching.
Just as I was on the verge of becoming immobile, I finally saw light. I thought I was saved, but what I saw was neither salvation nor relief.
It was a world covered in ice. There was no sign of life, and a frigid gale was raging. Fist-sized hailstones rained down from the sky with a roar, smashing the thin ice covering the ground.
Suddenly, an explosion echoed. From the bottom of a massive basin, frozen dust plumed up. What erupted next was lava. Blue lava, carrying a freezing chill, was spewed out by the eruption, stealing away whatever heat remained.
I could only describe it as a scene from another dimension. And I had no time left to unravel the cause of this state. My body had become immovable. It took everything I had just to maintain my minimum internal organ functions using Ten.
I had no choice but to use 'Idolatry'. I materialized Quinn and had her carry my main body. I had no stock of eggs, and securing the aura necessary to maintain the materialization was difficult. Still, to be active in this extreme cold, I needed a warm-blooded human body.
In this environment, long-term operation of Quinn was impossible. Just maintaining body temperature consumed a considerable amount of aura. I also had to apply physical reinforcement with Ten to run. If we entered combat even once, my aura would run dry immediately, and I would die. This time, true death would be waiting.
There was no time to hesitate. I started running. With every step, frost pierced the soles of her feet; the skin that stuck to the ice peeled off, sending sharp pain through me. It was easier to keep running with numbness in her feet until the pain disappeared, rather than repairing the wounds.
Hail rained down like blows. I didn't repair those injuries either. I had to save aura to run even a little farther. I had to endure the piercing cold.
It was not a cold or pain that could be easily endured. The human body is weak. It reacts hypersensitively to even trivial stimuli, and pain torments the flesh to the point of incapacitating action. And due to my Vow, I cannot escape that pain.
That was very harsh, yet at the same time, something to be grateful for. I could feel that I was alive, that I wanted to live. The desire to accept a sleep-like death vanished. Biting back the agony, I simply moved forward.
Would I escape this frozen crater first, or would my aura run dry first? I continued an escape with no end in sight.
The Dark Continent is a crucible of monsters and disasters. Giant creatures run rampant, and nature exists in its most extreme and harsh forms. It is not a place where humans can live.
My perception had been naive. I hadn't understood a single thing about the severity of this place. Just because I was a Chimera Ant, just because I could use Nen—I thought I would manage somehow.
Thinking back, that wasteland was a singularity. Being peaceful was the anomaly on this continent. That empty wasteland was the first and last paradise, and I had destroyed that place with my own hands. I realized that what I had thought was the world was nothing more than the back of a giant snake, and I was equivalent to a parasite greedily devouring peace atop it.
What lay beyond the ice field, after escaping with my life, was a dizzying cliff. The place where I had been buried seemed to be on top of a mountain. The cold persisted, and with my main body barely able to move, I had to descend a nearly vertical mountain face in the flesh. There was nothing but despair.
Inside the blizzard, I descended the cliff with desperate resolve. My vision was blocked by snow clouds, and I couldn't see even a few meters down the cliff. If I lost my footing, I didn't know how far I would fall. And occasionally, as if remembering to do so, "volcanic activity" would start, and the ground would shake violently. When the eruption started, the blizzard grew even more intense.
I survived hunger by eating moss that grew sparsely in the cracks of the rocks. If I ate, I could make eggs, and extend Quinn's activity time. Just as I was making plans to survive somehow, Quinn died. Not from slipping and falling, but by predation. A giant monstrous bird snatched Quinn and flew away in an instant.
I wasn't pessimistic. I thought Quinn would slip from the cliff and die sooner or later anyway. I couldn't summon Quinn anymore. For my main body to be active in this cold, I had to maintain Ren at full power. If I let Ten cut out, I would freeze to death on the spot, so while reserving aura for that, the time I could use Ren per day was about a few minutes. I was only given those few minutes to descend. An ant's body could overcome some poor footing, but it was a descent of death where a single mistake would lead to the end.
If I could find a crevice in the rocks to rest my body, it was unexpected good fortune. mostly, I had to spend time in a blizzard where I couldn't tell day from night, clinging to a rock face that could collapse at any moment. The descent was slow. I often thought it might be better to just let go and surrender to free fall. If I was in a state of full-power Ken, couldn't I withstand the shock of the fall? Ordinary ants don't die no matter how high they fall from, right?
Insects don't die falling from heights because their bodies are light. They are susceptible to air resistance, and falling speed naturally slows down. In the end, I didn't think that law applied to my body as is. What happens if an object with a density of several kilograms packed into a size of about 20 centimeters falls? No matter how much I reinforced it with aura, I had no confidence I could completely kill the shock reaching my internal organs. I couldn't step into a gamble without any certainty.
One day, I discovered a deep crack in the rock. It was a fissure about one meter wide. There was enough space inside for me to enter. And in the back, moss was growing in clusters. The fact that this fissure existed without being crushed for the time required for this much moss to grow, amidst this unstable ground shaken by volcanic activity, was proof of its stability. A space with food, protection from the blizzard, and where I could rest my body. I was wrapped in a sense of accomplishment as if I had completed the descent.
While I strove to recover my strength in that fissure for a while, there was a day when the sky cleared. perhaps the clouds were swept away by the wind; the blizzard stopped for just a moment. In that fleeting time that seemed like a good omen, I looked down the cliff and cursed the world. I saw the path to the foot of the mountain, which was far too distant. I didn't know how many years it would take to finish descending.
I had no choice but to move forward. At times, a white giant bird scattering cold air passed by; at other times, I passed a pack of wolves sprinting up the vertical wall as if ignoring gravity. I simply repeated Ten and Ren, continuing the cliff descent side-by-side with death. Gradually, I became adept at handling aura, and my active time increased. As the descent progressed, the temperature rose, and my body began to move.
And finally, I reached the foothills. The area was a forest dyed entirely black. Trees, animals—everything was encroached upon by black. The true identity was mold. Half-dead giant beasts with rotting flesh wandered about. The air was contaminated with poison.
Beyond that, a great red river blocked the way. Countless giant fish that could be mistaken for dragons were swimming. All of them had the appearance of lampreys. They latched onto each other's bodies with sucker-like mouths, sipping each other's blood, killing each other.
Detouring around that river, there was a colony of bizarre plants. Large carnivorous animals like dinosaurs were being preyed upon by the plants helplessly. Beyond that, a lake of light that showed hallucinations. A canyon of swirling thunder. A forest with thin air. Those were still understandable, which was fine.
A plateau where grotesque monkeys lined up in a row. A river overflowing with colorful chunks of meat. A group of strange rocks flying in the sky. I was exposed to threats where I didn't even know what they were.
No matter where I went, there was no place of rest. That was the kind of place the Dark Continent was.
Quinn was walking through the forest. Her conspicuous silver hair was tied up on top of her head and hardened with mud. She also smeared mud all over her body to make her skin color as hard to see as possible. Her body remained slender as before; no matter how much she trained, she didn't gain muscle, and her skin didn't even tan.
I realized later that this was likely an effect due to the restriction "Cannot change design." In other words, strength training was meaningless. Even if I imagined a trained body when materializing her, her appearance remained as it was before. It seemed she could only take the form I decided on initially.
Regarding sustaining external injuries, it wasn't treated as a design change but simply as damage, so the state didn't change. However, if she continued to bleed, she would continue to consume massive amounts of aura for life support, so I was forced to repair her eventually. If she received a fatal wound to a vital point like the head or internal organs, she would die just like a normal human, and the activation could not be maintained.
Quinn has died countless times so far. I've gotten used to the death caused by the Vow. The price of death has come to be suppressed to the sacrifice of a few eggs. I began to use Quinn as a disposable pawn, a decoy solely to let my main body escape from strong enemies.
I don't think that judgment itself was wrong. In fact, there were situations where the main body might have died if I hadn't done so. But back then, I was taking Quinn's existence far too lightly. I even regretted creating such a useless ability. I wondered if it would have been easier to survive if I had created an ability suited to my affinity, rather than one that spanned multiple categories and used enormous memory.
As if reflecting those thoughts, Quinn's manipulation precision dropped. The amount of aura consumed skyrocketed, and I fell into a state where just maintaining the activation was all I could do. At first, I couldn't understand the cause of this obvious performance degradation.
I think the cause lay in the leniency of the Restriction and Vow. The Vow of 'Idolatry' is that the user dies if the promise is not kept, but this was no longer a demerit for me, who had multiple lives. A Vow draws out power corresponding to the magnitude of resolve by shouldering unfavorable conditions that bind oneself. Treating it like a word game on paper and preparing a loophole meant it couldn't amount to resolve. The Vow of "If I cannot keep it, I die" was merely a difference in phrasing for "I will sacrifice an egg."
For a normal human, life is something unique. It is a resolve one can swear because they are betting that one life, and there is a compensation for it. When I first mastered 'Idolatry,' fear of death still remained. No matter how much stock of lives I had, I was afraid of what degree of punishment would descend when I actually broke the Vow. I had some degree of resolve regarding death. Before I knew it, I stopped caring about dying, about killing Quinn. That resulted in weakening the effect of the Vow and inviting a decline in the ability's performance.