Three days had passed since Yan Kesh entered the dead zone.
His food supplies had run out yesterday afternoon. Only a single drop of water remained in his leather flask. No matter how strong one's mind was, the human body remained a slave to flesh and blood.
His stomach twisted in agony, as if gastric acid were gnawing at the walls of his intestines. His head throbbed from dehydration, and his vision swam with spots of light.
Yan Kesh sat with his back against the black stone. His breathing was short and shallow.
"Hunger," he whispered hoarsely, staring at the unchanged gray sky.
"This is the most ancient form of deficit."
If he followed the logic of the previous chapter—equivalent exchange—he could use this hunger as "payment" to destroy something. But smashing rocks or trees would not fill his stomach. That would be a losing transaction.
He needed to survive.
He needed time to think and search for food without being crippled by this pain.
Yan Kesh turned his head toward the black stone beside him. The words carved upon it had not changed—but his understanding of them had.
The world records.
If the world recorded things, then the world had a ledger. And in any ledger, payment did not always have to be made in cash, on the spot. There was a concept older than money itself—
Debt.
"If I can't pay now…" Yan Kesh placed his trembling palm against the stone's surface.
"…can I request a deferment?"
He closed his eyes.
He did not attempt to exchange pain for external destruction. Instead, he tried to push the pain back.
He imagined the gnawing hunger tearing at his stomach, wrapped it tightly within his thoughts, and placed it into a locked, imaginary drawer.
Not now. Later.
He rejected the pain.
He rejected his body's own signals.
A long silence followed.
Slowly, the tension in Yan Kesh's brow eased.
The pain in his stomach… vanished.
The dizziness in his head… disappeared.
Even his parched throat suddenly felt normal.
Yan Kesh opened his eyes.
His body felt light, refreshed—
as though he had just eaten a roasted chicken and slept soundly for eight full hours.
Yet he had eaten nothing.
His body was still empty. His cells were still starving for nutrients. But the perception of suffering had been erased.
"Sensory fraud," Yan Kesh analyzed calmly, touching his sunken abdomen.
"I didn't cure my hunger. I merely postponed the pain's invoice."
This was a terrifying technique.
A soldier with severed legs could continue fighting using this method, because he would feel no pain. But his blood would still drain away—and he would die suddenly, without warning.
Yan Kesh understood the risk.
But for now, he was buying time.
Crack.
A sharp sound echoed through the silence of the dead forest.
Yan Kesh turned his head instantly.
The black stone—perhaps undisturbed for thousands of years—now bore a fine crack on its surface. The crack was straight and clean, like the stroke of a scribe's pen across a ledger page.
No energy erupted.
Only a silent fracture.
Yan Kesh stared at it warily. His instincts told him this was not damage.
It was notation.
"One deferment. One mark," he murmured.
He stood up. His body felt brimming with false vitality. He knew it was an illusion. His true energy was being ruthlessly drained from fat and muscle reserves—but his brain was no longer receiving those reports.
"I have maybe half a day before my body collapses without warning," Yan Kesh calculated.
"I need to find food now, while my body still feels strong."
He stepped out of the safe zone, returning to the dangerous Black Mist Forest.
His movements were swift and silent. He no longer trembled. He moved like a ghost.
As he passed through thorny bushes, a sharp branch scraped across his cheek.
Blood trickled down.
Yan Kesh felt nothing.
He touched the wound, staring at the blood on his fingertip.
"Dangerous," he thought coldly.
"Without pain, I lose my body's alarm system. I could bleed to death without realizing it."
He would have to be extra cautious. He would need to audit his own body manually—because he had temporarily shut down his nervous system.
Half an hour later, he spotted a one-horned rabbit chewing on roots.
Yan Kesh did not rush forward. He had no proper weapon.
He picked up a stone the size of his fist.
Moving against the wind, he approached slowly. The rabbit grew alert, its ears twitching.
The instant the rabbit prepared to leap, Yan Kesh threw the stone.
Not with ordinary physical strength.
He reached into the "imaginary drawer" in his mind. He extracted a portion of the pain he had stored earlier—the burning hunger—and exchanged it for a momentary burst of strength in his arm.
A small installment payment.
Whoosh!
The stone shot forward at twice the speed of an ordinary throw.
Thud!
It struck the rabbit squarely in the head. The creature convulsed briefly, then went still.
At the same moment, Yan Kesh's stomach churned violently. The hunger he had postponed surged back for two seconds—far more intense than before, accompanied by stabbing nausea—before he suppressed it once more.
Yan Kesh staggered, clutching his stomach, then broke into a wide grin. His white teeth showed starkly against his cracked lips.
"This mechanism is fair," he hissed.
"I borrow comfort as debt—then repay it with interest when I need power."
He picked up the rabbit's corpse. It was still warm.
When he returned to the black stone's area, something made him stop.
The crack on the stone had extended by another inch. And from within that fracture, faint wisps of black vapor seeped out—carrying the scent of old ink.
The world was recording his transactions.
And Yan Kesh had a premonition:
when the cracks eventually covered the entire surface of the stone, the true debt collector would arrive.
But that was a problem for the Yan Kesh of the future.
The Yan Kesh of the present needed to eat.
He began skinning the rabbit with a sharp stone, occasionally glancing at the cracked black stone—like a chess player exchanging gazes with an invisible opponent.
"You're recording?" he asked the stone.
The stone remained silent. Only the crack seemed to deepen.
"Good. Record everything," Yan Kesh said softly.
"Just make sure you don't miscalculate."
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