Chapter: 836

Jay stashed it in his bag along with his black cube, which he had been carrying this whole time.

“…Is it bigger?” he thought, looking at the cube in the bottom of his bag.

“Surely not.” He shook his head, closing it as he put the bag back on.

Jay headed back down the tower. He would have liked to rest but how he spent his next ten hours was crucial as the knights would be on the move.

As he exited the tower, the skeletons were still chopping the root, so Jay pulled out his chair and sat down, deciding to finally read the diary that Blue had brought him.

Of all the pages this diary contained, only the waxy pages had survived the test of time.

~

[The results were promising… Too promising to keep from prying eyes. Some corrupt fucker took an egg with them and some serum… I bet it was Anderson, but it doesn’t matter now. One egg was all it fucking took….

We went too far, we cut corners, we let this happen... Our desire to live has led to our destruction. There is no future for humans anymore, probably not even humankind. They escaped and spread too quickly.

I locked myself in the compound while my colleagues were taken or turned. After my food ran out, I left the safe room. Nothing but empty rooms, flipped desks and papers strewn everywhere - it was empty, gutted of life. The emergency lighting barely lit the hallways after weeks had passed.

Somehow I made it to the portal… now the only safe place left is here, inside the experiment of all places… in this damned crucible.

The experiment continues, not that they know it. But I won’t warn them. All of their fates are sealed anyway… now, many of them are turning too. The fruits aren’t growing anymore either, so there’s nothing to stop them.]

~

“Yeah, fuck Anderson.” Jay chuckled, not knowing any other details about this person.

“Alright, so the fruit is meant to stop them - them being the parasites most likely, as he referred to eggs… but this is basically saying that this is one big experiment? This whole valley enclosed by cliffs?” Jay shook his head in amazement.

Red’s shield seemed to make sense… at least the part of its design with the brown jagged outside did: it was the cliffs surrounding them.

A part of Jay was jealous, and to do experiments of such a grand scale was now subconsciously added onto his list of priorities.

“But how does this tie in to my quest? Who is innocent? Who is untainted?” he wondered, “Not only in this dungeon, but the real world too?”

“Being tainted doesn’t mean you are infected either. I wonder if it has something to do with innocence? But innocent of what?”

Jay took out the needle of hunger and gazed closed at it.

“Maybe these are two separate ideas that I’m just trying to force together. Maybe the needle is just to help me figure something else out… needle of hunger…” he scratched his chin.

“Hunger for what? Food? It can’t be that simple… Blood? Revenge… war? …lust? Well, if it was a hunger to murder, then sure, you could say they aren’t exactly innocent… at least their thoughts aren’t.”

“Hmm, ‘our desire to live has led to our destruction’… could it be a hunger for immortality?”

“Do the innocent not hunger though?” he pondered.

“It surely can’t just be hunger for food though, as it tells me people are tainted by something… even myself - even after I fill my belly with food.”