Chapter 33: Room 103, Cursed Room – ‘Athanasia’s Human Farm’ (2)
[User: ㅁㅁㅁㅁㅁㅁ
Date: ㅁㅁ Day
Current Location: Floor 1, Room 103 (Cursed Room – Athanasia’s Human Farm)
Sage’s Advice: 3]
Standing there in a daze, I watched the people.
Before my eyes were enormous, pure white structures that were far too big to take in at once.
Between these structures were the beings we had thought of as ‘monsters’ – the white giants with multiple tentacles hurriedly scuttling about.
Countless incomprehensible machines surrounded me. Some looked like giant smartphones, while others defied any solid form.
But there was one common feature.
All of them wore silver bracelets on one of their tentacles. With each flicker of the silver bracelets, something changed in the humans.
Were these tools designed to control them?
In the space constructed by these structures, I could see people, all wearing what looked like restrictive chokers, living their respective fantasies.
Perhaps at the beginning, they were assigned ‘human roles’ and lived on in their illusions. As their souls were gradually drained away, they’d eventually be trapped in the bodies of beasts, only to be reduced to mere mindless entities.
Before my eyes lay a world where humans had literally become resources.
Now, I struggled to even remember the last day at the Animal Farm. I could only recall that everything crumbled, and our little rebellion vanished with a single gesture from the giants.
What if I had died then too?
At least, I wouldn’t have to endure the pain I’m suffering now.
The cow, pig, cat, dog, snake, wolf, and rat—all shattered in an instant, reassigned new roles.
And only the goose managed to break free from that cursed cycle.
The one who pulled me out was a white giant.
It wasn’t until much later that I learned his comrades called him Theodus. He reset the farm and pulled me out, and only me, at that.
Why?
I couldn’t ask the giant, as communication was entirely off the table, so I was left alone to endlessly reflect on it.
‘Affinity.’
The blessing I received from the Hotel.
The Blessing of Affinity had prevented the weird monkeys from attacking me on the first day, and now it seemed to have made these soul-devouring monsters take a liking to me.
The giant’s mindset could be likened to that of a farmer who, upon coming across a particularly cute chicken, decides to pull it from the flock to raise as a pet. Humans might eat chicken like there’s no tomorrow and grind baby chicks by the thousands, yet many still keep pet chickens.
If humans are this complex, how could beings that evidently surpass them in ability be any simpler?
At least, that’s the furthest I could take my understanding.
Fortunately—or should I say unfortunate—Theodus didn’t seem to torment or abuse me. Rather, he treated me like a cute pet, giving my head a little pat while passing by, and before I knew it, some of the other giants picked up the habit as well.
The food and water weren’t served in a demoralizing way either; there was just your regular energy bar and a cup of water, always.
Yet, if my speculation is correct, I’m probably regarded as a pet. Not many people would rescue a chicken from a poultry farm only to mistreat it.
If all this stems from the blessing I received at the Hotel, then I’ve truly hit the jackpot with this so-called blessing.
– BLEChapter:
A signal echoed throughout the building.
Now, I understood what that sound meant.
The silver bracelets of the giants moving about emitted a bright white glow, and countless humans, each entrapped in their own worlds, began to emerge.
Even as they walked out, they were still immersed in their illusions.
Their minds lingered in an endless realm of fantasy, yet their bodies moved on their own, awaiting their turn to be ‘harvested.’
As time passed, a bizarre gray giant appeared.
While most other giants resembled humanoids with a few tentacles instead of arms, that gray thing lacked legs altogether; it was just a mass of many, many tentacles instead.
It looked like a frayed starfish magnified a million times over, with nothing on it but tentacles!
What a sight to behold!
Why was that one giant so different from the rest?
Even the Teacher didn’t have the answers. To be fair, the Teacher’s situation wasn’t fundamentally different from mine.
He had simply been trapped here for an unfathomably longer time than I. That’s why he seemed to know so much more.
Tentacles extended forth, piercing through the heads of the humans.
I nearly wept the first time I witnessed this gruesome spectacle, but now it merely intrigued me.
Why was there not a single drop of blood even though they were being stabbed through the skull?
Rationally speaking, brains were the only thing in a head, so how could those tentacles extract… that thing?
That thing.
A cluster that appeared vaguely white.
At first glance, it looked like a small cloud, and at another glance, it sparkled like a shining stone.
In terms of appearance, it seemed like an odd amalgamation of solid, liquid, and gaseous characteristics all rolled into one.
‘Fragments of Rationality,’ ‘The Joint of Soul and Body.’
That’s how the Teacher described it.
When convoluted like that, it becomes infinitely complex; yet, when simplified, pulling that thing out repeatedly would squeeze a person’s intellect dry, pushing them closer to the mindset of a microbe over time.
That appears to be the reason why the giants of this world, the Athanasias, domesticates humans.
In fact, I’ve heard there are several farms for other intelligent beings, too, where their intellects are drained, but I’ve never been to any of those places. I only oscillated between the human farm and what I’ve dubbed the basement.
If I were alone, I wouldn’t have had any inkling about the nature of those places at all.
Before the Teacher enlightened me, I’d known nothing.
They routinely extracted rationality from humans still possessing it, while those who became less productive and their intellect lowered to that of beasts were ‘disposed of’ indiscriminately. I stared blankly at the occurrences before me.
How long was I supposed to witness this cruel spectacle?
Time elapsed without mercy.
I no longer knew how many days had passed. I thought I’d been counting until Day 10, but
this white desert filled with blinding light was like hell crowded with apathetic individuals, and even counting the days became unbearable torture, leading me to throw in the towel.
‘WHOOSH.’
The mechanical hum resonated—a sound I had grown disturbingly familiar with.
Every time I heard that noise, Theodus always showed up.
Ah, what a relief it was.
The one glimmer of sanity I clung to in this hell was that I had at least one entity to communicate with.
It was time to visit the Teacher.
Each time I ventured to the basement—if that was even what it was—I had a burning question.
Honestly, I couldn’t even confirm whether it was truly the basement or not, but let’s proceed with that assumption—how in the world did the Athanasias move around?
Once Theodus’s tentacle flickered with a spark of the silver bracelet, I found myself in a completely different location.
From my observations so far, the silver bracelet had the power to manipulate the minds of sentient beings like humans.
In simpler terms, it meant Theodus temporarily placed my consciousness into a deep slumber before moving me to another place.
From that perspective, I had no means of knowing where I might end up. However, I called it the basement simply because it was always cloaked in darkness.
With nothing but a dim glow to guide me, I stood in a colossal, vast, and utterly empty arena.
At least 20 Athanasias were busy operating complex contraptions that were entirely beyond my comprehension.
In the center of the room stood what resembled a massive water tank.
And inside…
There was something so overwhelmingly huge it made those white giants look like mere digits. The white giants were roughly 6 to 8 meters tall, but that thing in the tank easily surpassed 50 meters.
I couldn’t even begin to guess its size accurately.
Yet, it was beautiful.
I thought each time I gazed upon it—the Teacher was an unbelievably stunning creature.
The soft luminous glow illuminating this space emanated from the Teacher’s very being.
He resembled an exceptionally gigantic whale adorned with countless crystals, with radiant dust floating freely among them.
Endlessly, strange beings emerged from his outer form only to be absorbed back into him.
Rather than just being a single organism, he resembled a small universe.
An infinite cycle of birth and demise.
With my woefully insufficient descriptive skills, there was no way for me to capture this sight in words.
All I could grasp was that it was exquisite.
That existence appeared to be the most beautiful organism in the world.
For about 30 seconds, I stood there, mesmerized by the single source of radiance in this painful realm.
And that was when I heard a voice.
“Child… You’ve come to see me again.”
“Yes, Teacher. I came to see you today as well.”
“Did you wade through another torrent of pain today?”
“I witnessed more people withering away and perishing without end today.”
“Pain is not eternal. Endure, and be patient. If you wait without revealing that your intellect has recovered, the rightful moment will come.”
The restoration of my intellect.
To be precise, it would be more accurate to say that the extraction of my intellect had ceased.
I became aware of this only after meeting the Teacher, but the halting of my intellectual extraction was merely a stroke of luck.
Back when I was a goose on the farm, it seems that something happened one day when the farmer attempted to pluck my feathers, resulting in my restrictive collar sustaining minor damage; that’s when the extraction process came to a stop. It resembled a chicken in a poultry farm suddenly ceasing to lay eggs, yet herein lay the enigma—why wasn’t I disposed of? That question still eludes me.
More urgently… when will the end to this suffering arrive?
When, when will that day come? I’m always pondering this. Could these beings truly be either gods or demons?
With a single gesture, they toy with human hearts and confine them within an everlasting prison of illusion; how could I ever escape from these giants?
“To a chick, the eagle seems like a god, and to a puppy, the human bears the same reverence.”
“Your salvation is near. For now, just sleep peacefully.”
—Ahhh
At the moment I heard those words, my eyelids grew unexpectedly heavy.
As I drifted off to sleep, I prayed fervently—for the realization of my last remaining hope.
I wished for something to materialize; to escape this farm of pain and reunite with everyone once again…
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