by Pegaz
The older man’s movements came to a halt. He stared at John in utter shock. Although he was not educated, he knew what “extend your life” meant.
His friends, whom he grew up with, had all died. Everyone he grew up with, suffered with, and laughed with was gone, and he was expected to die within a year’s time. Now, out of nowhere, there was a man giving him a chance to live a longer life? Surely, the dream had to end at some point. It was too good to be true.
And yet… Isake had never married or had kids, and his parents died so long ago he couldn’t even remember their faces. He had no friends or any attachments to this world where he was barely clinging to life. There was no reason for him to even be alive; did he really want to go on even longer? How much suffering could he take?
“You can follow me towards the capital afterwards,” John added, catching Isake off-guard. “You will never go hungry again.”
Isake looked up to John, eyes wide and watery.
“Who are you?”
“Somebody much stronger than those sorcerers you mentioned.”
Isake’s breathing grew unsteady.
“What do you want me to do?”
But John didn’t answer that question no matter how many times Isake asked. Isake’s mind was being overloaded with the pros and cons, and the pressure made his now-full stomach feel queasy. Finally, after reeling over the possibilities, he spat out his answer.
“Fine!” he cried out. “But nobody dies!”
“Deal!” John clapped his hands, a sickeningly sweet smile blossoming onto his face. “First, I need to tell you that the life-extending offer I will give you must be your reason for doing the things I ask. Can you understand that?”
Isake nodded his head.
“Great!” John beamed, legitimately excited for the first time in ages. “First, let’s start with something simple. Go steal something from anybody you want. The item, the amount, or who you steal it from doesn’t matter.”
He saw the wheels churning in Isake’s head, so John added for him not to ask any questions. He would be rewarded if he did as instructed, and that was enough to convince him to be on his way.
John closed the system and laid down on the floor, waiting for Isake to return. It only took Isake fifteen minutes to come running back while holding a piece of food, so John assumed that must be what he stole. He opened the system and saw that Isake’s sin count had gone up.
Sin: 16
John smiled. It worked, but he had to wonder about Isake’s motivation for stealing. Did he do it because John asked him, or did he simply want the piece of food? John had given him enough food to live for a long time, so Isake didn’t need it to survive; because of that, he got sins when he stole it. It still needed more testing, though.
“Isake, I can tell that you stole this, so good job.” John offered an encouraging smile to the older man. “Meet me outside the village in the opposite direction of where the river is. I’ll get what you need to do for my next task.”
John pointed in the direction he meant and teleported out of the village. He could see Isake with his Scan and watched the older man begin his walk in the right direction. Now, it was time to prepare for the next experiment.
Looking on the ground, John picked up a sturdy-looking stick. He took out a blank parchment from his Storage Space and wrapped it around the stick. That should do the trick. All he needed now was to wait for Isake to get there.
When Isake finally arrived, John handed him the stick and told him to throw it into a nearby house. John picked that house because he knew it was empty; he even told Isake that nobody was inside it. It was a fairly simple task, and even Isake could see that no one would get hurt. He approached the house and prepared to throw the stick.
However, before he could throw it, John tapped the parchment with his finger and blue flames engulfed it. Isake panicked a little but still threw it inside the house, taking off in the opposite direction once the stick hit its target.
John teleported back to Isake’s house and waited for him there while he checked his own sins again.
It works on the sins as long as the rewards I offer can inspire enough greed to cause their actions. I’ll check Isake’s sin count when he gets back, too.
It took over ten minutes for Isake to get back. John watched with his Scan as the older man returned to the scene of the crime to watch the home burn down. As a crowd gathered, he joined them in their efforts to put the fire out. John assumed he did this to seem less suspicious. Finally, Isake walked around the village to make sure nobody followed him home. It wasn’t long before he returned to his hut, covered in soot and smelling of smoke.
Isake
Rank: 0
Level: 0
Sin: 31
Both he and I have the same amount of sins for the two acts he did. It’s time for the final experiment, then.
“Isake,” John asked, “do you have somebody you hate inside this village?”
Isake nodded while clenching his fists.
“The next thing I will ask you is the last test.” John’s gaze pierced into Isake’s, who met it back with one almost as daunting. “If you do this, then what I promised as a reward is yours. It might be a little difficult for you to do it, but you must if you want the reward. Do you understand?”
John received a nod as an answer.
“Good.” John grinned. “I want you to go to the person you hate and shout insults at him. If he threatens you, insult him. If he hurts you, carry on insulting him. Only stop shouting insults after two minutes, do you understand? Do you know how to count to 120?”
“I understand.” Isake nodded but tilted his head in question. “Why do you want me to do this? I will get beaten for doing it.”
“It’s a test.” John put it quite simply, his smile still beaming. “I need you to do this to test something for me. I can’t tell you what it is, but I can tell you that after this, you will get the reward. After that, the person who beat you today will be beaten by you from tomorrow onwards—until either of you die.”
Isake gawked.
“That’s if you don’t follow me to the capital,” John added. “If you follow me, then that person will never see you again... unless you want to come back and show off to everyone in this village, of course.”
Isake’s shocked stare twisted into a grin at John’s last sentence. With a rush, he ran out of the house. John watched him with his Scan while taking a rest on the floor. It didn’t come as a surprise that the older man walked directly over to the area where the elders were sitting and talking. Though John couldn’t hear what was being said, he could tell that Isake was causing quite the spectacle.
After twenty seconds, the elder Isake was yelling at stood and walked up to him, punching him in the stomach. Isake went down on his hands and knees, but John could see his lips still moving. The elder kicked Isake in the stomach while he was on the floor, causing Isake to fly for 5 to 6 feet, but John could still see Isake moving his lips. John could only watch in mild amusement.
He wants the reward and has put everything on the line, but if he doesn’t do the full two minutes, then the test is useless and I will not reward him for it.
After sixty seconds, the elder walked up to Isake and began stomping all over his old, broken body. Isake was somehow still shouting.
Ninety seconds and the elder had bent down to strangle Isake, but John could tell he wasn’t trying to kill him.
A hundred and fifteen seconds and Isake’s eyes slowly rolled to the back of his head, but still shouting insults.
Five seconds later, Isake shouted one last insult before passing out.
Even if the test didn’t work, I will try to give him the reward because of his determination. Let’s see if it worked first, though.
He opened up the system.
Welcome to the Idle System 5.0.
Name: John
Title: Demon
Age: 39
Idlers: 0/616
Skill Points: 0<
br />
Life Pool: 3
Toxin Pool: 39.9B
Sin: 231
Looking at the sin amount, John burst out laughing.
So the “torture per minute” part of the Sinners System can be different forms of torture!
Shouting insults didn’t seem like much, but if a person kept shouting insults without stopping, then would the system classify it as psychological torture? Or a different type of torture? Either way, John had earned 200 sin points over the course of a mere two minutes. If only he could get a million people to shout at a million others for a few years...
Through the Scan, John could see the elder who beat up Isake and everybody else had walked off, leaving Isake alone on the muddy path. John teleported to Isake, grabbed his arm, and teleported back to the old man’s house.
Though I’ve promised him an extended life, the only way to do that is by “forcing” immortality on him. I’ve never done it, but I know how to. Either I fulfil my promise or Isake dies, but after tonight, I will go to the capital.
Chapter 9
Forcing
John closed his eyes and recalled what he’d read about “forcing” immortality.
He first heard it from Amanda back in the immortal village. She’d explained what it was, but not in great detail. The Rogue Sect had little information about it. They only had one book that was four to five pages, and all of those were theories rather than experiences. Inside the library on the planet where he had his first long-distance mission, he read four million five hundred thousand books, and only two of them were about “forcing” immortality.
It explained that the age test crystal pushed Life Power to the very centre neuron inside the brain to cause it to mutate and, in turn, it would then cause the other neurons around it to mutate. That was why “forcing” had a 99% death rate.
Humans trying to find a single neuron smaller than the size of the width of a hair between a hundred billion other neurons, and then attempting to push Life Power into it had some huge odds against them. Neurons were so compact that a hair width strand of Life Power would be hard to manoeuvre around them. Getting to the centre of the brain was nigh impossible.
Nobody knew for sure how age test crystals did it, but a human duplicating the technique perfectly was unheard of. There was a theory that on the twenty-first birthday, the neurons in the brain were aligned in a certain pattern to finish their growth cycle. This was allegedly how the age test crystal determined where to push Life Power through the maze. If the theory was true, then it also explained why “forcing” was much harder, as the neurons were bigger and moved around the brain more after the twenty-first birthday.
John took out a herb that had Life Power inside it, but he put it back after thinking about it more thoroughly. Mortals didn’t have the Life Power mutation in the brain, so if Isake ate this herb, it might kill him rather than heal him because of the state he was in.
He placed his hand on Isake’s back and pushed a small amount of poison inside him. This poison could heal injuries in small doses. Almost immediately, John could see wounds healing on the man’s skin. Even the bruises on his neck turned paler before disappearing.
A few minutes later, Isake woke up, confused. He looked around and found John and familiar surroundings.
“Welcome back!” John smiled at him. “You passed the test so I healed you. When you’re ready, we can begin with the reward. Here is a little gift before we begin. Take it.”
He gave Isake a pound of the delicacy fish he caught a while ago. John remembered the taste and had some, too. When Isake sunk his teeth into the flesh of the fish, his eyes began tearing up.
If I’m unsuccessful and this is your last meal, at least your last memory will be of food so delectable that it made you cry.
After they finished eating, Isake said he was ready for his reward. John had him sit down on the floor while he stood behind him.
“Don’t move at all,” he instructed. “If you move even the tiniest bit while I’m doing this, it could hurt you enough to make you want to die.”
Isake nodded, and John was stunned by his movement right after the instruction not to move. Had he already started the process, Isake would have already interrupted the ceremony.
Steeling his drive, John proceeded to make six threads. He touched Isake’s head with them in the north, east, south, west, upward and downward positions. This was to find the very centre neuron. With the downward positioned thread, John would have to push it through the back of Isake’s neck then travel upwards.
He pumped a numbing poison inside the threads as they travelled through the skin towards the skull. When the threads touched the skull, John had them turn into tiny drills to force their way through. After a moment, all six threads passed through the skull and Isake was not screaming in pain, which meant so far so good.
John closed his eyes as he concentrated on all the threads’ movement. He had stopped cultivating and used one part of the mind to control each thread. This way, he was in total control the whole time.
As soon as the threads went past the skull, John’s Scan could see inside Isake’s brain. His Scan picked up every detail, even the neurons. Each neuron he saw was a little grey ball with grey wires coming out of it, reaching out in all directions. They were all connected and John could even see the electrical signals travelling through the wires. A few neurons moved ever so slightly and connected their wires with other neurons as they moved.
John’s threads were smaller than a hair’s width and could pass through the wires with room to spare, but their wires blocked every turn. The first thing he tried was to touch the wires with his threads, but without Life Power or any poison. As soon as the threads touched the wire, John noticed Isake trying hard not to twitch.
So touching the wires is like sending a pain signal to Isake’s brain. While one or two might be tolerable on the surface, deeper in the brain could do permanent damage. It’s best to avoid them all, then.
John moved the threads around the wires, making sure none of his threads touched any of them. If the neurons dared to move and touch the threads, then there was nothing John could do but hope for the best.
After thirty minutes, all six threads came to the same spot in the centre of the brain, but there was a problem. At the very centre, there were two neurons wrapped around each other. They were so close together that even with all six threads pointing to the centre, either one could be the centre neuron.
Are all neurons like this in the centre, or is Isake just unlucky?
“Ah…” John took a deep breath. “Hey, Isake, don’t move your head at all. Don’t speak or nod or anything, but move your right hand to answer me, all right?”
Isake lifted his right hand and put his thumb up.
“Good. Now here’s what’s going on.” John went on to explain that inside Isake’s brain, there were two neurons joined together. With a sour taste in the back of his throat, John admitted to not knowing which one to give Life Power to. “If I choose the wrong one, it could kill you.”
Dead silence. Isake didn’t so much as twitch at the news. John continued his proposition.
“I’m giving the choice to you,” he said. “Do you want to go through with it or not? If you do, which one do you pick? Left or right? Put up one finger for left and two fingers for right.”
Isake had lowered his hand after hearing John and didn’t move for almost a minute. Then he took a deep breath without moving his head and he put his arm and thumb up again. All fingers except his index finger were tucked in, signalling one.
“Understood.” John nodded. “You’re braver than most people, Isake. I hope this works out for you.”
The threads inside the brain moved closer and touched the left neuron. John pushed a single unit of Life Power inside then removed the threads as quickly as possible.
Isake rolled about while clutching his head in pain, like what John did when the age test crystal mutated his neurons. What surprised John the most, though,
was that Isake did not utter one scream, cry for help, or even made a noise at all.
Fifteen minutes later, Isake was lying on the floor, unmoving. John could not hear him breathing anymore. He checked the man’s pulse, but nothing.
He was gone.
John sat down and closed his eyes. He lowered his head. Sitting here, it was eerily quiet. All he could hear was the rain pattering against the straw roof of the hut.
After a few minutes, John picked up Isake with his threads. He put his hand on the straw wall, using his fire element to burn the house down. He then teleported to a hill about seven miles away from the village.
With the earthen element, he made a 6-foot long, 4-foot wide, and 8-foot deep hole for Isake’s body. He gently lowered Isake down into the tomb with his threads. John used his earthen element to cover his body up. As a finishing touch, he created a tombstone to mark the grave.
He made the tombstone from one solid piece of grey rock. John used the earthen elements to bring it here from deeper in the planet, then used the same elements to sculpt it. Isake’s face was on the tombstone, but a younger, more clean-shaven version of himself with shorter hair and a smiling face. His name was etched below, but John left out the ‘Peasant’ part.
John took out a few platinum coins and used his metal element to coat the whole tombstone. This would keep it looking brand new for much longer and make it much harder to destroy.
When he finished, the tombstone looked like it was made from marble. Isake’s smiling face gleamed coldly in the warm light of the setting sun.
Chapter 10
Soul
John stood there, looking at Isake’s tombstone.
He could kill anyone he wanted, and if given the right circumstances, he could destroy an entire planet. He could use all the basic elements for whatever he needed, and he was immune to most—if not all—ailments of mankind.
But he couldn’t help anybody.
Maybe when he died the first time back on Earth, he’d been sent to hell. Maybe this was all an illusion, and his life was nothing but his own personal torture. It seemed as if everything he got in this life was taken away not moments later. It just wasn’t fair.