Pitch darkness.
A feeling of falling.
Pressure.
Encroaching danger.
Increasing fear.
These were the few words that could describe Ryuk as he disappeared rapidly down the formation. The darkness was so deep that he couldn’t see anything at all, and all he felt was the sensation of endlessly falling below.
"Activate Nano-Reaper!" Ryuk ordered in his mind as the humongous scythe snaked out of the void, landing in his grasp. Ryuk turned upside down, making his head shoot down with speed through the abyssal darkness.
He could feel the space behind him constricting as if it were being locked down, and he knew well that he needed to speed up.
But accelerating through this darkness, where his eyes couldn’t see anything, created unfathomable pressure on him, causing his heart to beat rapidly. A strange feeling of encroaching danger crept upon him.
The concept of time was lost to him in this scenario, but quickly, he found something within the darkness—a ginormous vortex, seemingly more of a black hole, that appeared in his line of sight. It rotated with speed, as various dark and crimson runic lines flashed on its gaseous surface.
’What is that?’ Ryuk asked. The darkness of this vortex was so deep that it created a sharp contrast with the darkness around him, allowing him to barely see it.
It was like falling into a large ocean, but one made of gas.
As Ryuk tried to slow down his speed, he failed, and in the next moment, he could only wrap himself into a ball. The edges of his clothes wound around his head before he disappeared into the vortex.
Time seemed to have paused momentarily, with his sense of self and balance disappearing for a while.
But then—
BAAAAAAAM
BAAAAAAAM
BAAAAAAAM
His sense of pain and touch returned as he felt himself slam into the ground, bouncing off it a couple of times before finally having his motion stopped. He crashed onto an object, causing him to groan from the pain.
Quickly snapping his eyes open, he was welcomed by the image of a pointed blade flashing with speed towards his head, as if to drill a hole through his forehead. At the last second, he could only raise his scythe to the blade’s edge.
BAAAAAANG
A small sound of collision—yet with so much power—his arm bone holding the scythe shattered into pieces. Ryuk slammed his left foot to the ground, shooting to the side to avoid the entrapment.
Quickly looking at the figure responsible, he saw a buzzing yellow-black bee, standing at a height of one meter, with 0.5-meter-long buzzing wings.
Its four eyes stared at Ryuk’s figure, but then a thought appeared in his mind.
’The Formation Circle.’
According to MadWhite, there ought to be another Formation Circle where he could have come out from, and when Ryuk looked behind him, he found it. But with something extra.
On the Formation Circle he had emerged from stood a broken 10-meter-tall home, made of clay. And now, bees—like the one that had almost stung him—were starting to move out of the destroyed home.
The bees had built their home on the transporter, for whatever reason, and now that Ryuk had been thrown out of it, he had managed to destroy their home.
Immediately, his face paled when he realized the stage of each bee.
"They... They are all Grade C!!!" Ryuk thought in shock, his face paling even more.
Ryuk himself was only at the Core Stage of the Plane of Ascension, equaling the Upper Tier of Grade D, but these bees were each at Grade C, equaling the Peak of the Plane of Ascension. His face paled even more when he felt a deeper, more threatening aura rising from the bottom of the house.
In the next instant, a notification flashed—
[New Quest Issued.]
[Survive the Encroachment of the Huryaga Bees!]
[Rewards...]
The rewards of the quest barely flashed before Ryuk’s gaze, but he paid them no attention as he shut away from where he stood, disappearing into the distance.
BUUUZZZ
BUUUZZZ
BUUUZZZ
Immediately, all the bees began buzzing loudly, and in an instant, about fifty of them chased after Ryuk’s figure, their sharp stingers surprisingly pointed towards him.
The bees were flying backward!
’Fuck, fuck!’ Ryuk screamed in his mind as he rapidly moved through the bush, but then he soon realized something that caused horror to spread across his face.
’What the fuck?! Why am I so slow!?’
Right now, Ryuk’s legs, which would have normally turned into a blur based on how he moved in Endearth, now seemed like he was jogging instead.
He was essentially running like an ordinary mortal, and horror appeared on his face when he felt the bees’ buzzing getting louder.
Turning behind him, he could see the dozens of sharp stingers pointed at his back, and his face paled as he exerted more strength in his feet—yet he was still so ridiculously slow.
’Fuck, fuck!’
BUUUUUUUUUUUUZZZ
A loud buzzing rang out behind him, and he quickly turned to the side, only to find his ability to turn had also become incredibly difficult, resulting in him sliding down to the ground.
But that maneuver saved his life, as a tree trunk was dug into by the sharp sting of a bee. The bee buzzed crazily, trying to remove itself from the tree trunk, only to fail.
Quickly picking himself up, Ryuk continued his run like a dog, his clothes soon getting wet from sweat.
And after five hours of relentless running, dodging, and avoiding the bees, Ryuk finally watched them turn their backs and buzz away from him.
Immediately after, he collapsed onto his back, revealing a couple of large red boils behind him—the places where he had been critically stung by the bees.
Even one of his eyes had a large boil swollen over it, along with his left arm, which had swelled up to three times its normal size.
[Congratulations, Host has completed the Quest!]
"Fuck!"