He had done it.
He had let go of his way back.
Finding the rope again would prove to be almost impossible.
The subtle sensation of touching a rope could barely be felt under the endless assault of torture.
Nick took controlled and deliberate steps forward, trusting his feeling of balance more than his sight.
This was the only way he could hope to find the rope again.
He only needed to retread his steps, but that was easier said than done.
If his angle changed in any way, he might completely miss the rope on his way back.
In fact, relying on that method was idiotic.
The chances of success were minuscule.
Nick might as well just randomly run into the darkness.
And he knew that.
He knew all of this.
But he still did it.
He took a risk.
The biggest risk a human could take.
Either he succeeded or died.
There was even a possibility that he would succeed and then die.
After all, as far as he knew, no one had ever gotten the Nightmare's ability.
But that might not be completely accurate.
What if someone had gotten the ability but died before anyone else could see it?
What if the Nightmare killed anyone who got its ability, like Nurse Alice?
That might be possible.
However, Nick believed that this wasn't the case.
Everyone suspected that the Nightmare was not conscious.
The reason for that was the fact that it killed anyone who fell unconscious in the darkness.
Most Specters, even weak and dumb ones, tended to keep their food source alive unless they gained power by killing somebody.
For example, the Talker let people go after it became impossible to get them to engage with it in a conversation anymore.
The Grey Room let people go before their minds vanished.
It was quite obvious that the Nightmare gained power by torturing people, and based on how Specters generally worked and operated, experienced Extractors were quite certain that it didn't get power from actively killing people.
But it still did so, even though that reduced the amount of food it had.
Usually, people would just believe that this was a Specter without any intelligence, but that didn't seem feasible when it came to an Eternal.
An Eternal must have had enough time to evolve intelligence.
So, why was it killing its food?
The most likely explanation was that it was unconscious.
Maybe it was sleeping.
Maybe it was in some form of trance.
Maybe it wasn't paying attention.
No matter what it was, it most likely wasn't conscious of any human suffering under its power.
And that was what Nick was betting on.
If it wasn't conscious of any human, he might be able to get its ability without it noticing.
This was the only hope he had left.
If that didn't work, he would die.
Nick had known since the beginning that the chances of his death were over 99%.
However, if he didn't put in even more effort, he wouldn't be able to redeem himself.
In his mind, the only way to redeem himself was to do his absolute best to improve the lives of a huge group of people.
He had to do so much good that the gratitude of countless people outweighed the hatred of the two thousand or so he had killed.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be better than any of the people he despised.
Truthfully, right now, he knew that he wasn't any better, which was why he had to give his best to improve.
He was in an indescribably deep moral and emotional debt, and he wanted to do everything in his power to get out of this debt.
And that was why he had to do his absolute best to become powerful enough to achieve his goal.
Nick took a step forward, and countless spears of burning metal shot through his body.
'I deserve this!' Nick thought with gritted teeth.
He took another step forward and felt poisonous gas entering all of his orifices and turning him into liquid from the inside.
'I deserve this!' Nick thought.
He took one more step forward, and two huge grindstones ground him into dust.
'I deserve this!'
'I deserve this!'
'I deserve this!'
Nick kept walking forward in uniform steps.
The only way he could cope with all of the unimaginable torture was to tell himself that he deserved to feel all of this.
If he didn't tell that to himself, he might have given up.
Nick looked into the endless sea of hatred with determined eyes.
The endless sea of hatred overlapped with the hatred all the killed people from the Dregs felt for him inside Nick's mind.
Nick felt like the people of the Dregs were taking their revenge.
They wanted to make him feel the same pain they felt.
They wanted to make him lose the same things they had lost.
Nick just stepped forward.
And another step.
He never stopped walking.
An eternity of endless hatred.
Unstoppable pain.
'I deserve this!'
'I deserve this!'
'I deserve this!'
'I deserve this!'
He kept walking forever.
Time had long since lost its meaning.
The hatred became more and more overwhelming.
Nothing made sense anymore.
What was his body?
Where was his body?
What was he?
What was his mind?
What was his soul?
Pain, hatred, and reality turned into a colorless sludge and became indiscernible from each other.
The illusions of the Nightmare had become so abstract that they turned into random colors.
Pain turned into colors.
Colors turned into space.
Space turned into time.
Time turned into pain.
Forward became later.
Earlier became less painful.
Later was red.
Pain was backward.
Nothing made sense anymore.
Only one thing was certain.
Only one.
'I deserve this!'
This was the only certainty.
He deserved this.
And he knew it.
This was the only thing he knew.
Step by step.
Deeper in the endless hatred.
A step.
Another step.
Another step.
Another step.
Another step.
Another step.
On and on.
For all of eternity.