Omniscient First-Person's Viewpoint

Chapter 25 – Resistance

A ball made of leather flew in the sky. A roaring sound was heard along with a joyful cry.

Tap

When the clawed foot slammed the hard concrete, a powerful sound was produced with a split beat.

Concrete, unlike soil, does not absorb vibrations, so the impact was completely transformed into sound and came to me.

“Woof! Woof!”

A short break ended, I thought as I saw Azzy running to me with a ball.

I faced the approaching calamity with unfocused eyes.

My rest time was proportional to the distance of the ball.

If I threw it high, Azzy would catch it late.

If I threw it far, Azzy would arrive late.

So, at first, I threw it as far as I could without overdoing it, so that Azzy could run away and catch the ball and I could rest until she comes back running.

But nothing was permanent in this world… Except for Azzy’s stamina.

I figured it out by throwing the ball again and again.

The more it was repeated, the shorter the distance it traveled got.

The leather ball that soared high in the sky for the first few times just fell to the ground slightly above my head.

Now even the rolling distance was longer than the flying distance.

Unlike before Azzy wasn’t in the posture to run either. She just squatted at my feet, bite the ball as it rolled, and came over to me. Then I picked up the ball again and flick it with my still-good wrist.

Then the moment finally came.

“Wait.”

Humans are also beasts by nature, so animalistic intuitions came to us too all of a sudden. The sense of the beast in my heart, which had come to me after a long time, was whispering to me;

If you throw more than this, your shoulder will hurt.

“Woof?”

I raised my hand instead of trying to throw the ball. I felt a strange creaking in my shoulder.

It’s like when you turn a pencil sharpener, the shaft is misaligned and the handle shakes to and fro. Just like that, it was a familiar sound, but it felt like it should never come out of my arm.

I stopped throwing the ball and dropped my hands. Azzy came to me with a puzzled face.

“Today’s ball game is over.”

“Woof woof! more! more!”

“I can throw more. However.”

I unpacked the clothes I was wearing. The sweat-soaked entry-level shirt was scattered, revealing my wretched body hidden underneath.

It was a skinny and agile body specialized in escaping and survival. I hadn’t felt any discomfort in my body so far, but now that my durability was being tested, the time I spent with laziness in the past was haunting me. If I knew I would be locked up in Tantalus and would be expected to be a throwing machine, I’d do some exercise when others had recommended it…

Regret came too late, however. I just hoped that the future me would not regret me of today, and I just decided to do my best at each moment.

With regrets behind me, I sat down and showed Azzy my reddened shoulders.

“Then my shoulder is broken. Doesn’t it matter in any way?”

“Woof!”

“You want me to die?”

Still, Azzy seemed dissatisfied with not being able to play anymore. With a fresh expression on her face, she began to squirm around me.

Huh…

“What? Look, if you made me throw the ball now. I will become a body that can no longer raise my arms, and I will suffer from the aftereffects and eventually die suddenly at some point.”

“Woof!”

“What? You don’t die just because you don’t have arms? This… You can fall down the stairs and you can’t grab the railing because your arm doesn’t go up, or you can get killed when terrorist attacks and threatens to raise your hand and your arm doesn’t go up! Discomfort in one of the bodies is in itself a very serious threat!”

“Woof woof… .”

“Look when I die, a human being who can throw a ball as obediently as me from this abyss will disappear from this world! Are you going to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs or the machine that throws the ball, just for a short fun?”

“woof… hate it.”

“hahaha! do you understand now? If you don’t want me to break, give me a break!”

It was time to teach this intelligent beast the basic concepts of work efficiency, fatigue limits, and rest.

Azzy began to think deeply about something, then grabbed my arm and brought it to her mouth.

What? Are you trying to catch me now instead of the ball?

I can’t lay golden eggs, so now you just want goose meat? You can’t be that stupid…

What? Wait a minute…

“Sorry, sorry! I’ll throw the ball, so please don’t eat me!”

As I was about to pull out my arm, Azzy’s snout approached faster than I could.

I closed my eyes, anticipating the terrible pain. Then, with a click, something moist and soft brushed my shoulder.

When I opened my eyes, Azzy was carefully licking my reddened shoulders.

“What? I said it hurts, so are you giving me some oil massage?”

“Woof.”

Ah, yes. The king of dogs can’t eat a living human.

No, this… I couldn’t read her thoughts, so I flinched without realizing it.

I can’t help it. It’s a self-protection instinct.

Embarrassed, I scratched my head and stared at Azzy who was licking meticulously.

She was an evil boss. If the throwing machine can’t throw well, she’ll oil it first to use it continuously.

“Hey. No matter how much it’s said that the king of the beasts licking your wounds heals them, would this be better? This isn’t a wound, it’s a body worn out from overuse…”

I was muttering like that, but I felt a strange coolness around my shoulder. Like I had a window on my body so that the wind can pass through, but it didn’t feel cold but it was refreshing.

Maybe it was because of the saliva, yeah wetting my arm would definitely feel cool.

I raised my arm just in case.

Although it was a little stiff, my arm moved much more easily than before. No, it might be even smoother than before throwing the ball.

“Is this real?”

I’ve heard that the King of the Beast’s act of licking is holy water, but is that true? Or is Azzy special?

As I tilted my head, Azzy looked over my shoulder and barked as if it was over.

“Woof! All right?”

“It’s better. The arm won’t break. But it just got better, so let’s take a break.”

“Woof woof!”

Azzy put her upper body on my thigh and fell face down. I ran my fingers through Azzy’s hair and looked around.

According to the golem’s words, supplies should arrive soon.

How the hell would they get here though?

Common sense said that they would just drop it. But is it possible to reach the bottom of the abyss by ordinary means? If it can arrive, how would I get it?

You’re not going to tell me to take it with my body, are you?

My body…

Oh, come to think of it, there were also vampires. I turned my head to look at the underground arsenal in the distance. The entrance to the underground arsenal, located as sinister as the door to the abyss, was firmly closed today.

“You can’t get up from the slumber.”

It is said that the older you get, the more sleep you get. If the correlation between age and sleep time is even 10% of what people say, it’s not surprising that the average daily sleep time for vampires converges to 24 hours.

She also had orthostatic hypotension, so she couldn’t easily get out of a wheelchair, no, a coffin. Even so, she was overbearing because she had a teacher kind of relationship, so she gave up her precious Jinhyeol. She can’t even get a blood supply anymore.

[TN: As Reaperscan has dropped it, I’ll continue its translation. Hope you guys will like my work. Thank you]