Starting out as a Dragon Slave
Chapter 138: Absorbing Emotions?

Chapter 138: Chapter 138: Absorbing Emotions?

The months flowed in a monotonous and atrocious cycle, where time had neither shape nor color. Mordred no longer measured his life in days, but in corpses. In faces frozen in their final expression, in empty gazes staring into eternity, in warm skins that inexorably cooled under his fingers. He had stopped counting how many humans he had been forced to kill after exceeding a hundred, compelled by the dragons to perfect the morbid art they imposed upon him: methodical assassination.

He stood each day in the dark arena, his feet sinking slightly into the compact sand stained brown by the dried blood of previous days. The dagger in his hand gleamed faintly under the flickering light, while ten terrified humans were pushed before him by draconic guards with impassive faces. Unarmed beings, with hands trembling like autumn leaves, shifting eyes desperately seeking an exit that didn’t exist. Their faces were pale under the eerie light of blue-flamed torches that encircled the pit, casting moving shadows on the black stone walls. They sometimes whispered prayers in languages he didn’t understand, often begging in those he did. Mordred no longer listened.

The blade, austere, black as obsidian, perfectly balanced with its dragon scale handle, had become an extension of his hand. It no longer trembled. Neither did he. He was quick, precise, efficient. Each strike reached a vital point throat, heart, temple each gesture was minimalist, without excess, without hesitation, conserving energy with surgical precision. He executed each human as one performs a mechanical gesture, coldly necessary, consciously avoiding any prolonged eye contact.

Each time a body collapsed before him, slumping with a dull rustle onto the sand, his personal system activated, silent, invisible to the eyes of the dragons observing from the stone bleachers, but omnipresent for Mordred.

[Successful statistic absorption] Strength: +1 Agility: +2 Endurance: +1

It was now part of the process, immutable as the sunrise. Mordred no longer strained his mind to steal these forces from victims. He asked for nothing. It was automatic, beyond his control, as if his body had become a machine programmed for this task. The system methodically absorbed the remnants of life from those he struck down, drawing in their attributes like an avid sponge. And slowly, day after day, his body grew in power, speed, and resilience, as if nourished by these forced sacrifices. His muscles became denser, his reflexes sharper, his skin more resistant to training blows.

But one day, after finishing the last man of a particularly bloody series a former soldier with brown eyes who had stared at him with visceral hatred until the very end something unusual happened. Mordred was standing, motionless in his habitual posture, his breathing calm, his face impassive, when a different notification suddenly appeared before his eyes:

[You have absorbed the victim’s resentment]

Mordred felt a cold shiver run down his spine like an icy snake. This message was new, resolutely different. Never before had he received such information. He stared into the emptiness before him for a moment, perplexed, with slightly furrowed brows.

- "Resentment? What resentment? What does it mean... to absorb emotions?" he thought, his analytical mind immediately attempting to understand this unexpected evolution of his system.

But before he could even reflect further, a strange taste invaded his mouth. A bitter and ashy flavor, acrid, similar to the cold dust of a long-extinguished fire, as if he had licked the walls of an abandoned chimney.

He slowly swallowed his saliva, trying to forget this disturbing sensation. But with the next victim a gray-haired woman with braided hair who was silently sobbing a new notification appeared after he had precisely slit her throat:

[You have absorbed the victim’s fear]

This time, the taste became more acrid, almost burning at the back of his throat, like white-hot metal. Mordred felt a knot form in his stomach, tight and painful. Then, victim after victim, other notifications emerged, relentless, imperturbable, each briefly illuminating in his field of vision:

[You have absorbed the victim’s sadness]

[You have absorbed the victim’s despair]

The draconic guard pushed a trembling young man before him. Mordred eliminated him with a quick strike to the heart. The body collapsed, and a new notification appeared:

[You have absorbed the victim’s regret]

As he stood amid this dozen freshly killed bodies, Mordred finally gave free rein to his thoughts, his inner monologue boiling behind his mask of impassivity:

- "What is happening to me? Is this an evolution of the system, or an additional curse? So now I not only steal their life force, but also the emotions that inhabit them in their last breath... Is this how this world works? The more I kill, the more I become a receptacle not only of power, but also of suffering?

It’s as if each death creates a bridge between their consciousness and mine. I feel their emotions infiltrating me, seeking to settle in. This resentment is not mine, this fear does not belong to me, and yet... they are there, like emotional parasites seeking a new host.

Will this change me? Will I go mad from absorbing the terror of others? How can I remain myself if I become the receptacle of the emotions of the dead? Or is that precisely the goal to transform me into a creature incapable of discerning its own feelings from those it has stolen?

There must be a way to control this, to channel these emotions, to use them... or to reject them. I must understand this mechanism before it overwhelms me."

He could not control this phenomenon, no more than he could stop breathing. It was as if the emotions of dying victims infiltrated him without permission, like a slow poison contaminating his soul from within, insinuating itself into every corner of his consciousness. Mordred, who believed he had lost everything, suddenly discovered that his heart could still grow heavier. He did not yet feel all the consequences, but each dark emotion absorbed accumulated within him like a black cloud, thickening day after day, hour after hour.

Every evening, when he returned to the icy solitude of his cell with its polished basalt walls, he lay down on the cold stone of his rudimentary bed, feeling his heart grow heavier and heavier, filled with negative emotions that were not his own, painful memories torn from others, and resentments stolen from dying souls. He tried not to think about what he was becoming, this hybrid creature made of flesh and stolen emotions. But the taste of ashes was there, persisting in his mouth as a perpetual reminder of his change.

And every night, without exception, when he sank into sleep induced by exhaustion, his consciousness slipped and became Isaac again, suspended in the velvety darkness of his human prison, beneath the labyrinthine catacombs of Paris. Isaac too felt this new weight, these absorbed emotions, this permanent taste of ashes that now permeated both his existences. He could say nothing, do nothing, just wait in the motionless darkness, his heart slowly corroded by this strange venom with multiple flavors.

POV: Planet Earth

The entire Earth seemed to be plunging into growing anxiety, palpable in every press conference, in every official communiqué, in every hushed conversation among hunters. Since the mysterious disappearance of twenty-three rank A hunters in dungeons classified as secure levels 3 and 4, tension had risen a notch, transforming concern into genuine institutional fear. Across the globe, unexplained incidents had multiplied with alarming frequency, plunging governments and international guilds into cold, calculated panic.

Entire squads had vanished without a trace in minor portals, supposedly perfectly controlled and mapped. In Germany’s Black Forest, the Eisenfaust team, composed of five experienced rank A hunters, had been found dead, without visible wounds, their bodies intact but frozen in unspeakable terror, their bulging eyes fixed on an invisible enemy.

In South Korea, in the Busan Portal, a usually stable crystalline structure of level 4, a group of seven elite hunters had been found completely empty, as if the hunters had simply vanished, their equipment abandoned in a perfect circle on the ground. In the United States, in the Nevada desert, the Thunderhawk team, renowned for its cohesion and experience in level 5 portals, had suffered a brutal attack of unknown origin, with no survivor or witness able to explain what had happened, the bodies found in an abnormally advanced state of decomposition.

These disappearances were no longer isolated events that the media could treat as tragic accidents. They were numerous, simultaneous, and inexplicable by current portal understanding models.

They clearly indicated a coordinated threat that no one, not even level S analysts, yet understood. Governments frantically questioned the origin of these attacks in closed-door meetings. Was it a new threat internal to the portals, a sudden evolution of their nature? An unknown natural phenomenon linked to dimensional stability? Or worse yet, a hidden, intelligent, and hostile foreign power learning to manipulate the portals?

The World Hunter Association, an organization usually measured in its communications, quickly became aware of the urgency of the situation after losing more rank A hunters in three months than in the previous five years. A crisis meeting was hastily organized by the UN Security Council: an exceptional and unprecedented summit bringing together the presidents of the world’s major powers, as well as all twelve still-active rank S hunters and their closest scientific advisors.

Governments demanded clear answers and immediate solutions, but experts had only vague and worrying hypotheses, incomplete theories based on fragmentary data. France, already weakened since the dramatic death of Lazare Korr and the loss of its dominant position in the global hunter hierarchy, particularly insisted on the need to unify international efforts to understand the exact nature of these unexplained disappearances. The scale of the crisis was such that it could threaten not only the global economy heavily dependent on resources extracted from portals, but also the geopolitical balance if a solution was not quickly found and implemented.

In an atmosphere of palpable nervousness, with intelligence services on maximum alert, the summit was rapidly scheduled after intense diplomatic negotiations:

Official date of the world hunter summit: November 14, 2035. Location: confidential – to be communicated later only to the concerned leaders and hunters, under triple quantum encryption.

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