"So... this was a symptom of mental illness?" Hector sighed, leaning his back against the dusty, damp wall of the prison.
He could easily guess his illness based on the symptoms.
First, the countless negative whispers had been appearing in his mind. Each of them aimed at the darkest part of his hidden self.
Second, there were a large number of soulless and horrific illusions around him.
To be exact, it was a terrifying thing he never wanted to suffer from, like the lunatic patients whom he once treated as he remained in the modern hospital.
And it was truly terrifying.
Right now, he could see two boys at the corner of the prison.
They seemed to be playing with each other or simply doing something he couldn’t figure out unless he approached them, but he had no intention of doing that.
It felt eerie—dangerously eerie.
"Fuck!" Hector blinked nonstop, even pressing his eyelids over and over to get rid of the illusion, but it mostly didn’t work.
"That sucks!" he muttered, exhaling deeply before shifting his gaze toward the outside of the gloomy prison.
A random question, yet one he couldn’t answer.
The area outside the prison was dim, barely lit. Even though he could see a little with his special eyes, it wasn’t enough.
Were there more prisons out there?
At least, that was what he thought he could see.
"You’ll die! She’s cursing you and waiting for you in hell!"
An unknown voice whimpered deep inside Hector’s ears.
And then, many more voices, all echoing through his mind.
"I think I’m gonna go insane if this keeps happening... The symptoms are definitely getting worse as time passes."
"I need some kind of medicine for this mental illness... but I doubt it’ll be easy to find."
After all, this world wasn’t the one he had known.
He had never heard of this kind of illness in this place, so how could he know whether it really existed here?
Of course, there was no way he could find any knowledge about it—not while he was stuck here.
He needed a solution.
He had barely seen or known anything about this tower.
Anyway, if he just sat here and waited for someone to rescue him, he guessed that was impossible.
At that moment, his attention was drawn to the cold, tight sensation around his neck.
It felt suffocating and unbearable.
"What’s this?" Hector lowered his head, touching the steel chain wrapped tightly around his neck. He looked at it with narrowed eyes.
Then, without hesitation, he tried to twist it using his mana, but nothing happened.
"It’s too strong... I probably need to reach a higher level if I want to break it!"
"I remember mother..."
Instantly, A chill ran across Hector’s spine as that sound appeared beside him.
Hector jolted, startled, and pushed himself backward as the voice of a child echoed right next to him.
"What the hell?! This is insane! Now I finally understand what my patients felt like... Maybe I judged them too harshly," Hector muttered, gulping as he stared at the two boys in front of him in fear.
The boy’s head was so twisted and distorted that Hector could barely see anything except their mouth and nose.
Were they even human?
To him, they looked more like monstrous monsters than lovely children.
He knew everything would become terrifying in the near future if he didn’t find some sort of medicine.
It would affect him badly—maybe even worse than he imagined.
"My luck coin... what are you doing to me? Would you work?"
Hector’s eyes drifted toward the coin hanging from his neck, now soaked in blood.
He couldn’t entirely figure it out.
"I thought its name was reason... so why hasn’t it saved me yet?"
He clenched his teeth.
"Damn... I hope luck still stands by my side."
Just like that, a day passed.
Hector was no longer being tortured directly, but that didn’t mean things were getting any easier.
Countless illusions began appearing again—more than he could handle.
At that moment, a man’s voice echoed across the prison:
"ANNOUNCEMENT: FOOLISH SLAVES, YOUR TIME IS COMING. PREPARE YOURSELF IF YOU DON’T WANT TO DIE."
"HAHAHA! I THINK YOU’LL DIE ANYWAY!"
After that, the steel door of the prison slowly creaked open, revealing a vast, empty space outside.
Hector instinctively approached it—lightly and cautiously—and scanned the area for a few seconds.
"Well, this place is massive..." he muttered.
Suddenly, an unknown force shoved him from behind, making him stumble forward several steps and fall.
Hector slowly stood up, rubbing his shoulder, then turned to see who had pushed him.
To his surprise, it was a young man—also a prisoner, judging by his worn clothes and chain-bound neck.
"If you want to die, don’t drag others down with you," the man said in a flat voice, then spat at Hector’s feet and walked away.
Hector sighed, taken aback by the stranger’s coldness, but didn’t argue.
He quickly joined the crowd that was moving forward.
As he descended each floor, he saw more and more people—many of them in far worse condition than he was.
"They’re lunatics... truly."
He stared at their twisted, broken expressions and couldn’t help but gulp in fear.
He didn’t want to believe it.
Moreover, he had begun to understand the true effect of the chain wrapped around his neck.
The steel chain would slowly tighten... until it eventually cut off the head of anyone who resisted—those who refused to leave their cell or follow the orders.
"That’s brutal..." Hector muttered, shaking his head slowly as he looked at them with pity in his eyes.
With every step, his trust in escape began to fade.
He thought—no one could flee this place.
Certainly... they were all going to die.
There were a lot of prisoners here.
Roughly a thousand, maybe more.
So then—what was the purpose of this massive prison?