Rebellion Rising from the Depths: Mocked by the Hero Who Impregnated My Childhood Friend Before My Very Eyes. - Chapter 6: The Bottom of the Abyss.

The Bottom of the Abyss.

By the time the wagon ground to a halt, Noah was barely aware of his surroundings.

The inside of the coarse sack pulled over his head was damp with blood and sweat; every breath he drew forced a murky, stagnant stench into his lungs. Bound hand and foot, he had been piled atop either corpses or scrap wood—he couldn’t tell which—and every time the wheels jolted, his broken ribs pierced his flesh from the inside. His consciousness slipped away time and again, and each time, his father’s final words rose from the depths of the mire to echo in his ears.

Live.

That those words alone refused to fade even after all this was starting to feel like a curse.

“Is he still breathing?”

A man’s voice drifted in from outside the bag.

“Who knows? Doesn’t matter either way,” another man chuckled. “Once they drop into the Abyss, that is.”

In the next instant, Noah was grabbed roughly.

A flash of white-hot pain shot through him, as if his shoulders were being torn from their sockets. Still bound, he was dragged to the edge of the wagon bed, where the cold night air bit at his skin. A faint sliver of moonlight filtered through the gaps in the sack. Black rock faces. A darkness that knew no bottom. A wind blew from below, crawling upward like a living thing.

The Abyss.

It was a place the drunks in the slums used to speak of as a threat. A massive hole at the western edge of the kingdom. There were countless stories: that it was a ruin from an ancient era, a mark of divine punishment, or a scar carved into the earth by a dragon. Nowadays, no one cared about the truth. There was no need to.

Those who fall do not return.

As long as that single point was true, it was enough.

“Right then. Off you go.”

A boot slammed into his back.

The ground vanished.

For a heartbeat, Noah felt his body cast into the void. The wind howled in his ears. Inside the sack, heaven and earth flipped repeatedly until he slammed shoulder-first into something hard. His bones creaked, and the breath was crushed out of him. He continued to slide, tumbling and colliding again and again with rocks, corpses, or shards of rotted wood. His head struck something, blood flooded his mouth, and finally, he sank deep into something muddy and soft.

There, his consciousness cut out.

***

He didn’t know how much time had passed.

The first thing to return was the smell.

Rotting meat, stale blood, damp earth, mold, beast saliva, and rusted iron. A thick, suffocating reek—a cocktail of all those things—stabbed at the back of his nose. He coughed involuntarily, and the motion made his chest feel as if it were being split open. As he groaned and shifted, something soft touching his cheek slid away with a wet, heavy sound.

He opened his eyes inside the sack, but he could see nothing.

He only knew he was lying on something cold and wet. His clothes were soaked through. Whether it was blood, mud, or something else entirely, he didn’t want to think about it.

Noah moved his bound wrists. The rope had shifted. It seemed the impact of the fall had loosened the knot. His fingertips were numb with pain, but he twisted and rubbed his wrists desperately, pulling despite the agonizing creak of his bones. With the sensation of skin tearing, one hand finally slipped free.

At that exact moment, a low growl sounded nearby.

His entire body froze.

Slowly, making as little noise as possible, he eased the bag off his head.

It was dark.

Not absolute darkness, though. Far above, he could see a sliver of sky, thin as a laceration. He couldn’t tell if there was a moon or stars; there was only a distant, greyish crack of light. That faint glimmer, combined with the pale phosphorescence bleeding from the rock walls and patches of moss, dimly illuminated the bottom of the Abyss.

Then, Noah saw what lay beneath him.

It was a human arm.

A blue-black arm, severed at the elbow, protruded from the mud. Beyond it lay a corpse clad in crumbling armor, half-buried. Its face no longer held its original form. Similar sights were scattered all around. Bones. Rotted leather bags. Broken spears. A leg that looked as if it had been gnawed by beasts. The fragments of an ancient wagon. Before it was the bottom of the Abyss, this place was a dumping ground.

The dead, the broken, the discarded.

Everything ended up here.

A ragged breath escaped Noah’s throat.

“…ngh.”

As he tried to push himself up, a surge of agony turned his vision white. Several ribs on his left side were gone. His right ankle was useless. Two of his fingers were swollen in unnatural directions. The damage from his torture had been overwritten by the trauma of the fall. It was a miracle he was even alive.

The growl came again.

This time, it was closer.

Noah reflexively pressed himself flat. Just beyond a pile of carrion, something was moving within the pale phosphorescence. A beast. It was smaller than a wolf, but its back was unnaturally humped, and its front legs were disproportionately long. Its skin was peeling in patches, revealing the bone beneath. Its head resembled a dog’s, but its mouth was torn wide.

There were three of them.

They swarmed over a pile of corpses, making a sickening sound as they crunched through bone. Their snouts twitched, and every time they glanced his way, their reddish-black eyes reflected the dim glow.

Scavengers.

Monsters that lived by devouring what was thrown into the Abyss.

Noah held his breath. He must have been reeking of blood. If they noticed him, it was over. In his current state, unable to even stand, he had no hope of winning.

One of them took a tentative step toward him.

Acting on instinct, Noah grabbed a rotted arm nearby. The skin was slimy, and a wave of nausea threatened to overwhelm him. He didn’t care. He hurled it as far as he could. The arm landed beyond the pile of corpses with a wet thud.

The three heads snapped toward the sound simultaneously.

An instant later, they pounced on it as if competing for a prize.

Noah took the opportunity to drag himself behind the wreckage of a collapsed wagon. His ribs screamed in protest. A bloody cough escaped his lips, but the monsters were too engrossed in the carrion to notice.

As he crawled into the shadow of the wagon, his hand brushed something hard.

A dagger. The blade was half-chipped and the hilt was corroded, but it was better than his bare hands. Noah gripped it with trembling fingers.

As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the layout of the place slowly began to take shape.

The bottom of the Abyss was not a flat plain. Layers of corpses, rubble, and debris had piled up at the bottom of the massive hole, forming mounds in some places. There were several black stone ledges and fissures along the walls, from which glowing blue moss hung. The sound of dripping water echoed in the distance, but the presence of beasts was much stronger than the sound of water. Growls, chewing, the scraping of claws, the feeling of things skittering in the dark.

This was not a dead place.

It was teeming with things that lived off the dying.

Noah looked up through the gaps in the broken wagon. The sky was still impossibly far away. The rock walls were sheer, with almost no visible footholds. He knew at a glance that climbing out was impossible.

It’s over.

The thought echoed quietly in the back of his mind.

There was no way out. No help was coming.

His father was dead. Lydie was gone. There was no one left to look for him, no one to mourn him. If the Hero had decreed it so, the world would simply accept it.

If he died here, it would all be finished.

The moment that thought occurred to him, he felt a strange sense of relief.

He wouldn’t have to carry anything anymore. The pain, the shame, the betrayal—it would all end here.

But that semblance of peace was immediately crushed by another voice bleeding from the depths of his chest.

Live.

His father’s voice.

It was only a single word, yet it remained strangely heavy and persistent.

Noah closed his eyes. Behind his lids, his father’s final expression appeared. He had been feverish and struggling for breath, yet he had smiled as if trying to reassure him.

You are not incompetent.

A heat rose in the back of Noah’s throat.

He hadn’t wanted to remember that in a place like this. If he remembered, he wouldn’t be able to die, even if he wanted to.

Noah grit his teeth and crawled out from the shadow of the wagon. If he stayed here, he would eventually be found by the scavengers. His only choice was to go deeper, into a place where he could hide.

Every time he put weight on his right leg, agony flared. He couldn’t stand, so he had to crawl.

He dragged himself across the ground—a mixture of mud, blood, and rotted meat—using only one arm. Along the way, he snagged on human bones and armor fragments, tearing his skin. His fingernails were peeling, his stomach wound rubbed against the floor, and his vision darkened with every breath. Still, he didn’t stop.

After a while, he saw a narrow fissure in the wall. It was a crack in the rock just wide enough for a person to squeeze through. A draft of air, colder than before, flowed from it. It might lead somewhere deeper.

Noah slid his body into the crevice.

It was cramped, and the rock walls scraped his shoulders and back, but it felt safer than the outside. At the very least, large beasts would have trouble entering. As he moved further in, the smell of corpses faded slightly, replaced by the scent of damp stone and ancient water.

Eventually, he emerged into a small cavern.

The ceiling was low, but it was wider than the dumping ground outside. The walls were thick with blue moss, dimly illuminating the ground. In the center was a shallow pool of water, gathered from drips falling from the fissures above.

The moment he saw it, Noah realized his throat was burning with thirst.

He crawled to the edge of the water. Mud and dark debris floated on the surface. It didn’t look like anything fit for drinking. But beggars couldn’t be choosers. He scooped it up with both hands and brought it to his lips.

It was lukewarm. It tasted of iron and a rotten, acrid bitterness.

In the next instant, his stomach convulsed, and he wretched it all back up. Blood and the sourness of gastric juice filled his throat, and his ribs screamed once more. There was almost nothing left in him to vomit, yet his body continued to heave.

“…ha… ah…!”

He pressed his forehead against the edge of the puddle.

How pathetic. How miserable. He found it almost comical that even here, he was still desperately trying to survive.

That was when it happened.

His left shoulder suddenly felt like it had burst into flames.

He couldn’t even scream.

A pain as if a red-hot stake had been driven from his shoulder into his chest shot through him. It was the same pain as when he had acted as a proxy for the Holy Dragon’s curse. Immediately after, a coldness like ice pierced his right flank. The fangs of the Northern Demon Wolf. Then his back felt as if it were being split open, his legs went numb, his throat constricted, and a ringing like a bell echoed inside his skull.

He recognized them. He recognized every single one.

The remnants of the wounds, curses, fatigue, erosion, and backlashes he had taken on as a proxy—it was as if they had all woken up at once inside his body.

“Agh… ahhh…!”

He clawed at the stone floor, his nails cracking. But the pain wouldn’t stop. Instead, as if fanned by the atmosphere of the Abyss, one sensation after another that he never wanted to remember resurfaced. The searing heat of curses. The creaking of joints. The cold of poison crawling through his blood. A weariness that gnawed at the very marrow of his bones. The moment his vision had exploded into white from taking on too much mana. All the pain he had endured alone every night on the battlefield came rushing back, without order or mercy.

Before he could wonder why now, Noah understood.

This place was a sinkhole for curses.

The discarded corpses. Broken cursed tools. The ancient miasma settled deep in the earth. Everything had accumulated like sediment, dragging out the remnants he had forcibly suppressed through his proxy skill.

In other words, a staggering amount of pain had been stored within his body.

A detached part of his mind wondered how he had even been able to stand until now.

In that moment, Leon’s face flashed through his mind.

The man who stood at the front, raising his sword and basking in the cheers. How many times had Noah fallen to his knees behind him? How many times had he spat blood? How many times had he been mocked—”For a weakling, you sure tire out fast”?

All of it was meant for you.

The words rose to his throat, but they wouldn’t become sound. He could only grit his teeth against the agony.

After a while, the waves of intense pain receded slightly.

In its place, a heaviness as if lead had been poured into his veins remained. Every movement felt as if it would tear his body apart.

Taking shallow breaths, Noah looked past the puddle.

At the far end of the cavern, an even narrower passage stretched onward. The glow of the moss was stronger there. There might be something. Or perhaps there was nothing. But it was better than going back outside.

He crawled.

That single action took an immense amount of time.

The passage gradually sloped downward, and the stone beneath him changed from natural rock to something flat, as if carved by human hands. Ancient ruins. The words flitted through his mind. He remembered someone once mentioning rumors of ancient facilities buried within the Abyss.

There were strange lines carved into the walls. He couldn’t tell if they were letters or just cracks. Here and there, the bases of broken pillars were embedded in the rock. This was no natural cave. Someone—or something—had built this place long ago.

A bone crushed under his hand.

Startled, he looked down to see a small, dried-out skeleton. It wasn’t human. It was about the size of a dog, but the skull was elongated and the teeth were unnaturally sharp. Was it a creature of the Abyss, or something from the past? He lacked the energy to care.

He nearly fell asleep several times in the passage.

He knew that if he slept, he would die, but his eyelids were impossibly heavy. Was it the drugs, the blood loss, or the miasma? Probably all of them. His consciousness truly cut out a few times, only returning when the pain of his chin hitting the stone jolted him awake.

Each time, he saw visions.

Lydie was laughing. With the hand wearing the blue-stone ring, she pointed at him.

“There’s no future with you.”

Leon laughed beside her.

“Know your place, you incompetent fool.”

No.

He opened his eyes. No one was there. Only the damp stone walls and the pale light of the moss.

Next, he heard his father’s voice.

“Noah.”

He raised his head. In the dim light, he thought he saw a back at the end of the passage. A large back, worn from labor. The back he had chased so many times.

“Father…?”

When he called out in a raspy voice, the figure didn’t look back but continued forward.

Wait, he tried to say, reaching out, only to see his own palm covered in blood and mud. The moment he realized it, the vision vanished. There was only darkness.

The Abyss might even devour the human heart, he thought.

It showed people what they wanted to see, tempting minds weakened by pain, hunger, and despair. It whispered that giving up would be easier. It waited for them to die.

That was all the more reason why he couldn’t fall here.

Live.

His father’s final words were the only thing binding him to life, like a chain.

How long had he been walking?

Eventually, the passage opened up, and Noah emerged into a small hall.

It was clearly different from the caverns he had seen so far. The floor was made of black stone arranged in a circle, and in the center stood a pedestal that seemed to have once been used for worship. Broken pillars were half-embedded in the walls, their surfaces faintly etched with patterns. Though half-merged with the rock and eroded by moss over countless years, enough remained to show it was man-made.

The air in the hall was cold. Not just cold, but while the miasma was thick, the stench of rot from the dumping ground was strangely faint. In its place was a deep, stagnant presence, like the bottom of an old well.

Noah collapsed at the entrance of the hall, his strength finally spent.

He couldn’t move a single finger. His stomach was empty, his throat burned, and his wounds continued to throb. He didn’t know how long it had been since he fell into the Abyss, but it felt as if he had been wandering for days.

In reality, it might not even have been half a day. Still, it was enough.

Maybe it’s okay for it to end here, he thought again.

His father was gone. He had no home to return to. He didn’t believe his existence would benefit anyone. If anything, the longer he lived, the more pain and humiliation he would face.

I should just sleep here.

The moment he thought that, his body felt strangely light. He didn’t have to crawl anymore. He didn’t have to be trampled by anyone. If he faded away quietly here, neither Leon nor Lydie could reach him.

Noah pressed his cheek against the stone floor. It was cold. That coldness felt slightly pleasant against his feverish skin.

He closed his eyes.

In the darkness, he thought he heard his father’s voice again.

Live.

Why? Why do you go that far? In a world like this…

An unanswerable question swirled in his chest.

In the next moment, blood from the wound on his left hand dripped into a groove in the stone floor.

Something shifted instantly.

Noah opened his eyes slightly.

The faint patterns carved into the floor were turning red, as if soaking up his blood. The grooves that had looked like mere scratches until a moment ago emerged as a circular crest, beginning to glow with a slow, steady light.

The air in the hall trembled. From somewhere far away, a low resonance sounded, like something that had been asleep for a very long time was waking up.

“…Wh…at…”

His voice was a mere rasp, barely audible.

The blood wouldn’t stop. From his torn fingertips, from the wound in his flank, from the gashes on his arms opened during torture—blood dripped and flowed along the stone floor, sucked into the patterns. With every drop, the red light intensified.

An ancient crest appeared on the surface of the pedestal. The lines on the walls pulsed faintly.

And then, in the next instant, a pale light rose from the center of the hall.

It wasn’t a flame. It was like a mist, like blood, a flickering that seemed as if memory itself had taken shape.

Noah gasped.

At the bottom of the Abyss. Deeper than the corpses and the miasma, something was responding to his blood.

As his consciousness drifted away once more, the last thing he saw was a strange, ancient emblem rising above the pedestal. As if it had been waiting for someone to fall into this place since time immemorial.