The Extra Wants To Live

**Gasp! Gasp! Huh!**

"It looks like something happened," Garten heard a voice that sounded like it belonged to both a boy and a girl as he gasped for breath. His frantic eyes rolled around in the pitch-black darkness, but he saw nothing.

"Why, why me… How am I alive? More importantly, where am I?" Garten asked, trembling, but received no answer in return.

"Hey, hey! Where am I!" he shouted.

"Can you be a little quiet?" came the reply, only after Garten had been yelling incessantly.

"What happened to me? I can't move!" Garten's voice was filled with panic.

Silence followed.

"I can't move! My body...!"

Garten's frantic shouting ceased as he realized something strange. The last scene he remembered was Carl standing unharmed after being struck by the power of Dureniodon and then being attacked by the Master who jumped out of Carl's shadow.

His vision began spinning round and round. His neck had been cut.

"Huk… Ugh…"

Garten gasped for breath in fear, but before long, even that stopped. It was only natural that he couldn't move—he had no limbs or torso to breathe with.

*Crackle, crackle.*

Garten felt something thin and wet moving just below his neck.

The bundle of nerves in his eyeballs, which he had been manipulating, was sucking in air and spitting it out, taking the place of the body that no longer existed.

"Ahhh!" he screamed.

"Noisy," the unidentified being said, and Garten's scream suddenly stopped.

The moment the being spoke in an annoyed tone, the eyeballs attached to Garten's neck ceased moving.

Garten fluttered his eyelids in agony, unable to breathe, his mouth wide open, and his tongue sticking out. But even more horribly, despite being unable to breathe, he did not die.

It was strange in the first place that he hadn't died when only his head remained.

Garten silently screamed in the dark, cramped space for what felt like an eternity. Eventually, emptiness and frustration overwhelmed him, and he soon became quiet.

"Have you calmed down a bit?" the unidentified being asked Garten calmly after his screams had subsided.

"…What did you do to me?" Garten asked weakly, feeling the nerve bundles in his eyes move again.

"Are you blaming me?" the being asked.

Garten remained silent.

"Garten, you ignored my advice not to let your guard down and played with your toys. You were the one who lost to Carl Feld Hardion."

Garten still didn't respond.

"You were the one who pushed me away from fighting on your behalf after I was defeated so miserably, and you ended up fighting yourself and lost once again."

Garten kept silent.

"And now, you don't even know how to be grateful that I saved your life when you should have died."

"This isn't living…" Garten muttered weakly.

"You're alive. You're not dead, are you?"

Garten kept his mouth shut.

"…Are you lying to me?" Garten asked after a moment, his voice boiling with hatred and resentment.

"You're blaming me again."

"You made me your slave! You made me!" Garten accused.

"What you're doing right now is exactly what a slave would do. And you're trying to blame me even after coming this far," the unidentified being said, not in a mocking or contemptuous tone, but simply stating the truth indifferently.

"If you truly wanted to be your own master, shouldn't you think for yourself, act for yourself, and take responsibility for your own actions?"

"How dare you!" Garten spat.

"And did you think there would be no price for the power you borrowed?" the being continued.

"You… You fooled me! Dureniodon didn't work on him!"

"That was unexpected, even for me. But if you had acted according to plan from the beginning, it wouldn't have come to that point," the being replied.

Garten was babbling nonsensically, as if foaming at the mouth, completely losing control of himself.

Eventually, the unidentified entity silenced Garten by taking his breath away once again.

*Bam! Bam! Bam!*

Garten continued to grind his teeth, which became increasingly annoying to the being.

*I'll kill you! I'll kill you! You who called this prophet Garten, who was supposed to become a god, a slave! And you who deceived me!* Garten shouted silently.

*Click.*

In an instant, light poured down. Garten unconsciously frowned, reacting as a normal human would to the glare.

He opened his eyes wide again and looked up, but since he couldn't move his body, all he could do was raise his eyes as high as possible. His field of vision was narrow, and he couldn't see properly.

Then, something invisible lifted his head, and he was able to see his surroundings more clearly.

He was in a space that appeared to be a cave.

The light of the full moon, shining through a hole in the high ceiling, brightened the darkness, and intricate drawings were visible on the floor.

Garten realized that it was blood filling the grooves, the very same blood that had created the eyeballs and powered the Dureniodon.

Unable to speak, Garten rolled his eyes wildly and opened his mouth in fear. He moved his jaw as far as he could, his teeth chattering as he bit down on some invisible, unfelt force.

But there was nothing to catch his teeth.

"You really are below expectations in every way," the unidentified being spoke softly.

"You could not obtain Carl Feldhardion, You could not kill him, YouI could not divide the Duren cult, and you could not harm the Empire."

Garten knew that for power to be achieved, a sacrifice was required. Power always comes with a price. But even though Garten knew that, he had believed everything was completely in his grasp and had acted recklessly.

"And you couldn't properly use the eyes I planted, nor could you make them grow properly," the being continued.

The price had to be paid now. The planted eyes had not grown properly, like planting a seed and evaluating the fruit that grows on the tree.

"I planted it because it had a personality that was worthy of a curse, but this is actually a loss," the being lamented.

The model was good, but the problem was that the standard for a good seedbed was 'how bad is it?' The seedbed ended up being ruined because it was too good.

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