Who am I?

The hole seemed unending, Jean estimated that he had been crawling through this narrow hole for at least 30 minutes.

Not only that, the hole seemed to get more narrow over time, even if he wasn't moving. He was now forced to wriggle like a worm, as the hole was too narrow for him to maneuver his arms.

Oxygen wasn't available down here and he was starting to regret coming down this hole. Thinking back, it was quite irrational of him to jump down a hole created by a Jellyfish-I.

Something was wrong with him these past few days. He was, too emotional. What had changed? Pondering about it for a while, he gave up and focused on the task at hand.

The walls were clamping down on him, their acids coating every inch of his body, eating away at his skin and flesh.

He was quite irritated.

Suddenly, his hair sprung up and red sparks appeared all over his skin, they pulsated, shaving away tiny bits and pieces of the creatures around him.

The sparks grew and seeped deep into the walls. And with a loud bang, froze in place. The walls stopped moving and started to retract, widening Jean's path.

'Did not intend to do that.'

He looked at the walls of flesh around him, they were still moving very slowly and had terrible black marks, which oozed out a liquid that looked like blackened blood.

'Is it because there's no oxygen?'

Extending his hand over his head and gripping the fleshy wall, blue sparks appeared at the tips of his fingers.

'What about this?'

Much to his surprise, before the sparks even did anything, he suddenly felt himself falling down. The hole widened a lot more significantly than before, standing up, the hole was tall enough for him to walk in it.

'Interesting.'

He tried to do it again, but as he approached a wall on his left, he heard unsettling footsteps echoing further down into the hole.

Turning his head to where the sounds came from, he focused on the sound vibrations that bounced off of the walls.

Before long, he could tell that the footsteps were still a few hundred meters away. He got as close to the walls as he possibly could and gripped them tightly.

Stablising his feet, he tried his very best to not make any sounds. The sounds slowly became louder and louder and he could now make out the features of a humanoid creature.

'Hmm, doesn't that mean I'm going the correct way?'

'The thing seems to have come from deeper in the hole after all.'

The thing walked very slowly, almost leisurely. He was hoping that sight was also an issue for the creature, so he made the least amount of sounds possible.

A few minutes later and the distance between the two was a measly 50 meters, he could make out more features out of the creature. He had hoped that it was a human.

But maybe even that was too idealistic.

The thing was humanoid, he could tell that before. But what he couldn't tell was that it was made up of thousands of fingers, which were moving, as though independent.

'What kind of Zirtue is this?'

'What have you done to them?'

Were they real fingers? Or just a trick from a jellyfish? That he couldn't tell.

The creature took one more step forward and then suddenly halted.

Jean couldn't feel any vibrations anymore, but he didn't need that to know he was in big trouble.

Suddenly, he felt he was getting hot, and he suddenly felt something moist touching his skin.

'These darn...'

'Yeah, no, I think I'll just find another way to find them.'

'...'

'No.'

Despite something like this happening before, he couldn't help but want to dash out of this place.

He felt like he was being boiled, alive.

'I refuse to believe Ana went through things that are worse.'

It was quite excruciating, but he had to endure. He wanted to run, but that would only endanger him further, the same thing happened with the Crab-V.

He then felt his skin peel off.

'Yes! Skin! Peel off, take the nerves with yo-'

He almost let out a groan from the intense pain, but managed to hold it in.

'How..do I even...feel pain? I thought we removed them long ago.'

He couldn't remember the last time he felt pain, because it was literally impossible for him to. Pain was one of the first things Erika removed for him, so it had been a good 400000 years since he last felt physical pain.

But he did have an inkling as to why.

After what felt like days, the pain just abruptly stopped and his skin felt revitalised. He then checked for vibrations and he was extremely relieved to find it echoing the other way.

It seemed the thing walked past him.

He then started walking again, the whole tunnel was still hot and all movements from the walls ceased, it actually seemed like they were dead.

He still used echolocation to tread the way but its effectiveness was more or less reduced.

'At least I'm still alive and kicking.'

Walking for a few more minutes, he suddenly became very bored.

'I should go find my diary once I successfully retrieved all of them.'

The diary actually served two purposes for Jean. One was quite simple, he wanted to document each and every single thing that happened to him.

Even the memories that he wanted to forget, are all in there. The second purpose was to remind himself of who he was.

Many of his memories, were bad ones, borderline traumatic. As such, he tended to erase these memories from his mind.

A recent example would be the Witch's knot, shooting the 'moon' in the sky. The sight was mesmerising but also terrifying, so he instinctively erased it.

But, as a wise dead man advised him, he should hold on to these memories, as they were what made him himself. So, every now and then, he would open up the book and regain his memories.

Everytime he did, he would be reminded of one thing in particular. Their screams, their cries for help, their terrified faces, their struggles for survival, their nails scraping against his legs.

'...'

'I want to forget.'

Soon, he finally heard something, something other than the sounds of wriggling flesh. He began running, towards that sound.