The Butterfly Effect

Death was not an end, but a shedding of skin. That blurry line between existence and nothingness, where only emptiness resides—she had crossed it twice. Seraphine's eyes snapped open. But it was as if they hadn't. Darkness swallowed everything. The air hung heavy, damp with a metallic tang, like a long-stagnant pit of decay. There was no screaming, nor was there the sticky gaze of a predator.

Her mind calmed, mirroring the eerie stillness around her. Her small hand gently reached into the air, waving in the pitch-black void before her.

"Cheers, my lovely two-headed friend."

The response to the challenge—a resounding success. There seemed to be a sliver of light reflecting in the corner of her right eye, coming from the direction of the door.

Seraphine suddenly sat up. She was lying facing away from the door. The light couldn't reach this place. So what was it?

Her knees trembled as she tried to stand upright. Her whole body was soaking wet. Her toes curled tightly around her slippers. Under her feet was an extremely slippery puddle of liquid.

There were two more light sources in the room. Seraphine squinted, observing the change in this pitch-black space.

The dry floor was now slick with green liquid. A single Murak, with over 200 liters of blood, had turned the room into a small pool of blood. The monster had been corroded by its own master's saliva, melting away and leaving behind a swamp of thin tissue and two stones.

They shone brightly, the outer layer transparent, the inner layer filled with green veins.

Holding the two stones under the light, Seraphine wiped the disgusting liquid off her nightgown, now soaked through. Then, without hesitation, she put them in her mouth.

No grittiness, no discomfort—only the overwhelming taste of metal. These two stones were different from the previous reward; the veins in the first stone were cloudy white.

Whatever! A life worse than death was the only thing more terrifying.

That guy had said the strange stone could help her survive in the arena. So no matter what color it was, she would swallow it.

Once again, thanks to the green creature—and the ridiculous game between him and the others.

Her light blue eyes lowered to look at her perfect left arm.

Not long ago, it had been crushed to pieces by an alien creature—like being forced into an industrial press.

In the moment when she saw the monster's crazed, hungry gaze, Seraphine sensed something was wrong. She wanted to test the stone's value on Murak. If they weren't really interested in the stone, she wouldn't lose anything.

When the poisoned paper adhered to the creature's palm, she knew she had valuable data.

This stone definitely had something. A mysterious compound? Some kind of energy? It couldn't be magnetism—if it were, there would be no need to swallow it. But Murak died and left behind 2 stones. Murak had a single heart but two brains. Or were these crystallizations from the alien's brain?

Innate?

White, green… hmm. What about blue? Or purple? Orange? Red? Amused by her own thoughts, Seraphine curled the corner of her lips, enjoying the metallic taste in her mouth. Divided by rank? Or by function? Species?

Seraphine didn't know what it was, but she was very interested in it. Because after a moment of swallowing the stone, her whole body felt as if it had just been cleansed.

A level of cleanliness she had never experienced before in her life.

For a second, she felt all the impurities accumulated in her body had been expelled, vanishing into the air. Her soul even felt as if it were about to drift away like she had just taken a drug eight times purer than before. Her mind sharpened the fog lifting. It was as if a switch had flipped, and suddenly, the world was crisp, vivid, real.

She had almost opened her eyes, waking in a world submerged in hypnosis.

Although she couldn't truly wake up, that one second was enough to return her body to a safe state. Her left arm returned to its intact state, her coccyx was not broken, and half of her face was no longer corroded to the bone.

Seraphine was eager to experience that state again. She was certain that, given another chance, she would escape this illusion for real.

When she saw the two stones, Seraphine was overjoyed. After swallowing them, Seraphine calmed down again.

There wasn't that soul-cleansing feeling like when she swallowed the first stone.

Or was it because they were different?

She didn't know.

Or did they have a different effect this time?

She would try.

Both hands held the sword. It still felt as heavy as before. Her lips pursed unwillingly. One hand gripped the sword's tip, the other tightened around the hilt. She braced herself—and snapped the blade with sheer force.

Her hand was cut.

Still human. Still weak. Yet, something had changed. She just didn't know what.

Seraphine's face remained cold. She didn't turn into a superwoman.

Not spirit strength, not physical strength, so what was the effect of those 2 stones from Murak?

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! The passcode entered. The door opened.

Seraphine stood inside the door, looking outside. It was still pure white.

Her soaking wet slippers, covered in green liquid, slowly moved forward. One hand dragged the sword, the other held the book and the individual pages soaked in Murak's blood. The exhausted young woman stepped out of the pitch-black room.

Lord Zylorn observed the projection before him, his smooth triangular head reflecting Seraphine's small figure disappearing behind the door. The human blood mixed with Murak's fluids, each of her footsteps imprinted on the pure white floor, as a series of bizarre characters etched onto the plane of fate. Inside the silent space, Zylorn pondered.

Something he hadn't expected—this small creature had accomplished the impossible. A single touch. A minor provocation. Yet it had unraveled the script. Earth's chaos theory had an interesting principle: "the butterfly effect"—a small movement at the starting point could cause unpredictable changes in the entire system. A flap of wings somewhere could lead to a storm on the other side of the world. Seraphine was that storm. He hadn't expected that a light, mocking lick would become the initial impact that pushed that weak human to step over the line between life and death and evolve.

Two green stones—if she possessed ancestral genes, then it was enough to activate that part of the gene. Enough to evolve.

He lowered his head, his slender fingers drawing invisible symbols in the air. A diagram appeared, replaying every movement, every expression, every breath of Seraphine in the challenge room. This data would not be wasted. The corners of his lips slightly curled up, beneath his smooth skin.

Hmmm—he couldn't wait to go and share with his brethren about this interesting human. But first… Lord Zylorn held out his palm. Two green stones suddenly appeared in his hand.

Grasping the stones, he moved towards a cryogenic chamber behind him. Opening the chamber lid, he placed the two stones into a transparent tube—one end of which was connected to a mask covering the entire face of the person lying beneath. Closing the chamber lid again, he leisurely walked out of the room.

It was lunchtime.

Lord Zylorn excitedly left the room, merging into the crowd coming out of the doors beside him. Every time he passed other beings, he nodded in greeting and the being opposite him also did the same. Two smooth, green, featureless triangular heads bobbed in acknowledgment.

"Lord Zylorn 799, greetings!"

"Lord Zylorn 8034, greetings!"

Human science has a fundamental law: the second law of thermodynamics—entropy always increases. Order always tends towards chaos. A closed system cannot spontaneously reorganize itself unless there is an external influence. And he, the great scholar Amurda Byis Zylorn, was the agent of this change. He didn't believe in luck. Luck was merely a beautiful name that lower beings assigned to uncontrollable variables. But this variable… was interesting.

Seraphine Saint Vault—would she help him gain many more years of life? Or would she die in the arena in just one day or one hour? Human decades were just a blink of an eye to him.

Upon seeing his familiar brethren in the dining hall, Lord Zylorn 8034 smiled. They were sitting there with an empty seat, it seemed their human had completed the challenge very early, or had died very early.

"I've got something interesting for you, my friends."

Lord Zylorn 8034 sat down as the skin at the center of his triangular head split open, revealing a bottomless black cavity. The individuals around him also began to emit bizarre caw caw caw laughter. They huddled together, simultaneously enjoying the stones conjured out of thin air, chattering excitedly about something.