Chapter 29 Reconciliation

• Clinton was subjected to the greatest reality check of his 18 years of existence.
• For the first time in his life, he was made to understand that he was nobody.
• For the first time in his life, he was made to understand where he stood in the grand scheme of things.
• He was made to understand that he was just a cog in the grand wheel of existence, a cog that could be rejected and discarded at wheel.
• For the first time in his life, he felt ugly.
• For the first time in his life, he understood rejection.
• All these were things and emotions that Clinton had never experienced in his 18 years of existence before now and as expected, experiencing it was draining.
• “Uhh,” Clinton groaned as his hollow eyes looked at the gloomy skies of this forest. “Now would be a good time to end it all, right?”
• As soon as he muttered that, he let the seed of thought generate in his head, watered by his emotions as it blossomed into a sapling and then a big tree.
• The idea of committing suicide was getting more prominent in his head.
• Right in that moment, he thought. ‘Is this what Lobo felt when he committed suicide right before graduation?’
• Then, Clinton was very self-critical of his senior who committed suicide just before graduation but thinking back to how ugly he looked and how much he was mocked in school, he finally understood.
• The puzzles of the one piece finally started fitting together in his head.
• ‘I never knew rejection could hurt so much,’ he thought.
• And so, Clinton sat at the bottom of the slope, lost in his dark thoughts.
• He did not know for how long he was there and he didn’t care to know but at some point, suddenly thinking of it, he felt around for something.
• He felt around for the 2 bones, the only trophy that he got from his expedition back to the world of light.
• As soon as he touched them, his system lit up with a familiar notification.
• ***
• {You have come into contact with a mythical tool: Bone of Magedon, the Doom Knight!}
• …
• {You have come into contact with a mythical tool: Bone of Magedon, the Doom Knight!}
• ***
• Clinton noted the fact that the system didn’t notify him of breaking the enchantment of light again, he wondered what the enchantment was for.
• He didn’t pay much attention to the notifications of the system though. Rather, raising one of the bones with his skeleton hand, he looked at it.
• For over a week, Clinton had stayed in the decaying forest since being banished here by the Angel Athena.
• During his time here, Clinton saw nothing else but the gloom, darkness, and decay of this forest. There was nothing bright about the decaying forest, only filled with decaying trees and hideous monsters.
• None of the monsters could act as a reflective surface for him so due to this, Clinton never had the chance to look at his own face.
• Of course, he had seen his white skeleton hands and legs already, including other parts of his body when he used his bone assembling skill but none of it was nearly as impactful as seeing your face.
• And since the idea never crossed his mind to use his own white bone as a reflective surface, he never did it until today.
• In this moment when his mental defenses were at their weakest, Clinton finally thought of something that he always saw as inconsequential since.
• He decided to look at his face.
• Raising the bone up, the little bit of light still shining from the world of light was just enough to make the white bone reflect like the surface of a mirror.
• It was blurry but just enough for Clinton to get a glimpse of his own face.
• A white skull, jagged teeth, and then hollow space for eyes through which two red balls of flames burned with furious intensity.
• Those balls of flames substituted for his eyes.
• “So, this is how I look”. Clinton muttered.
• No matter how much Clinton wanted to reject it, the reality was before him, his face was hideous like the villain of a children’s cartoon.
• That realization itself felt like a prick through his heart.
• Clinton no longer spoke, he no longer thought. Instead, he just laid down there on the ground, looking at the gloomy skies for a long time.
• After all this time, he started thinking again.
• He already went through the phases of shock, denial, pain, before finally graduating to the phase of eventual acceptance.
• “I’m a skeleton, so what?” He muttered.
• “I’m a skeleton doesn’t mean I need to die for it. It’s my current reality, I have to accept it unless I want to die,” he grinned. “And I don’t want to die, not yet, I’ve not spited that angel yet”.
• Right in that moment, Clinton made a few conclusions and decisions in his mind.
• ‘It is not my fault that those people decided to commit suicide’.
• ‘He committed suicide because he could not accept himself for who he was’.
• ‘I don’t want to end up like Lobo’.
• ‘Unlike him, I’ll live’.
• ‘As for my new reason for living?’
• He thought long about it before giving himself an answer. ‘I’ve wronged too many people in my life before my death’.
• ‘I never saw it before so it was fine, but now I do’.
• ‘I can’t afford to live nonchalantly anymore like nothing happened’.
• ‘I made a mistake, so I need to own up to it’.
• ‘I need to apologize’.
• For the first time in a long time since coming back from the world of light, Clinton sat up and muttered. “I need to apologize for all my wrongdoings”.
• “It may not mean anything but still, I want to apologize”.
• “For that, I will live”.
• “Heck, I don’t even know if there’s a way to return to Planet Earth from this dungeon after dying but still, I want to believe that there’s a way”.
• “I want to believe that I can go back so that I can apologize”.
• “And above all else, I still want to spite that angel”.
• Right at that moment, Clinton heard sounds from above.
• “He’s still alive”.
• “He’s there”.
• Clinton raised his head and saw… humans!