Ren walked behind Yuna and Nautilus, his steps moving more out of habit than conscious will.
Step by step, as if being swept along by an invisible current without realizing it.
Images of the Starting Town slowly surfaced in his mind.
By now, he should've been stepping out of the church, sunlight pouring through the high windows onto the marble floor.
The stained glass would shimmer across the ground, casting a strangely warm light.
A system message would hover at the corner of the screen, indicating that the Blessing Buff had just been activated, a small but useful effect that slightly increased EXP and gold gain from monsters, while also restoring a bit of HP and reducing Stamina consumption for ten minutes.
To the left of his HP bar, there would always be a small icon: a silver halo.
Always.
…
Ren stopped walking.
He had just realized something. Something strange. A hole in reality.
His breath quickened as his eyes darted to the edge of the interface.
His HP bar… 400/400, still full. Not a scratch.
But where was the effect icon?
The church's blessing should have been showing beneath his HP bar for ten minutes after leaving that place.
Regardless of what zone he entered, regardless of whether he fought or not, the effect never disappeared before the timer ended.
And yet now, it was gone.
It wasn't that the time had expired. It wasn't erased due to a negative status or some other effect.
It was as if… it had never existed in the first place.
He narrowed his eyes. A discomfort spread from his palm, crawling up his arm like invisible chains tightening around him.
Something's wrong.
He had left the church this morning. He was sure of it. He clearly remembered standing before the altar, silently gazing up at the statue of the deity, feeling the warm light descending from above.
But if the blessing effect never appeared…
If the system never acknowledged it…
If he couldn't find any trace of it in the interface…
…then that could mean he had never stepped into the church at all.
So then, where had he been this morning?
A cold shiver crawled up Ren's spine.
How could he not remember?
...
The strange feeling still lingered in his mind.
Like an itch buried deep in the recesses of his thoughts, unclear, impossible to scratch away, only growing more uncomfortable with every passing second.
Ren took a deep breath, trying to shake off the chill that had just crept along his back. But no matter how he shook his head to refocus, the gnawing unease clung to him, like an invisible fog surrounding him, separating him from reality.
This isn't right. I can't keep going like this.
He quickly opened the system menu. A pale blue light swept across his vision, and the familiar interface appeared with rows of numbers and text he had seen countless times.
[Name: Ren]Lv: 6HP: 400/400STR: 17 (+2)VIT: 19AGI: 21 (+8)Free Stat Points: 3
Everything looked normal.
…But no.
Ren frowned, his eyes scanning quickly through each stat, every number, every line.
They were all correct. Exactly what he remembered. Nothing seemed out of place. Nothing had changed without explanation.
Then why did he still feel this way?
This feeling, that something had been altered, or worse, erased.
His hand clenched into a fist. His heartbeat skipped.
He scrolled down to the Battle Log, checking the recent entries for combat, recovery, or any possible status change.
The moment he saw the first line, a freezing chill swept across his skin.
There was no record of the church blessing.
No trace. No message saying it had been activated, removed, or expired.
As if it had never existed to begin with.
Ren's breath caught in his throat. A heavy silence pressed down on him.
He didn't believe in system errors. There was no way the game would forget to log something as simple as a buff effect.
Only two explanations were possible:
One, he remembered wrong. But that was impossible. Every previous time, the blessing appeared the moment he left the church, a habit far too familiar to mistake.
Two, something had interfered with the system.
…Or worse.
Something had interfered with him.
His chest tightened. Another shiver ran down his spine.
What did I do this morning?
I left the church… didn't I?
Ren clenched his fist tighter, the unease swelling inside.
If he never received the buff… if the effect never existed to begin with…
Ren opened the system menu, again.
A pale blue light swept across his vision, and the familiar interface appeared in the air. But this time, the feeling he got from looking at it wasn't the same as before.
[Name: Ren]Lv: 6HP: 400/400STR: 17 (+2)VIT: 19AGI: 21 (+8)Free Stat Points: 3
Everything seemed normal.
But something still clung to him.
Ren narrowed his eyes. His gaze slowly slid across each stat, each number, every tiny change.
Then he stopped at HP and VIT.
A cold chill raced down his spine.
Something was wrong.
At level 1, every player starts with 10 VIT, equal to 250 HP.
Each point of VIT adds 25 max HP.
He had increased his VIT by a total of 9. Which meant he should have:
250 + (9 × 25) = 475 HP.
Not 400.
Ren froze. His heart pounded violently in his chest.
Why is my max HP lower than it should be?
A small mistake? No… it was far too obvious to be a mere error.
No equipment reduced HP. No active debuffs. No skill that could alter this stat.
Then where did the number 400 come from?
His breathing grew rapid. Battle Log.
He quickly opened the log, his fingers flying across the entries, scanning for anything related to stat changes.
But there was nothing.
No message about HP being reduced.
No record.
As if it had always been 400 from the beginning.
Ren felt another wave of cold crawl down his back, every vertebrae freezing in place.
He remembered these numbers clearly. He knew his max HP should be higher.
But now, the system was asserting a different reality.
Something has changed.
Something has been tampered with.
And the scariest part was.
He didn't know when it happened.
Ren stared at the HP bar, the unease in his chest spreading wider and deeper.
His breath caught.
There was something… lurking beneath.
Something faint, almost invisible, as if it were just a mirage conjured by his imagination.
But Ren knew it wasn't a hallucination. Narrowing his eyes, he focused, trying to catch what had just flickered across his vision.
A dim spark blinked.
A tiny shape, buried beneath the interface.
And then.
A symbol.
A minuscule icon, deliberately hidden. It nestled just below the HP bar, only a sliver of its dark outline peeking out, flickering occasionally like it was caught between existence and disappearance.
Ren held his breath.
He had never seen this symbol before.
And that made it all the more terrifying.
With a swift motion, he opened the status screen, trying to inspect the details. But there was no description for this symbol. No footnotes. No explanation of what it was or what it did.
As if the system didn't want him to know.
A chill ran down Ren's spine.
Since when?
Since when had it been there, seeping into his interface without him ever realizing?
Why wasn't there any kind of notification?
And more importantly.
What was this effect?
Ren tapped on the faint symbol beneath the HP bar, and immediately, a cold line of text appeared before him.
The letters formed slowly, as if being carved into the silent space one by one, each word a sharp blade slicing into his mind, making it impossible to look away:
[Hollow Brand] – The Mark of Emptiness
Cursed Effect.
This mark silently erodes the victim's life force, reducing their max HP without any clear warning. It infiltrates the body without notice, draining vitality even as the victim remains unaware.
Memories will begin to blur, as if thick fog shrouds the past, fading events and distorting emotions, making the afflicted feel like a stranger to themselves.
Important memories become shattered fragments, impossible to piece back together.
Close relationships will lose their clarity, familiar bonds unravel, replaced by doubt. Trust turns into suspicion, and the afflicted begins to question even the most obvious truths.
Thoughts and emotions gradually lose their shape, swallowed by a dense darkness.
Side Effects:
Max HP reduced by 25% per day until the effect is removed.
Induces anxiety and unease, increasing distrust toward others.
Causes a sense of alienation and loss of self-awareness.
Cannot be detected until it has already caused significant change.
Current Status:Effect not removed.
Ren finished reading, and his body went numb. A suffocating weight spread through him, cold and heavy, like an invisible hand gripping his heart, making every beat more difficult.
His eyes widened, but he couldn't look away from the screen. It felt like everything he was living, everything he had done, was being manipulated by some unseen force.
Then, another chilling line of text appeared in the description:
A worm of doubt creeps into the righteous heart of a king.Trophies pile high around the throne.Sweet praise slowly turns into shackles.Loyalty becomes falsehood, honor becomes greed, golden light blinds reason.And then, he turns his back on those who once fought beside him.
That description read like a silent curse, hitting Ren straight in the heart.
He couldn't help but feel the coldness seeping into his soul, like a shadow he could never escape.
Hollow Brand.
He had never heard of it before. It was like an inevitable curse, a ghost lurking in the dark.
But everything about it was clear, it was a warning. It was manipulating him from the shadows.
Ren couldn't believe what he'd just read. He couldn't understand how such a curse could even exist in this world.
A heavy sense of dread coiled around him, as if something unseen was poised to strike.
He began to realize that he wasn't just facing external challenges, monsters, visible threats.
This... might be something far beyond imagination. An irreversible change creeping in slowly, claiming him piece by piece.
This wasn't a fight against an enemy.
This was a war within himself.
Each passing day, he became more uncertain, more vulnerable to doubt, slowly losing control.
The anxiety refused to be silenced, it was like an undercurrent in his mind, growing stronger, pulling him into a deep abyss of despair.
Ren suddenly understood, this wasn't just an effect.
It was a silent battle. Invisible, but devastating.
And if he didn't find a way to fight back, it would devour him, bit by bit, until nothing remained.