Autophagy

"Then watch what we will do to your bestie!" Adam said. "Lower him!"

At his command, Hayden walked up and started turning a reel. Although Damien was puzzled for a second, he quickly realized what was going on. There was a barrel right under Ryan. Its size was enough to accommodate more than two people at once. Although Damien couldn't see what was inside it, he knew that it wasn't something pleasing.

"Stop! How can you do this!? This is a crime!" Damien started shouting but to no avail. These three seemed to have dropped all their common sense somewhere. They lifted Damien and brought him near the barrel to see what was inside it.

Damien shrieked as soon as he saw what was inside the barrel.

"How is that huh? We spent almost a quarter of our allowances to have these imported. They are all exotic and highly venomous! Aren't they beautiful?" Adam asked with a smug smile.

"You are monsters..." Damien said. His eyes were filled with anxiety, nervousness, and hate.

The barrel was almost full with hundreds of centipedes. They were all crawling and squirming around. If they really threw Ryan in it, he would undoubtedly die.

"We are not monsters Damien," Adam said while shaking his head. "We are humans and you are just animals who are to be used for us."

Ryan, who was unconscious, woke up from all the commotion.

"Look who is up!" Adam said with a wide smile on his face. Ryan looked at his surroundings and the state he was in for some time.

"Damien?" He asked. Without answering, he kept looking around and saw that he was about to get dropped into the barrel of centipedes. Instantly, he broke out into a sweat. He started crying without making a sound. He knew this warehouse as he had been brought here before. Even if he shouted with all his might, no one would hear him.

"Aww... He is crying," Hayden said.

They kept lowering Ryan down until he reached the barrel. He was tightly bound and couldn't move.

"Do you have any last words?" Adam asked.

Ryan, with tears flowing out of his eyes, did his best to smile widely.

*Ptui

He spitted on Adam's face.

"Keep smiling no matter what happens Damien," Ryan said with a fake smile on his face.

"Drop him!" Adam shouted with anger as he wiped the spit off of his face. Hearing Adam's order, Hayden dropped Ryan into the barrel. In the next 15 minutes, Ryan didn't stop screaming in agony.

'How could this happen?' Damien asked himself in his head. His eyes were devoid of any emotions. 'Weren't this kind of stuff only supposed to happen in movies? It doesn't make any sense...'

As Ryan's screams stopped, the whole warehouse went silent. Adam, Hayden, and Anthony were all enjoying this moment of victory. This whole time, their families were being suppressed by Ryan's. They had to suck up to him since they had started school. Actually, Ryan was the only reason that they were sent there in the first place. Their families wanted them to have good relationships with Ryan and better their family ties with his family. After Ryan's family went bankrupt though, they were able to do whatever they wanted.

After some time, Adam turned his head towards the now psychologically broken Damien.

"Now now... It isn't the time to be mourning after your dead boyfriend right?" Adam asked. He looked at his two friends and continued by saying, "After all, you aren't getting away from here."

Damien, who had been looking at the ground with dead eyes raised his head and looked at the smug smile on Adam's face.

"Why don't you die next to your friend huh?" Adam said. He and Anthony lifted Damien from the ground and tied him up just like they did to Ryan.

After everything was ready, they started slowly lowering Damien to the centipede barrel.

"Why isn't this bastard crying and whimpering like he always does?" Anthony whispered to Adam.

Adam didn't answer and kept waiting. He was sure that Damien would break down in no time.

Suddenly, a chuckling started echoing in the warehouse.

"Haha..."

"What..?" Adam was dumbfounded.

"HAHAHA!" Damien started laughing. In his head, Ryan's last words were being repeated again and again.

'Keep smiling no matter what happens,' Ryan had said.

"This guy is actually laughing..." Hayden muttered in awe.

"Come on! Do whatever you can! It can't be worse than it already is!" Damien shouted with a wide smile on his face. "My life is already like a hell! You don't even know how to properly torture people!" He said.

"We will see that once you're inside the barrel!" Adam said. His face had become red from anger.

'I will keep smiling,' Damien affirmed in his head. 'Even though I won't be able to see my family again,' he thought. 'Even though I won't be able to laugh with my friend again, I will keep smiling no matter what.'

"Even when I'm about to die..." Damien muttered. "And even after my death! I won't stop smiling! So that I can become like my friend whom I envy the most!" He said.

"This guy went crazy," Hayden said.

"Shut up! Go faster," Adam urged Hayden to spin the reel faster.

They quickly dropped Damien into the barrel, waiting for his screams. However, no matter how much they waited, they couldn't hear those much-awaited screams.

Instead, all they could hear was the maniacal waves of laughter from Damien.

'See you on the other side, Ryan...'

...

"Reach him!" Damien shouted with all his might. His golden slit eyes became brighter as if they were two suns, illuminating this apartment filled with despair, death, and horrors.

Unfortunately, the shadows were about to reach him and the robed man. If they did, Damien would get swallowed and killed without being able to take the urn away from the man.

At the last moment, an ethereal energy came out of Damien's hand. It was golden in color, flowing like a gentle current. The golden energy wrapped around Damien's knife and formed into a long blade around it. Damien smiled widely when he saw this.

The energy blade stabbed into the man's heart. The urn flew out of the robed man's hand. Seeing the opportunity, Damien grabbed the urn before falling to the ground.

As soon as he hit the ground, the shadows engulfed him. They inspected all of his body, feeling him and the thing he was holding in his hand. If he didn't have the urn on him, he would probably have turned into a corpse by now.

As the urn's effect became clearer and clearer on Damien, the shadows left him alone.

"I did it," Damien muttered to himself. "I've beaten them..."

His whole body was shaking from excitement, relief, and fear. These shadows were his biggest trauma.

'Centipedes...'

The shadows that had been infesting the whole apartment for some time were actually made up of centipedes. They weren't exactly physical. Rather, they were spiritual centipedes that would hide from human eyes, looking like a whole, homogeneous shadow.

Damien's ability was his eyes, because of his ability, he was able to identify what those shadows were from the beginning.

'I wonder what that golden energy was...' He thought.

After he had rested enough, Damien lifted himself up from the ground and looked around him. There were still some shadows here and there in the hallway but they were nowhere near as much as they were before.

The robed man's skeleton was lying on the ground. He had been consumed by the centipedes in less than ten seconds. Damien shivered when he thought about what would happen if he were to be swallowed by the centipedes without the urn.

'Well... I already know how being eaten to death by centipedes feels like,' Damien thought. He chuckled slightly.

He entered some rooms on the third floor to check out whether he could find some clue about what was happening and who were these robed men.

'That's weird, the shadows seem to be coming from the upper floor,' Damien thought. No matter which room he went to, there was a small stream of shadows coming from the ceiling. He got a bit worried when he thought about Song Lei. "I hope he is okay..."

Damien finished searching the whole floor and didn't find anything new. Seeing that he wasn't getting any more useful info, he returned to floor 4 and entered the safe room.

"You're back?" Fu Ah asked when she saw Damien. She raised one of her brows and looked at the faint smile on Damien's face. "Oh. You're back to normal."

"Yes yes..." Damien said while rolling his eyes. "I have a little question," he said. Seeing that Fu Ah was waiting for him, he continued by saying, "By any chance, do you know anything about a golden energy that would come out of a human?"

"Did you hit your head?" Fu Ah asked with a frown on her face.

"No no... It's just that... When I was fighting with the robed man, a golden flow of energy came out of my body and lengthened my knife. That was the thing that saved me," Damien explained himself.

"Are you sure that you weren't imagining things?" Fu Ah asked.

"Yes. I'm very sure."

"I have no idea. But we can always experiment," Fu Ah said. Damien nodded and they walked further into the room.

"Anyways... As you can see, we have three very miserable and wounded men in our hands," Fu Ah said. Old Wolf, Lu Peng, and Gao Jing were all lying on the bed, side to side. As the bed was small, it seemed very cramped. Especially Lu Peng was covered in lots of wounds.

"Fuck...."