I Hate Systems

"N-No, w-where am I this time?" The man gasped for breath, noticing that he was now within a pit of sorts. The pit spanned a depth of ten metres and encompassed an area of 500 square metres. It wasn\'t big, sporting a tree on one side.

The man gazed up, noticing that it was evening time, about to darken soon after. There was nothing else in the place. He was not only exhausted but also in an intense state of hunger, wishing to eat something, no matter how grotesque it might seem, as long as it was edible.

He approached the wall, intending to climb only to scrape his palms as a result. The wall was too steep and filled with sharp protrusions that could injure him.

Grumble!

His stomach made noises due to hunger as he felt weak, thinking of something as he approached the tree and plucked a leaf, eating it to spit out immediately, "Bitter!"

But he had to eat something to satiate his uncontrollable hunger as he began to gobble up the leaves. He first started by eating one after another, but after a couple dozen seconds, he was plucking them by the group before stuffing them in his mouth.

"Aargh!" Suddenly, he screamed in pain, sensing something wriggling in his mouth to spit out in alarm.

Psst!

Dozens of worms crawled out of the spit contents, alarming him. Moreover, some of them were still in his mouth, hanging from the inner walls of his mouth that they had bitten into.

"Bleh…puhaaa…gahh!" He hurriedly used his fingers to somehow pull them all out, spitting out the blood that had filled his mouth by then. Blood leaked out of his wounded gums, not to mention the injuries on his fingers—bitten by the worms when he used his fingers to pull them out—that spilt out blood.

"Disgusting!" He grunted before staring at their wriggling bodies, slowly picking a worm as he crushed its head before crunching it in his mouth to swallow the contents, noticing that they tasted better than the leaves.

He then looked through the leaves, only now noticing tiny eggs planted on the backside of the leaves, with a layer of the leaf epidermis covering them to camouflage them slightly. Upon staring at them, the face of the man paled in response, "Oh no…"

Cough! Cough!

He tried all means to vomit out everything that he had eaten, realising by now that every scenario was created to torture him. Unfortunately, he had been too hungry before, so on his empty stomach, he was unable to vomit.

The quantity he stuffed in his stomach refused to come out as his body instinctively protected its satiety needs. "No…no…no!"

He fainted soon after from exhaustion. Time passed in such a fashion as he woke up almost a day later. He had an exhausting experience dying a slow but painful death to the tsunami after all.

"Guh! My stomach hurts!" He was woken up many hours later by phantom pains in his stomach that continued to worsen over time, "Arrgh!"

He got up, took a step forward and collapsed, unable to endure the pain that suddenly spiked under the exertion.

It was the dead of the night as he lay at the bottom of the pit, staring at the starry night as he was unable to endure the pain, tearing up in response, "What have I done to you? Why are you making me suffer so much?"

Cough! Cough!

Suddenly, he felt pain in his chest before coughing out, noticing something sticky splash out. A rusty smell pervaded the surroundings, making it apparent that he had coughed out blood.

"Pain! Pain! Pain!" He hollered like a madman, scratching his stomach as it hurt too much before soon, he lay flat on the ground, lacking the strength to resist anymore.

He was still feeling the phantom pains in his stomach when eventually, there was a piercing pain that jutted him awake.

The clouds parted way at this time, causing the moonlight to brighten up the pit, allowing the man to stare at his stomach to notice blood bubbling out of a dozen holes that had appeared on it accompanying the pain.

And from each, wriggling out was a worm, completely bloody as they had eaten their way out from within his stomach. They were a type of worm species whose egg hatched within the stomachs of living organisms.

While eating the leaves out of hunger, he had consumed them too, "Vicious bastard…"

His eyes lost their shimmer as more and more worms drilled out of his stomach, rending his life.

…

"Kill me…please…no more…please…" The Invader kneeled on the barrier, begging in response as it mostly resembled a human except for some modifications on its mouth, nose, and neck.

Its gaze was of utter despair, blanked out from repeated torture as its mind had been converted into the most susceptible human ever, too weak to endure torture. Four scenarios in and it was done, unable to endure anymore.

\'Hmm, for a being with power on par with a peak Grade 1 System, once I gave it the mind of a fragile human, it lasted for four scenarios.\' Compass Carburettor thought in response, \'Interesting, but it still lasted through four scenarios. And even though I conveyed it through a nightmare, it still took a couple of minutes in total in reality. It\'s not potent enough yet to affect a Grade 3 System.\'

"Seems I need to improve my experience reserves." He muttered before staring at the Invader, "Not yet. I still lack valuable data."

He then snapped his finger, removing his influence on its dreams, watching its body gradually revert into its original Invader form. And with it, the Invader lost all the weaknesses it gained.

"You condemnable bastard, I\'ll kill you!" It let out a guttural roar and charged at Compass Carburettor, pulling out a hammer that hummed with terrifying power. The tentacled beast it was riding had charged a penetrating power in its mouthpart that had healed by now.

Staring at them, Compass Carburettor thought, \'In terms of sheer power, they rival the Coincidental Luck System. But indeed, that\'s only when comparing brute power. A System has more finesse, especially since it manipulates countless parameters.\'

"But," Compass Carburettor suddenly stared at the Invader when time seemed to have slowed down to a crawl as his mouth curled up into a devilish sneer, "When did I say my experiments ended? There\'s still plenty of aspects about my power that I have yet to explore."

"We\'re just getting started.