Refused The System

Blood Is Cheaper Than Power

"Father?"

Gerry's voice echoed against the damp stone walls.

The iron door slammed shut behind him, sealing away every trace of light from above. A wave of regret settled over him for coming here. The banquet upstairs had only been the beginning. The real nightmare was waiting below.

At the foot of the staircase, a vast chamber opened before him.

It was an alchemist's laboratory merged with a prison.

Stone tables stood in orderly rows at the center of the room, surrounded by shelves lined with glass jars containing preserved organs suspended in strange liquids. Pale blue crystals embedded in the ceiling cast a dim, ghostly glow over the chamber.

Gerry called for his father again, his voice trembling as instinct warned him that something was terribly wrong.

A man stood at the center of the room with his back perfectly straight.

Alex Sterling.

Gerry's father.

He faced away from Gerry, calmly sharpening a small surgical knife. The scraping of metal against stone broke the suffocating silence.

"You know, Gerry," Alex said in an unnervingly calm voice, "the Sterling Clan has survived for hundreds of years, not because of luck. We endure because we know how to cut away what is useless, so the clan remains strong."

Gerry stopped in his tracks.

A sick feeling twisted in his stomach.

"What do you mean? The guard said you had compensation for me... something that would help me survive."

Alex finally turned around.

His stern face was completely devoid of emotion.

"And that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm making sure your existence isn't entirely meaningless. At the very least, part of you can make a real contribution to the clan's future."

Suddenly, Gerry's knees weakened.

Something was spreading through his veins.

His mind flashed back to the goblet of wine his father's personal servant had offered him just before he left the banquet hall.

"A... sedative?"

His vision began to blur.

He tried to step backward, but his body refused to obey.

He collapsed onto his knees against the cold stone floor.

"Only a high-grade muscle relaxant," Alex corrected as he approached. "I need your nervous system to remain active. If your heart slows too much under full anesthesia, the quality of the organ will deteriorate significantly."

Gerry tried to scream.

The muscles in his throat were locked.

Only a hoarse groan escaped as two guards dragged his limp body onto a stone table. They shackled his wrists and ankles with iron restraints engraved with energy-suppressing seals.

"Let... me... go..."

The words barely escaped his lips.

Tears streamed down his face.

"I'm your son... Father..."

Alex stood beside the table, looking down at him with emotionless eyes.

"That's exactly the problem, Gerry. As my son, you're a failed product. But your brother, Dandy, is the clan's greatest asset. Unfortunately, the Shadow Reaper Poison he encountered at the border a month ago destroyed his internal organs. Ordinary medicine can't heal him."

Alex lowered the surgical knife toward Gerry's abdomen.

The cold tip rested against the skin near his waist.

"Only the organ of a blood relative with perfect compatibility can save him through this transplant ritual," Alex continued. "Your blood may be worthless because you possess no strength, Gerry. But today, your organs are the only valuable thing you have."

Gerry stared at him in utter disbelief.

They had not only abandoned him.

They intended to harvest his organs.

Standing in the open doorway was Dandy.

He did not look sick in the slightest.

Dressed in elegant robes, he stood tall as he watched Gerry with an expression of complete boredom.

"Just get it over with, Father," Dandy said flatly, glancing at his pocket watch. "I have dinner plans with Helena afterward. She doesn't like being kept waiting."

Those words pierced Gerry's heart.

Helena.

The woman who had just broken off their engagement.

She was now preparing to have dinner with the man who would continue living by taking Gerry's organs.

"Of course, my son," Alex replied.

Without another word, he drove the scalpel downward.

Gerry wanted to scream until his lungs gave out.

The drug held his mouth tightly shut.

A burst of indescribable agony exploded through his abdomen.

He felt every layer of skin and flesh being sliced apart as the cold air of the chamber invaded the inside of his body.

Alex worked with steady, practiced precision.

He had deliberately kept Gerry conscious so the adrenaline flooding his body would preserve the organ throughout the extraction.

Gerry felt Alex's gloved hand reach deep into his open abdomen.

It burned.

His eyes bulged.

The veins at his temples swelled.

Cold sweat drenched the stone table beneath him.

Reflected in the polished crystals overhead, Gerry saw himself being dissected alive while his father and brother casually discussed the future of the clan.

"The left kidney," Alex murmured. "Perfect. His damaged meridians are worthless, but the organ itself is exceptionally healthy. He's never consumed the harsh cultivation pills that ruin the body."

"Good," Dandy replied from across the room with an indifferent chuckle. "At least he's useful one last time."

A sickening sound echoed through the chamber as Gerry's kidney was torn from his body.

An unbearable emptiness spread through his abdomen.

Blood poured across the stone table and dripped onto the floor below.

Alex handed the still-pulsing organ to a physician dressed in black robes, who hurried toward the operating table where Dandy was waiting.

Alex looked back at Gerry, whose face had turned ghostly pale as he struggled for every breath.

He had no intention of properly closing the wound.

Instead, he grabbed a handful of blood-clotting powder and casually scattered it into Gerry's gaping abdomen.

"Argh..."

At last, a broken moan escaped Gerry's throat, filled with unbearable suffering.

"Don't die here," Alex said coldly as he wiped the blood from his hands with a clean cloth. "It would be troublesome if this place became filthy. Guards."

The two guards stepped forward immediately.

"Wrap him in burlap. Take him to the edge of Regret Cliff at the border of the Forbidden Abyss," Alex ordered without looking back. "Throw him over. If he's lucky, the fall will kill him before the creatures below tear him apart."

"But, Clan Head," one guard said hesitantly, "that place is cursed. No one has ever returned alive."

Alex fixed him with a threatening stare.

"That's precisely the point. Gerry Sterling died today by suicide after falling into despair over his broken engagement. That's the official story. Now go and carry out your orders."

Gerry's body was lifted without care and wrapped in coarse burlap like a worthless piece of trash.

His wound throbbed relentlessly.

Every jolt from the guards' footsteps sent waves of agony tearing through his body.

As they carried him past Dandy's operating table, Gerry saw his brother turn toward him.

Dandy offered him a faint smile filled with triumph.

Deep inside his fading heart, Gerry made a vow.

If he survived the abyss, he would return.

And he would make every one of them pay.

The massive iron door slammed shut, severing the last bond that had ever existed between them.

Gerry was carried through the darkness of the night toward the towering cliffs where the eternal mist of the Forbidden Abyss lingered.

The freezing wind dried the blood on his wound.

Inside his chest, grief and pain had already transformed into pure hatred.

Moments later, at the edge of the cliff shrouded in black mist, the two guards hurled Gerry's body into the bottomless abyss.

He fell endlessly, swallowed by absolute darkness.

To the world, Gerry Sterling was dead.

But at the bottom of that abyss, something else was waiting for him.

Something that would allow him to rise again.