After I had finished laughing and composed myself, I teleported back downstairs and saw Ariel still with a troubled expression on her face. Resisting the urge to break out in laughter once again, I stopped her before she could speak and told her to not worry.

I wanted to know more details about her ability, and as she was feeling guilty about asking about mine this was the perfect opportunity for me to get some answers.

“So I was wondering, if even beheading can’t kill you, what are the extents of your healing abilities?” I asked the question rather bluntly, beating about the bush would take too long and her mindset right now would make it more likely for her to answer straightforward questions.

“Ummm… honestly I have no idea. I tried a lot of things back there to end it all but nothing seemed to work. I even jumped off the twentieth story and smashed into the ground, but my body healed up immediately after. Then I got attacked by a number of different creatures who started eating me alive, but as soon as they would bite a chunk of flesh off me it would get healed again, so they had a lot of food to go around I guess. The creatures even used all manners of abilities against me, but I got healed back up as soon as something hit me. It hurt like hell. My ability doesn’t stop me from feeling pain after all. The bastards allowed the creatures to feast on me for hours before they finally decided it was time for them to ‘save’ me. They claimed that it was my punishment for trying to get away, and then they chained me up and gagged me so I wouldn’t do it again.”

…..

….

Wow.

This…. wow….

I’m speechless.

I have no idea how she is still sane. A normal person would have lost their mind after all that...

Wait a minute… A normal person WOULD certainly have lost their mind after that!

“I really have no words to respond to that. However, I do have one question if you don’t mind, how are you still sane? I mean, anyone else would have lost their mind after going through what you just described and then being gagged and bound on top of it for so long… All the other women had no sense of sanity left as far as I could see. Even when they were saying goodbye to each other it all felt very… weird…?”

Good job Ben. Asking her how the hell isn’t she cuckoo yet will certainly make a great impression!

“Apparently my ability doesn’t even allow me to get insane. It sees insanity as a disease and cures it as soon as it happens. You have no idea how many times I have heard my mind voice inform me that I have been cured of insanity.”

Hmm… Well that explains it. It also explains how she remained so calm all throughout the torture session and how she is so calmly replying to my questions right now too. Though it’s strange she didn’t use her ability to its full potential in that torture session…

“Okay, that explains it. But I do have to ask, if your ability can also cure insanity, why didn’t you use it on that bitch back there when she went insane? You could have cured her and continued on, couldn’t you?”

Her eyes immediately went wide and for a moment she stared blankly at me, then she screamed “FUCK! Why didn’t I think of that!” and started mumbling and grumbling about what she should and shouldn’t have done.

I enjoyed her tantrum for a bit before I stopped her and asked her another question that sprung in my mind.

“Does your ability also make it so that you think more from your head instead of with emotions like normal people do?”

Bit of a weird question but whatever. I was hoping she would answer yes, so I won’t have to deal with an emotional person. If her ability can cure insanity, then it should also cure the disease that is thinking with your emotions! I also would prefer it if someone who I am going to stay with can make quick decisions with her head instead of taking forever because of conflicting emotions.

“No, why would it? Emotions are what makes a human, human. There’s no reason why my ability would cure my emotional state.”

Ah crap. The old ‘emotions are what makes humans, humans’ crap. Give me a break. I thought I would stop hearing this fucking phrase after 90+% of the humans died but nope, it’s still around!

It was enough talking for one day so I told her that we should probably find a place to crash for the night. It was getting late and the room we were in wasn’t suitable for sleeping.

20 minutes later we had found two adjacent rooms which were suitable for us and I bid her goodnight and went to lie down on my bed. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it must have felt for Ariel to go through all that shit. I think I should refrain from manipulating her from now on. Poor girl has been through enough!

…..

Naah… Manipulating is too fun… I’ll just make sure no other bastards get their hands on her ever again. Yea, that should be good enough… With that decided, I drifted off to sleep.

___________________________________

The next two days passed by with nothing major happening. Ariel was surprisingly good company! She didn’t bother me, she didn’t annoy me with stupid crap like talking about her feelings, she didn’t even talk to me! I was afraid that it was going to be hell for me and I would have to dump her somewhere after her ‘emotions are what makes us human’ crap earlier but luckily that wasn’t the case.

I did enjoy her not talking to me, but I did find myself wanting to speak to her from time to time. This came as a shock to me as it completely against my loner mentality! At first I thought it was just because I had been alone for far too long and I had been wanting some company lately, but I soon found out that wasn’t the case.

The simple reason why I had started to feel lonely during my travels and why I had started to speak to Ariel was boredom. I was utterly bored. It was so boring that I couldn’t even come up with entertaining thoughts to keep me going through the day!

The boredom came from the fact that there was just nothing for me to do anymore. I had no goals, I had no priorities, I basically had no reason to live! Sounds seriously depressing, but it’s the truth!

The world before was flawed, yes, but at least there was always something to do. A goal to achieve. You had to study to get a job, you had to get a job to pay for necessities, you then got married and had children and then got busy with your family. Even if I never got bothered to marry and have a family, I would have been busy running a business probably.

It had always been a bit of a dream of mine to run a business. To be the boss of people, to have no one else to tell me what to do. Also, the aspect of running a business and making money always excited me for some reason. It was also why I had been studying Chartered Accountancy. It certainly wasn’t because I wanted to become an accountant, it was so that I could understand all the numbers and technical aspects of running a business before practically running one myself. I also had jotted down a few ideas on what kind of businesses I could run…

But now, there was nothing to do. I had nothing to achieve. I could continue getting more abilities, but what was the point? What’s the point of getting stronger on a planet filled with monsters? To survive? I can survive fine right now, there aren’t many normal creatures out there who can kill me. Sure, there are things like the T-rex or the dragons, but I can simply stay away from them.

What do I even have to survive for? I have no family, no one I care about. I can easily drop Ariel off somewhere and then go back to the dragon and let it have me for lunch. No one would care.

I don’t think this is some sort of depression kicking in, I seriously have nothing to do! I have travelled most of the world, I have taken steps to ensure my survival, now what? It would have been so much more interesting if there had been no monsters, and only humans had been given abilities. That way I could have at least had some interesting things to do from time to time.

Alright Ben, stop this self pitying crap. It’s just boredom, there must be plenty of stuff to do to get rid of it! Let’s see now…

I could start playing the hero, using my abilities to rescue people in distress and setting up a sort of ‘community’ or safe haven for them all to stay at…. Nope, pass!

I could go to the university and hang out with my friends. They are all an entertaining bunch, and worst-case scenario they annoy me by being too clingy and I leave. Much better than the first option, but let’s think of something else for now…

I could search for another group of survivors and stay with them if they turn out to be a fun bunch. But I would probably end up being the guy who does everything because of my ability, while the rest of them would just laze about and do nothing…

I could continue hunting monsters for abilities. Maybe give fighting the T-rex a shot now that Ariel can heal me up quickly. But again, no point in getting stronger…

I could get something to kill me. End of story. *sigh*

Come on Ben! Think of something, or pick one of these options and stick with it! There has to be something to do!

So far the option to go to the university seems like the best out of the bunch. I’m just not sure though…

I absentmindedly took out the piece of paper where I had listed up all of my abilities and went through the list.

….

Wait!

There’s one ability I haven’t tried yet!

I had been postponing it as I wanted to try it out once I was done travelling, and completely forgot all about it! How could I have forgotten something so incredible! This will certainly help me in getting rid of my boredom!

It’s about damn time I tried my summoning ability!

__________________________________

Author's note: Sorry for another long delay. Real life issues and what not. I also ended up reading a few chapters of Re: monster for the first time because someone had said in a comment how similar my story was to it. I found out that it really is EXTREMELY similar regarding the abilities etc, both MCs even have the same name for their abilities!

This naturally got me worried and I spent the last 2 days planning out everything from here on out for the story. I haven't read a lot of Re: monster yet but I do apologize if there are other similarities in the future. That being said, I have planned out about 4-5 arcs which I am very excited about!

Anyways, let me know of any mistakes. Any feedback is always welcome! Hope you like this chapter.