Looking back on my life, I would say that I belong to the relatively unhappy category.

Of course, there have been many instances when I felt content and joyful. There were numerous precious memories that shone like jewels in my mind.

Yet, the harsh truth remains that I have spent more time lamenting my misfortune than experiencing happiness in my 25 years of life.

Despite being born into an average middle-class family, my parents passed away before I was old enough to understand anything. Subsequently, my care was entrusted to my uncle and aunt, but their treatment towards me fell short of kindness and care.

My uncle and his wife had a son who was one year older than me, making him my cousin. Although it may sound impolite to say, he was not particularly exceptional in both academics and sports, while I was proud to have a moderate level of proficiency in both areas, if I may say so myself.

Perhaps not pleased with this, my uncle would frequently beat me, and my aunt would criticize me relentlessly. At the time, I believed it was just the norm, but looking back objectively, it was undoubtedly a form of abuse.

Out of concern for their reputation, they allowed me to graduate from high school but then forced me to leave and work in a factory with dorms owned by a household appliance manufacturer. I worked diligently, got along well with others, and quickly learned the job. Even my seniors praised my performance.

One of my seniors took a liking to me and introduced me to his sister. Until then, I had not met a woman in whom I was strongly interested in forming a relationship with, but I was attracted to her good nature and calm demeanor, and we started going out shortly after.

Looking back now, I realize that this was the high point of my life. It was exactly one year after we had started dating when my girlfriend, with whom I had planned to marry, was found dead in a brutal state.

When my senior colleague called to inform me of her death, I inadvertently dropped my mobile phone. Everything went black before me, and I collapsed onto my knees. When I regained consciousness, hours had already passed.

According to the police, her death was clearly a homicide. Furthermore, she had been sexually assaulted before being murdered. Surveillance cameras captured the scene of her abduction by a group of criminals while she was out shopping.

The culprits were apprehended within a month of her death. However, the outcome of the trial was far from satisfactory for us. The reason being that the group of criminals had used illegal drugs during the crime, and it was concluded that they were in a state of mental instability.

Moreover, due to this reason, they were acquitted, and none of them received any punishment. We protested, but no one was willing to listen to us.

However, a young detective who was in charge of the case secretly told me the truth. He revealed that the leader of the criminal group was a sitting member of parliament, and also a hidden child of someone who had a strong influence in the judiciary. There was pressure to acquit them without conducting a detailed investigation.

The detective was biting his lips until blood came out, looking regretful. He knew that if he leaked the information to the media, he would be crushed. But maybe he wanted to talk to me to ease his mind. Looking back, this may have been the moment when I decided to seek revenge.

Many people may know what happened next because the media has reported it in a sensationalized manner. I resigned from my job, used my savings to buy the necessary equipment for revenge, and systematically trained my body while learning about poisons and drugs. It took me three years to thoroughly investigate the target’s personality and behavior patterns.

Once the preparations were complete, I swiftly carried out my plan. I abducted each person one by one at a time where no one would notice and tortured them until they confessed to their crimes, all while filming the entire process. The torture was never a pleasant experience, but I was able to carry it out for the sake of my revenge. Even though I knew I had become a demon, I did not stop my revenge halfway.

Once they confessed, I provided first aid for their wounds before using my bare hands to strangle them to death. This was to ensure that they suffered the same way my loved one did, through asphyxiation caused by strangulation. All the men in the group begged for mercy, but their pleas fell on deaf ears since my heart had become cold and indifferent.

After carrying out my revenge, I uploaded the confession videos of the group to various video-sharing sites and turned myself in to the police. I didn’t do this out of remorse for taking lives, but as a form of irony towards those who were able to escape punishment by exploiting legal loopholes. I knew I had to face the consequences of breaking the law since I had committed crimes punishable by law.

During the trial, I was sentenced to death as I had killed six people, which was justifiable. I accepted my fate and became a prisoner awaiting my execution.

Various individuals have visited me for a meeting since I became a death row inmate, including activists against the death penalty, journalists who wanted to write articles about me, psychologists who were interested in my mental state, and lawyers who suggested appealing for a retrial.

Regardless of their intentions, I have tried to respond to them with sincerity as much as possible. Even if society may label me as insane, I wanted them to know that I had my own philosophy and some room for reasoning about things.

My execution was scheduled for tomorrow, and it seemed that the time from the verdict to the execution was to be the shortest in history. Although I could probably guess the reason, to be honest, it didn’t matter now that the end of my existence was looming in front of me. What I felt in my heart right now was major relief.

Looking back, my heart had always been thirsty. From my upbringing, I grew up with little to no affection given to me. When I met her and learned what love was, for the first time in my life, the thirst in my heart was quenched. But after losing her, my heart once again became parched. No, it should be said that the pain of a thirsty heart grew even more severe after experiencing full happiness through her.

I was to die the next day as punishment for my own sins. However, for me, who was at the time crushed by a sense of emptiness and longing, death was nothing but a relief. In that case, could it even be called punishment?

As a sinner, I knew that I deserved to be punished by someone. If an afterlife existed, I was undoubtedly going to fall into hell. I hoped that a fair punishment would await me there.

“Hmm? Where am I…?”

I had been executed by hanging after avenging the death of my beloved. The faces of the prison guards who had taken me from my cell and brought me to the execution grounds with bitter expressions were still vivid in my memory. The sensation of the floor beneath me giving way and my neck snapping was still faintly present.

Yes, I should be dead. So, this place might be the afterlife, which means it could be hell. However, hell seemed quite different from what I had imagined.

I was still wearing my prison uniform and standing in a barren wasteland with nothing around me except for the reddish-brown earth. There was no sign of anything reaching the horizon, and the sky was overcast and gloomy. There were no landmarks from the hellscape paintings I had seen before, such as the jailers who tormented sinners, the River Styx, the needle mountain, or the lake of blood.

“Or perhaps this is my punishment—to be stuck in this empty place forever?” I wondered to myself. “If that’s the case, then I must accept it…”

Suddenly, I felt something hit my foot. “Huh? What’s this?” I looked down and saw a tablet device lying on the ground.

“Why would there be something like this here? It seems so out of place,” I muttered to myself as I picked up the tablet and touched the screen. It started up spontaneously, perhaps a reaction to being away from electronic devices during my time in prison. As I did so, the device turned on and a mysterious logo appeared on the bright screen.

I had never seen this logo before, but it must have been made by a manufacturer that I was not familiar with. I was not well-versed in electronics, so I only knew of the top companies in the world.

“Ah, there’s text on the screen… it says Questionnaire for the Deceased with Mitigating Circumstances.”

According to the text that appeared on the screen of the tablet device, it was clear that I had fallen into hell. Considering that I had killed six people out of personal revenge, it was only natural. However, they had decided to conduct a questionnaire for only the deceased with mitigating circumstances on a trial basis. Apparently, the results of this questionnaire would determine the punishment for those deceased individuals, which in this case was me.

I couldn’t help but wonder if they couldn’t just hold a proper trial, but since there was no one to complain to and since it seemed that I couldn’t leave this place without answering the questionnaire, I had no choice but to accept it. It was quite a heavy-handed approach, but I suppose I had to accept it since I was a sinner who had fallen into hell.

Besides, this was probably just a hallucination that I was experiencing as I approached death. Like a “life flashing before your eyes” kind of thing. It was absurd to think that this unrealistic landscape and situation were real. I never thought I had any attachments to this world to be experiencing such a hallucination, but let me answer the questionnaire for now.

“The first question is ‘Do you think it’s unfair that you’ve fallen into hell?’ and my answer is, of course, ‘I don’t think it’s unfair,’”

I had killed people. That was an indisputable fact, and even if the other person had been the scum of the earth, I couldn’t deny my own guilt. That was a conviction I couldn’t bend.

I answered the questionnaire calmly and dispassionately. My response to the second question, ‘Do you regret your actions?’ was ‘No.’ As for the third question, ‘Do you think your life was happy?’…I hesitated, but ultimately answered ‘No.’ Although there were happy memories, when I looked back, only painful memories came to mind.

There were at times questions I didn’t understand, but I answered them earnestly and honestly. Why did I take these questions so seriously, even though I knew it was just a delusion? Anyway, after struggling with the questionnaire on the screen for about ten minutes, I finally reached the last question.

The fiftieth question was a difficult one to answer: ‘Do you like yourself?’ It was the last and most challenging question they had asked me.

I didn’t hate myself for sticking to my beliefs, but I couldn’t say I liked the person who killed for selfish reasons. My human conscience didn’t allow me to accept the fact that I turned into a vengeful monster and killed a human being.

This was just my nature, and it was not something I could easily come to terms with. Being too serious and inflexible, I’ve always had trouble accepting my clumsy way of living, so maybe I didn’t like myself after all. With a wry smile, I typed ‘dislike’ as my answer.

At the bottom of the screen, there was a submit button. After touching it, the message ‘sending’ appeared. After a while, it changed to ‘verifying’, and then ‘receiving’, until finally it read ‘touch here for verdict’.”

I thought it was quite poppy or casual, but perhaps it was too haphazard. It was just a product of my own illusions after all, limited by the extent of my imagination. With a self-deprecating chuckle, I touched the designated spot.

“The verdict is to go to hell. That’s to be expected… But what does the punishment of ‘surviving for a hundred years’ mean?”

The truth was that I had researched about the hell I would likely go to while in prison. According to what I found, torture for several hundred years by the prison guards was standard punishment for those who fell into hell. For particularly cruel criminals, the torture would be even more severe, lasting for several thousand years or more.

My knowledge of hell was only a small part, and furthermore, it was limited to Buddhist concepts. However, regardless of the religion, if there is a concept of hell, those who fall into it will undoubtedly experience similarly severe punishments. Nevertheless, isn’t a sentence of only one hundred years too short?

Besides, it was strange that the punishment was to “survive.” I had so many doubts in my mind, but since this was a mere hallucination, I suppose it doesn’t matter. I selected “no” for the “Do you want to request a retrial?” option at the bottom center of the screen.

With this, my sentence should be final. The tablet device screen displayed “Thank you for your hard work,” and the power abruptly got cut off, turning the screen black. Immediately afterward, the world around me crumbled. The dark, cloudy sky shattered like glass, and the barren wasteland cracked open, causing me to fall into the crevice.

Ah, it was finally over. Rather than being afraid of disappearing, I was relieved to have escaped a life filled with pain. As my vision gradually faded to black and my senses began to dull, the last sound I heard was a mechanical voice saying, “WELCOME TO HELL!”

When my consciousness awakened, the first thing I felt was a strong sense of confinement. I felt as if I were being squeezed into a room that was barely big enough to contain my body. Desperately, I moved my arms and legs, trying to break free from whatever was compressing me.

It seemed that a soft membrane was enveloping me, and simply moving my limbs wasn’t enough to stretch or tear it. So I focused my strength on a single point, piercing the membrane with the sharp ends of my hands and feet. With a small popping sound, a hole was made in the membrane, and I gradually tore it apart by widening the hole.

“Kishii…?”

Emerging from the membrane, I looked around. It appeared that I was in a large room with metal walls and floor. Only the ceiling was covered in glass with low transparency, allowing dim light to enter.

However, the issue at hand is not my location, but rather the objects around me. It was a white, elongated egg, nearly the same size as me, with a taut membrane that enveloped me as well. In other words, the creature inside this membrane was my sibling.

Observing my sibling’s appearance through the membrane, I saw a creature that was pure white, composed of several segments with eight legs, two pincers, and a tail with a sharp stinger at the tip. In short, it was a scorpion.

I climbed atop my sibling’s egg, attempting to gain a better understanding of the situation from a higher vantage point. It was then that I realized that not only were there scorpion eggs like my own in this room, but there were also eggs of various colors and species, creating a spectacular display of noxious colors.

I questioned how I even had the knowledge to identify myself as a scorpion, and how I possessed such a high level of cognitive ability as a newborn. Moreover, where was this room located? Questions continued to arise, but one thing was clear—I had a mission that I must prioritize above all else.

Interestingly enough, while I had doubts about possessing my own knowledge, I had no doubts about my mission. It was as if my instincts knew that it was natural not to question it. It was confusing to think that not having doubts could be a doubt in itself…I couldn’t even make sense of it myself.

As I delved deeper into contemplating my own existence, the glass ceiling above me lifted. Suddenly, a giant boy and an old man peered down at me. The boy had soft-looking blonde hair and a cocky yet perfectly proportioned face, while the old man had unkempt, bushy white hair and a sickly thin, withered appearance like that of an old tree. They both wore expressions of delight as they looked down at me.

The knowledge within me whispered that these two were members of the Furu people, a species within the human race. The definition of the human race is having two arms and two legs, one head, and possessing a high level of intelligence that includes the ability to speak a language.

The Furu was the largest within the human race, living mainly on the plains They were known for their combative nature and were constantly engaged in battles with other races. Even among themselves, there were instances of groups within the Furu race fighting against one another. So, it was safe to say that their reputation for being combative was not misplaced.

However, the fact that the Furu race looks so big means that I am very small. When I think about it, it makes sense. Scorpions, as a species, are generally small. In other words, this place that I thought was a room… was actually a box for incubating.

“Oh, it’s finally hatching!”

“Please calm down, young master. The real show is about to begin.”

The old man reached into the box with a pair of tweezers and tried to grab me. I panicked and tried to escape, but I had nowhere to hide, and the difference in size between us was overwhelming. Despite my struggling, he easily caught me.

I tried to wiggle my arms and legs to get away, but the old man seemed to be skilled in handling tweezers and had me firmly fixed in place, making it impossible for me to escape. Will I die like this without fulfilling my mission?

The old man, who seemed unaware of my fear, picked me up with the tweezers and tossed me into another box. This box was made of wood and seemed to be less sturdy than the previous one, but it was apparently custom-made. This was because intricate patterns were drawn on the walls and floor inside the box.

When I saw the patterns, the knowledge within me cried out that these were spiritual circuits used for some kind of spiritual arts. However, I did not know what kind of art it was for. Although I had knowledge of spiritual art, it seemed that I did not understand the technical aspects. It appeared that my knowledge was not all-encompassing.

“However, it’s quite small.”

“The offspring of insects are usually of this size, young master.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, young master. It is said that the individuals that hatch quickly have a strong soul and body. By breeding various types of insects, and hatching more than tens of thousands of eggs laid on the same day, the fastest individual among them… this child will surely become a strong insect.”

“I see. Anyway, if you can raise it to be strong, that’s all that matters.”

“As you wish.”

The old man with bulging eyes and bony hands hovered his hands over the spiritual circuit. As he did so, a burst of spiritual power emanated from his hands, causing the circuit to glow red. The energy was then converted into a black and red thread that bound my body tightly.

The pain was indescribable—not physical but rather a soul-crushing agony that left me writhing and screaming in high-pitched agony. I felt as though I was about to lose consciousness, yet the spiritual binding refused to let me go. For what felt like an eternity, I endured the excruciating torment of this spiritual art.

“Phew… The ‘soul binding is now complete, young master.”

“So now I can give orders freely?” asked the young master.

“That is correct, young master. The authority to give orders belongs to you and me, but the priority is yours,” replied the old man.

“I see. I’ll leave it to you then.”

After being released from the torture-like pain, I couldn’t move a single joint. As I listened to the conversation between the two Furu members, I was stunned by the sight of my own body reflected in my compound eyes, now adorned with bright red patterns despite not having fully developed pigmentation yet.

When the door opened and closed again, the old man picked up my body with a pair of tweezers. I didn’t resist or struggle, partly because it was too much effort to move, but also because I reasoned that since they had gone to all this trouble, they wouldn’t kill me.

I wondered where they would take me next, but was surprised to find myself in a box meant for hatching me and my siblings. There were already thousands, if not tens of thousands, of insects hatching, forming a sea of wriggling bodies. Among them were not just my scorpion siblings, but also various other insects such as centipedes, spiders, millipedes, cockroaches, and more.

A fierce battle for survival was already underway among the insects. Scorpions grasped cockroaches with their pincers, while centipedes bit them, and spiders jumped in from behind to sink their fangs in. Elsewhere, mole crickets swarmed around unhatched eggs and severed limbs, squabbling and cannibalizing one another.

“I see, the rest of the pack is eating each other. It will be good nourishment. As your master, I command you to use all your strength to fight and kill every insect in the box.”

“Kishiii!?”

As soon as I received the command, the markings on my body glimmered with a sinister light. The intense urge to kill surged within me. I felt a sense of duty to quickly fulfill the old man’s command and eradicate all the insects fighting below with my own hands.

Normally, it would be difficult to resist such a strong sense of duty. However, I had a mission that I had held since birth. It was something deeply ingrained in my soul, and even powerful spiritual arts could not overwrite it. It was this mission that helped me maintain my sanity.

But as a result, I seemed to be opposing the new command. My soul was under great strain, causing excruciating pain that made me grit my teeth. Unaware of my internal struggle, the old man released me from the tweezers and mercilessly dropped me into the sea of insects.

“Screeeech!”

“Shaaah!”

“Hushuuu!”

I quickly flipped over, feeling the danger to my life after falling to my back. My intuition was correct. For a moment, I had exposed my vulnerability by being flipped on my back, and as a result, insects came attacking me from all directions.

These insects showed no emotion or intelligence in their eyes, driven purely by their instincts and hunger. Among them were my own siblings. They seemed to have no hesitation in cannibalizing each other. I suppose that’s just how insects are. But then again, I too am an insect.

“Kiiishaaa!!!”

However, that doesn’t mean I’m willing to be killed and eaten. Perhaps it was due to the old man’s orders that triggered my fighting instincts, or maybe his words were correct, or it could be the power of knowledge within me. Either way, fortunately, I knew what I needed to do to survive.

I caught the head of the centipede approaching from the front with my pincers and threw it into the swarm of millipedes. As for the cockroaches coming from behind, I stabbed them with the non-poisonous stinger on my tail and swung it like a blunt weapon. Until the needle falls out, it’ll be my weapon.

From then on, I fought desperately. I cut off the insects’ heads with my pincers, twisted their bodies, and finished them off. After they broke, I used them as a stabbing sword to pierce the insects. I used my long abdomen as a whip to smash the insects I stabbed with my tail onto the ground and crush their heads and bodies. I focused solely on hitting the vulnerable spots of the insects that came within range of my attack, accurately and with a single strike.

This tactic worked precisely because I was fighting against newborn, weak insects that had no intelligence. They didn’t learn from the deaths of their fallen comrades and simply acted on their instincts.

Furthermore, once I regained my footing, there was no longer any reason for them to target me specifically, and I was just one of the many insects to them. I was never again intensely targeted. The most dangerous moment was right after I was thrown into the swarm.

The battle of the insects was fierce, and as a result, their numbers dwindled quickly. The floor, once covered in eggs, was now littered with countless dead insect corpses, and the bodily fluids that had splattered during the fighting stained not only the floor but also the walls on all sides. However, as the number of insects decreased to a few hundred, the fighting rapidly subsided. This was because those who survived could now feast on the corpses of their fallen brethren.

Amidst the silent and scattered insects now busily feeding on the corpses as if the previous fighting had been nothing but a lie, I alone continued to kill the insects. This was because my orders were to annihilate all of them.

Although the old man’s commands could not fully control me, because I retained my rationality, I still suffered from unnecessary mental anguish. However, if I followed the old man’s wishes, the pain that tormented my mind would be significantly reduced.

After all, these were the same creatures that had been killing each other up until now. Even if I killed them all, including the scorpions that were my siblings, nothing would change. I swiftly killed all the surviving insects without hesitation, and finally fulfilled the old man’s orders. At that moment, the pain that had been weighing on me suddenly disappeared. It seemed that the criteria for fulfilling the orders had been met.

Ah, I’m exhausted. I haven’t even been alive for an hour, and I’m already covered in wounds. My pincers were cracked, my soft exoskeleton has been pierced by fangs, and my tail’s stinger was broken. I was in a state of complete disrepair.

What will I be forced to do from now on? Can I fulfill my mission, “to survive for a hundred years,” that is engraved in my soul in this condition? First and foremost, can a scorpion even live for a hundred years? With nothing but anxiety, I focused on surviving for the time being, and I stabbed my broken pincers into the spider carcass in front of me, devouring its flesh.