I’m Trapped in a Cube - Chapter 141

Seeing this pitted stone, Mo Ling suddenly felt a surge of inexplicable revulsion, an uncontrollable sense of nausea flooding his mind.

So ugly, extremely ugly.

Even though the stone looked exactly like the Black Tower’s structure outside, that abnormal sense of disgust was impossible to suppress.

Mo Ling stopped looking at the stone, but as long as he thought of it, he would reflexively feel nauseous.

“So strange. Where does my disgust come from?”

This baseless disgust even triggered a physical reaction in Mo Ling, goosebumps rising all over his body.

Only after he forced himself not to think about the stone did the discomfort ease a little.

But the stone wasn’t about to give up, floating right in front of them.

“Why did she say I’m disgusting?” it asked again.

Martin finally couldn’t take it anymore and, suppressing his discomfort, said, “Isn’t that what sirens are like? You’re just that disgusting.”

Sirens?

Mo Ling noticed the term.

“The Core is a siren?”

Mo Ling instantly connected everything-the creature living in sound, using sound to create physical things, that was a siren.

Martin kept cursing, “You’ve lived so long and still ask such childish questions?”

He stepped back a few steps, distancing himself from the stone.

Martin spoke while still suppressing his nausea, trying to hold back his discomfort, but his tone clearly betrayed his uncontrollable revulsion.

“Sirens are just such creatures. The price of gaining the power of sound is a repulsive true form, making anyone who sees them feel uncontrollable disgust. That disgust simply can’t be suppressed.”

“Unless you disguise yourself with sound, layering shell after shell, wrapping your ugly core in a beautiful exterior-but even that doesn’t work. The disgust will still seep through eventually.”

“To become the object of revulsion, that is the price of being a siren, and also their fate!”

Martin finished, retching as he spoke to the Core.

After hearing this, the Core stopped approaching, slowly retreating to the center of the cave.

It was silent for a long time.

“This is the first time anyone has told me. Thank you,” the Core said quietly.

“The first time?”

“No one had ever told it before? Just how hated was it?”

“No one ever told you?” Martin was also incredulous.

This was a being older than human civilization, and it hadn’t understood its own species’ nature?

“No,” the Core replied quietly.

It slowly began to recount its past. This being, the hated one, was not always like this.

……

The Core was born in a world of beautiful sound.

It was originally a sound echoing in the Abyss , until at some moment, it gained self-awareness.

Confused and ignorant, it began to explore the world from a unique perspective.

Unlike other creatures, it knew the world through sound.

The sound of rain was “tick-tock.”

The sound of leaves was “rustle.”

The sound of a brook was “gurgle.”

The sound of wind was “whoosh.”

……

As it learned these sounds, it discovered that by imitating them, it could create the same things.

This delighted it, and it began collecting all kinds of sounds.

It loved noisy environments. The jungle during rain was its favorite-at that time, there was a symphony of countless sounds, and it drifted among the notes, as if lying on soft clouds.

But in the process of understanding the world, the Core discovered something even more interesting, a group of creatures.

They made different sounds, could interact with the outside world, and could create sounds rarely heard.

The Core wanted to join them, to create sound, so it made itself a body.

This body was made of the most ordinary stone. It controlled the stone and found the group of creatures.

But these creatures fled at the sight of it, even tried to attack, and even smashed its body.

“Why did this happen?”

Lacking basic common sense, the Core didn’t initially know why it was attacked.

After some time, it guessed that these creatures might be wary of it.

So it changed its body to look exactly like those creatures, but when it tried to approach again, it was attacked once more.

The Core could only slink away.

It had no companions, and could only continue to drift through the sounds of the Abyss, until it met her.

Her first words were, “You look pretty disgusting.”

But she didn’t shun it, and even helped it modify its body.

“Put the body you possess in the very center, then wrap it with the sound illusions you create.”

The Core obediently chose the same color purple crystal as her, and wrapped its body in layer after layer.

“That’s much better,” she said, complimenting the Core’s new appearance.

She taught the Core many things, and told it they were friends, that friends should help each other.

This was the Core’s first time having a “friend.”

It had drifted in sound for so long, so lonely. The sounds were beautiful, but none would communicate with it.

The friend led the Core on explorations in the Abyss, letting it see the world anew from a normal creature’s perspective. It learned the ways different creatures communicate.

Not only that, it learned many different sounds, making its power ever stronger.

Until one day, the friend told the Core she was leaving, to see a newly born species, she really liked this species.

But after she left, she didn’t return for a long time. The Core lost its purpose, and tried to make new friends.

At first, these friends were friendly, but slowly they began to dislike it.

“You’re too disgusting.”

“Stay away from me.”

“Sorry, I can’t stand you.”

All the friends it made lasted only a short while, they would all eventually leave.

So the Core decided to stop making friends. It built a tower on the second layer of the Abyss, hid itself inside, created a world of sound, and studied all sorts of sounds.

Most importantly, it studied itself.

“What did it represent?”

Every sound has meaning, every sound has a source, but it didn’t know where it came from.

It imitated itself, creating many similar sound creatures.

But these sound creatures didn’t have the Core’s intelligence, more like beasts, often causing trouble, so it threw them into the third layer of the Abyss.

Its research continued, but there was no progress-it still couldn’t figure out its own sound source, as if it had appeared out of nowhere.

It was at this time that the friend found it again, asking it to pass its power to humans. The Core happily agreed.

“We’re friends, we should help each other.”

The Core thought they would always be like this.

But as the power of human language faded, the friend visited less and less, and their conversations grew more perfunctory.

The Core had no choice but to bring her to its world of sound, to show her its creations, its beautiful sounds.

But she showed no interest.

At a loss, the Core tried desperately, using sound to create her favorite thing-humans.

But this act angered her.

“The humans you created are disgusting!”

“Your world is also extremely ugly!”

“Just like you, very! Very! Very disgusting!”