Through Ellen's perception, pedestrians trampling the soil brought him the crushing pain of bone cells; insects gnawing at grass and trees transmitted piercing, tearing pain; flowing water scouring particles brought constant corrosive pain; slight tremors of the earth's crust and the pressure of roots added new suffering.
Those pains were like sheets of paper stacked layer upon layer, growing thicker and thicker as they pressed down on the core of his perception—too heavy to ignore, yet never enough to crush him.
He had no sleep, no numbness, no emotional buffer. A thousand years of pain had piled up upon him, yet he remained calm as he managed the world's industries and refined his research into death.
The pain persisted like background noise. He could not turn it off, but he had learned to keep it in the background, letting it interfere neither with his judgment nor his decisions.
Occasionally, death-seekers with nowhere else to turn would find their way into these mountains and forests suffused with his cells. They knelt in the mud, sprawled beside the water, and cried out hoarsely with words of supplication.
They did not know whom they were praying to. They only vaguely sensed that something existed within these mountains and forests—an aura that belonged neither to grass nor soil, and certainly not to any living thing they had ever seen.
Ellen sensed their approach and their lingering presence. He sensed the friction between their knees and the soil as they knelt on the damp ground.
Using the earth itself as a medium, with the cell fragments scattered throughout the mountains and forests as the point of origin, he sent out a thought signal resembling resonance. It did not take the form of distinct sound, but the consciousness of those death-seekers could receive it as a