Free Web NovelChapter 4: Hollow Progress
The familiar scene played again.
Slave 135’s torn body reassembled beneath the false tree. The lower half that had been bitten through was pulled back into place. Flesh reattached. Bone aligned. Blood flowed backward into open veins that no longer leaked.
The process finished.
He stood whole, but he did not react... He failed to react.
There was no awe left to feel. His thoughts were brief and blunt.
’Where is the way?’ his mind screamed.
He wasn’t seeking victory, nor did he want to run away... He just wanted a way to not die again. This trial must have a way for him to live.
He couldn’t have been sent here to just die and reverse meaninglessly... There must be a way...
Or so he believed.
His eyes scanned the field.
The monsters were still there. Their numbers did not shrink in any meaningful way. They only felt farther now, but just slightly.
He was still surrounded from every direction, and within no time...
He dismissed the thought and focused on finding a way... Along the search, his stomach tightened when his eyes fell on them again...
The trees... he now knew they were not trees.
They had never been trees. They were waiting things, or rather, predators that did not move unless provoked.
Predators he could not afford to touch again.
They weren’t things he understood, nor did he have the luxury of adding extra enemies.
Still, soon, the living was back and ready, and the dead were left broken, scattered where they had originally died.
[Trial Resumes in 3]
The mechanical voice cut through his thoughts.
He exhaled inwardly, for his lungs were till this moment still frozen along with everything else in the trial.
There was no cover, no route, no blind spot, nor a fault he could exploit.
So he chose the only option left. He would die willingly.
If he was going to die again, then he would die where he stood... and he would not try to escape.
Saving the wasted stamina and effort on trying to run or finding a way out was not very practical at this point, so... he was going to invest everything in killing a few more.
[1]
He didn’t wait for them to jump him again, instead... He lunged forward the instant the countdown ended.
The nearest goblin died before it could react. Its head left its shoulders and hit the mud.
He stepped back without thinking. His blade slid into a wolf’s throat.
His sense of fear was gradually getting duller. He had already died twice in this swamp... It no longer felt as sharp as it used to be.
Combat familiarity started to set in instead, but familiarity did nothing to stop pain.
Claws tore through his side. Teeth sank into muscle. Blades found gaps he had not guarded.
He kept moving. He kept cutting.
But he also kept dying.
His screams echoed briefly before being swallowed again.
Then the world reversed, once more without consent or rest.
The fourth attempt ended with goblins overwhelming his left side before he could pivot.
The fifth ended beneath the tree, the trunk split open earlier this time, swallowing him along with a few wounded monsters who failed to run.
He realized it had been waiting.
"WHY WHY WHY?" He screamed his lungs out the moment the trial resumed.
He kept cutting till death found him as soon as it always did.
The tenth ended with him attempting to ride a wolf with his blade stuck into its ribs. He rode wildly into a cluster of goblins. He killed several before the weight dragged him down and everything tore him apart.
The world reversed.
Again.
The mind that was used to combat, familiar with war.
The mind that never thought amidst combat was crumbling.
"WHY ME, WHY AM I HERE ALONE?" He screamed, jumping on the closest goblin. He ignored everything and kept stabbing.
"WHAT DID I DO TO FALL INTO THIS HELL?" He shouted at the dead goblin, ignoring death that rapidly claimed him once again.
By the twentieth attempt, his movements were mechanical, his senses dulled, his desire to live diluted.
"Please let me die!" He cried, though his body failed to stop fighting back.
He had already accepted that this place didn’t have a method nor a path. There were no tactics, nothing to climb or hide upon. There was nothing here... nothing but monsters.
Not in the slightest did he have a chance to win, but he kept moving... He screamed, cried...
By the fortieth, he no longer screamed when he was disembowelled. frёeωebɳovel.com
By the seventieth, the numbers had visibly changed. He suddenly snapped, "YOU BASTARD EYE BALL COME AND FIGHT ME YOU COWARD!"
He was trading whatever was left of his will for kills, and it seemed to be working.
But the realization brought with it no relief, nor joy... He was tired. This reset brought physical rest, but not mental...
He was tired in a way that ate away at his sanity, at his existence, and sense of self.
Regardless... his body continued moving out of the hard-acquired habit.
Out of spite.
Out of refusal.
He did not think about survival anymore, but about reducing, cutting, thinning these numbers.
Leaving this trial by any means, death was not allowed... and a way out didn’t exist...
And so, more attempts, unwanted but forced onto him. He who could not choose death anymore.
For now, he was certain. He would be kept alive against his will for as long as this trial lasts.
The eightieth attempt lasted longer.
The ninety-first ended with his arms torn off by the snapping maws of two dashing wolves, before his neck was shredded all the same.
The hundredth ended standing, a large gash on his throat with a long blade mark, before the wolves started closing in.
The trial reversed.
Again.
He stopped counting somewhere after that. The trial didn’t care if he could count or not... It kept going, indefinitely.
By the god-knows-how-many attempt, the far edge of the swamp was visible. He was standing alone on a hill of corpses, taking higher ground in the battle.
When he looked around, ease washed over him for the first time in a time he could no longer perceive.
There were only a few dozen monsters left.
He stood among corpses that never disappeared.
But this very progress still felt hollow. After everything, it felt unrewarding, delayed. freewёbn૦νeɭ.com
Stripped of meaning.
If this was success, it was meaningless.
Why was he still being restored?
Why was his death denied?
This was not a trial for one man.
This was a battlefield meant to be drowned in bodies.
A battlefield for an army to clash endlessly.
He was but a single warslave, holding a blade that was not his own... nothing more.
He did not qualify to stand here. He never had.
[Qualifications for the conclusion of the first wave have been fulfilled]
The mechanical voice rang all of a sudden without warning, at a time he was not wounded nor dying.
[Total monsters killed]
[Lesser Swamp Goblins 759]
[Lesser Swamp Wolves 492]
He was too focused on the numbers he killed through an unknown number of deaths.
But for some reason, they didn’t feel real nor earned.
They did not feel like anything.
[Second wave starts in 10 minutes]
With these words, he felt the world freeze... everything reaching a pause, waiting for him to comprehend.
"Ha."
The sound came out wrong.
Empty.
"Ha ha."
His throat hurt.
"Ha ha ha."
The laughter echoed into the swamp and found nothing to answer it.
Ten minutes to stand, watch, and wait...
To understand that surviving the first wave had changed nothing at all.
Slave 135 smiled bitterly before loosening his grip on the blade.
