"huh?"
As the pinkish blanket of aura that covered Kai's eyes crumbled away under the pressure of an unknown voice, his diluted irises seemed to have regained their focus.
His eyes grew clearer, and his vision started to return gradually.
"What... Happened...?" Words flowed out of his mouth as his face bore a clear expression of confusion.
Kai's right hand gripped his forehead tightly as he felt a sharp pain piercing his head.
"Urgh..." He let out a low, painful gincreasinglyyelids struggled to remain open.
Despite feeling the strain in his head, he raised his eyes and looked forward—trying to grab onto the current situation.
Up front, he saw his own hand clenching onto the shield with all its strength while his weapon, the spear, stood tall with the endincreasingly of his wooden end dug into the ground.
His knees were slightly bent and numb, threatening to let go of their balance any second.
His vision—although recovered—still remained somewhat obscure due to the darkness that shrouded the entire plains in the form of a cloudy night.
To his left, right before the barrier that should've made monsters come through from a single point, a dim light shone.
The light emanated from a system window that hovered right beside him.
---
[Time passed - 11:00 minutes.]
---
'So only 15 seconds have passed? But for it to seem like an eternity... Surely, it was a spell.'
He shut his eyes tightly. His brows furrowed, creating deep lines over his forehead as he felt the pain spike up once again.
Unlike before, it only seemed to grow increasingly heavy on his mind. Until suddenly, it all disappeared in an instant.
His body, his mind—all the pain that seemed to pulse through, disappeared as though it never existed in the first place.
On the other hand, instead of feeling as though something or someone was hammering his head from the inside, he felt a rigorous vibration taking over his body.
It wasn't something that was harming him in any form; rather, it felt as if his body was screaming. Telling him to run away as soon as possible.
To begin with, Kai's perception wasn't something to scoff at either. While on average, people barely started off with the perception stat of 10, Kai stood tall at the small yet vast difference of 16.
Even if his perception wasn't strong enough to become his 'cheat', it wasn't far from that.
Kai had his doubts, but he trusted his intuition way more than his mind. Thus, without any second thoughts, he snapped open his eyes and, with a rapid burst of movements, grabbed onto his weapons and quickly retreated while holding his shield high.
As his feet stumbled backward, his gaze fell upon others—Damon, Daniel, and Xavier.
All three of them stood like a stone, frozen to the ground. Faint noises of beastly growls escaped their slightly parted lips.
"Wait... Those eyes!" Kai's eyelids slightly broadened their distance, as he looked at the pinkish glow that enveloped their eyes.
With just a single glance, Kai recognized that glow... Or more like spells that were inflicted onto the minds of others.
"One of the most basic spells of the first circle - Corruption." He muttered under his breath as he slowly began to intentionally decrease the rate of his breathing.
Corruption. As its name suggested, it was a spell that inflicted the target's mind with all sorts of desires. Slowly nibbling at their consciousness.
It was considered a very weak spell that wasn't worth learning since anyone who had learned even a little about energies could snap out of the grasp of such a spell.
However, that wasn't the case for mortals. To them, this spell was equivalent to the guaranteed parchment of death issued against their name that'd give them and those around them, a cruel and painful end.
Since mortals weren't really aware of how energies worked, their souls were left unprotected and were often devoured by such spells to the point, that their physical body would go berserk, killing everything that came into their sight.
Kai and others were no exceptions as well. Even though they did possess knowledge and information about energies, they had yet to experience such phenomena with their body.
While Others were still struggling with the spell, Kai had, for some reason, broken through already.
As tried to probe more into this matter, the pain spiked once again and subsided just as quickly.
"I guess, finding the answers to my questions won't be possible right now... But I just hope they can endure this torture for 19 minutes."
Kai's thoughts were clear. He knew it very well no matter how much he'd have tried; if all three of them were to go berserk, he wouldn't be able to handle them at all.
"Not to mention the waves of monsters that were supposed to attack us... The goblin champion... And the user of first-tier spells, the goblin shaman." His voice slightly wavered as he visualized the insurmountable amount of danger lying ahead.
Trying to cool his mind down, he let out a deep sigh as his eyelids closed on their own.
Suddenly, he felt his instincts spike up again while his body froze completely. It was an instantaneous reaction, that made his heart coward up.
Unlike before, his instincts weren't telling him to move, but a feeling of uneasiness eerily lingered in his mind.
His body wasn't screaming like before, but he clearly felt his blood run cold.
He wanted to open his eyes, but his body refused, almost as if his body itself had given up.
As if it had surrendered.
Within a mere second, Kai's mind fell into turmoil once again. But as said before, fate had completely different plans for him.
Once again, the mysterious voice appeared in his head:
"Shield."
As the words softly echoed in his mind, his body broke through the state of immovability, and without any second thoughts, his mind followed the suggestion.
With all the power he could manage to accumulate, he planted his spear into the ground and then, with both of his hands, tightly clenched onto the shield, and raised it high up.
He snapped open his eyes only to see a sword coming towards him. With the shield in his hands, he blocked the path of the sword.
However, unlike his predictions, the sword was far from stopping.
As soon as its blade came into contact with the surface of the shield, cracks emerged as the sword overpowered the shield in an instant.
Kai's hands, which held onto the shield, were met with a pressure so great that they threatened to break any moment. Tremors took over his body as his arms, in an instant, became numb.
"Heup!"
He shut his lips tightly as his cheeks swelled; his eyes were injected with tiny stains of crimson.
His body felt as if it had been rammed over by a truck, as his muscles began to tear apart.
Under such tremendous strains, his body acted up on its own and loosened its muscles, making his lips slightly part apart.
With a guttural cough, he spat out dark, crimson blood that trifled down his skin and stained his clothes—while sharp noises of desperate, rapid gasps followed.
His eyes, desperate to see the attacker, raised themselves up, only to be widened in shock—for his worst nightmare had come true.
The one to have attacked them so vigorously was none other than Damon.
And that was the time he realized, that the second trial—the Trial of Endurance... Had just begun.