Lucien looked around, hoping to find anything, but there was nothing.
'Weird.' He frowned, as the last time he had been awakened with the Ingestion method, the trial had been quick and straightforward.
He had to fight the very spirit he was consuming and defeat it to awaken.
He had done it with great hardship, but he succeeded.
He knew that Arenox was more special than the last spirit he consumed, so he waited.
Hours passed, and there was no sign of anything.
The heat was making him sweaty and lethargic, as he tapped on the ground, hoping to find a button or something that might do anything.
'Has the trial started already?'
'Is the trial about enduring this heat?'
'Or is it about waiting here?'
'What's happening?'
Another few hours passed, and his entire body was red, and he was extremely thirsty.
All the moisture from his body was evaporating, and his head ached like crazy.
His throat felt like there was barbed wire inside it, given how dry it was.
He tried remaining calm to prevent the moisture loss, but the heat was slowly yet steadily rising.
He felt like he was being boiled alive in his own water content, but he held on.
His mental fortitude was a lot stronger than normal people, but he wasn't invincible.
After an unknown amount of time, his head felt like being split apart with an axe, when suddenly, something happened.
He saw four massive mirrors drop from the sky, and the heat around him subsided.
'Huh?' As if it was all an illusion, he stopped feeling hot, his body returned to normal, no longer dying of thirst and heat, and all the lava around him was gone.
What replaced it was an endless green plain, with evening sun setting in the west and a river flowing right behind him.
His thirst was gone; matter of fact, he felt full of water right now.
He wanted to drink water from the river behind, but he felt like he would drown his organs if he drank any more water.
He took a deep breath.
Turning around, he noticed four full-body mirrors, their edges having the same ornate gold and obsidian design as Arenox.
All four mirrors contained different animations looping around like GIFs, showing random images.
Three of them were gray-scaled, like those in the video games, signifying that they were not yet accessible.
So naturally, Lucien wandered further and reached the only mirror that had colorful animation.
It was a picture of a keypad machine, and its screen was flashing a number. [4-2-9-1-7-3]
The moment he read the whole number, the animation was replaced with a few sentences.
A bunch of instructions.
[Escape. You only get one life. There's only a lot of air in a coffin.]
Zoom!
As he finished reading it, his entire world shifted.
He didn't move from his spot at all, but suddenly, he found himself lying down horizontally.
'Huh?' It was so trippy that his mind was boggled.
Following the positional shift, the light from his world also vanished, and he was in complete darkness.
No wind, no light, no nothing.
He sucked in a breath slowly, and the air around him felt very thin.
He tried getting up, but his head suddenly slammed against something hard. "Ouch!"
He tried moving sideways, but his shoulders were obstructed.
'Huh?' He realized he was in an enclosed space.
Thin air, enclosed space.
This was the coffin the mirror was talking about.
The coffin was a lot wider than normal, but the top was touching his chest.
He was sealed in a tight space.
Huff! Huff!
His breath got ragged as he panicked slightly.
There was a fact about him that not many people knew, but he had a traumatic and irrational fear of closed spaces.
Remiel St. Clair was claustrophobic.
'No, no. Calm down. Calm down.' He tried calming down, when suddenly he saw 2 dim lights.
One right above his head. A red countdown on a screen.
[15:00]
[14:59]
…
And the other light was coming from his feet.
A dim, flickering, moss green light.
He remembered the other thing he saw in the mirror right before the instructions appeared.
A keypad machine with numbers [4-2-9-1-7-3].
He tried feeling it with his feet, and it felt a lot smaller.
He understood what he had to do now.
Fill in the passcode in the machine before the time runs out.
Or he'd fail and die.
He shifted around, painfully, and tried pressing the buttons with his foot.
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
Buzz!
Wrong number.
[Incorrect digits. 2 tries left.]
A mechanical voice announced inside the coffin.
'There's a limit on how many times I can do this?' Lucien panicked further.
His pulse quickened.
Of course, he failed this time.
He was using his toes to fill in numbers in a keypad machine, which was smaller than a nicotine patch.
And while he was doing all this, he was in a closed space, being a severe claustrophobe.
He was already panicking, and the pressure of the ticking timer, the urgency to escape, his clumsy coordination with his toes, and his inability to see the machine clearly only made things worse.
This attempt was bound to fail.
'Calm down. Calm down.'
He realized what he must do now.
Turn around and do this with his hands.
He couldn't waste any more of his attempts.
His fingers would be better at this job, as he can see the machine.
He sweated, thinking about how he would invert his body.
The time was ticking down.
He reached the sides of the coffin with his arms, realizing that it was only barely enough for him to turn around.
He was in a sealed box bigger than his own frame.
His heartbeat quickened.
No room. No light. No space to turn.
But he had to.
He twisted his body, his shoulders scraped the ceiling.
Huff! Huff!
His chest started compressing, one leg folding beneath the other, both of them getting closer and closer to his chest.
Huff! Huff!
His back slammed into the ceiling.
Huff! Huff!
He couldn't breathe anymore.
His ribs screamed.
'No, no, no, no, no.'
Just as he reached a certain degree of crampiness, he flinched back.
His bladder threatened to leak, and his body was covered in sweat.
His stomach churned, and he could no longer hold it anymore.
He snapped back, crawling back to where he started.
All the progress made was gone in an instant.
His eyes moistened as a scene flashed in front of his eyes.
The reason why he had this fear in the first place.
A lump formed in his throat.
'I-I can't do this.'