Above the small white platform, the white array flared with a blinding light… and Zagan stepped through.
The moment he landed, the timer began.
00 : 10 : 00
00 : 09 : 59
His light-blue eyes darkened, calm yet deadly, like the sea before a storm. The carefree, playful Zagan was gone, replaced by a saint ready to kill.
He dropped into a running stance, then shot forward, bolting across the wooden bridge toward the central platform.
The instant his foot hit the bridge, rain tore down from the sky, wind battered the bridge, and the grey sea churned violently below. He was like a lone boat in the storm, racing against time.
Skree—
Zagan didn't have to wait long before the black birds with spindly legs and scorched, matted feathers like corrupted vultures dove toward him, their cries cutting through the storm-laden air.
Plague Beak: Rank 0 – Type 1.
Individually, they were no threat, each only as long as his leg… but the sheer number descending upon him made his skin prickle. Most circled above, waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
Then the first real threat came, not from the sky, but from the churning grey sea below. Something burst out of the water, a panther-sized beast with sleek, scaled skin, webbed claws, and fin-like ridges along its spine. Its eyes gleamed with feral malice as it lunged straight at him.
Zagan slowed just enough, reading the beast's trajectory in a heartbeat.
Click—
In one seamless motion, he swung his katana. White energy pulsed along the blade as it sliced through the creature. Blood and scales erupted in a violent spray of blue as the beast split in two, twitching briefly before falling lifeless into the waves.
Without hesitation, Zagan sheathed his blade and sprinted past the corpse, the wind howling above.
Water Prowler: Rank 0 – Type 1.
It seemed his adversaries in this trial were a mix of both Abyssal and Eidolon beasts, both the lowest type for now. But a glance skyward made his stomach tighten.
A creature loomed above, a black vulture's head fused with a humanoid body, claws and talons glinting like blades. That was a Rank 1 Plague Beak. Zagan grimaced. If it decided to attack, he could only hope for the best.
What a fucked up trial. Were they always this hard?
There was no time to think further. The first Plague Beaks were already upon him, talons poised to tear. Zagan skidded to a stop, calculating his next move.
He couldn't let himself get surrounded and waste more time.
With a calm inhale, he drew Kuro no Zai and activated the first rune.
His katana's black blade shimmered with a faint, translucent white energy. With a sharp, calculated swing, Zagan slashed upward in a wide arc, roughly sixty degrees across the air in front of him.
The Plague Beaks didn't even flinch. The swing would never reach them… or so their dull instincts thought.
Then, the blade stretched.
In an instant, the katana's length doubled, cutting through the flock mid-dive. Blood… dark and viscous, sprayed across the storm.
Kraaah—!
The bisected bodies fell, some crashing onto the bridge, others plunging into the sea, where the waiting Prowlers dragged them under with their finned tails.
Zagan flicked his wrist, dispatching the few survivors that made it through. The blade's length shrank back to normal as the rune's glow dimmed.
Rune of Elongation.
As long as he had enough soul energy, the blade's reach could extend without limit.
A broken ability — if only he had the fuel for it.
He was about to sprint again when the world… shifted.
Time slowed. His breath caught. Droplets of rain hung in the air like glass beads, and he saw them; two water prowlers bursting from either side of the bridge, jaws wide, teeth flashing toward his legs.
Zagan reacted on instinct. He drove his katana downward toward one, using the momentum to leap over the other.
Then—
His perception snapped back to normal. A sharp headache followed, like his skull splitting from the strain.
"Fuck…" he hissed. The plunge had missed, of course it did. Only his perception of time slowed, not the world itself. His timing was off.
Still, the jump had saved his legs. Both prowlers slammed onto the bridge, their tails whipping as they prepared for another strike.
Since the bridge had no ropes or rails, just a stretch of old wooden planks suspended above the raging sea — the prowlers had no obstacles to reach him. He even wondered how the hell this flimsy thing was holding his weight.
Kreee!
Zagan snapped his head toward the sound and saw another flock of plague beaks diving from ahead, while the two prowlers behind him prepared to lunge.
He sprinted straight toward the birds, the prowlers close on his heels.
Just as the flock swooped down, he dropped low, sliding beneath them. The birds overshot and crashed straight into the prowlers, who lashed out with their tails.
Zagan darted past as chaos erupted behind him — the beasts tearing into each other. It seemed they weren't exactly allies after all.
The whole exchange took only seconds, yet nearly a full minute had slipped away. The bridge still stretched endlessly ahead.
He clenched his jaw. Four minutes left. Time to pick up the pace. Channeling a minuscule amount of energy into his legs, Zagan surged forward, his speed spiking in an instant.
* * *
Zagan was panting lightly, his body marked with cuts, tears, and bleeding wounds… nothing fatal, but enough to sting with every movement. Thankfully, if he cleared this trial, the Soul Realm would restore his soul body completely.
It was impossible to block every strike. His katana had one innate ability and a single rune, but neither was ideal. The rune was useless against wide-area attacks, and the blade's innate ability… well, it wasn't exactly helpful in this situation either.
So he focused on what he could — parrying only the lethal blows and baiting the beasts into tearing each other apart.
Somewhere amid the chaos, he discovered the trigger for his Temporal Flow's slowing state: it activated whenever he was tense, unaware of incoming danger; when his instincts screamed survival.
As for the speeding state? He still had no clue.
A webbed tail whipped toward his head. Zagan bent backward, dodging it by a hair, then drove his heel upward into the chin of another prowler lunging for his hand, sending the creature crashing back into the churning grey sea.
He noticed something strange: the bridge's shattered planks were mending themselves, knitting back together whenever nothing blocked their path.
And the storm around him — howling winds and stinging rain, barely fazed him; the blood nanites pulsing inside his veins kept his body warm and his movements sharp.
The soul body seemed to perfectly mirror his physical form down to the smallest cell, yet it excluded anything not recognized as part of him, like his NSI bracelet. The nanites, however, had been replicated.
"How the hell does that even work?" he muttered, half-thinking, half-running. He'd need to reach Midline and get Level 2 access on AndroNet to figure that out.
Zagan hadn't noticed it yet, but his Soul body no longer resembled Airin's form from Earth. Instead, it was a fusion of both — Zagan's original features from the 21st century blended with Airin's body.
Mostly, it was Zagan's face, with his body blended seamlessly with Airin's physique. Anyone who had known Airin probably wouldn't recognize him now. His hair had turned midnight black, and his eyes glowed a pale blue.
Just as he cleaved through a Plague Beak and sheathed his blade—
Sckreeee!
A screech tore through the storm, high-pitched and violent enough to rattle his skull. Zagan snapped his head upward.
"...Shit."
The Rank 1 Plague Beak descended from the clouds, its wings blotting out the grey light. Around it spiraled a murderous flock of Rank 0s, circling like a living tornado.
And then… his vision shifted. The world slowed, sounds muffled, and time itself bent. The Flow State.
Below him, the sea swelled. The bridge planks buckled and rippled as something enormous surged upward.
Zagan didn't hesitate. He leapt back onto the bridge, right into the gaping jaws of two prowlers snapping at his heels.
Click—
Midair, he drew his katana in a single, fluid motion, plunging the blade into the planks as its rune shimmered, elongating the blade to five times its original length.
Using the hilt as a narrow foothold, he crouched low, balanced like a circus performer atop the rising sword.
Beneath him, the prowlers snapped at empty air, their claws slashing at the rain-slick wood.
For an instant, he looked like a lone figure crouching on a pillar of steel amid a raging sea — like the Monkey King atop his Ruyi Jingu Bang.
Then, in an instant, time snapped back to normal in his perception. Blood trickled from Zagan's eyes as he steadied his breathing.
The spot where he had stood exploded — a column of seawater erupted as a prowler thrice the size of the rest burst out, its scales glistening under the stormlight.
RRAAAWWWH!
It missed him but caught one of its own midair, crushing it in its jaws with a sickening crunch.
Zagan grimaced, watching the beast thrash like a breaching shark.
"Perfect... a Rank 1 Water Prowler."
He exhaled sharply, steadying his crouch on the katana's hilt.
At this rate, forget about reaching the central platform in five minutes — even staying alive was looking impossible.