Kael looked at the notification hovering before him for a mont before selecting yes. If this was truly an A-Class reward, then whatever was inside should at least be useful. The chest materialized before him with a tallic clunk, much smaller than he expected. It was made of dark silver tal, its edges lined with intricate carvings that resembled flowing rivers circling toward a central symbol embedded on the lid. It looked elegant, expensive, and far too decorative for sothing that was probably ant to help him not die.
He crouched and opened it, only to stare blankly at what rested inside.
A ring.
Kael blinked twice and frowned.
"Interesting..." he muttered under his breath. Looking at his fists first, he already realized it would be hard to use a ring while carrying the gauntlets. Sothing he’ll ask Andre about later.
As he reached inside and picked the ring up between his fingers he stared at it. The ring itself was smooth and polished, forged from a pale bluish tal he didn’t recognize, with a small crystal embedded into its surface that resembled a frozen droplet of water.
It certainly looked valuable enough, but after everything that happened, after one punching a giant monstrosity and getting showered in hidden achievents, finding a single ring inside an A-Class chest felt slightly underwhelming.
A notification appeared before him as he inspected it.
[You have obtained: Ring of Returning Tides]
[Epic Accessory]
18% Mana Regeneration
8 INT
Passive:
Restores a small percentage of mana over ti while not actively casting.
Lore:
Even the exhausted sea returns to itself.
***
Kael read through the description once, then again, hoping he had sohow missed another effect hidden sowhere in the text.
He had not. The ring was useful, objectively speaking.
For anyone else, this was probably an incredible reward, sothing a mage or caster would kill for, or at the very least sothing expensive enough to fetch a ridiculous amount of cores.
For him, however, it was close to worthless. He didn’t use mana, didn’t know how to use mana, and unless his body suddenly decided to stop being whatever abomination it currently was and beco normal, mana regeneration was about as useful to him as a decorative spoon.
The worst part was he couldn’t even wear the damn thing. Kael looked down at his gauntlets and clenched both fists slightly. There was no chance he was sacrificing either gauntlet slot for a ring that restored a resource he did not possess. Even if he wore it on another finger, it would likely interfere with his grip or punching chanics. That alone was reason enough to not bother.
"Well," Kael sighed, turning the ring once between his fingers before tossing it into his inventory, "at least I can probably sell it."
The chest dissolved into fragnts of light shortly after, disappearing as if it had never existed in the first place. Kael rose to his feet and stretched his shoulders slightly, finally taking a proper look around the room again.
The corpse of the mutated hobgoblin still lay slumped on the floor several ters away, smoke faintly rising from the catastrophic wound that used to be its abdon. The sll was awful, though compared to so of the things he had experienced with his master, it barely registered.
A low hum suddenly filled the chamber.
Kael paused.
The walls began trembling softly, and pale inscriptions lit themselves across the dark stone in thin glowing lines that crawled outward like veins. The floor beneath him responded shortly after, circles of light spreading from beneath his boots. Kael instinctively lowered his stance, ready in case this was so sort of trap, but instead, a new series of notifications began appearing rapidly before him.
[Anomaly detected.]
[Climber lacks previous death record.]
[Standard Floor 3 Qualification cannot be assigned.]
[Adjusting...]
[Adjusting...]
[Special Qualification Path found.]
Kael frowned deeply as he read through them. "Previous death record?" he muttered, though he didn’t get much ti to think about what that ant.
The next notification appeared.
[Entering Special Sequence: Labyrinth of Penance]
The air in the chamber grew heavy.
More text appeared.
[The Dead are asured by their failures.]
[You possess no recorded failure.]
[To climb among the Dead, you must first be weighed.]
[Trial 1 Assigned.]
[Trial of Pain]
Objective: Survive for 7 Days.
Condition: Do not yield.
Failure: ntal Collapse.
A second bar appeared directly below his health.
[ntal Fracture: 0/100]
Kael stared at the new bar with visible suspicion. Nothing about that looked good.
"That sounds like fun," he said that with too little conviction to convince anyone.
Before he could inspect it further, the glowing formation beneath him erupted with light. His vision was swallowed whole, his body feeling as though it had been compressed and stretched at the sa ti. The sensation only lasted for an instant, but it was unpleasant enough that he instinctively tensed through it.
When his feet touched solid ground again, the first thing he noticed was the cold.
Not ordinary cold either, but the sort that imdiately sank through clothing, skin, and muscle all at once. Kael inhaled sharply as freezing air stabbed into his lungs and spread through his chest like shards of glass. He looked around quickly, eyes narrowing as he took in his surroundings.
He was in a forest.
Tall black trees stretched endlessly in every direction, their branches twisted and bare, coated in frost and snow. The ground beneath him was uneven and blanketed in thick white layers that crunched under his boots with every subtle shift of weight. Overhead, the sky was a miserable shade of grey, completely covered by dense clouds. There was no visible sun, no moon, no stars, and no indication of where exactly he was supposed to go.
A new notification appeared.
[Welco to the Trial of Pain.]
[Day 1 / 7]
[Survive.]
Kael read it, waited for more instructions, then frowned when nothing else ca.
"That’s it?"
No map. No objective marker. No visible shelter or landmarks. No enemy in sight.
Just snow, trees, and cold.
Kael exhaled slowly and imdiately began assessing the situation. Standing still in an environnt like this was idiotic. The mountains had taught him enough to know that cold killed the lazy first. Without wasting ti, he adjusted his gauntlets and started walking forward through the snow, choosing a random direction simply because remaining idle was worse.
The forest was unnaturally quiet. There were no birds overhead, no insects hidden beneath bark or branches, no distant movent beyond the occasional sweep of wind cutting through the trees. It was only after nearly fifteen minutes of walking that Kael suddenly felt a sharp sting near the side of his foot.
He stopped and looked down.
A small thorn, nearly invisible beneath the snow, had pierced through the side of his boot and nicked his skin. It was shallow enough to be irrelevant. Kael simply pulled his foot free and kept walking.
A notification appeared.
[Minor pain registered.]
[ntal Fracture 1]
[ntal Fracture: 1/100]
Kael slowed his pace slightly and stared at the ssage. "You’ve got to be kidding ."
He looked down at his foot again. The wound itself was already insignificant, as expected. Yet strangely enough, the sensation remained. The tiny sting from the thorn did not fade even after several more steps. It remained fresh and irritating, as though the prick had only just happened.
Kael’s expression slowly shifted from mild annoyance to understanding.
The pain remained as fresh as when he got pricked. It felt like the thorn was still stuck in his toe even after he had removed it personally, by hand.
"Oh, That’s why it’s called the Trial of Pain... Well shit." he muttered quietly.
He continued walking, now far more aware of his surroundings. Only a few minutes later, a sharp gust of freezing wind struck the exposed portions of his face and neck. The cold bit into his skin hard enough to feel like a thousand tiny needles.
Another notification appeared.
[Environntal pain registered.]
[ntal Fracture 1]
[ntal Fracture: 2/100]
Kael stared blankly ahead for a few seconds, then sighed deeply.
This was not a trial about injury.
This was a trial about accumulation.
Every discomfort, every wound, every source of pain would remain with him ntally no matter how small. A cut, a bruise, a blister, cold exposure, hunger, exhaustion. Individually, each one was manageable. Together, over seven days, they would beco unbearable.
A very irritating design.
Kael pulled sothing from his inventory. A cloak he got from his master back at the mountain during the colder tis of the year. It was patchy, old, and slled of mold. But right now, it was pretty damn useful and far more valuable than anything on him right now.
He wrapped cloak tighter around himself and continued deeper into the forest, snow crunching beneath his boots while the tiny thorn prick in his foot and the freezing sting on his face accompanied him like invisible parasites.
Sowhere deeper within the woods, a low growl echoed through the trees.
Kael’s eyes sharpened imdiately.
At least there was sothing here besides snow.
He rolled his shoulders once and continued forward.
By the end of the first hour, his ntal Fracture had already reached 5.
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