One by one, other players stirred on the ground. They pushed onto elbows and knees with slow, unsteady movents.
Fei Ming counted ten who managed to stand or sit. Five others stayed motionless. White foam covered their open mouths and trailed down their chins. Their chests showed no movent.
A few distances away, Misfortune remained seated in the dirt, her gaze fixed on her open hand.
After a long, hollow silence, she crushed her fingers into a fist until the skin looked ready to tear over her knuckles. "It... wasn’t real," she muttered to herself.
While Olive and Xia hauled each other up, Keres staggered blindly. He hit the wall, his knees buckling as he collapsed.
He barely had ti to turn his head before he was vomiting, doubling over as he retched violently onto the stone. The acid burned his throat as he heaved again and again.
The sound was wet and jagged, his shoulders heaving in rhythmic, painful spasms long after his stomach was empty.
He slumped back, wiping a string of bile away with a trembling hand. "Damn," he wheezed, his voice raw. "These SS difficulty gas are psychologically fucking up. I thought we were gonna fight the boss combat style, not this."
Thick vapor continued drifting through the chamber and bearing down on faces and lungs.
One player coughed hard. "I thought the ga was over."
Two slumped into Seven, her breathing coming in shallow, ragged hitches that made her whole fra tremble. "The rules... they were clear," she managed, her voice paper-thin. "... said we need to kill the boss to survive. Maybe so type of beast produces this pink dust."
Seven braced her feet, shifting her center of gravity to keep them both upright. Her eyes darted into the swirling haze. "If it were a beast, we’d have seen it. Or heard its movents by now."
As Jaren drew himself up, his posture was forced and stiff.
When he spoke, his voice was unnervingly flat.
"That hissing sound..." he said, his eyes scanning the area . "We assud the pink dust ca from a leaking pipe. What if that’s the sound the beast makes? And it hid itself because it’s..."
Supporting Olive’s dead weight, Xia tilted her head, her eyes narrowing as she listened to the vibrations in the walls. "...An insect," she suggested.
An SS tier beast that was nothing but an insect.
It wasn’t too far-fetched but was believable.
A heavy, uncertain silence followed as they spread out to search.
They were blind in the pink haze, squinting through the dust as the hissing intensified and shrouded them.
It was impossible to track; as if the hissing ca from the stone itself, mocking their attempt to pin it down.
While the others squinted against the mist, Misfortune’s sightless gaze remained fixed on a small radiating energy only she could see.
Suddenly, her hand jutted toward a low-slung stone bench at the edge of the arena. "It’s there," she said, her voice tight with a sudden, sharp clarity. "The bug. It’s under that seat."
Nodding, Jaren stepped forward to follow Misfortune’s direction toward the low stone seat when a loud mutter cut through the thick vapor.
"I heard she’s blind. How does she even know it’s there?"
Misfortune turned to the speaker, her movents as fluid as shadow. "The sa way I know where you stand," she said, her voice a low, chilling anchor in the noise. "Now, don’t be stupid."
With a flick of her wrist, she signaled the stone seat. "Keep searching."
Jaren stepped into the thick of the fog.
The pink vapor had turned into a cloying skin, sticking to his clothes and turning every breath into a lung-burning chore.
Around him, the others were re silhouettes in the haze, their hands sweeping the floor in desperate, blind arcs.
The hissing grew louder, pressing against their eardrums until their heads throbbed.
Every touch of cold stone or dry dust sent a jolt through their tensed shoulders, their minds still sluggish and bogged down by the lingering fog.
Keres wiped his mouth again in the corner. His face remained pale as he forced himself upright and joined the others.
Crouching low, Jaren was the first to reach the seat Misfortune claid the insect was hiding.
A hand reached blindly into the shadows beneath the ledge, fingers spidering over the cold, damp underside of the rock.
Then, he felt it.
Against his fingertip, sothing small and horribly alive gave a wet, frantic twitch.
It was soft, a pulsing knot of feverish flesh.
Along its spine, dozens of microscopic pores opened and snapped shut in a rhythmic blur, venting the high-pitched hiss that had been screaming through the coliseum.
The contact sent a jolt through him, and he yanked his hand back, his jaw locking so tight the muscles bunched in his cheeks.
For a second, the agony of the earlier illusion flared in the lines around his eyes.
Bottling everything up, he stared at the dark void under the seat, his face a mask of pained, cold resolve.
Then, he slamd his palm down, crushing the insect.
Squash!
The creature flattened under his hand. Warm fluid spread across his palm.
The hissing stopped abruptly and silence fell over the coliseum for the first ti since the mist appeared.
Ding!
[The Euphoria Sovereign has been defeated!]
Slowly, the euphoria mist began to unravel, lifting from the floor in lazy, swirling ribbons.
As the air cleared, the crushing weight on their lungs finally stopped, and the players stood taller, greedily breathing in the fresh air.
But the reprieve was short-lived.
The Runic board notification echoed through the chamber:
[The throne is yet to be claid.]
The room erupted into a scramble.
But Misfortune was already a blur.
While the others were still finding their footing, she crossed the expanse.
Without a word, she shoved Leone’s slumped corpse aside. A second later, the corpse collapsed into a cloud of grey ash, hissing as it scattered across the stone.
Sitting, she claid the obsidian throne, her fingers locking onto the armrests.
"Hey!!! She’s cheating!"
[Congratulations, Misfortune! You have won the final mini-ga: the fool’s coronation.]
The obsidian throne cracked under her.
Black dust skittered off the edges, pattering against her boots and pooling around her ankles.
She rose. The seat sloughed away behind her in a dry hiss, collapsing into a heap of powder on the stone.
One brush of her palms against her sides, the dust fell.
Standing amidst the wreckage, her posture was a portrait of icy composure.
Her face devoid of triumph or disappointnt as she turned her sightless eyes back toward the group.
[Prizes will be distributed shortly!]
"Wow." Jaren remained near the crushed insect. Warm residue coated his palm.
Wiping it slowly against his trousers while his eyes stayed fixed on Misfortune, he scoffed.
’I’ve heard her do things like this. Taking advantage of any situation. But I didn’t expect her to be this... bad.’
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