Chapter 268

Trials of Champions (V)

“Oh, fuckin’ hell,” Cain collapsed flat back, panting and sweating a river. He lied down onto the floor, every fiber of his being feeling like it is being torn by a force beyond any reason. His vision was blurry, his breaths quick and shallow, and he was entirely unable to move even a finger. He’d dipped beyond his Mana reserves and stayed there for nearly five minutes, forcibly extracting Mana from his surroundings but not cleansing it entirely, infecting himself with all the other crap that’s out there directly.

Grunting, he heaved himself to the side and threw up, chunks of blood flying out alongside water and whatever little else was left in his stomach after doing this five times. It felt as though there was a massive mountain sitting on top of his chest and there was barely a thing he could do to even just alleviate the pain a bit.

“Sweet shit, that felt good,” he grumbled, pooling what little strength he had to sit himself up, shaking. Looking up, he saw the fiery rings, nine of which sat stable above him, two still shaking and quaking. Just a mere glance at them caused fear to swell within his soul.

It was fear akin to nothing he ever felt before; it wasn’t fear of death or fear of something far stronger than him. It was fear of something he knew humanity would never understand or conquer. The ninth ring was... impossible. It should have been impossible, rather. The sheer size trumped his understanding completely-- it was as though the sun was suddenly replaced by a black hole and his job was stopping Earth from being dragged into it.

He shuddered at the thought yet again, taking out a bottle of water and downing it whole. He was well aware that there were many, many things that were simply beyond people in their scope, but, really, that ‘awareness’ was shallow, at best. There was nothing quite like matching a human’s scope of reality with the... well, actual reality.

The ninth ring was like a starlit sky in its scope-- billions of nodes alighting a net spanning billions of light years, converging into clusters that were the true behemoths and leviathans, the true eldritch creatures that the dreams are made of, and within those clusters forging galaxies that were the innumerable eyes staring back at him, doubting, mocking, questioning.

As he fixed a hundred thousand nodes, a million more corked open like champagne, bursting at the seams. Though it was a sight behold, unlike anything he’d seen in his life, it was... terrifying. And, more now than ever before, he was terrified of something else as well: himself. Exhausted, shaking, dehydrated, Mana-deprived... yes, he was all those things-- but he’d also ‘solved’ the ninth ring. He solved the near-universe-level ‘puzzle’ and he lived.

His gaze dulled evidently as he stared at the tenth one. He understood that it would be different; there was little elsewhere to go in scope over the universe itself. It had to be different. Likely reverse-- from everything to the tiniest bits that made it up. Quarks, or something even smaller. There was absolutely no way anyone, regardless of talent, would be able to maintain a larger scope than the ninth ring. As such, tenth and eleventh were different.

Cain didn’t rush it. He calmed down, first, drinking six bottles of water to hydrate himself a little bit, chewing down a whole chicken in the process. His Mana began to recover slowly but the wounds in his body would remain for quite a few weeks, especially ones inflicted by overdrawing on Mana.

Sighing and leaning further back, he closed his eyes, recalling. It was strange; though he passed the puzzles, if he had actually known the difficulty beforehand... he would have probably skipped them. Far more dangerous than him harming his body was the self-validation, a ginormous ego boost he’d gotten from it. He was in the top strata. Among the best, the most talented, the one-of-a-kind genius club. That’s not the sort of mantle that people shed easily. Just how many lives were inadvertently screwed because, as children, people were praised as one-of-a-kind geniuses only to learn immediately after entering college that they were actually fairly average? Millions? Tens of millions?

Letting it get to his head was not something he could afford. He was already dancing loosely with the challenges here, relaxed by the lifetime of knowledge he believed was his eternal ledge. However, that line he was dancing was fine; one extra step, one extra pound, and it might bend and break, barreling him into the darkest corners he was far from able to face.

“Didn’t you leave?” Cain quizzed aloud, taking a sip of water.

“And I returned.” a fragmented voice replied.

“You solved your thing?”

“Nope.”

“Ah.”

“You solved yours?”

“One more to go.”

“See? I told you.”

“... if I go for tenth,” Cain said. “It’ll break me.”

“... possibly.”

“Y’know, I kinda liked that blind optimism,” Cain chuckled, glancing at the shrouded silhouette. “You can do it, Cain Gregory! You are an absolute unit! A genius! What happened to it?”

“Oh, I still absolutely think you can do it,” the voice said. “I only agreed you’ll likely be shredded in the process.”

“... I never understood it,” Cain sighed. “And, despite that, here I am, doing that very same thing.”

“What?”

“This... push,” he said. “This unrelenting, crazed want that people have when they focus on something. Purposefully breaking down your body, suffering for days, weeks, months, on some future promise that your abs will be as ripped as all the shirts the women are gonna see you in... I could never do it. Well, until now. I’ve genuinely never been more exhausted or beaten or hurt.”

“...”

“And what was my reward? A pointless ego boost that will likely cost me more than it would reward me.”

“You really like to vent, huh?” the voice asked.

“Ha ha, I do, really do, it seems. All humans do, really,” Cain said, grumbling as he stood up. “It’s how we cope. You stub your toe? The manly thing is to curse the ever-living shit out of that nightstand. You burned yourself trying to cook for some ungodly reason? It’s the fuckin’ stove and not my inability to use it. Curse, yap and yap till our throats burn. That’s also how we talk ourselves into doing all that cray-cray shit, you know?”

“...”

“Yea, yea, bench enough weight to literally turn you into a pancake; some girl might say it looks cool. You know the saddest part? It’s almost always the dudes. Fuck. I’m really doing this, ain’t I?”

“Looks like it,” the voice said.

“I’m insane,” Cain smiled bitterly, looking at the tenth ring. “I’ve become one of those morons I used to relentlessly mock. I could be sipping whiskey on a beach somewhere and having the time of my life relaxing and, instead, here I am. Probably about to be de-atomized or whatever the fuck. Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.”

“Will I be able to at least look at the eleventh if I pass the tenth?” he asked.

“You’d die.”

“...”

“But... if you pass, I’ll help you,” the voice said. “Consider it my reward since, well, it is kind of my fault you’re doing this.”

“Kind of? Tsk,” Cain scoffed. “You’re lucky Em’ isn’t ‘ere. She’d hold a ten hour lecture on how you’re a terrible influence for me.”

“Whatever you see in there,” the voice spoke again. “Can’t-- shouldn’t be shared with anyone else.”

“... I’ve belched quite a lot of horseshit on the people I love already,” Cain replied. “There’s no reason to bend them even further over the line. Me going insane is more than enough.”

“Good luck.”

“Thanks. I’ve a feeling I’mma need it.”

The voice disappeared and with it did all of Cain’s reservations-- at least temporarily. Using that brief moment of respite, he tossed his wrung Mana directly into the tenth ring, his senses exploding immediately upon touch, the world imploding into the sound-bereft void of lights that bore through everything. The void itself bounced and rippled like the ocean’s surface, lights of colors indescribable blasting from every direction, inevitably converging into the singular point-- Cain himself.

He felt nothing for a moment, suspended and adrift in the infinite cold and indifference of the everything, staring at the eternal darkness that spread everywhere. Then, in the moment of dread, something within him blew; it felt like every last inch of his body, mind, and soul was being torn with infinite seesaws, from within and without.

Immediately coating himself in Mana, shielding the ‘bloating’ that looked like a bomb ready to go off, he looked within himself and nearly passed out. Where his heart ought to be was a perfect sphere, tiny like an old, round bullet, stationary. It was without color, but Cain couldn’t recognize it; to him, it was black, but instinctively he knew it had no color. It had nothing but the slowly-increasing pull. It was tearing away at him, atom by atom, trying to swallow him.

With each tiny chunk of him that it swallowed, it grew in size slightly, its pull growing stronger. Terrified, he immediately fought back the pull, managing to stabilize it. And, strangely... nothing else happened. While he did have to use some Mana to maintain it equilibrium, it wasn’t much. In fact, he could probably maintain this for years, if not decades, before ever running out. The catch, he suspected, that the pull would likely get stronger and stronger and that the task was to withstand it for as long as possible. But he was wrong. There was no catch. It was a constant, unchanging, unfeeling pull, like the droning sound that never ends. It simply goes on and on, first for days, then weeks and months and years and decades and then for hundreds of years and until the very fabric and concept of time... ceases to mean and matter. The infinity itself.