Cycle No: 1,000,000
Status: Ended
Surviving Participants: 19
Total Score: N/A
A blue screen appeared before two beings in a small room.
"The last cycle did better than most my Lord." A quiet voice uttered softly and hesitantly.
The 'Lord' addressed quirked an eyebrow at the unneeded and out of character statement. "What's on your mind Iyreyla? It's unlike you to be indirect with what you're thinking." His deep voice echoed lightly around the small room.
Iyreyla let out a mirthless chuckle in response to this. The two had known each other for a while.
"I just wonder when it will finally end my Lord? How many more eons of this endless cycle will we be subjected to? I know I've asked this before, but what is the point?!" Iyreyla grew more and more agitated as she spoke, her words building in volume, causing the pale shimmering walls surrounding them to stretch further and further outwards before being blown away with her final shout.
She looks around the endless white nothingness that is now visible to her pale blue eyes and lets a small shudder, she then wills the shimmering walls back into existence with a slight wave of her hand, changing the pale shimmering quality of them to instead show a glittering array of stars.
"I'm sorry my Lord. I just can't help but feel frustrated, the previous Cycle brought it up to a 1,000,000. I spent the last 500,000 Cycles hoping that this would end, or that at the very least that something new would happen! Yet here I am, back in the same bloody room, in the same fucking nothingness waiting for that same....fuuuucking Screen!!! I mean seriously Jeff, what the fuck is going on with this place??" Iyrayla threw her arms up in the air dramatically and started pacing around the small room, continuing to curse explosively while doing so.
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Iyrayla's latest tirade caused the previously summoned walls to disapear once again. Her 'Lord' otherwise know as Jeffrey (Jeff for short) didn't even blink an eye at this. The multitude of Cycles together meant he could roughly predict what the next expletive out of her mouth would be. He left her to her vent, secretly glad that she had dropped the whole 'Lord' business that she'd adopted for the last hundred Cycles or so. While he appreciated the novelty of it to start off with, he was glad she'd returned to her usual disposition.
He let out a gentle sigh as he watched her pace, trying not to think too hard about another milennia of cycling 20 of his systems warriors against the endless trials set up by the bane of his long existence. The Screen.
Each cycle had started and finished in the same room, with the same Screen.
The two of them would appear in the room, then the Box and then the screen. Cycle after Cycle with the only changes coming from the number of surviving participants. The two of them used to care about how many of their little challengers they could help reach the end of the current Cycle. That stopped after the first thousand or so Cycles with no discernable change whatsoever, no matter the number remaining. So they stopped training the challengers, stopped offering assistance and advice and instead just watched.
Watched unendingly as Cycle upon Cycle new challengers would appear in the nothingness outside their walls, look around lost and confused. Then slowly fade away as they fell to the Box's relentless challenges.
They watched as some Cycles challengers would all fade away after the first trial and others would have the full twenty make it to the end. None of it ever made a difference.
Steeling himself to another millenia of cycles, Jeff turned to the wall that the cursed Screen always, without fail, appeared on.
Cycle No: 1,000,001
Status: Beginning
Surviving Participants: 20
Total Score: N/A
Jeff snorted bitterly to himself at the unchanging Screen and turned instead to wipe clear a patch of Iyrayla's newly built wall to watch the new challengers arrive. Iyrayla upon seeing the very familar screen decended further into explosive expletives, the walls vibrating in response.
As he watched fully expecting to see the usual pale pink, vaguely human shaped blobs pop into the nothingness, hes instead found himself falling backwards in shock as he witnessed the first change in 1,000,000 Cycles.
The figures that had arrived weren't the usual pale pink that he was used to, instead they arrived in a multitude of colours. He found his eyes jumping from deep blues to vicious reds, pale light silvers to a glittering black. The colours almost amazed him as much the change itself. Turning around to see if Iyrayla had also seen this fantastical occurance he saw her instead gazing wonderously at the last thing he expected. The Screen.
Looking himself he saw a new message on the screen that brought a wry smile to his weary soul.