"Buy me some time Zoro!" Lucy shouts. "I'll message Mikey and asking him to come help us!"

Lucy and Zoro are stuck in the hallway getting attacked from all sides.

(BOOM)

Zoro throws a big smoke bomb. Lucy starts messaging Mikey, when suddenly her attribute shows her Mikey's location.

(In the labyrinth)

Why won't they stop coming? Mikey thinks to himself as he fights countless various monsters.

"You know what? I don't care about your monsters anymore." Mikey starts running towards the three firehead spirits.

[You have activated an ability of the "Ultimate Fighter"]

The only "Ultimate Fighter" ability that Mikey had activated up until now was his extremely strong punch. The one he used against Claudius, Peter Jackson and the Stone Golem that he had fought earlier.

This ability was however different. Mikey could feel the air around him gathering under his feet and making him feel as light as a feather and as fast as a Cheetah.

Mikey easily caught up to the the spirits and swept his sword at them.

His sweep was so strong that it blew away the fire from two of the spirits heads. They fell to the ground and stopped moving. The third one's color changed to red. He got bigger, angry, and stopped running from Mikey.

"Now then, you managed to put out two of the three fires, the third one grew stronger from the deaths of its comrades. How are you going to deal with it? Muhahahaha."

The ghost laughs at Mikey while spectating from above.

"Mister ghost. I can't believe you're still underestimating me after seeing what I can do." Mikey says as the angry spirit attacks him with a flurry of punches. Mikey easily dodges everything.

"I am Mikey Hunt. The strongest human." Mikey says and smirks.

[You have activated an ability of the "Adaptive Fighter"]

Mikey starts punching the spirit back with the exact same attacking pattern, as if he had copied the moves of that spirit. This means that they're literally punching eachother's fists.

The thing is... Mikey is MUCH stronger. His "Ultimate Fighter" attribute not only gives him all kinds of abilities for different situations such as this one. It also increases all of his stats without him realizing.

The statistics in his status show:

Strenght: 15

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Speed: 18

Stamina: 15

But his true statistics, are much higher then that. Not even Mikey knows what he's capable of yet.

It doesn't take more than THREE seconds for Mikey to obliterate the body of the spirit.

The ghost's face changes from happy to serious. He starts clapping and says.

"Not bad, very well, you're right. I definitely underestimated your power. But that's what all of the other challengers who failed said. There will be two more challenges before you face me. Not a single person has managed to get through the next one... good luck."

The ghost flies away and the labyrinth around Mikey dissapears. The scenery changes to a mountain area.

"What's happening? How am I on a mountain?"

Mikey is on the peak of the mountain, it gets harder for him to breathe because of the low air pressure.

There's is a little bit of snow scattered around and it's really cold.

"This is real, I am sure of it." Mikey says, shaking from the cold.

"This is your second challenge." The ghost appears out of nowhere while holding a scroll in his hand. With a serious look he hands it over to Mikey and dissapears.

Mikey opens the scroll.

[1.Descend the mountain]

[2.Find the Ultimate Chicken Horse Kraken in the forest and defeat it]

[3.Ascend to the peak of the mountain with its body and burn it at the peak of the mountain]

"What the hell?" Mikey asks himself and looks around. The mountain is surrounded with forest from all sides.

"Ultimate Chicken Horse Kraken? What is that?" Mikey pictures a hybrid between a chicken, a kraken and a horse in his mind.

"At any rate. The ghost said that no one has managed to get through his second challenge yet. The bodies that I saw outside of the temple... there was dozens of them. Not a single one of those people has managed to get through this challenge.. is it really going to be that challenging?"

Mikey, without wasting a second starts descending the mountain.

(A few minutes later)

"Man, this is pretty exhausting. My respect goes to all the hikers out there." Mikey says, at this point he has descended about one fifth of the mountain. He's also starting to realize just how big this mountain is.

(Two hours later)

Mikey had finally managed to descend the mountain. He was taking breaks and looking for the Ultimate Chicken Horse Kraken.

Mikey looks back up at the mountain. "It will be such a pain ascending it. But there's no other way for me to progress, is there..." Mikey says as he goes into the forest and starts exploring it.

(Another two hours later)

Mikey didn't find anything besides a few animals. Like foxes, bears or wild pigs. He also found a river flowing through the forest.

"Hmm, there is a chance that it might take me a few days to get out of here." Mikey says. "The others probably took care of the castle and the forest by now." He adds.

"Oh, wait. Open status."

[Skills: Player Message, Kraken Slayer]

"I still have that Player Message skill. I should use it to message Lucy."

Mikey sends Lucy a message, telling her that it's gonna be a while before he comes back and that they might have to wait for him.

Mikey starts preparing for the fact that he might have to stay here for several nights. He hunts a few animals and cooks their meat. He puts it in his inventory which prevents it from spoiling, pretty handy.

He then comes up to the river and makes sure that the water is drinkable. He takes out his glass water bottles and fills them up.

The sun is starting to set. Mikey is preparing for another sleepless night, he isn't too tired anyways so it doesn't bother him.

[You have received a message from "Lucy Hunt"]

[Hey Mikey, I saw you with my attribute, where the hell are you? Why are you on a mountain? My attribute is literally glitching whenever I try to find your position. What happened?]

Mikey sends a message back saying everything that happened to him and that it might take him a few days to get back. He also asked Lucy if they took care of their stuff already.

Half an hour later and Mikey receives another message from Lucy.

[Huh, what do you mean Mikey? You spent several hours descending the mountain? It's been one and a half hour at most since we disembarked on the island. You must have lost the sense of time or something.

Anyways yeah, we haven't finished yet, we're about to fight the boss of this castle. Text you later]

"Huh?" Mikey looks at Lucy's note in disbelief. "No, that literally can't be possible. I mean... I was counting the seconds while I descended the mountain. I counted over 7000. Sure, I wasn't counting completely accurately but still. That's over 2 hours alone itself. I was also in that labyrinth for atleast an hour. Not only that, I was wandering around this forest for about two hours aswell. What's happening?" Mikey asks himself. "Is Lucy right? Have I completely lost the sense of time?"

"No, you didn't." The ghost says as he appears out of nowhere. "You are essentially in my domain right now. You probably don't know what domains are but that doesn't matter. The moment the temple that you were exploring changed to a labyrinth was the moment that you entered my domain. And all you need to know about my domain is that the time flows differently here."

"So, in this 'domain' of yours, a few hours have passed while in the 'real' world not even an hour has passed?" Mikey asks the ghost.

"Exactly." Ghost says. "Oh, and get ready for the night, you'll have to fight monsters just like you would normally."

"I think I am slowly starting to grasp why no one has managed to get through this second trial yet. You have to spend several days just searching for a monster that's probably really strong. You also have to survive the nights and carry the monster back on the mountain..."

"This is going to be annoyingly hard."