[System] The Second Trial has begun.

I hadn’t even caught my breath after the nightmare that was the Itching Trial when the world around me shifted once more. I found myself again in that same sterile, white room. There were no windows or doors—only smooth walls whose surface seemed to pulse with a strange, immaterial energy. The air was muffled, as if absorbing all sound, and a faint scent of something indefinable—perhaps metal, perhaps ash—irritated my senses. For a moment, I felt as if the surroundings were contracting, as if they were trying to engulf me.

[System] Physical Pain Trial

Victory condition: Endure.

"Endure?!" I thought, feeling tension beginning to seize my body. I didn’t yet know what awaited me, but my intuition warned that it was not something to be ignored.

For a long while, nothing happened. My heart pounded wildly, waiting for a blow that never came. Every second of waiting stretched on, intensifying the tension. Then, suddenly, I felt a strange tingling spreading through my muscles. It was barely perceptible, yet carried something ominous.

Then it struck.

The blow came so suddenly that I couldn’t even scream. It wasn’t an ordinary hit—it was as if an invisible force thrust me into the very epicenter of pain. I felt every particle of my body burst in spasms of searing agony, as if my innards had been suddenly turned inside out. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t breathe—the entire world had contracted into pure, brutal agony that I couldn’t comprehend.

At first, there was only a jolt, as if something had shattered in my chest, but then the pain exploded throughout my body, tearing me to pieces. It didn’t matter where it began, for it was everywhere. Every muscle, every bone pulsed with an agony I couldn’t pinpoint, yet I felt it in every cell.

At first, I could only gasp, unable to draw breath. But as successive waves of pain surged through my body, I eventually let out a scream. An echo tore from my throat—raw and terrifying—reverberating off the sterile walls, filling the space with the sound of pure agony. Another ragged scream burst from my lungs as my body instinctively tried to expel that unimaginable suffering. But there was no escape. Every breath, every second stretched into infinity, turning the world into one vast sea of pain.

My body convulsed reflexively, trying to flee, but there was nowhere to go. It was a closed loop of torture governed by a single law: pain.

[System] Pain level increased by 10%.

"It won't end..."

I felt panic rising in my mind—overwhelming, pure, primal fear. I was like an animal caught in a trap, a being stripped of any choice. I had no means to defend myself, nothing to rely on—it wasn’t a fight; it was pure survival.

The pain erupted within me like a raging blaze. I felt my bones shattering, my ligaments stretching to their limits. Every fiber of my body screamed for relief, yet I knew it would never come.

[System] Pain level increased by 20%.

The pain was endless. It throbbed in my body like an incessant rhythm, offering no respite. Every second stretched into eternity, and I drifted on the edge of madness, unable to find escape. My body seemed to lose its shape, merging with pure suffering—as if reality had been reduced to a single, brutal emotion: pain.

There was no time, no boundaries. It was an endless night filled with searing impulses that redefined my very existence. I tried to fight, to regain control, but with every blow the light of my mind dimmed.

I was nothing but pain.

I no longer knew where I ended and the agony began. My mind was drowning in an endless ocean of suffering, my thoughts shattering like fragile glass. It seemed that nothing existed beyond this—until, suddenly, amidst the chaos, a single spark of consciousness appeared.

At first, it was only a barely perceptible twitch deep within my mind. It wasn’t relief, but something else—a moment when you realize that you’re drowning, yet still breathing. Gradually, that feeling grew, like a quiet whisper in a chamber full of screams.

I am not powerless. I am not merely a tool of pain.

Pain is something I can understand. Something I can control.

I couldn’t change reality, but I could change the way I perceived it.

Breath. One. Two.

I began to breathe. Slowly. Deeply. I no longer resisted the pain—I allowed it to be. I didn’t fight it, for it was inevitable.

I was not a victim. I was an observer.

[System] Pain level stabilized.

It hadn’t vanished, but it no longer controlled me. It was like a river—raging, brutal, yet flowing in its own current. And me? I was a stone, unmoving, enduring.

Time ceased to exist. It could have been a few seconds or a few hours—it didn’t matter. I was here and now. I simply was.

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And then everything fell silent.

[System] Trial completed successfully.

The pain ebbed away like a tide returning to the sea, leaving behind only an echo trembling somewhere within my body. My breath was still ragged, my heart pounding too fast, and my body felt lighter—as if, for a moment, I had been detached from reality.

I staggered, my knees buckling beneath me, and the ground became my only point of support. Shivers raced over me, like a memory of pain that was no more. I looked at my hands, expecting to find marks of torture, but they were intact—they only trembled, as if their owner were still unsure whether she had survived.

I did it. I survived.

[System] Title Earned: "Unyielding Will - Second Degree"

Before I could gather my thoughts, everything around me blurred once again. I felt myself falling into emptiness, as my soul prepared for the next challenge.

It was time for another trial.

[System] The Third Trial has begun.

Even before the world had fully stabilized, I sensed that something was off. The surroundings changed once again. This time, however, there was no endless void or surreal illusion. I stood in utter darkness. The air was heavy—as if denser than it should be—and the silence around me was so absolute that I could almost hear the beating of my own heart.

[System] Mental Pain Trial

Victory condition: Maintain your consciousness.

I sighed. This time, the system did not impress.

I had expected something… greater. Something that would break me from the inside. But I knew it wouldn’t work. Not after everything I had been through. Not after the first encounter with the Eye of Chaos.

The first waves of mental pain struck me—or rather, they tried to. I felt a familiar pulsation in my head, as if someone were forcefully trying to pour a million things into my mind at once. The void filled with chaotic images—flickering lights, incoherent thoughts, sounds too intense to make sense.

It was exactly the same as when I first opened the Eye of Chaos. It nearly destroyed me. Nearly.

But now?

I sighed, almost bored. I focused, allowing the chaos to flow through me like a stream of water—neither resisting it nor attempting to control it. This was my reality. This was the world in which I lived. My mind had become a part of that chaos.

[System] Mental Disintegration Level – 0%

"Really?" I whispered to myself.

The voices that were meant to break me merely bounced off my consciousness, having no impact on my will. The system tried to increase the intensity of the effects, but I felt the same as I did every day when I used the Eye of Chaos.

I couldn’t help but smile.

[System] Error... no reaction from subject to pain.

For a moment, it felt as though the system itself did not understand what was happening—as if it had never encountered someone who did not react to this form of torture. Its mechanisms tried to adjust the intensity, but it was already too late.

The trial was merely a formality.

[System] Trial completed successfully.

[System] Title Earned: "Unyielding Will - Third Degree"

I blinked. Was that all?

The surroundings immediately returned to normal, and I stood in the same darkness—but I already knew: it was over. Another trial completed. Without a fight. Without suffering.

There was something almost satisfying in how much I had changed. How the pain that once broke me was now incapable of even ruffling me.

[System] The Fourth Trial has begun.

There was no change at all.

There was no shock, no sudden strike of pain, nor any rupture of reality. Simply… everything vanished.

There was no sound. No light. No wind, no scent, no temperature.

There was nothing.

The void was omnipresent, absolute. It couldn’t be called darkness, for darkness exists only in relation to light. This place was something more—it was nonexistence. Not even I existed.

My breath? I couldn’t hear it. My heartbeat? Silence.

I tried to move, but I couldn’t feel my body. There was no pain, no fatigue, no heaviness in my muscles—but there was no lightness either. I was suspended in nothingness, in a void where absolutely nothing existed.

[System] Trial of Absolute Solitude

Victory condition: Survive. Do not lose yourself.

At first, I thought it was just another formality. That if I had already endured physical and mental pain, solitude would hold no power over me. I was wrong.

Time passed… how much? Seconds? Minutes? Hours? There was no measure of time, no point of reference. I tried to concentrate, to find anything that resembled reality, but every thought, every attempt to make sense of something, dissolved into nothingness.

I couldn’t concentrate.

I couldn’t think.

I couldn’t…

[System] Phase Two – Consciousness Disintegration.

My thoughts began to scatter. Individual images, memories, sensations—everything started to dissolve like ink spilled into water. I tried to grasp them, but the harder I tried, the faster they vanished. I was ceasing to be myself.

"That's not me."

The words sounded foreign, as if they didn’t belong to me.

[System] Phase Three – Identity Severance.

I felt the light of my existence gradually fading, as my own thoughts grew quieter, weaker, until eventually I began to wonder… did I even exist?

It was a trap. Perfectly constructed. It held no pain, no torture—only a void to which no one could resist.

No one.

Not even me.

No… I couldn’t allow it.

But who was I, really? Who…

[System] Disintegration Level – 75%.

And then… something stirred within me. It was chaos—the kind I knew.

I did not summon it consciously. I couldn’t. But as my consciousness crumbled and the void nearly engulfed me, something trembled within the very fabric of that reality, as if something deep inside me refused to submit to the rules of the system.

The void was not the natural state of chaos. Chaos pulsed, shifted, shattered stagnation. And I… I was a part of it.

The trembling grew stronger. The air—which wasn’t even there—suddenly seemed to crackle. Along the edges of my shattered mind, cracks began to dance, barely perceptible, like unstable waves in reality. Chaos repelled the stagnation of the void, challenging its very existence.

[System] Anomaly detected. Attempting stabilization.

No.

I will not. I won’t surrender to the void.

I couldn’t control the chaos, but I could allow it to be. I stopped fighting. Instead, I took a deep—though unreal—breath and accepted what was happening around me. I allowed the chaos to shatter the void.

And then… something inside me broke. Not the world, not the void—me. Something in my consciousness shattered into pieces, scattering into the emptiness.

The silence shattered like glass. In an instant, everything returned—my body, my senses, gravity, sound, light. I collapsed to my knees, taking my first true breath as if I had emerged from deep water.

[System] Trial completed successfully.

I trembled. Not from cold, not from exhaustion—but from a pure, primal instinct to survive.

I had made it.

But this time… it could truly have broken me.

[SYSTEM] Understanding of the Law of Chaos increased.

Progress: 5%

[System] Title Earned: "Unyielding Will - Fourth Degree"