Alexia

I teleport away from the attack, only for all of the flying parts of reality to suddenly change direction and slam straight into me where I end up. Sending me flying until I crash into the ground while coughing out a mouthful of blood. With pain filling my body. Enough pain that I actually feel it this time around.

When I look down at all of the wounds, I find my armor and body glitching out wherever the attacks hit.

I grit my teeth before reverting all of the damage. A process that ends up taking a bit more energy to perform than it normally would.

But it heals in the end, and I immediately teleport away multiple times to avoid more attacks from the Architect.

To my surprise, though, the guy just keeps sending one attack after another at me. Not giving me even the slightest amount of time to dodge them all. Even with my teleportation.

So I keep taking one hit after another without being given any time to retaliate.

And thus begins a cycle. One of me taking blow after blow before reverting the damage and gradually losing soul from the time it took me to revert the damage.

My soul shrinks down from nearly full to three quarters filled, all the way to half full.

At which point I decide that I don’t give a shit about the attacks and just let them all hit me before I start attacking the Architect in return.

The Architect shifts his attacks a little bit in order to block the bolts of quantum energy I fling his way, making it so only some of his attacks are headed my way. And in the process of that, letting me dodge some of them now.

But only some of them as I’m still pelted with attacks while he’s blocking all of mine.

I grit my teeth, feeling like this battle is completely unfair.

Only to blink as I teleport multiple more times and realize something.

Is… this how others feel when they’re fighting me?

My soul continues to decrease as I teleport over and over again while taking blows. All the way till I finally decide to say fuck it and swing my scythe straight at the man.

Sending an arc of quantum energy flying towards him, to my surprise.

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Unlike my other attacks, he scrambles to block the arc, managing to do so with some difficulty.

Then he resumes his onslaught.

Now that I know how to attack, I do so over and over again. Using my scythe as a conduit to attack with quantum energy that is far harder for him to block.

But regardless of my newfound knowledge, I still end up being overwhelmed by his attacks. Because the Architect clearly has far more experience using his true form than I have.

I grit my teeth, finding my soul dropping down to dangerous levels. And at this point I begin to look for a way out of this place.

Because if I don’t, I will die.

Unfortunately, no matter how hard I try, I can’t find any sort of way out.

Eventually I’m left spamming Quantum Stasis Copy to keep myself from losing as much soul as I can, but it turns out to be all for naught in the end.

As the Architect sends one last barrage at me, knocking my soul down to zero and leaving me paralyzed as I drop down to the ground.

The man then teleports in front of me while raising his hands to the panel in front of him with an apathetic look in his eyes. Then he says, “Nine more.”

And without another word, he blasts me in the face with quantum energy. Not even giving me time to contemplate what he just said.

But unlike what I was expecting, I find myself reappearing in that same room I started the trial in. With the Architect standing in front of the computer.

While I’m sitting here filled with confusion, the man says, “Let’s start.”

Then he once again begins the process of initializing a new galaxy, just like the first time around. Leaving me even more confused as he says, “Accessing new galaxy, GID 21578941221. Initializing Structure Setup Protocols.”

And just like before, the same words resonate through the room.

[New Galaxy Initialization Process has begun.]

I feel my confusion growing more and more by the second. Even moreso when I check my status and find that my soul is full again.

What the fucking hell is going on?!

The Architect here doesn’t bother answering me. He just goes through the process of initializing the structure of this galaxy. A galaxy that is different from the last one.

My mind runs in circles as I try to process what is happening, meanwhile he just continues initializing the galaxy. Then, when he’s done, he says the same thing he said last time, “You’ve passed the first trial.”

And without another word, I’m once again teleported to that battlefield where the Architect starts fighting against the corrupted monsters.

At this point I’m starting to wonder if this trial has some sort of reset. Maybe if I lose against him I get to try again.

My eyes narrow as I remember his last words before he killed me.

Nine More.

Does that mean I have nine more tries to kill him? Until what? Until I die permanently?

Or until I just lose the trial and am kicked out?

I highly doubt this trial is so nice as to just kick me out and not leave me dead, so most likely until I die.

Which means…

I take a deep breath to calm down before focusing all of my attention on the way the Architect is fighting.

Okay. So I’m going to have to figure out how to defeat him by watching him fight here, and adapting when I fight him myself.

I watch him go through and battle with the corrupted monsters once more, studying all of his attacks and how they’re done. Then I watch him fight the Corrupted One once more. Except with this one being a different Corrupted One than last time.

With him showing some different attacks that I hadn’t seen before.

Then I find myself once again facing off against the Architect.

Guess it’s time for round two.