Sixtieth Challenge Initiated.

I couldn’t think anymore… I was too tired of thinking. I couldn’t even recall some of those challenges anymore, even though some of them slowly killed me while making sure that I suffered in the whole process. There was no clear reason for this to actually happen… Some people are just like that, sick bastards who find pleasure at the expense of the suffering of others.

While I was thinking about that, I felt the smell of something good in the air… Eventually, curiosity got over my mental exhaustion and then I forced myself to get up. Around me, I could see some tables with some dishes around me. This was the first time that this had happened… the challenge was to endure food poisoning or something until death?

What the fuck is going on now? Is this a new form of torture? I wasn’t pressed for time, so it seemed that I could think about the situation a bit more. I had no idea how much time had passed since I began to wake up in this room, but every time I woke up, my body was back to normal.

I stared at the dishes from a distance, my mind trying to make sense of the sight in front of me. The table was full of food, real food, the kind you’d expect back home. Chicken, golden-brown and crispy on the outside. Steaks, perfectly seared, glistening with juices. Seafood, fresh and gleaming with a sheen that made my mouth water. It all looked so... filling. Appetizing. The kind of meal you dream about when you’re hungry, when you haven’t had a decent bite in what feels like forever.

The smell? It was intoxicating. Rich and savory, with hints of spices and herbs that tested my senses. Nothing off about it, nothing to raise suspicion. In fact, it felt like a trap set to play on my hunger, something so perfectly designed to lull me into a false sense of safety. But I knew better than to trust it blindly.

I couldn’t let my guard down. I had learned the hard way that nothing in this place was ever what it seemed. Every challenge, every test, had been another cruel twist designed to break me. My stomach growled. I was starting to get hungry just by looking at the food. That made me think of how much I wanted to eat, but I pushed the urge aside. Trusting what I saw would be the end of me. I had to think. I had to figure out what game they were playing with me now.

So, I kept my distance, eyeing the food like a predator sizing up prey. The scent still lingered in the air, but I refused to give in. If there was one thing this place had taught me, it was to never trust anything without understanding the consequences first. And right now, I don’t understand anything.

A couple of hours passed and now I could fully understand the logic behind psychological torture… I didn’t know how this was possible, but the food didn’t lose its smell and that only made me feel more hungry. The food certainly had something in it that made my hunger increase… I didn’t know how that was possible through the smell alone, but it was happening.

‘Am I just delaying the unavoidable with this? Might as well eat and get over it?’

My mind began to waver as it got weaker and weaker, thanks to the temptation. Still, there was logic behind those thoughts… resisting knowing what would eventually happen was a waste of time. Just thinking about the situation didn’t help me take a single step forward… I had to at least learn from them and move on somehow.

‘This is going to hurt, but at least it will help me save time.’

I stopped caring about the possible dangers and then decided to eat. I took the chicken leg and then began to bite on it without hesitation… As expected, the best sauce is hunger when it comes to pretty much anything. Before long, I finished the chicken leg and then began to eat a bit of the other dishes.

For a while, I didn’t notice anything wrong with the food, but soon I found a problem… there was no water. The dishes were quite salty and spicy, so the thirst soon began to bother me.

‘Crap, this will be worse than I thought.’

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There was no water… This was the challenge. Without water, I was doomed. The food, rich in salt and spice, had done its job, filling me up, yes, but also making my body cry out for something to balance it. My throat soon was like sandpaper, dry and raw, and my mouth felt like I had swallowed the desert itself.

My stomach, now swollen with food, felt like it was dragging me down, a weight I couldn’t ignore. I could already feel the effects of the dehydration setting in. My head began to spin lightly, and a sharp pain throbbed in my temples. The hunger was gone, replaced by a gnawing desperation for water, but that wasn’t coming. The next three days? They’d be hell. Absolute hell.

The first day was brutal, every minute stretching into what felt like hours. The thirst dominated everything. My mouth was like cotton, my lips cracked and dry, and every swallow felt like swallowing shards of glass. My energy drained quickly as I tried to move, my legs heavy and unresponsive. I tried to pace myself, to distract myself with small movements, but my head spun in dizzying circles, and the dry pain in my throat only worsened. I spent most of the day sitting still, my hands clenching the air as I resisted the urge to scream, to beg for water that I knew wouldn’t come.

By the second day, I was barely conscious of anything other than the hunger and thirst eating away at me. The sensation of dryness had invaded my entire body, leaving me feeling brittle and fragile. Every movement became a struggle, and my vision started to blur. I could hear my own heartbeat, a dull thudding in my chest that seemed to echo through my entire body.

Time had lost meaning; I was just existing now, hoping, praying for something, anything, that might end this torment. But nothing came. By the third day, I couldn’t stay conscious anymore. My body, too weak to hold on any longer, finally gave way, and the darkness swallowed me whole.

One hundred fifty-ninth Challenge Initiated.

At this point in time, I could tell that I have been here for months… troublesome thoughts were starting to bother me. Instead of waiting for the challenge to deal with the job, I should just… before I could finish the thought, I punched myself. That was the last thing that I needed. I had to keep going…

I forced myself to get up, and I didn’t find anything around me. It seemed that I was done with the challenges that involved food or similar things. I was already tired of eating herbs that gave me stomach aches and that made my head spin. The weird thing about them was the fact that they always made me feel pretty good at the beginning.

I tried to get up, but the best I could do was to remain seated on the ground and I waited for whatever the hell was going to happen. At first, nothing happened… but then I began to feel my legs being bitten by some annoying ants. I smashed them by raising my legs a bit, but they kept coming.

Eventually, I saw a bunch of them coming through holes in the ceiling… the same holes that water was poured in before and they all were heading toward me and quite fast at that.

‘So this is the challenge, huh… Son of a bitch.’

I knew that when ants are starving, their behavior can become more aggressive, particularly in species that are already territorial or highly organized. In some cases, ants will fight each other over resources, with some species engaging in fierce battles for food. In extreme conditions, where food is scarce, ants may even turn to cannibalism, feeding on other ants, including members of their own colony.

Ants have a strong drive to secure food, and in times of scarcity, they may become more territorial, attacking anything they perceive as a threat to their survival. In this situation, I was a huge source of food for them... Some aggressive species, like fire ants, are known for their capacity to overwhelm and attack in large numbers when provoked or desperate. These attacks can become more violent as the ants work together to overpower their prey or rivals, and their venomous bites can make their attacks even more harmful.

‘Well, I am feeling like doing some stress relief as well… So, come and get it.’

The ants truly wanted some pieces of me, so I didn’t hesitate in smashing them. I never felt like I should kill insects before, but this was different since they wanted to eat me as well… I smashed them with a large grin on my face, even though I knew that I was just making this last more than it was necessary.

Still, more and more of those little bastards… before long, my limbs were covered with the liquid inside their bodies and that only stirred the ants even more. They began to eat and drink the liquid, but eventually they all came to me. A living meal was a lot more appetizing to them.

I was ashamed to admit that I didn’t last even one hour against the ants… at some point, they began to pour from the holes at the same rate as the water before. I could smash and punch them, killing hundreds of thousands of them with each attack, but my stamina was being drained with every passing moment.

I still didn’t want to give up so soon, so I decided to eat those bastards instead… letting them alive inside me was the worst of the ideas, so I smashed them with my hands before chewing down. That did a bit to quench my hunger and thirst, but soon I was full, even though I ignored the taste.

“Fuck it…”

When the exhaustion finally overtook me, my body became completely unresponsive. I had already gotten used to that feeling. My limbs felt like they had turned to lead, utterly immobile, as if every ounce of strength had been drained from me. I could do nothing but lie there, a helpless, living statue, unable to even flinch as the ants began their gruesome work. They swarmed over me with terrifying efficiency, their tiny, relentless bodies moving in unison, driven by a single, insatiable hunger.

Each bite was a sharp, stinging agony, a needle piercing through my skin, but worse, because with every sting came the sensation of flesh being torn away. The pain was everywhere, searing and unbearable, spreading like wildfire across my entire body. It was a death of a thousand cuts, each one a cruel reminder of my helplessness. Even though it lasted only five minutes, those minutes stretched into what felt like an eternity. This death was one of the worst I had endured, not just for the pain but for the sheer horror of being consumed alive, completely powerless to resist.