Challenge One thousandth Initiated.

I let out a sigh after seeing that message above me… I didn’t know if that was a good thing, but I was starting to get used to this whole mess. It sure was painful, but humans are creatures that adapt, and there are some of them that awakened to masochism as well. I sure hoped that I wouldn’t lose myself to that point.

I thought a few times that this nightmare would end after one thousand of these, but I gave up on having hope. It would only make things worse, after all. I forced myself to get up and then understand what was going to happen next. I looked around with a blank expression until I saw some weird things.

Until now, the things that I saw in this place never repeated themselves, so I was surprised to see the same tables with food that I had seen a while ago. When I thought that I had to die of dehydration once more, I saw some jugs in the corner of the room and they were filled with water.

I grabbed a cup and drank it without hesitation. It didn’t matter if it was poisonous or not anymore. I just had to make time pass faster to head to the next challenge. Regardless, the water didn’t have any sort of weird taste and the food didn’t smell unnaturally good like before while making me feel hungry.

‘I guess this is another type of torture. They will make me drop my guard and then go all out once that happens to make me suffer. How creative.’

I wasn’t hungry or thirsty, but I decided to eat and drink a bit to end the challenge already. Eventually, three hours passed and nothing happened.

‘I guess it was a poison that would have a delayed effect that would come out all of a sudden, huh?’

Despite that, nothing happened. Maybe the challenge was to finish drinking and eating all the food. There was enough here to last me a full month, and since it doesn’t look like nothing goes bad here, this was going to be a very long challenge.

‘I guess my patience is being challenged, then.’

I decided to eat and drink as much as possible, thinking that perhaps the challenge wanted me to consume everything in sight. Still, as I stuffed myself with food and gulped down water, I felt the weight in my stomach grow. A wave of nausea washed over me, and it felt like I was on the verge of throwing up. That was my cue to stop.

I staggered over to a chair and let my body sink into it, the room spinning slightly. Resting my arms on the table, I let my head fall forward, feeling the cool surface of the wood against my skin. My eyelids grew heavy, and as my mind began to drift into the comforting void of sleep, something unexpected happened.

A sudden jolt ran through me, sharp and electrifying. It was as if lightning had struck, coursing from the top of my head to the tips of my toes. My entire body seized up, and a gasp escaped my lips. My heart raced in panic as the shock left me wide awake, trembling in my seat.

I sat there, gripping the edge of the table, trying to steady my breath. What the hell had just happened? Was it the food? The water? Or was this just another cruel twist in the challenge?

‘What the fuck was that?’

I looked around and then checked my body… my body was still a bit stiff and it was hurting as well. That was no illusion or dream. I had indeed been shocked for some reason. My body was still the same, feeling heavy thanks to all the food, so it wasn’t like I had awakened to a new challenge.

It took a few hours for me to understand what the new challenge was… I began to nod off with my arms crossed while sitting on the corner of the room after doing nothing for several hours and thanks to that, I confirmed that the challenge was for me to stay awake. Whenever I tried to sleep, I would be shocked for some reason.

‘How is this even possible? What is this place? This is so messed up…’

I knew that while staying awake for several days won’t typically lead to immediate death, it causes dangerous effects such as hallucinations, immune suppression, cardiovascular stress, and micro-sleeps, brief, uncontrollable lapses into sleep that can result in accidents. Severe psychological symptoms like paranoia and confusion begin after just 2–3 days, making prolonged wakefulness both mentally and physically hazardous.

Although there isn’t a precise threshold for when sleep deprivation becomes fatal, severe complications can occur after a week. Death is usually due to indirect causes, such as infections from a weakened immune system or critical failures in cognitive judgment leading to life-threatening accidents.

‘... I can’t panic. I have to think logically while I can and stay committed to a plan.’

I held my chin in my left hand to think about this… of all challenges, this was one of the most messed up ones. The whole thing was already messed up, but this was going to mess with my head on another level… At least between the challenges, I had a brief moment of mental rest and my body returned to a point where it was completely free of exhaustion. At least to some extent.

Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!

This challenge can take a while, but I need to shorten it without risking my sanity or doing anything else dangerous. The best possible solution was to try to get some rest while keeping my eyes closed, but that would make this whole thing extra long, and I didn’t know if I would be allowed to do that.

I decided to test that theory… crossing my legs and then relaxing while clearing my mind. All of a sudden, a jolt of electricity took over my body and forced me to open my eyes.

‘Not even this is allowed… sick bastards.’

Perhaps I could get used to being shocked, but this was going to be physically painful instead of just in my head. It felt like in all those scenarios, I didn’t have any real options to fight back and that was tiresome and I didn’t even start to feel tired enough for being forced to stay awake…

I let out a sigh and then tried to keep my cool. In the end, I just had to endure this, just like I endured all the other challenges… The same result was waiting for me at the end, and even if it wasn’t, so what? That would only make the suffering end. The situation was beyond my control, so I might as well just accept whatever happens… no matter the result, I couldn’t care less since it felt like I lost the agency over my own life.

The effects of prolonged sleep deprivation began to show after two days of forced wakefulness. My body, still physically refreshed from the resets, started to betray me in subtler ways. The first signs were the heaviness behind my eyes and the faint, persistent ache in my head, like a storm building in the distance. My thoughts became sluggish, and I struggled to maintain focus. Time felt warped, the seconds dragging like hours, yet moments seemed to vanish without warning.

By the third day, my mind began to fracture. Hallucinations emerged, subtle at first, shadows moving in the corners of my vision, faint whispers that I couldn’t quite decipher. Soon, they grew more vivid: the room felt alive, twisting and bending in impossible ways. My thoughts turned chaotic, a storm of fragmented ideas, memories, and irrational fears. My body, though still outwardly strong, felt disconnected from my mind. My hands trembled without cause, and my legs threatened to give way as though they carried the weight of a thousand failures. Which they did…

Eventually, the constant shocks, the unrelenting vigilance, and the sheer weight of isolation shattered something deep within me. It wasn’t a dramatic moment but a quiet collapse, a sudden realization that my mind was no longer entirely my own. My thoughts felt alien, my emotions dulled, and the whispers in my head no longer felt external. They were mine, or perhaps I was theirs. The breaking point wasn’t the pain or the exhaustion but the complete loss of agency, a cruel transformation where survival became meaningless, and I was left as a hollow vessel enduring only because there was nothing else to do.

At some point, I found myself staring at nothing and thinking of nothing. I was exhausted, but I was able to stay awake with that minimal focus without letting any blink almost push me down to a slumber… Something snapped inside my head and I finally realized something important: My existence by itself was close to nothing.

I couldn’t understand what was going on, why I had to experience this one thousand times or why I alone had to endure all this. While looking at nothing, I felt like I could understand how a tree felt. After growing, giving birth to leaves and fruits, it couldn’t do anything else until the moment it would stop doing that and wither away or until someone comes and chops it down.

Challenge One thousandth Completed.

Treasure Rewarded: Mind of Steel

The alert showed up, but I didn’t understand or pay any attention to it. There were no meanings to any changes now. While I kept staring into nothing, cracks began to appear on the walls and ceiling of the room. It made me wonder for a moment if this place was connected to my own mind… it would have made a lot of sense if that were the case.

Some chunks of the place began to fall like large boulders, but beyond those places, I couldn’t see anything aside from darkness. I was supposed to feel some relief here, but then again… I didn’t care anymore. Whatever happens, happens. Nothing will ever faze me again.

Eventually, everything around me disappeared and then I started to feel my body getting weightless… it wasn’t the first time that such a thing happened, so it wasn’t surprising. What surprised me a bit was a feeling of warmth covering my body.

First True Challenge Initiated - Take over the world in twenty years.

If there was any doubt that my mind was truly gone, then this truly should have vanished by now…

“UggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhHAAAAAAA!”

For the first time in what felt like forever, I heard the voice of someone else. It made me wonder if someone was put in that hellhole in my place. I felt a bit bad for it… most people wouldn’t get used to that kind of ordeal. I already had gotten used to it, so perhaps it would have been better if I stayed there.

Then again, perhaps whoever put me there probably had gotten sick of watching me there… The only clue that I had of that being was the messages that I received at the start of each trial. While I was thinking about that, a dazzling light enveloped me. Here we go again. Another challenge waiting for me. I didn’t know what would be waiting for me at this point in time, but it was fine. Enduring that kind of issue was basically the same as breathing for me.

Eventually, the light decreased in power and then I was able to see the ceiling once more… this time around, it wasn’t a white ceiling that emitted an unnatural amount of light. It was an old wood ceiling… I could see some holes in it and a cloudy sky beyond it. Before long, I was able to hear the sound of the rain and some droplets falling on me through the leaks… at the same time, I could hear someone panting coming from the side. I tried to turn around and get up, but my body felt incredibly heavy and weak for some reason.

A few moments later, an old lady with grey hair wrapped my body in a piece of cloth and then handed me to a much younger woman who had long dark hair and crystal-clear blue eyes. It seemed that the new challenge involved me being fooled about being reborn.