In a situation like this, would one choose to fight or resort to flight?
Sofis couldn’t do either. She didn’t have a weapon, and like a few of the others, she was stuck inside the room. She looked at the toddler’s drawing, disgusted at the monstrosity that came to life. For someone as adorable as he, to draw something this hideous was nearly unforgivable.
If she were to die, she only hoped the law of immortality still applied at this level.
With a loud cry, Gennai and a few of the treasure hunters lunged at the creature, stabbing their weapons into its flesh. It wailed in pain, knocking its head against the stone wall. Debris fell against the treasure hunters, and one of them unfortunately was crushed under the rubble. Another was stomped flat by the creature’s foot, blood and flesh splattering everywhere before he could utter a cry of hopelessness.
A few of them chose to flee, running away as far as they could out of their cowardly instinct. Despite Gennai cursing their cowardice, they could do nothing but apologise as their legs carried them away.
Then a second identical creature appeared from the other side, this one coloured black. It easily caught a few of the fleeing treasure hunters and ate them, while a couple more were trampled to death. They were being swatted like flies, helpless in the face of the two extremely powerful predators that simply overpowered them in every aspect. The few that remained fled into the room before slamming the door shut, their eyes filled with terror.
‘Bastards,’ Temia spat.
‘You try fighting against that!’ one of them screamed.
Jorn hurriedly tried to separate them. ‘Now, now, let’s calm down for a bit—’
Bang!
‘Ahh!’ Jorn squealed.
One of the creatures smashed its head against the door, easily breaking it into splinters. While a few of them were lodged inside its face, it seemed unfazed, continuing to ram against the wall as the stone bricks struggled to protect the band inside.
Before long, the wall that separated the room from the corridor completely collapsed, and the two creatures slowly advanced against the remainder of the band.
Sofis could not even think of anything. Her brain was blanking out. Her legs were tense but weak. She could barely even stand. Her muscles were uncontrollable. For a moment, she thought she need to relieve herself.
Temia pulled her upright. ‘Stay calm,’ she whispered. ‘Look.’
The bits of flesh and bone were gradually coming back together. Bit by bit, the fallen treasure hunters were reforming themselves. Sofis noticed movement within the black creature’s stomach. The next moment, its stomach burst, and a few of the treasure hunters leapt out, their flesh corroded but recovering.
The law was still true. Death was still impossible here.
‘What are you waiting for?’ Gennai shouted as soon as he regained consciousness. ‘Fight, you idiots!’
With a collective cry that served more to hide their fear than to encourage each other, every single treasure hunter quickly joined the fight. It didn’t matter that they were crushed to death. They simply recovered and fought for a few moments more. Even the weapons were regenerating, with broken spear shafts repairing itself, sword blades sharpened, and clubs that could just endlessly shatter and reform.
They could just throw themselves endlessly until the monsters were killed.
Having ‘died’ twice herself, Sofis should’ve been used to the sensation by this point. Still, she was extremely hesitant in sacrificing herself over and over as everyone was doing. Temia repeatedly was killed just to land another wound at the leg of one of the creatures, while Jorn allowed himself to be thrashed about while he stubbornly attempted to climb up to a creature’s head.
She still had a strong sense of self-preservation… at least until she was killed by a stray brick that fell on her neck.
Realising how quick death could come, she suddenly felt the pressure of her life ‘ending’ being tossed behind for the time being, her eyes now coldly focused at the two predators at hand. The green creature was already blind in one eye, being gravely wounded by an arrow earlier which was still lodged in the wound. The black creature was struggling to stand as its legs were being repeatedly hacked at, the band now chipping at its bones.
It wasn’t that Sofis didn’t treasure her life now. She still did and was still afraid of death, just far less so than a few moments earlier. She knew she lacked the strength to deal much damage to the creatures, so she opted to throw the colourful building blocks to attract their attention away from the others.
It worked to an extent. Despite still continuing the carnage, the two creatures would be distracted for a moment at a time, just enough for Temia, Jorn, Gennai or the others to deal an extra blow before they were killed.
With Jorn constantly reviving atop the creature’s back, he had the best position to truly wound them with his club. Though the wood would shatter upon impact, the reward was a resounding crack from one of the creature’s ribs.
For a long while the fight continued, until, finally, the two creatures lay dead, riddled with wounds from head to tail. The corridor was dyed red, and so was everyone in the band. They were all exhausted, their minds blank from all their ‘deaths’.
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But they won. That was all it mattered.
It didn’t even feel fair, honestly. So long as they had the will and strength to continue, they were always bound to win even if the creatures were twice as big and strong. It was gruelling, yes, but they had no worry of defeat.
‘It almost feels like we have nothing to lose,’ a treasure hunter joked.
‘I think we can leave them be,’ Gennai said. ‘There should be a proper hall at the end of the corridor.’
‘Alright, let’s go—’
Flesh and bones were connecting back together, but they had all been revived already. None of these regenerating tissue belonged to them.
Sofis saw one of the creatures twitch.
‘Oh, no…’
The impossibility of death extended not just to them, but to the creatures as well.
‘We’re properly stuck here now, aren’t we?’
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‘Pant, pant…’ Sofis breathed heavily before she was stomped to death again by the creatures.
They had each died a few dozen times already, with increasing frequency as time went on. In comparison, the two creatures revived only twice, each death barely fazing their fighting spirit. Everyone was exhausted at this point, unable to survive beyond a few moments. Compared to their energy earlier, they were now all sluggish with their movements, some of them dying again before they could even land a single blow.
As soon as Sofis revived once more, she began to crawl away from the scene, desperately fleeing the fight in order to reorganise her thoughts.
But Temia noticed her.
‘Sofis, you coward—’ And she was killed again.
Sofis continued onwards, snaking through a few regenerating corpses before she climbed back into the ruins of the room. Her mind was clearly still recovering as she could barely even think of anything beyond the basic instinct for survival. The red couch, surprisingly, was still very much intact save for some scratches here and there. Compared to everything else, it might as well be considered pristine.
The two drawings were still in their original places, one on the floor and the other on a bed. She wondered if the toddler was in fact some sort of thing unique to the structure, just like the previous halls were with their unique properties and trials to overcome.
As her mind recovered further, she realised that the creatures never actually stepped into the room despite destroying much of it. The bedrooms were still intact, albeit dirtied with all the splattered blood. If anything, at least those were safe havens.
She began to walk towards one of the rooms, only for a stray brick to suddenly land and crush her leg, pinning her on the ground. As she wasn’t dead, she could acutely sense the pain she was in. She couldn’t even scream in agony, the shock taking over her entire brain as she froze in place. She began to desperately grab onto anything to reduce her pain, from blocks to toys to other pieces of rubble to the drawing just within her reach.
And in her agony, she accidentally ripped it apart.
The green creature stopped in its tracks. A deep wound appeared out of nowhere on its back, right where she tore the paper in half. The next moment, the creature was split in two, its upper body detached from its legs and tail.
She expected it to regenerate, but instead… there was nothing. No blood even poured out. The creature was just dead.
Sofis tore apart the head of the drawing. The next moment, the creature was decapitated, the head rolling away.
She crumpled the piece of paper with the head in her hand. The creature’s head began imploding on itself, and within a few moments, was completely gone.
The drawings. The drawings were the key.
‘The drawings!’ she shouted, tears flowing from her face due to the pain. ‘Tear apart the drawings!’
Those that were alive when she said those words immediately understood her. While a few were quickly then killed by the black creature, Temia had been standing in shock where the green creature was. She didn’t need Sofis to shout again.
She sprinted towards the bedroom, stepping on a few of the blocks on the way. She winced in pain, but that was nothing compared to the uncountable amount of deaths she’d experienced at this point in time. Before long, she had arrived at the bedroom and dived at the bed, grabbing the sheet of paper with her bloodied hands.
‘Tear it!’ Sofis screamed.
Riiiip.
Temia quickly ripped the paper into shreds. In that moment, the black creature had captured Jorn with its mouth, its teeth sunken into his flesh. The next moment, the creature itself was split into many pieces, and Jorn was dropped to the ground, instantly killing him.
But that wasn’t enough. Picking up the shredded pieces of paper, Temia then scrunched them up together before swallowing the piece whole. In an instant, the creature disappeared, leaving the rest of the band to gradually recover from the deaths and fatal wounds.
Just like that, the two creatures were destroyed.
Gennai staggered towards Sofis, in his hand a sword. He knelt down, took a look at her situation, and shrugged.
‘Sofis… Can I kill you?’
‘Y…Yes. Please do.’ There was no hesitation.
The next thing Sofis remembered was waking up on the red couch, the band all looking at her in concern, and turning to relief as soon as she fully opened her eyes.
‘You saved us,’ Gennai smiled. ‘Again.
‘You’re the most important person in the band right now,’ Jorn praised.
‘Heh, perhaps,’ Sofis chuckled. It might’ve been accidental, but she did indeed save them. The trial was over. Though the cost was perhaps much more significant than any of them imagined, at this moment, all they had in their minds was relief and celebration.
Temia fed a piece of mana into Sofis’ mouth. It still tasted surprisingly nice despite not being stored in the best of conditions. Well, perhaps she was just hungry.
‘Can I ask something?’ Sofis looked at Gennai.
‘What about it?’
‘Can we… actually rest for a bit more here?’
The others nodded in agreement. They were all desperately searching for treasure, but they were long overdue a proper break. Jewels and precious stones were nowhere near their top priorities at this moment, only the sweet comfort of sleep and rest.
Gennai sighed. ‘Sure. I’ll need a break as well.’
For the next few days, the band rotated between sleeping in the comfortable bedrooms and sleeping in their tents next to the rubble and dried blood. Jorn was still energetic as ever, but he was forbidden from the bedrooms after nearly breaking one of the beds in his sleep. Temia opted to rest on the couch whenever she could, but it turned out to be one of the most comfortable places to sleep in the entire area, and it soon became a coveted spot for everyone. It was also during this time that Gennai was caught sleeping on the couch for nearly the whole day, undisturbed by anyone despite the activities and conversations during the day.
Perhaps at the end of it, it was Gennai that needed this rest the most.