Time slowed as the deadly spikes descended, their wicked tips glistening in his startled eyes. Like stingers, they sped downwards seeking to perforate him with as many holes as a thriving beehive.
Pulling so deeply from his core that it ached, Ren flooded his meridians with essence and lunged forward into a hasty roll. The rough ancient floor scraped layers off his skin as he tumbled away, drawing significantly less blood than the whistling spikes he narrowly dodged had sought to take from him.
His momentary sense of relief was immediately doused as another trap triggered. This time, the spikes came horizontally, shooting out from the right wall. Unlike the spear-like spikes from the ceiling, these spikes were needle thin, dripping purple poison and they darted in and out of the walls. With lightning quick reflexes, Ren dropped into a slide slipping underneath the blades and through the narrow gap they failed to cover.
He jumped to his feet just in time to see another baseball sized corrosive energy zipping towards his head. Cursing, he pivoted on his feet, spinning away from the sizzling projectile. Mid-spin, he felt a stinging pain flare across his back as the purple energy grazed his back, eating through his shirt and the topmost layer of skin.
Gritting his teeth, he controlled his footwork to stop his spin from sending him into the wall. With barely a finger’s length separating him from the wall, he stopped, his muscles twitching as they worked to prevent his momentum from slamming him forward. He remained motionless, his heart beating rapidly as he stared at the wall wondering if he had triggered another attack.
‘Wait, why is that useless organ beating faster than the allocated speed?’ He wondered.
[ Hehehehehehe. You really are foolish, child. How have you failed to notice the changes? Your blindness amuses me. ]
‘Quiet!’ Ren barked internally.
He was very annoyed with himself at the moment. The blasted voice had said the energized ball trap was out of commission for two weeks. And he had actually believed its ramblings! He didn’t need that kind of distraction in this death trap of a hallway. That point was made more poignant as his next step brought a low rumble from somewhere deep within the walls. He froze, his senses stretched to the limit and his muscle tensed waiting for the repercussion from his moment of distraction.
[ Watch your tone, you bumbling runt! Bah! Wisdom is truly wasted on the — ]
With considerable effort, Ren cut his consciousness from listening to the voice. It wasn’t the complete isolation he had promised, but with the dangers around him, he could not afford to devote a significant portion of his processing resources to punishing the annoying personality. After ten seconds of waiting with no incoming attack, he continued forward.
The next half an hour were incredibly tortuous, as Ren carefully crept along watching for traps and flinching at every minute gust of air. With his senses heightened, the flickering of the torches and ancient dampness in the air grated at his nerves. Why would there be dampness in the air in a Bank Vault? Whoever designed this Vault was a sadist.
Ren would know, since he had been called such thousands of times!
His frustration mounted as a high pitched whine kept his ears twitching. He spent the next half-hour searching for the source but it remained elusive, like he was experiencing tinnitus. However, when he checked his advanced sonar sensors to inspect the frequency of the sound, the spectrogram reported no such sounds detected. He frowned in irritation. Were his audio receptors faulty? And was this hallway always this narrow?
Eyes widening, Ren pushed all his energy into his legs and sprang forward.
He moved with a swiftness that mirrored the wind itself, disregarding all caution in his desperate flight. The hallway twisted and turned, his feet pounding against the ground as he raced through, every ounce of effort exerted. But as he covered more ground, a sinister revelation dawned upon him—the walls of the hallway were steadily converging, inching closer with each passing second!
How sinister!
He silently upgraded his respect for the architect of the ancient building. Like Earth’s Venus Fly Traps, he had been ensnared in an insidious trap, completely unaware as its malevolence slowly tightened its grip around him. While he had been looking for more direct traps, the walls had been closing in, propelled by an unrelenting force that moved them so slowly that even he had not noticed until it was almost too late.
Ren's mind raced, analyzing the mechanics of the trap. It was designed to deceive, closing in at an accelerated rate at the farthest reaches, while progressing more gradually where the trap was triggered. The diabolical plan was to leave him trapped within a rapidly diminishing space, with no possibility of escape. The walls closing in from all directions, he would be crushed into oblivion, becoming yet another victim claimed by the labyrinth's treachery.
His heart pounded in his chest as he accelerated, his limbs pumping with adrenaline-fueled speed. He rounded another bend and saw that the hallway ahead had closed to within a few feet of each other. Digging deep into his Radiated Essence reserves, he cycled the corrosive energy as fast as he could and used the boost of energy to push himself forward. His meridians stretched and screamed at him as he pumped them until overflowing with all the energy he could muster. Lazy drifts of wasted essence spilled out of his skin as he left deep indents into the floor in his enhanced rush to make it through the closing exit.
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The hallway grew more treacherous with each passing moment. He was nine meters away from the closing exit now. Ren yelled and with a final burst of speed, he closed the distance to five meters. Still too slow. His bionic legs felt like dead weight at this point, but still he persisted. He was losing more essence than his meridians could channel to his legs but what choice did he have? He finally made it within two meters of the exit but then he faced his next obstacle. The walls had become so narrow, he had to turn sideways as he dove for safety.
Claustrophobia was always a ridiculous notion to Ren. He remembered first reading about the phobia and being perplexed as to why some humans had that irrational fear. He used to think it was all due to the fragility of the mushy slushie they called a brain. At this moment, Ren was seriously rethinking his stance. With increasingly frantic movements, he wriggled his way between the closing ancient walls. His skin was peeled from multiple parts of his body as he struggled to inch his way through the tight confines of the closing walls. Salvation lay a few meters ahead but it seemed like a mirage. The walls were unrelenting, moving ever closer with wicked finality even as Ren screamed in defiance, refusing to be undone by pieces of ancient mortar.
At last he burst through the exit with a victorious yell as the walls slammed close behind him. He had escaped by the skin of his teeth. Morbid curiosity made him turn around to inspect the space that would have been his final resting space if he had been nanoseconds slower. To his horror and delight, he was faced with a smooth wall without any blemishes. The hallway had closed so seamlessly, that it looked like one piece of stone now. A gust of wind brushed up against his bloodied back, a gentle reminder that he was not safe yet. He whirled like a dervish, spinning so fast a mortal would have several days of vertigo.
Ren found himself standing on the precipice of a gaping chasm that spanned the width of the hallway. The ground he stood on went forward for about a meter before ending abruptly. A few steps to the left, he saw a thin rickety rope bridge stretching across the chasm to the far end of the hallway. If that was his only way across, Ren was not very optimistic of his chances of survival.
Taking a few careful steps forward, he peeked into the depths of the chasm. Hundreds of meters below, a fast moving body of water streamed by with unstoppable speed. Ren was an excellent swimmer, and he couldn’t really drown as he could just close off his orifices if needed. However, with everything he had seen so far, he wasn’t keen on trying his luck down there. He shivered at the thought of the monstrosities that were sure to be hiding beneath the surface. Nope. Not today. Let someone else try it out.
The air was very damp and the sounds of rushing water permeated the hallway as he tentatively moved towards the rickety bridge. He tested the first wrung of the bridge, with one leg standing safely on the solid stone of the hallway. Slowly increasing the pressure, the wrung remained steady, although the whole bridge wiggled and shook as gusts of air pummeled it from all sides.
“Finally, something I am good at,” Ren said with a smile.
Balance was something he was great at. It was one of the strengths of his model. There were multiple modules of code dedicated to ensure he could alway remain balanced no matter the environment he found himself in. He fondly remembered one of his jobs, where he had to infiltrate a hovering Luxury Platform that had been the site of a Q8 conference of world leaders. His job had been to take out one of the dignitaries.
He had infiltrated the meeting by jumping from a Rocket that dropped him just within the boundaries of the earth’s atmosphere. The last few hundred meters, he had used controlled gliding to adjust his position. When he landed on the roof of the platform, his system kicked in and with nothing but the spikes on his boots and his innate balance, he had been able to withstand the gusts of wind seeking to pull him off the roof of the platform.
Here and now, he was sure he could handle this bridge. That is, unless it did something stupid, like breaking off while he was in the middle. Ren frowned.
‘You know what, let’s not think about that.’
Out of an abundance of caution, Ren decided to take a short break before attempting to cross the precarious bridge. His body was badly injured, filled with slashes, gouges and puncture holes. Several patches of skin were missing, and his legs struggled to respond as they should. Upon closer inspection, he noticed the ethereal meridians in the affected area displayed alarming signs of damage. The forceful surge of energy he had pushed through them during his desperate escape from the encroaching walls of the hallway had left them scarred and torn.
Moreover, Ren's Radiated Essence was inherently corrosive by nature, even to his meridians. Ordinarily, this wouldn't pose a significant issue, as the meridians possessed a modest ability to self-heal. But the constant strain he had been forced to place upon them during the past few minutes of escape, had denied them the chance to recover. A short rest was definitely in order to fix the damage, and hopefully deal with the other injuries he had sustained. With a determined mindset, he dragged his battered body toward the smooth wall that marked the remnants of the hallway and slumped onto the ground.
Closing his eyes, Ren tried to relax. Despite his circumstances, a satisfied smile graced his features. If he wasn't preoccupied with healing, he would have allowed himself the luxury of shedding tears in overwhelming relief. The emptiness that had plagued his existence on Earth, the loneliness and monotony that he had endured for decades, seemed distant and irrelevant now.
Licking his lips, he wondered what other exciting challenges this accursed Vault had in store. And what of the Treasures! There had to be treasure, right? The sheer level of security surrounding this Vault suggested that it held something of great value. No one built a Vault this secure just for fun. While idly considering potential scenarios and treasures, Ren's thoughts turned to the other participants of the Trial. The last he saw of the group, they had scattered into smaller units, each seeking escape from the horrors of the summoning Plaza. He recalled seeing dozens of lifeless bodies strewn across the ground like the discarded toys of a spoiled toddler, even as he escaped the killing grounds by hanging onto the fleeing spider.
He reached into the small pouch on his waist where he had kept a few snacks. Ren grimaced as his hands returned with the smashed remains of a Moonberry Pie. A deep sigh escaped his lips as he looked at the delicious filling dripping from his fingers. He had been looking forward to savoring this treat made of Moonberry—a local fleshy fruit that combined the sweetness of an apple with the tartness of a lime. It had gotten smashed at some point as he fought his way through this Fractured Realm. Well, nothing for it now. He stuck his fingers in his mouth and licked them clean.
“Mmmm,” he smacked his lips in pleasure. “Still tastes delicious.”