The days blended together, and then he was back in the trial.

Specifically, back he was here.

Tom grimaced as he looked around the cave that April had put him in. This was his seventh attempt, with the previous ones having all ended in failure.

“A little, but not too much.” He whispered to her. “Remember, April, if there’s too much brain damage, then I can’t cast. I just need a little injury.”

She did not respond to him, of course. They had already had this conversation, and there was only so much meddling she could do before her attempts to help started to hinder.

The same natural-cut tunnel as before was leading down from where he stood. Tom procrastinated, because he knew what awaited him when he reached the bottom. This threat was April’s solution to his challenge to create a scenario to facilitate a perfect and meaningful cast of Heal Brain. To do that, she needed something to hurt his brain, and the usual method of a mental attack was not available because he was immune to everything below tier-five, while anything above that was so powerful that it would kill him instantly.

No, what waited for him was mechanical damage. The monsters were like giant insects that would try to attach themselves to his head and zombify him.

They would kill parts of his brain and keep other sections intact. It was useful for what he needed, under the proviso that he managed to limit the time they had to turn him into a meat puppet. Give them long enough, anything more than two seconds, and the GOD’s shield was going to be triggered.

With faltering steps, he advanced down the corridor.

There was a flicker of movement and he reacted, lashing out with his spear before it got too close. His weapon glowed blue with a hint of lilac as it connected with the creature springing at him. It sheared straight through the monster that resembled a stick insect the size of his forearm, with a proboscis as long as one of his fingers.

Tom knew from experience exactly what that dedicated part of its anatomy was. Its job was to get into his brain and take control.

He stamped on the larger half of the dead body. There was no need for the added violence, because it was already dead. Its physiology was similar to most things in that cutting it in half was, in fact, lethal.

“Calm, Tom, calm,” he whispered as he marshalled his breathing and pacified the feeling of revulsion that the mind eater’s presence had caused.

He had been expecting one of them, but not this soon. It was too early, and it worried him that April had changed the scenario up on him. Normally there would be no enemies for another twenty metres. He knew April was continually tweaking in the background, but she hadn’t warned him of any change in this scenario, and this was a big tweak.

With cautious steps, he proceeded forward. There was a rough patch on the natural cave wall, an area of deeper shadow that might have been concealing something. He poked it with his spear tip to ensure nothing was hiding in the space. There was no reaction, and he didn’t think this particular type of brain-eating monster was capable of resisting its baser instincts.

The area was clear.

Another two steps, and he slowed down. He licked his lips. It had been too long since that last attack. It didn’t match with the way April usually did things.

The coarseness of the walls and overall lighting were getting worse and worse. There were more and more spots that something less than a size of a football could be hiding within. The sensing spell that he had manually created from Spark was, of course, active. But it could only find things that were moving. If they were just huddling there, if they remained still, he wasn’t going to sense them until they attacked.

He swallowed and slowed further down, then poked each of the suspicious patches of deep shadows.

He pulled his spear back and saw a flicker of movement in the wider hole he had just disturbed. He leapt backwards instinctively as far as he could.

Spear Mastery aided the process, subtly guiding his feet to better avoid stumbling on the rough ground, and ensured that his spear was back, yet ready to be thrust at anything that threatened him.

Out of the hole, which had been at shin level on the wall, two monsters burst out. Like wolves, they coordinated, splitting up one going low and crossing the corridor to approach from his left, while the other scampered up the wall to the right, rapidly reaching head height.

Bastards, he thought to himself. Amongst all the other tools they had, it was unfair that they coordinated as well as they did, but all of his other failed attempts had taught him to expect nothing less.

Two, even if they were flanking him like this, were fine. He could take two at once. He was going to need to be quick and precise with each of his attacks, but he could do it without magic. It was doable. He could take them.

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Danger Sense, which had been a threatening hum since April had deposited himself in the tunnel, spiked.

Tom almost jumped, but turned the instinctive motion into retreating further away from them.

A third and a fourth insect appeared.

Tom recognised the setup. More were definitely coming.

The first two, thankfully, didn’t wait.

They leapt to attack.

The one on the ground was moving slightly faster than the one on the wall, so he destroyed the former first. Power Strike was making his weapon glow blue and ensured the effectiveness of the cut. Then he struck the other one on the wall with the butt of his spear, driving the wood into the centre of its body. There was a thud as the force went through to the wall that the insect was pinned against.

When he pulled his weapon back, his enemy limply fell under gravity to smack onto the ground. Tom was not tricked, as he had fought these things before. It was not dead; instead it was probably no more than momentarily stunned. If he was lucky, he would get thirty seconds, but it could be as short as one. Unfortunately, there was no time to stab it to death, as the others were already approaching rapidly. The second wave had already grown to be five in total. With his brain racing, he retreated while wondering if it was even possible to kill this many, even if aided by magic.

He didn’t want to die again.

He was almost running backwards with his spear lashing out in front of him to delay them as long as possible. They would catch him. It was a forgone conclusion. Despite their smaller size, he couldn’t flee from them. They were too fast, far quicker than he was, and he was retreating not to escape, but to buy time and hopefully fool them into abandoning their pack mentality. One at a time, he could kill them quickly, but if they coordinated, he was dead.

It wasn’t working. When he stabbed at them, they just retreated and then the other side would close into the space where his spear wasn’t.

With a curse, Tom turned the tables on them. He stopped retreating, and the fight was on. Unfortunately, his aggression did not phase them the way he had hoped it would. Neither collectively nor individually was there any hesitation, and they attacked him as one.

Spark, fuelled by precognition mana, arced out to shock them. It didn’t go where he had targeted it; instead, the energy flowed unevenly, with more power being redirected to his weak side and less to the ones he had decided to target with his spear. Tom put it out of his mind and went deep into his battle training. In a trance, he went through the spear forms with a terrifying speed and precision. These monsters were susceptible to being stunned, and that bought a moment and made them simple to target.

The three creatures going for his head died. One of them, possibly smarter than the others, went for his waist. The move was so surprising that he had left himself wide open. All he could do was twist to push a hip at it to stop it from striking his more vulnerable stomach.

There was a sharp pain as it plunged its proboscis into him. It was too far away from his brain to impact him directly, but having a living, moveable, sucking dagger penetrate him still hurt, and, before it could run up his torso, he moved to seize the insect monster with his hand.

His reaction was only just fast enough, as, moments before his grasping fingers arrived, it had withdrawn its proboscis and had started to move upwards. Tom seized it around its undefended torso, then instinctively pushed it down and away from his vulnerable head. It reacted by lashing out. This time, its proboscis dug into his upper leg, and he was certain it broke his femur.

Only a small fraction of his brain focused on negating that issue. The majority of his attention was on the two brain eaters who were still alive and coming for him.

One-handed, he met them. With the spear as his main weapon, it was awkward, but it was something he had already trained for. In Existentia, you never knew when you might lose a limb.

Even with one hand, courtesy of a deft use of Spark and two quick stabs he was able to eliminate them easily. There was still the issue held in his hand, but the wave had been dealt with. He had done it. The whole thing felt anticlimactic. Defeating seven creatures in quick succession was not supposed to be that uneventful. Yes, he had been hurt, but a single hip wound was nothing.

Danger Sense went up multiple decibels. He had forgotten that these things were swarm-minded. It was not over, because they were smarter than that, and they were happy for all but one of them to die, providing they got their target. Too late for it to matter, he recognised the likely additional avenue of attack and attempted to look up.

Something smashed into the back of his head.

There was instant pain, but he didn’t let that stop him. The spear was unwieldy at the best of times, but with only a single hand directing the weapon, it was horrifyingly slow. The pain in his head intensified, and, from experience, he knew what was coming.

He had one chance, and he didn’t want to fail. He didn’t want to die pointlessly again, and, no matter what they said, a GOD’s shield left psychological scars even when it worked.

The spear spun, glowing with Power Strike and struck the creature and only just in time. He could feel the rising numbness, and the fingers of the hand that held the spear spasmed and released it. His whole body reacted similarly, with only one exception. The hand holding the creature that had attacked his hip was reinforced with magic. Those were unaffected by the loss of nerves ordering actions, because his magic had long since supplemented them. That hand remained firmly locked on the monster, even if what the other one had done to his head meant he couldn’t feel it anymore.

Pain as a concept had been purged, as had his ability to balance.

His body crashed into the ground, but Tom didn’t care. His brain had suffered potentially lethal injuries, but was still functioning. He could still think. Usually by this stage it was over, but this time he had a chance. His best yet.

He formed the spell as precisely as he could, and only paused to spend fate with a focus on getting a useful brain sideways evolution. He wanted something to ensure that, even if his brain was injured, his consciousness wouldn’t be impacted. With the fate invested and the spell form as perfect as he could make it, he cast it, and hoped that his eight points of unattributed mana and ten of precognition was sufficient to fix the open wound in his head.

If he had Touch Heal already, eighteen points would have been more than enough, but he wasn’t sure how inefficient Heal Brain was.

There was an immediate ding.