Chapter 281

“Oh I hate this so much!” Ben yelled again as he accidentally passed through a portal, taking him away from the gate he could easily see off in the distance.When they’d first arrived it had been an empty expanse with the exit in the distance, but seemingly not so far as some of the other ones. He’d been sure he’d be able to make it there in no time, if not for the predictable result that was his being teleported around the area by holes in space opening up and closing the moment he stepped through them, the reason that no matter how many hours they were there they didn’t seem to be getting closer.

Worse though was what he hadn’t expected, the way the trial was attacking them, which had already resulted in his left arm being broken and mangled. In some areas, the very space itself had been expanding and contracting, and the one time he’d brushed against one of those areas he felt the flesh and bone of his arm all trying to occupy the same location at once. He considered himself lucky that it hadn’t just ripped off, but the experience was still horrifying.

That was when he’d come up with a strategy to put the light aspect of Greed’s magic into practice, namely to create a laser.

A single narrow beam of red light, it wasn’t meant to cause any harm or destruction, instead doing what light did best, traveling in a straight line. As Ben held the crab, no longer contained within the relative safety of the armour, Greed carefully fired off the beam of light in the direction they were going, looking to see if it distorted at all, either the beam contracting or expanding to tell them there was something that could injure them, or else changing direction in any way to tell them they were going to go through a portal as they did, and ever so carefully they avoided all they could until they were at the edge of the exit and took a step through.

“Oh thank fuck,” Ben sighed happily as he began stripping off the armour so Greed could get to healing his arm. “That may not have been as terrible as some of the others, but it was still annoying.”

“I’m just glad you didn’t drop me. Separated there and we were definitely never seeing each other again.”

“Are you kidding me? Even if I lose an arm I’m hanging on to you. I need someone to patch me up after, right?”

“Ha true enough.”

Since the extent of his wounds were all within a single arm this time he held Greed while it was being treated, walking around to do the other things he needed to. As always, first he worked to freeze the countdown on the trial, viewing it as the most important thing by far, but after he went to see if there was anything new from past participants he could take advantage of, feeling his eyes light up as he saw the armour he’d lost in the darkness trial, and then having them almost explode out of his head as he saw the only new item with it. It was another spatial bag, something that shouldn't have been too surprising to see when he considered the fact that people had definitely gone in there willingly and simply tried to plan the best they could for whatever they might encounter. Even better was the fact that while it was obviously old and some of the enchantments on it needed to be fixed up, it was created exceptionally well and was still working, a fact that seemed obvious as his crafting skill showed him that its item rank was ultra-rare.

He had to stop himself from racing over, doing his best to move calmly as Greed worked to heal him as he took a seat beside it, opening it up and pulling out its contents, the crab giving a low whistle as he went.

Whoever had been using it at the time, it looked like they’d been raiding the trial as they went, taking anything that looked exceptionally valuable from the piles and keeping it in their bag. It was the only way to explain the pure mountain of magic materials that were stored away in there in the form of various items.

Mythril, moribusial, white and rainbow mana crystals, death stone, and most important of all, orichalcum. He felt himself drooling as he took them all out, thinking about just what he could do with it all now that it was around and immediately getting to work separating things.

As nice as it was to suddenly have a host of new and powerful materials to work with, almost all of them were tied to weapons, with only a handful being used for more survival orient supplies, nothing he really needed, meaning he’d need to start disassembling everything to get it to more usable forms for him. Everything but the bag that was. With so much space within it, if he survived he’d be wanting to make good use of it.

Still, that was a worry for later. Even if he’d just remade his armour in the last section, it looked like he’d be doing it again soon enough. The orichalcum alone demanded it, and with all of the power from the various crystals that could go into powering it he felt their odds of surviving skyrocket.

“Holy shit.”

He hadn’t expected he’d get a level to his awakened crafting skill, it hadn’t even crossed his mind as he made the armour. All he’d been doing was pushing himself to his limits for the past month, all in the name of survival, training everything he could while making whatever was necessary with the resources he’d had, but the payoff had been huge.

In a way, it was shocking that the item he’d made was still only listed as lower ultra rare. He’d tied everything he had into it. Every ring, every resistance, every useful skill in his status, but that just went to show the gulf that was raising something from the lower to the middle ranking of it. What mattered was the fact that even with the level up he’d just had, he was happy to call it as good as he could have made it.

A piece of armour that would cover him head to toe, the number of crystals in it would force as much power as possible into the enchantments to help keep them alive. Even if both he and Greed knew that the trial would be able to overtake everything he made if they were in there long enough, at the very least it would give them a lot more time to work with before things got bad, or at least he hoped.

“Time section next. Feeling ready?”

“As I’ll ever be legs. After this only two or three more so let's do it already.”

Ben ate one last piece of food before donning his helmet. They both knew that time would be challenging, having little idea of just what a trial devoted to it might bring, but they stepped through the doorway, ready to face it.

Its start was similar to the space one in a way. An empty expanse with the exit already visible in the distance, though much farther off than the last time so they started moving, eager to get out even before anything happened.

“You know, as much as I hated the first four sections, at least they were guessable once we understood the theme of the trial. That last section alone taught me a pretty messed up application of space magic, I’m not sure I want to see what time will do,” He said, trying to make conversation as his minds focused on the surroundings.

If it was going to be anything like space then it was going to be hard to see and he could only hope that it wasn’t going to pull something ridiculous like stopping time for them while keeping the countdown of the trial going, if the active sections had countdowns that was. It was already stressful enough being in there, the fact that he had no way to accurately measure how long he’d be spending in that section was a whole other issue.

He thought with a shake of his head. There were some things he just couldn’t fight against, so with nothing else he could do he focused on his running as Greed worked to buff him.

A small part of him let himself believe things were going well, that if the trial was throwing anything at them it was being stopped by his armour. At least that was what he told himself until he tripped on nothing.

He managed to catch himself without landing on Greed but was immediately on guard. He knew he wouldn’t just fall for no reason, he just didn’t know what had happened, nor how it related to time. He saw nothing looking around, so with hesitation he continued on, doing his best to keep track of things while he could.

As time passed his body began feeling weird and uncomfortable. He didn’t know how to describe the situation, it was unlike anything he’d dealt with before. All he knew was that something very wrong was happening within him.

“Hey Greed, mind healing me, just to see if anything happens?” He asked, getting no answer as he did.

His companion wouldn’t just ignore him for no reason, not in a situation like that, so he tried to connect to him to understand what was wrong, but it left him unable to comprehend what was happening.

The crab's mind was behaving strangely, not in the way that Ben’s own was, but more like it just wasn’t working right, causing a spike of fear within him as he pushed himself harder. The buffs were still going for the time being at least, but if he lost his healer here then his chances of surviving would plummet. It was only as he got farther in and started to feel a similar effect that he understood just what was happening.

The many minds in Ben's head began moving at different speeds. Some faster and some slower, with which was receiving which effect constantly changing, and what the trial was doing to them both suddenly clicked in his head.

When they’d gone in they’d both been expecting a time effect, assuming the trial would slow down their progress, but it was doing something different altogether. It was speeding up and slowing down different parts of them as they went at the same time, playing havoc with their bodies as it did.

He didn’t know enough about Greed's anatomy to be sure, but given what he knew of his own and the way that fluids pumped through it, he could only assume it was bad. What would happen if a sped-up area led to a slowed area? Pressure would presumably keep building up, only getting worse until something broke, and that wasn't even considering the effect something like that would have on the brain. While his multiple minds seemed to be handling it, Greed only had one and it didn’t seem like it could deal with the experience.

As with every part of the trial though he had few options, giving him no choice but to push forward and hope that he’d make it to the end.

He felt blood start to leak from his eyes and one of his faster streams of thought reflected on the fact that he dealt with that far too often while the rest tried to focus on keeping him moving.

He was almost certain that parts of his body were basically suffering from blood loss while other parts were beginning to burst from the build-up as he’d feared, the areas affected by fast time not getting the blood they needed as the ones dealing with slow time couldn’t get rid of it fast enough, but he was finally within reach of the exit.

With every step he felt things grow more extreme, the difference between fast or slow areas feeling like it was tearing his body apart. Considering this was the only effect from the trial they seemed to be going through, he was miserable to say that he understood why the god who’d made it hadn’t added anything else. What else could they need? He was almost certain that this was already enough to kill someone. He only hoped that Greed would even wake up once they got out of there and that no permanent damage had been done to the crab as he finally made it to the exit and stepped through.

The relief he felt was overwhelming as his mind settled back to its normal speeds and his blood and other bodily floods started to flow properly again, while at the same time a wave of sickness washed over him.

Ripping off his helmet, he leaned over to vomit, an uncomfortable amount of blood mixed in as he saw it spewing down.

He quickly stripped off the armour, seeing his body was covered in marks and bruises from the experience with who knew how much damage going on beneath the surface. Everything still hurt, even if it was better being outside of the trial and he didn’t doubt that he’d need healing soon, but more importantly, Greed still hadn’t said anything.

“Greed, come on buddy, speak up. Don’t leave me alone in here,” He said desperately as he took the crab in his hands, not getting a response. “If you don’t answer I’m going to do something desperate so come on already.”

Still he only got silence, and not knowing what else to do Ben connected to him. The fact he still could at least showed that the crab was alive, and with nothing else he could think of to do he stopped hiding most of his minds the way he typically would when connected to someone and screamed as loud as he could with them all on his head, forcing it into the mind of the other man.

“Ah damn it, I’m up, what is it?” The crab yelled back, letting Ben breathe a sigh of relief as it caught a look at him and immediately began his healing.

“Just happy you didn’t die on me man. Now only two or three to go.”