Not to Be Trifled With!

"Hoo... hoo... hoo..." Heavy breathing echoed, as if the massive snout of the phantom beast Compasini were right before you, right behind you, right above your head. In the darkness, it existed without form, yet scrutinized you with exquisite care. It brought a thick, shuddering unease, as though a sheer cliff lay just half a step away, and falling would send you tumbling straight into the beast's gaping maw. Karen stood with his arms crossed, waiting quietly. Richard sat on the ground, his body trembling slightly. But glancing at Karen, he immediately settled down. In truth, had Richard come to this selection alone, he would have been far calmer than he was now. Back then, he would have known he could rely only on himself; now, with Karen to lean on, he was more prone to emotional swings, having the luxury to indulge them. "Roar!" Just then, a long howl suddenly erupted. In the churning sound waves, a person's soul felt like a skiff teetering on the verge of capsizing at any second. A black glow surfaced around Karen, enveloping Richard as well and shutting out the howl's impact. The sound gradually faded. Richard looked up and touched the tip of his nose. Raining? No. It seemed to be snowing. Karen noticed it too; the surrounding temperature seemed to have shifted. Altering the temperature inside an illusion? It was doable, but unlikely to achieve much. Everyone participating in the selection possessed fundamentally sound qualifications. They knew everything in the illusion was fake, and even more so, they understood they could neither freeze nor burn to death. If it were merely the torment of cold or heat, the vast majority of strong-willed individuals could withstand it. Would it really be that simple? ... Above the sculpture of the phantom beast Compasini, Bishop Bern's gaze swept across the 198 candidates standing in the circles of light below. The gaze of the sculpture beneath his feet shot into the air, dissolving into a curtain of light that blanketed the entire grounds. The stone chests beside him were fully open, and the several spiritual sacred relics within had begun circling the examination ground, bolstering the formation. On the perimeter, a contingent of formation priests transferred from other regions maintained the array, while eighty proctors swept their gazes ceaselessly over the venue, watching every stir. Bishop Bern sat down and spoke: "The selection..." ... The blackness peeled away continuously. Everyone in the testing ground became visible again, each appearing in their original spot in the formation. This left Richard exceedingly embarrassed, as he was sitting right in front of Karen—like someone caught red-handed preparing mischief in the dark the second the lights snapped back on. Yet Richard soon had no cause for worry. With a gust of swirling wind and snow, cries of pain rang out as numerous people fell, tumbled, and scrambled. The neat formation disintegrated in an instant. Richard relaxed. Then the wind and snow sent him tumbling backward, only for Karen's hand to dart out and catch him. Using that leverage, Richard regained his footing. He wanted to stand like Karen, but found he couldn't manage it at all. The higher off the ground, the stronger the wind seemed to blow. He could only sprawl on all fours. Looking around, however, Richard found fewer than thirty people still standing. Most were sprawling just like him. With plenty of company at the bottom, he felt perfectly at ease. Ahead, a towering snow-capped mountain emerged; all of them were currently positioned on the path ascending it. The scenery struck Karen with an inexplicable sense of familiarity, as though he had seen and experienced it somewhere before. Just then, Bishop Bern's voice sounded: "Rules of the selection: within the allotted time, the five individuals who climb the highest along the mountain path shall receive our region's recommendation." And that was all. A brief statement of rules, for the method of selection was remarkably simple. How long was the allotted time? Unknown. You simply had to push forward or crawl upward by any means necessary, ensuring you stayed among the top five. Or, as others fell out unable to endure, so long as you refused to quit and kept crawling forward until you overtook them into the top five, that would suffice too. Karen quickly deduced the deeper meaning beneath the sparse rules. He too noticed that counting himself, barely thirty people remained upright. This meant those thirty possessed relatively robust soul strength, capable of withstanding the wind and snow's pressure upon the soul. Yet for those whose soul strength fell short—whether due to innate traits or post-natal cultivation—it didn't mean they had no chance of winning. As long as you endured, crawling and crawling, even at a slower pace, once the people ahead could take no more, you could crawl past their highest mark and take their place. "Within the allotted time"—that duration could be defined arbitrarily. Everyone began to advance. Some walked; some crawled. Some who had started out walking gradually dropped to a crawl. Crawling met far less resistance than walking, saving considerably more energy. Karen continued to walk, while Richard crawled behind him, using Karen's body as a windbreak. To the left, the young girl Aisli walked with furrowed brows before hunching over. To the right, the youth from the knight order kept his back ramrod straight, forging ahead with determination. This time, however, he gave Karen several pointed glances, as if only now did Karen merit a second look. Some people carried pride etched in their bones; others wore it painted on their faces. This fellow evidently belonged to the latter. Behind them, the pebble-tossing boy kept throwing a stone forward, walking up to retrieve it, throwing it forward again, and retrieving it once more. His movements flowed smoothly, as though what he tossed were not stones at all, but guide ropes he was using to pull himself along. To the right, the drowsy girl had already laid flat. It could be counted as crawling, perhaps... With her eyes closed, she still seemed asleep, yet her neck and hips bobbed rhythmically up and down, resembling a maggot doggedly inching along in its slumber. "Rock, paper, scissors!" "Haha, you lost! Your turn for this stretch, mine for the next." "Fine, fine, a bet's a bet." The one directly behind was also walking forward. Ahead, Leon and Laure kept walking too; they had their images to maintain. Moreover, their circle quickly grouped together into two ranks, one in front and one behind, swapping places in shifts. This "teamwork" approach indeed conserved strength, but Karen doubted the test would make taking shortcuts so easy. After all, the goal of the selection was to pick five individuals, not a five-person team. Sure enough, when the crowd reached the snow-choked slopes, the temperature plunged sharply. This was no longer cold in the conventional sense, but an assault aimed at the soul. Compared to this bone-chilling dread, the biting wind seemed trivial. Leon, Laure, and their companions abandoned their teamwork. Everyone's pace had diverged. What existed and could be seen by all were soul forms, and each person's reaction to their soul freezing over was entirely different. "Ahhh..." Accompanied by a chorus of shrieks, dozens of figures vanished on the spot. They had not died, only withdrawn from the trial, though they likely suffered injuries in the process. To Karen's left, Aisli curled inward, her body trembling continuously. Still stooping forward, she cast a glance toward Karen—or more specifically, toward Richard crawling steadily behind him—and licked her lips, looking restless. To the right, the youth from the knight order remained stern-faced, each step measured and firm. "Hoo... mmph... mmph... hoo..." Behind them, the drowsy girl wriggling like a maggot took on a look of agony. Though still asleep, she was undoubtedly having a nightmare. The boy tossing pebbles maintained his earlier rhythm. His stones began emitting a faint warmth. The stones likely weren't sacred relics, but rather some form of companion construct. Looking closely, Karen noticed that every time the boy picked up a pebble, it sank into his palm, while the one he threw seemed freshly produced. What sort of technique was that? Karen truly couldn't tell. As for the fellow behind him, he was already falling behind. He had begun arguing with himself. With the temperature dropping and his soul wracked with pain, he refused to honor the rock-paper-scissors results. Karen checked on Richard. Though his younger cousin was shivering, his crawling rhythm stayed steady; he could still hold on. At that point, people up ahead began vanishing in steady succession, as though forging further triggered a new phase. As they pressed on, Leon and Laure's group let out cries of agony. The already loose formation collapsed completely, and two figures dissolved as their owners opted out of the trial. Leon clutched his hand while Laure clutched his face, groaning in torment as they plodded onward. "Ah!" To the left, Aisli stared at the back of her hand. It was frostbitten—not with chilblains, but because her body... no, her soul had been frozen brittle. The sensation was like having one's soul slowly turned to solid ice from its baseline state. It was torture, an excruciating agony few could endure. Karen reached up and felt his neck. Blocks of ice had formed there as well, yet he felt little pain, only a faint sensation. When his fingernails hardened into crystalline ice, Karen actually chuckled. No wonder it felt so familiar. No wonder it felt like déjà vu. Only now was he certain: Wasn't this the exact same second revelation he had undergone during his God's Revelation, after rejecting the revelation given by the God of Order! Snow, mountains, a solitary figure walking alone—that had been a hopeless expedition. Yet in the end, he had gritted his teeth, endured to the very end, and completed his own revelation unto himself. This scene was actually part of a formation? And used as a test problem for a selection trial? So what was this scenario called within the Church of Order? Just as certain suppressed vicious beasts were gradually incorporated into the church's spells or summons, Karen didn't find the appearance of this scenario here too surprising. Yet its actual purpose here could not be revelation, lies, or rebellion; more likely, it was employed as an internal punishment within the church. Perhaps after being handed down for so long, the exact origins of this formation had been lost to time. But it was undeniably terrifying. Karen continued walking forward. In fact, to avoid overtaking Leon and Laure ahead, he even had to slow his pace. Painful—it truly was painful. But for someone who had already lived through the entire ordeal once, its impact was drastically diminished. For the greatest agony stemmed from boundless despair. Here was comparatively better: a snow mountain stood before you, and though towering high enough to make you feel you could never scale it, it was far kinder than the absolute, sightless hopelessness Karen had faced last time. Consequently, this freezing sensation was hardly a challenge for Karen. To the right, frost crystals formed across the knight youth's face, yet his pace remained steady. The pebble-throwing boy's face looked unscathed, but the stones he threw had turned to blocks of ice. The sleepy girl was crying and screaming with her eyes shut, seemingly on the verge of waking. Yet remaining asleep in such a state seemed like an excellent form of self-delusion. The "Captain's relative" had fallen far behind, obscured by the veil of wind and snow. Likewise, due to the storm, Karen could only observe his immediate surroundings. Scanning Richard one last time, Karen saw him puffing out warm breath as he crawled resolutely onward, eyes glued to Karen's boots and looking at nothing else. Karen stopped, bent down, and helped Richard to his feet, offering his right arm so Richard could hug it as they moved. Richard didn't resist; he pressed his face flush against Karen's arm, as if that were the only way to draw the sense of security he so desperately needed. Though standing exposed him to harsher winds, compared to the freezing of the soul, the initial gale could practically be called gentle. Karen hadn't helped Richard up just to deny him the chance to temper himself independently. Rather, he worried that as the freezing intensified, a sudden lapse in Richard's strength or a slackening of his soul might see him blown clean away by the wind before Karen even had time to grab him. Better to hold him fast now. Seeing this, Aisli's eyes practically dripped with envy. Nor did she hide it in the slightest; if glances had substance, she would have been whipping sheets of envy across Karen's face over and over again. Karen chose to ignore it. Hauling my cousin along makes sense. Who are you? Beside them, the knight youth saw Karen dragging another person along, and fury flashed in his eyes! He wasn't accusing Karen of "cheating," of course. He was enraged that while he struggled forward alone, Karen was hauling deadweight—meaning Karen was operating on a higher difficulty and showing him up. It rankled! Karen sensed the angry glare from his right. As a psychiatrist, he could easily deduce what the proud youth was thinking. Had the wind and snow not been so fierce and had he cared to converse, he would have loved to tell Aisli on his left to go cuddle the knight youth on his right. The freezing intensified further! It was no longer mere frost crystals in extremities, but massive swaths of the torso freezing over. More and more candidates chose to withdraw; this kind of agony was beyond normal endurance. Leon glanced back, then pressed on. His pride would not permit him to quit now. Laure stumbled along, clinging to progress. Gradually, the ordeal deepened. When the freezing reached its absolute limit, the ice... began to "burn" away the body like fire. Many people's bodies began to dissolve—an elbow fading here, a brow dissolving there, a calf crumbling away. Yet in truth, as long as you were willing to keep pushing upward, you could forge ahead even without legs. For everyone here was a soul; no physical body existed. Aisli finally broke. Moving closer to Karen as she walked, she pleaded: "I want one too..." Karen pretended not to hear. Aisli called out again: "I want..." Karen continued to ignore her. This girl was indeed innocent and cheerful, but she acted far too familiar. Richard was already sobbing. Without Karen pulling him, he felt he would have given up long ago. It hurt so much; it was so hopeless. Crying was no disgrace, for more than half of those remaining on the field were in tears. At that point, a new stage of freezing struck. After stepping across that boundary, figures vanished in droves, finally breaking under the strain and choosing to give up. Past this line, Karen made a rough estimate: of those he could see, barely a dozen remained, and accounting for the perimeter, probably another dozen or so. Thus, fewer than thirty people were still enduring on the field. These thirty had entered the true elimination phase. "Ahhh!" Laure could endure no longer. He fell to his knees, weeping as his form dissipated. Leon glanced at the spot where Laure had vanished and trudged onward like a walking corpse. Indeed, everyone present—including Karen—had become walking corpses. Karen's mental clarity remained intact, but the "freezing" and "burning" wracking his form were no less than anyone else's. The situation was equal; what truly differed was the inner resolve and mindset. Just then, a stream appeared nearby, flowing with clear water and carrying small boats laden with steaming coffee and hot broth. No one cared whether such a sight made sense here. The moment it appeared, seven or eight figures succumbed to temptation one after another, stepping into the stream and vanishing. Fewer than twenty people remained. And right then, both the gale and the freezing doubled in an instant! In a flash, several more chose to withdraw, their psychological defenses shattered by the sudden spike. Only ten people likely remained on the field now, for the rate of plummeting temperature and storm had stabilized. Karen had grown experienced: every absurd drop was calculated to cull the candidates. The judges were steering the game. Ten into five—the finals! When the knight youth glanced at Karen again, the anger and pride in his eyes had vanished, replaced by pure respect. For a soldier revered the strong! "Ka... Karen... put... put me down... You... you keep going..." Richard knew they were in the final stretch. He yearned to make the cut, but he feared even more that he would cause Karen to miss it. Between the temptation of making the list and the guilt of costing Karen victory in the final stretch, he chose the latter. For the facts were clear: Karen had dragged him all the way here by sheer will. Karen was guaranteed a spot—if not for this deadweight holding him back! Karen knew Richard wasn't playing the martyr. At this extreme, when everyone was reduced to a half-dead husk, if Richard still had the energy to act, he could easily have stood on his own feet and walked into the top five. In truth, most candidates were numb by now; what Richard uttered came straight from his truest heart. People were simply like that, whether kin or friend. If someone deliberately tried to take advantage of you, even letting them gain a single riel felt unbearable. But if they kept their distance, refused to impose, and looked out for your interests, you would gladly spend a thousand riels on them. Karen's arm had already dissolved away, yet he still "pulled" Richard along, keeping the boy's soul moving forward. "Keep going. We're almost there." "Can't... hold you... back..." "Hold on a bit longer. Almost." "Let me... go... After all... I'm... cheating..." "We are brothers." If what you're doing counts as cheating, does that make me someone who stole the exam questions? At that moment, the person ahead of Leon could endure no longer. Whipping around, he lunged with his mangled soul straight at Leon, tackling him to the ground. Leon, who was hanging on solely by his last breath, lost all momentum from the collision, and his form vanished on the spot. Stopping at nothing for a slot. Of course, the rules never forbade it; it was just that the cost could be steep. Not only would you become a target for everyone else's vigilance, but more importantly, you would easily make enemies. Ten down to nine! The man who had eliminated Leon looked up, fixing his eyes on Karen. Seeing this, Aisli, over half her face already vanished, turned to look at Karen. The knight youth on the right turned toward Karen as well. The pebble-throwing boy behind also set his gaze upon Karen. The now-awake, tear-streaked sleepy girl stared at Karen too. Because Karen was carrying someone else. If Karen fell, two competitors would be eliminated at once—nine down to seven! Yet in the very next instant, every single one of them—including the man who had tackled Leon—shifted their gazes away from Karen. They knew all too well the brutal agony required to make it this far. Yet Karen had managed to carry deadweight all the way here. Therefore, this person, was not to be trifled with!