It was a haunting sight to see it stand still deadlier, somehow, than when it moved. Its four limbs were like siege engines of pure destruction, its silhouette blotting out the far end of the chamber entirely. Its chest heaved with a motion that didn't look like breathing; it was the rhythmic, mechanical thrum of a bellows feeding a furnace. Its eyes found him. Even through the haze of smoke, the sea of rubble, and the amethyst gloom of its cowl, Knight felt the crushing weight of that gaze. It felt like a sentence being handed down.
Then, it moved. The first step was slow, almost contemplative, the patient stride of something that never needed to hurry. The second step was faster. By the third, its form blurred. The patience vanished, replaced by what it truly was: a guided missile of absolute annihilation. All four arms clawed at the earth, kicking up plumes of dust and jagged stone. For something so massive, it stayed unnaturally low to the ground, moving with a predatory speed that defied nature.
[Little one, touch the Box! NOW!]
The earth shuddered with every stride. Knight stopped thinking.
Thought was a luxury he couldn't afford. Thinking required time and oxygen, two things he had run out of. He had only his legs, a direction, and a rapidly shrinking gap between himself and the Box. Mathematically, it was the closing distance between him and his final second of life.
He ran.
His body, which should have surrendered an eternity ago, was driven forward by a lifetime of accumulated spite. Legs that were practically powdered bone carried him step by agonizing step across the debris. Every stride felt like a serrated blade driving into his ankles, twisting, and pulling back out only to strike again. His vision tunneled. His lungs rejected the dust-choked air in shallow, rattling gasps. He didn't care. He was past caring. Pain was just data, and he had already received the message; it had nothing new to tell him.
The Golden Box sat there. Ten meters. Eight. Six. The Goliath's shadow stretched forward, swallowing him whole, eclipsing what little light remained until the gold of the Box was the only radiance left in the universe. He felt the air displacement as the first massive arm swung and felt the pressure wave before the sound even hit. It was a wall of force, like a door slamming shut in a vacuum.
He heard the whistle of cloven air a split second before the impact. A hand large enough to pulverize him, the Box, and ten square meters of bedrock was descending from behind like a collapsing skyscraper. The black shadow smothered everything. The sky vanished. There was only the absolute, crushing finality of the dark. The end he had been waiting for his entire life.
'Three meters. Don't stop. Don't stop. Don't—'
Two meters. Knight threw his entire weight forward.
It wasn't a warrior's leap. There was no technique, no athleticism, no grace. It was the controlled fall of a man who had lost the ability to stand upright, a desperate lunge aimed at the only thing that mattered. His body slammed into the stone, his palms and cheek bared to the bone as they skidded across the grit. He tasted blood and dirt in the same instant. And in that final, undignified reach
His index finger grazed the Golden Box. A touch as light as a feather settling on still water.
BOOM!
The world detonated. Goliath's fist hammered into the spot where he had stood a heartbeat before. The bedrock didn't just break; it vanished, turned to fine powder that sprayed outward in a halo of destruction.
The world spun violently. Sky and earth traded places in a nauseating blur. The sounds of the chamber, the crashing stone, the Goliath's mechanical respiration, the distant screams stretched and compressed into a single, high-pitched, endless ringing.
He felt weightless. In a surreal, inexplicable pocket of time, suspended between the explosion and the earth, between the life he had lived and whatever was coming next, Knight felt something he had no name for. It wasn't peace. It wasn't accepted. It was something rawer the pure state of existing. Just like the Box had existed. It was a moment of unadulterated life before the world finished deciding what to do with him.
Then the ringing swallowed everything. And then, there was only silence.
Knight's eyes snapped open. The first thing he felt wasn't the agonizing pain that had been crushing his body, but a gentle breeze carrying the clean, sweet scent of ripening wheat. He scrambled into a sitting position, hands frantically checking his ribs and stomach parts of him that should have been reduced to mincemeat. He found only smooth skin beneath his tattered clothes. His lethal wounds had vanished without a trace, leaving behind only the lean, frail body of a man who had spent his life undernourished.
He was standing in the heart of a golden wheat field that stretched to the horizon. The sky above was a vibrant, impossible blue, like a painting brought to life.
[Welcome to the Trial.]
A synthetic voice, flat yet commanding, resonated in his mind. It wasn't human speech; it was a vibration of will communicating directly with his soul. Knight froze, his heart hammering against his ribs. This is it, he thought. The world inside the Box.
If he were a high-born student from the Inner City, he would have begun analyzing the situation based on the Welder Association's doctrines. Trials were categorized by the Box's potential, ranging from Acolyte level for basic tests to the legendary Saint level, a tier so rare only a handful had ever conquered it in history.
But for Knight, a boy raised in a dark alley who spent his days at a forge instead of a desk, those textbooks were just fuel for starting fires. He didn't know a Saint from an Ascendant. To him, Boxes were either "trash" the peasants had, "good stuff" the soldiers used, or "Rares" he could only stare at on public television screens.
[Trial Type: Survival]
The moment the message faded, the tranquility of the golden field was shattered by a rhythmic CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! It was the sound of heavy metal striking the earth, accompanied by footsteps so heavy they made the ground tremble.
Knight spun toward the sound. His eyes widened in sheer terror.
On the distant horizon, thousands of silhouettes were emerging from a wall of white mist. It was an army of knights in full plate armor, shimmering brilliantly under the sun. Every one of them wore a pristine white cloak emblazoned with a massive red cross. They carried long spears and heavy iron shields, their formation so rigid and cold they looked like killing machines that knew no fatigue.
"Is this... some kind of joke?" Knight whispered, his voice cracking.
The air, once warm, turned ice-cold. The smell of iron and sweat began to drift on the wind. The Army of the Red Cross hadn't come to negotiate. The lowering of their spears and the simultaneous draw of a thousand swords was the only answer he needed.
Knight looked down at his shaking hands. He had no weapon. No armor. Not even boots sturdy enough for a long run through a field.
Survival... The word echoed in his head.
Behind him was an open field with nowhere to hide. Before him was a wall of steel, crawling forward like an unstoppable tide. Knight grounded his teeth. The phantom pains of the real world still haunted his memory. He thought of the Old Man, the corpses in the slave cage, and the way his finger had finally brushed that Golden Box.
If he wanted to live, he had to fight. But how do you fight an army with your bare hands?
A war horn blasted across the wheat field, the official signal for the hunt to begin. The knights broke into a run. Their steady march accelerated into a terrifying, synchronized charge, white dust billowing behind their ranks.
Knight turned and bolted. Amidst the golden stalks now being stained by the crimson light of a dying sun, the real Trial had begun. And in this world... death wasn't a lesson in a book he had never read. It was the only thing that was real.