Online Game: Starting With SSS-Ranked Summons-Chapter 560: Trial of Comprehension [2]

Arthur’s knuckles connected with something solid and warm. Fur and muscle. The creature yelped and retreated, but Arthur could already hear more closing in.

He stood in the absolute darkness, stripped of everything except his body, and understood what this trial demanded.

The beasts attacked in waves.

Arthur fought blind, relying on sound and instinct. A shape moving through the air to his left. He ducked and drove his elbow upward, feeling it sink into soft tissue.

Something warm and wet splashed across his face. Of course, it was blood. The creature collapsed with a wet thud.

Two more replaced it immediately.

Arthur’s fists became weapons. He stopped thinking, stopped trying to see, and simply reacted.

His body went through the motions that it had gotten used to after countless battles with beings beyond comprehension.

Block. Strike. Dodge. The sequence repeated itself constantly.

His knuckles crashed against teeth and bone. His ribs took hits he couldn’t avoid. But he kept moving, kept fighting, because stopping meant death.

More beasts fell. Arthur couldn’t count them anymore. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. Each one he killed seemed to summon two more from the darkness. The sounds around him multiplied, a cacophony of snarls and howls that never diminished, no matter how many he put down.

His feet began to slip.

The ground beneath him had changed. What had been solid stone was now slick, wet. Arthur’s next step sent him sliding, barely catching his balance before a beast took advantage of his stumble. He kicked out blindly and connected, sending it tumbling away with a pained whine.

But the wetness spread. With each beast that fell, with each spray of blood across his arms and face, the ground became more treacherous. Arthur could feel it pooling around his ankles now, warm and thick. The metallic scent filled his nose, so strong it made him gag.

Rivers of blood formed beneath his feet.

He was standing in the accumulated death of everything he’d killed, and still they came. The darkness birthed them endlessly, variations on a theme of teeth and claws and mindless hunger. Some were small and quick. Others were massive, their bulk announced by the displacement of air before they struck. Arthur adapted to each, learned their patterns in the seconds before they reached him, and destroyed them with his bare hands.

His body screamed. Every muscle burned. His hands were torn and broken, bones grinding against each other with each punch. Blood ran down his arms, his own mixed with theirs until he couldn’t distinguish one from the other.

But he didn’t stop.

The rivers rose to his knees. Then his thighs. Arthur waded through blood while fighting off attacks from all sides, his movements growing sluggish as exhaustion set in. His vision, useless in the darkness, began to blur at the edges. Or maybe that was blood dripping into his eyes.

Another beast lunged. Arthur grabbed it mid-leap, fingers sinking into fur, and slammed it down into the blood river with enough force to feel bones shatter.

Three more took their place.

The fighting continued without end.

Arthur lost track of time. Minutes or hours, it all blurred together into an endless cycle of violence. Strike. Kill. Wade forward through rising blood. He fought on muscle memory and desperation.

A beast with too many legs skittered across the blood’s surface toward him. Arthur caught it by what he thought was its throat and twisted until something snapped. Before it even finished dissolving into the river, two more emerged from the darkness.

He killed them both.

Four appeared.

This can’t be right.

The thought slowly formed through the fog of exhaustion. Arthur ducked under a swipe that would have taken his head off and drove his fist into the attacker’s centre mass. It crumpled, and he was already turning to face the next threat.

But the doubt remained, growing stronger.

There was no progress here. No forward momentum. Just an endless meat grinder that he was somehow surviving but never escaping. The blood was up to his waist now, thick enough to impede his movements. Each step took effort. Each punch travelled through the viscous liquid before reaching its target.

This isn’t how understanding the domains works. Surely, not.

Based on the words of the winter beast, which was a credible source of information. The trials tested understanding, which required insight rather than simple endurance. What was he supposed to understand here? That he could fight forever? That he was willing to wade through infinite blood?

Arthur grabbed a lunging beast by its jaws and tore them apart, feeling tendons snap. The creature dissolved. Three more charged through the crimson tide.

Maybe I’m approaching this wrong.

The thought felt obvious in hindsight. This was a trial for his Primordial Summoning domain. Fighting beasts with his bare hands had nothing to do with summoning.

So what was he missing?

Arthur blocked a claw strike with his forearm, feeling new cuts open, and tried something different.

These are summons? They could be my summons!

He focused on the nearest beast, really looked at it despite the darkness. Arthur tried to feel some connection, some thread that might bind it to him the way his actual summons were bound. Reached out mentally, attempting to establish a contract, to claim it as his own.

The beast bit into his shoulder.

Arthur cursed and ripped it off, slamming it into the blood hard enough to create a splash.

Clearly, it was the wrong approach.

If they weren’t meant to be tamed or controlled. So what then?!

The blood reached his chest now. Arthur had to push through it to maintain his stance, every movement a battle against the current.

Maybe they’re illusions!

The thought struck him suddenly. Nothing real could spawn endlessly like this. Nothing material could sustain this level of generation. They had to be constructs of some kind, manifestations created by the trial itself.

If they’re illusions, I just need to see through them.

Arthur closed his eyes, not that it made any difference in the absolute darkness, and focused.