The back of my head hit the wall as I let out a frustrated sigh.

Four bridges crossed.

Four hectic run through the heavy mist, trying to outrun the needles.

Four identical empty rooms at the end of each bridge.

"Chat, I don't think this is working. I might have to jump off… or something, I don't know…"

Just thinking about jumping off and hoping I would land on another bridge filled me with dread. But that was the point, wasn't it? 'Trial of courage' and all that.

Jeofffff: or you go through the spikes somehow

I rolled my eyes.

"Yeah. Such tempting options…"

I needed to do something soon, though. While I did have infinite food thanks to the pizza box, I didn't want to spend an eternity in this depression place. Yes, as a Vcuber, going outside and touching grass wasn't exactly one of my top activities, but still…

With another sigh, I briefly sent out John to look around the tower I was in once more.

Conveniently enough, the spike-free bridge that extended out of here was just above another bridge that I could drop down to. With Featherfall, this would have been pretty easy, but considering how much it took just to fight back the worst of the heaviness – even after getting so much practice with this – there was no way I could rely on that.

I tipped my head forward a bit and looked at the needle-filled bridge with lidded eyes.

Would I even be able to break these needles? Wouldn't they be indestructible like everything else? What would breaking them even do? Maybe the stairs appeared back where I'd started and I needed to get back now?

Well, couldn't hurt to try.

I heaved myself up to my feet again, quickly got out my gun self, aimed it at the needles filling the bridge where I'd come from, and then shot out a simple blast of water.

To my surprise, my shot tore through the needles as if they were paper, scattering them away and clearing the bridge again.

I blinked and proceeded to stare for a few moments.

"...Huh. Would you look at that. It actually worked–"

And then the needles came back.

Not like, spawned again from the bridge. No. The ones I'd scattered came flying back with freaking insect wings or something.

"What?!"

Unlike when they had been stationary, these winged insect spikes had no compunction about leaving the heavy mist and entering my safe haven.

"No, stop it!" I yelled and shot a wave of fire at the swarm coming my way.

They flew through it as if it was nothing but a light breeze.

I took out my axe self, covered it in black flames and then swung it in front of me.

The swarm parted to dodge my slash and then charged straight at me.

I stomped with my foot to create a barrier of crystals and didn't wait to see the results as I turned around and booked it straight toward the needle-less bridge.

The heaviness of the mist hit me harder than before, but with the threat of freaking needles right behind me, I didn't falter in the slightest.

Unlike all the previous times, needles didn't spring out of the bridge behind me. No. Instead, they shot out, gained wings, and then joined the swarm already chasing me.

"Whyyyy?!" I shouted between my gasps.

I got out my gun self, pointed it behind me, and took a second to charge up a plasma shot before letting it loose.

As expected though, it only slowed them down a little since they had to move out of the way, but otherwise, I was pretty sure none of them suffered any kind of damage.

I grit my teeth and pointed John below the bridge and… it just so happened that the bridge I'd been considering dropping onto was right below me and I could probably make it if I jumped in a few seconds or so.

Up ahead, inside the next tower I was running toward, there was also a red door perfectly visible from here.

A complete coincidence, I was sure.

Stupid Fate Weaver!

Making me choose between taking a leap of faith, getting stabbed by sentient needles, and giving up!

I had no time to make difficult decisions though. I simply made one.

With an angry scream, I pivoted to the side, crouched down, and then jumped off the damn bridge, hoping the stupid needles wouldn't follow me.

"GYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!"

The mist was so much worse outside of the bridge. The moment I left the platform, my entire became so heavy and numb that I wanted to throw up.

That didn't even make sense! Why would it just randomly be weaker on the bridges specifically?!

Regardless, I couldn't control my fall at all now. I just had to hope to god – fuck the Fate Weaver – that I landed on the bridge below me I'd been eyeing. And even then, this was going to hurt.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Despite my body almost entirely locking up, my heart beat like a drum and blood roared in my head.

I left the needle swarm behind me and plummeted down, the air beating against my face. I refused to close my eyes even as they teared up and my fall got faster and faster–

I miscalculated.

I was going to overshoot the bridge below me.

No no no no no!

With my teeth about break with how hard I ground them, I used every ounce of my willpower to break through the heaviness just enough to point my hands in front of myself, summon my gun self into them, and then fire off a huge jet of flames, hoping it would nudge my trajectory back just enough to land on the bridge.

A split second later, my back and my head hit something and I was momentarily dazed. I quickly realized that I was laying on top of something, but was slowly sliding down.

My body also didn't feel as heavy as it had during the fall.

I quickly stashed away my gun self, slapped my palms on the surface I was laying on, and tried to use the same adhering trick I could already do with my feet.

I wasn't practiced in this enough to completely stop myself from sliding off, but I halted myself just long enough for my head to clear and swung one of my legs back up before adhering to the surface.

I also tried to put my other foot on the underside of the bridge to sort of hold myself in place with my hips but–

"Ow! Fuck!"

I forgot that these bridges had needles on their underside.

Regardless, with just one of my feet on top, I wasn't sliding off anymore and with a bit of effort, I managed to heave the rest of my body on top of the bridge, ignoring the pain in my back.

I frantically looked up into the air, searching for the needles, but stopped when I saw the swarm still concentrated on the bridge above me without any signs of wanting to fly down and stab me to death.

Oh, thank god.

I let out an exhausted sigh and sprawled myself on the ground.

That landing had not been the best. My back hurt like hell and I still felt a bit dizzy, but at least I'd made it. Ugh, I really hoped I hadn't broken anything.

Then I remembered that I was on top of a bridge and those tended to inexplicably sprout out needles.

I forced myself to stand, wincing at the residual stinging pain in my foot and my poor back before looking around. To my relief, there were no needles on top of this bridge yet. I also belatedly realized that unlike all the other bridges up above, this bridge was slanted. In other words, I could either choose to go up or go down.

I hesitated for a moment, but then decided to go down.

Why?

Well, my reasoning was that, so far, the green staircases had always led down, so maybe if I reached the ground floor here, the staircase would just be there on the ground.

Still, despite the pain, I didn't dare dilly-dally and quickly made my way over to the tower at the end of the bridge. Surprisingly, no more needles appeared in the bridge as I crossed it, leaving me free to try and go the other way later if I wanted to.

I shot an annoyed glance at the red door in this tower and then collapsed in a corner with a sigh.

That was way too intense… God, what the heck had I been thinking? 'Can't hurt to try'? Yeah, right. There was no such thing in these freaking trials. Stupid stupid stupid…

I groaned as I shifted my weight.

Ugh, my back hurt and I still felt dizzy… I should drink from my flask a little.

I rummaged in my pockets, pulled out the flask and took a swing before returning it. The pain in my back receded a little… But as it did, the pain in my foot got worse.

"Owww… What is this…?"

I shifted my leg to look at my foot, but all I saw was a perfectly intact shoe, so if the needles had pierced through my shoe, I couldn't see it.

I took off the shoe to look at me foot–

I froze and my heart sank.

"What…?"

My entire sole had a blue tint and as I stared at it, I could see the color slowly spreading to the rest of my foot.

"Poison?! Oh, not again!" I yelled, my voice cracking.

Jeofffff: oh fuuuuuuuck

Memories flashed in my mind. Of nearly dying; Of barely making it out of the dungeon before collapsing; Of being sick out in the rain without a proper shelter for days; Of feeling utterly powerless.

But this was even worse, wasn't it? Sure, I technically had 'shelter' here and it probably wouldn't rain, but I had no idea whether the needles or something else would just decide to randomly attack me when I was at my most vulnerable. As much as being sick and without shelter had sucked, this place wasn't safe.

And that wasn't even mentioning that this poison might just outright kill me, rather than just debilitating me for days.

I quickly glanced at the red door.

Would leaving now clear the poison somehow? If this place really was some kind of virtual reality then maybe…?

But what if it didn't? What if I left, throwing away everything I'd worked for, and then still just died to this poison out in the forest.

Suddenly, anger rose up within me.

"No! Fuck that! I'm not dying to you!" I yelled and glared at the blue tint on my foot.

Ideas churned in my head as my forks aggressively discussed this issue with chat and delivered several ideas to me over the next few minutes as I watched the blue tint spread.

I formulated my first plan and took action.

I took out my flask again and took another swig. Then, as the Ether spread inside me, I took a hold of it the best I could and pushed it toward my foot, hoping to overpower whatever was corrupting my foot.

I could actually feel it now that I was trying to battle it. The blue tint was some kind of Ether formation as well, similar to the mist, actually.

"Okay, I know how to do this! I trained for this!"

My practice of warding off the heaviness of the mist paid off and I managed to shrink the blue spot a little with a lot of effort. But it wasn't enough. It was still there and it didn't feel like it was going to disappear completely on its own. I needed something more.

Chat was suggesting that since this was something made out of Ether inside my own body, I should be able to control it directly.

And so I tried exactly that.

It was like trying to grab flowing water. It kept slipping through my attempts, refusing to listen to me. It felt absolutely impossible.

...But I had experience grabbing water with my senses, didn't I? Nothing was impossible!

"I'll show you, you stupid eight-eyed bitch…" I murmured and completely locked in.

I needed a different approach. Trying to grab it directly wasn't working and pushing it away with my own Ether wasn't enough. How about… changing its nature completely?

It was something I'd been trying to do as a part of my experiments to try and use Fire Breath without the skill itself. Changing the Ether's 'flavor' so to speak into flames. I hadn't been very successful then, but maybe…

It took hours as I kept the corruption at bay, keeping it from spreading or getting worse, but at last, I finally figured it out. Part of the foreign Ether shifted and changed into the familiar Ether that usually resided in my body.

I gasped and my eyes went wide–

That Ether turned back into the corrupted blue Ether almost immediately.

"No! Come back here, you little–!"

Several more tries and I replicated it again, but it turned back into the corrupted Ether once more.

"Why are you… Oh, wait."

It was because I had kept that chunk of Ether corralled from the rest of my body and it had to have re-corrupted.

"Okay, how about…"

Again, a few tries later, I managed to cure a chunk, but this time, I took control of it, and merged it with the rest of the barrier that prevented the corrupted Ether from spreading.

And that worked. It didn't turn back anymore.

A wide grin spread on my face.

"Got you!"

It only took a few more hours of methodically repeating this to get rid of the poison bit by bit. I was completely and utterly exhausted by the end of it all, but dammit did it feel good to finally earn a win in this shitty place.

Just as I wondered about what I should do next, I let out a giant yawn.

Then I stopped for a moment as I realized something.

If I didn't find the staircase soon, I would have to sleep here.

"...Oh. Oh, no…"

Because even though nothing had attacked me while I'd cured myself of that poison, I didn't believe for a second that it would remain safe while I slept.

"This is part of the trial, isn't it…?"

It was designed to make me waste as much time as possible, so that I would have to go to sleep at some point.

And now…?

I had to either choose to press on despite being tired and risk making mistakes, or I could go to sleep and hope nothing attacked me.

"Fuck…"

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