Once his foot landed on the next step Adrian, stuck between the two steps, instinctually felt dread as if once he fully climbed the step he would be consumed.
Yet for him, this feeling evoked a small voice to appear in his head.
A deep raspy voice sounded in Adrian's mind, "Rain, Let me take over. I haven't played in so, so long."
Hearing the voice Adrian immediately jerked his body, unintentionally crushing himself in the process under the inordinate gravity around him.
Luckily or unluckily for him, his body reformed on the fifth step. Unlike the other steps before this step had the same gravity as before, but this time it assaulted his mind.
The step expanded, reaching a size of 100 square meters, disorienting Adrian as the voice continued to coax Adrian into allowing it to be in control.
The pressure on his body and mind made Adrian consider the voices offer as Adrian's memories seemed to regress to before he gained any power.
Tempted by the voice, Adrian wanted to give up and allow it to fix all his problems when a soft feminine voice called him back to reality, ~Adrian! Hello! You still there?!~
Once his mind became lucid again Adrian felt his fingernails digging into his throat as his body reflexively gasped for air. Feeling the air in his lungs slowly drain away, Adrian released his hands in fear.
Coughing, Adrian tried to catch his breath before calling out to the voice saying, "Zero… Why are you still here?"
As if saying that name was a catalyst, Adrian's mind began to fade into darkness as two demonic hands dragged his consciousness deep into his mind, as multiple faint pulses could be felt across his body.
Soon his face contorted into a devilish simile as the raspy voice reverberated from his own throat, "Why wouldn't I be? I AM still you remember. You can't escape me."
As the voice spoke Adrian's hair returned to a natural black color while his eyes became pitch black, "Just because I left you alone doesn't mean you got rid of me. You made me to do everything you couldn't, don't you remember?"
With each word, Adrian's body changed more until it resembled a lesser form of Demon, "I still remember when you let me have your parents, the abuser, even your beloved test subjects. For now, sleep tight, I'll deal with your struggles once more."
Completely changed Zero, as he was called, had vantablack* skin that seemed to suck in all the light in the area causing his form to be almost unviewable, claw-like hands and feet that were unnaturally long were the only things that were certainly there.
With Zero's final words to Adrian said he calmly looked around assessing his new body and environment. However unlike Adrian, Zero couldn't summon any of the system's, Sakura, or Adrian's pantheon so his information was limited.
If he could have seen any of those he would have known that no one had noticed him until he intervened. Oddly enough wisdom didn't react to his presence in the slightest as if he were just an extension of Adrian.
After a few seconds, Zero raised his demonic hands, strangling himself. A minute and a half later Zero had somehow killed himself.
In his death, for a split second a pink light tried to wash over him and when it did he reached out destroying it severing Sakura's calming light's soothing effect.
Less than a second later his body brought him back alive waking up Zero exclaimed, "It's good to be free. Why did he never fight that light? Whatever."
As Zero stood up the gravity and pressure of this step compounded and condensed above his body as he dealt with the full force of 12,500 Gs.
As his body was forced into the ground Zero's void-like eyes vibrated before the phenomena seemed to become his to control.
Zero smirked saying, "How did you gain this much energy? For once your body, senses, and energy reserves are in sync, and yet you never used our power on this island. Hum something is definitely wrong with Rain."
As Zero monologued, he noticed the source of the seemingly infinite energy. His own life force, but it felt multiple times stronger and more vast.
Shaking his head, Zero focused on the trails in front of him.
The fifth step's gimmick had awakened him for some reason, but even Zero felt wrong for taking over Adrian's body for a long time.
With that in mind, he promised to finish the trials and return their body to Adrian as fast as possible without unhealable damage to this body.
Zero tensed his muscles as black blood flowed into the air unaffected by the oxygen that would normally turn it crimson. With an improved blood mist lingering in the air Zero's physical abilities became exponentially stronger.
In a single leap, bypassing the rest of the step's gimmicks, Zero appeared at the sixth step's base.
Honestly, Zero was concerned that the others would wake up if he messed up his job so even with his power he carefully stepped onto the next step.
The sixth step once again kept the same 5^5 gravity*, and mental manipulation settings, but this step also had multiple illusions of loved ones standing in Zero's way.
Unlike Adrian, Zero wouldn't even look at the illusions and instead actively used wisdom to the best of his abilities, dispersing them instantly.
With a dull expression Zero once again leaped to the next step, however mid-air his ability to consume and control the phenomena around him seemed to disconnect briefly as he fell to the ground under the reintroduction of 5^5 gravity.
His eyes had stopped vibrating when he blinked and now they would be stuck in place for 30 seconds making his ability unusable.
Even with his main power down he still had access to his evolved body and blood mist, to make good on his promise, he continued albeit with much greater difficulty.
Before the 30 seconds was over Zero had already made his way to the seventh stair.
However, once he stepped onto the stair the previous gravity, pressure, illusions, and manipulation disappeared leaving only dull stagnant energy fields blocking Zero's every action.
With only 6 seconds left before his ability was able to be used again Zero reached for the back of his neck pressing on the scar left when Adrian forced the Evolutionary chip to rebond with him.
Zero closed his eyes and after three seconds multiple pulses were released from the chip's dissolved pieces, each ripple canceling another right over Zero's eyes causing his eyes to evolve to better suit his needs.
Opening his eyes they appeared to have become a mixture of insectoid compound and reptilian triple lensed eyes. With the chip's limited genetic code to draw from, these new eyes were the best he could create.
Once his eyes were completely formed the cooldown on his power had finished allowing him to activate it once more, only this time the power should last much longer.
Vibrating his eyes, the dense energy that was stagnantly hanging in the air sprang to life parting way for Zero to walk through.
Zero's ability Absolute Domination was one of eight Mythos abilities that allowed Adrian to shake the foundation of causality.