Arthur walked along the path to the left for a few seconds until his footsteps stopped, his eyes, though now blind, widened, and his breathing became heavy as he felt an unknown presence rapidly approaching while emitting a violent mana.
Arthur turned to face the presence and raised his arms in a desperate attempt to defend himself.
Unfortunately, it didn't help much. The creature's claws sunk into Arthur's skin, tearing his flesh, and nearly breaking his bones as it knocked him down.
Arthur groaned in pain as he hit the ground and felt the hot liquid splash onto his face, accompanied by a searing pain in his arms. He had felt many worse pains since he arrived in this world, but this one was still hard to deal with.
Struggling to overcome his dazed state, Arthur stood up and sent a pulse of mana through his fingers, trying to identify where the creature was.
But again, it was no use, his mana pulses were too slow, and if the creature itself wasn't actively using its mana, Arthur simply couldn't sense it in time.
By the time he received the return of his mana pulse, the creature was already above him again, opening its powerful claws and driving them into Arthur's chest, knocking him back to the ground.
" Motherf-" Arthur tried to curse, but he didn't even get to finish the sentence before his lungs filled with blood that flowed into his mouth, his ribs cracking and his flesh tearing as the creature put more force into its claws to make sure Arthur stayed down.
At that moment, all Arthur could do was instinctively raise his hands, giving the creature something to bite on and preventing it from reaching his head.
After that, he just stood there. The creature seemed to weigh a little over 30-40 kilos, which wasn't much compared to Arthur's thundering strength, but he was in no condition to react.
His lungs had been torn apart, no oxygen was reaching his brain, and he had lost a lot of blood. The truth was that his mind was foggy and confused.
At that moment, Arthur felt his lineage awaken and give him a brief second of clarity, just enough for him to realize his situation.
It can't end like this... Arthur thought as he clenched his teeth. How could he be great if he lost so easily? How could he fulfill his ambitions if all his talent only led to this? A quick, pathetic death at the beginning of the test?
He wasn't willing to accept that, he wasn't willing to waste this opportunity. He would survive, and this time he would fulfill all his ambitions!
The mana in Arthur's body stirred and he opened his hands, exposing his most vital organs to the creature, which roared and bit at Arthur's head, trying to finish him off right there.
At that moment, a thin crimson blade appeared in Arthur's hands as all his blood pooled in that region. Arthur swung the blade, slicing into the creature's throat in a swift, brutal cut, stopping only at the bones that connected the creature's head to its torso.
A stream of blue blood flowed from the creature's wound and fell onto Arthur's face, who instinctively opened his mouth and swallowed as much as he could while a crimson aura coursed through his body, giving him the strength to keep pushing his blade forward until it finally broke through the creature's hard bones, decapitating it completely.
At that moment, Arthur stood up as his broken ribs and bones returned to their original places and the cracks in his skin regenerated, rebuilding the muscles and flesh of his body, his crimson sword slowly fading away.
Arthur could only take one step forward, sending out a single pulse of mana to locate himself before being forced to stop again. Behind his back, he felt two new presences emerge and move toward him...
"More blood... Great!" He exclaimed before biting his own hand and using the blood from his self-inflicted wound to create another crimson blade.
This time, he wasn't willing to just passively defend himself.
"Hm... hemomancy and super regeneration... you're getting more and more interesting hehehe" The figure in the sky laughed as it watched the blood blade in Arthur's hands as he swung it clumsily, trying to hit the creatures that still surrounded him.
And so, time passed, and Arthur continued to fight.
Soon the minutes that he had passed the test turned into hours, hours turned into days, days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. But still, Arthur's blade did not stop dancing and his enemies did not stop falling at his feet.
His ability to sense and use mana had grown beyond anything he could have imagined. No longer did he need to concentrate and take several seconds to send and receive a single pulse of mana, now he scanned his surroundings with his senses every split second, no longer did he need to use a technique like mana pulses to understand his surroundings.
All he had to do was extend his mana outside his body, and as if it were part of his own flesh, he could feel everything it touched within a radius of 5 meters, not only knowing that it was there but even defining its shape and actions as if the mana were an innate extension of his sight.
Arthur could also materialize all the mana he controlled within a 5-meter radius into a magical attack that, while not extremely powerful, was more than enough to distract or seriously injure one of these creatures.
And even though he was surrounded by enemies and had been in this battle for longer than he could count, Arthur remained unshaken, as if he wasn't even tired.
However, one person who wasn't unshaken was the being floating in the sky.
"Shit, shit, shit... why don't you just die!" he shouted as he watched the battle, his vision slightly obscured by a cloud of black creatures that stretched to the horizon.
These were all the creatures still fighting Arthur, all from the same creature; the first one Arthur had fought.
Despite all his newfound control over mana, Arthur still hadn't realized one thing; for every creature he killed, two would appear in its place.
The truth was that killing had never been an option, Arthur should have run and tried to survive, that was all. There were only two ways to complete this test, the first was to reach the end of the maze, which would guarantee him a great reward, while the second was to simply die, something that would guarantee a small reward based on the amount of time one survived.
In all of his thousands of years as the guardian of this test, this was the first time anyone had chosen to fight and survived for so long.
No matter how wounded and tired Arthur was, all it took was a touch of his enemy's blood for him to regain his vitality and return to battle at full strength. He didn't know exactly what Arthur's lineage was, but he could imagine that it was a lineage of extreme potential.
"I shouldn't have insisted so much on making the mana in this place endless..." He gritted his teeth as he thought about what to do. He couldn't and didn't want to stay here for long, this labyrinth wasn't made to hold so many creatures at once and he could already feel the space around him shaking.
"This has to stop now!" He shouted as he raised his arms in the air, and as if time itself respected his command, everything stopped. Slowly, one by one, the creatures crumbled into ashes, finally dissipating, and giving the masked man a clear view of Arthur.
He was destroyed. His skin had taken on a bizarre reddish color and his flesh was pulsating as if he was at the limit of his abilities, his hair had disappeared and was no longer regenerating, his scalp had become so thin that one could see his skull.
It was a horrible sight.
The Guardian watched Arthur for only a few seconds before he snapped his finger and they both disappeared, leaving nothing but an empty maze.