Loki kept running along with the other creatures that were doing the same as him. His eyes darted around the corridor as he looked behind every few seconds to find the shortest distance to the next corner he could take to find cover.
Loki wasn't afraid of the Minotaur.
No.
Loki was afraid of the absolute force of destruction he'd turned the gate into.
Skidding behind a turn, Loki quickly took cover as he braced himself by holding his head in between his knees while covering the back of his neck with his intertwined fingers.
'Seven.'
'Six.'
"ARRGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!" A feminine scream interrupted Loki's counting but he skipped past it once he realised it was just Fleur.
'Four.'
'Three.'
'Two.'
'O-'
*BBBBOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM*
The terrifying explosion sent out a fiery cloud gust through the corridors, roasting any animals that couldn't escape in time or just had poor survival instincts.
Loki felt his skin burn and his hair singe but he didn't look up or even attempt to scan through the area with his spirit vision.
Loki stayed on the floor even as he felt like he heard the shrill screams of a girl behind the constant *ringing* sound in his ears because of the explosion.
Even with his eyes closed, Loki felt like his body was swimming. He felt like his entire body was loosely joined together like noodles floating through the wind.
The experience was surreal and felt incomprehensible at the same time.
It was only after what felt like nearly a decade that Loki felt himself slipping out of the concussive state before he slowly lifted his head to look around.
And what came into his only made him give out a derpy smile.
"How did I do?" Loki asked.
A few minutes ago, Nicolas along with Prenelle were looking at the holographic projections on their walls while having 'traditional' 'royal' French snacks.
They were having cake.
"I'm feeling worried about them honey…" Prenelle said looking at the display with a small sad frown.
"Weren't you the one that had the clever idea of dilating their sense of time?" Nicolas asked with a giggle as he watched Fleur fall onto her butt after realising that her idea to stop other people from following her into the challenge was stupid and naive.
"But…she's so heartbroken…should we get her out already? No one else is going to go in with what she's done…poor girl."
"Eh! It won't have any lasting effects~! Don't worry about it. She deserved that for ruining the test level." Nicolas just waved his hand.
Prenelle was sad for a few more seconds until she suddenly saw Loki wake up from his bed and look around.
"Did the curse of sleeping not affect him?" Prenelle pointed out.
Nicolas noticed it too and was having a slightly hard time explaining how Loki had stayed free from the curse that Fleur had laid on the room after using a charm that slowly sapped away the energy of everyone in the room so that they would go into a deep sleep.
It wasn't a slumber charm.
It was a charm from the Demoness pathway and Loki had somehow casually withstood its effects.
"Hmm…~ well, he fell back asleep-" Just as Nicolas was about to dismiss it as a freak accident he suddenly saw Loki stand up again and walk around to try and figure out what was going on.
Both Prenelle and Nicolas were interested now.
Nicolas looked even more interested than usual since he had started clipping his nails against each other as he carefully observed Loki's actions.
Soon they saw Loki arrive at the door that led him to a different space from where he eventually arrived at the wooden table before he broke out into a run because of the Minotaur.
Nicolas and Prenelle relaxed a little after they saw Loki acting perfectly normally and quickly started to stuff their faces with cake after they saw him running around the corridor maze while being chased by the Minotaur.
"Loki still isn't going to be enough to take down all those people alone honey." Prenelle gently reminded but Nicolas suddenly brought up a valid point that she had overlooked because she wasn't thinking very much.
"Why hasn't he used his ability from the darkness pathway to put the Minotaur to sleep?"
Prenelle's eyes narrowed when she was forcefully reminded that, she carefully tried to analyse if there was a valid reason for him to choose not to do so.
"Perhaps he realised that he couldn't use them since he figured out that if he could use it the person there before him would've already killed the Minotaur with their own abilities? I'm sure he's sharp enough to realise that he was the weakest among all our participants this year?"
"Hmm…perhaps…"
Nicolas and Prenelle began to carefully watch Loki this time around since they wanted to understand his actions.
They saw how Loki followed Fleur innocently but that was when both Prenelle and Nicolas quickly stood up from their sofas as soon as they saw Loki finish scratching the final runes into the door they'd discovered.
"He figured out she was only waiting to betray him!" Prenelle shouted before quickly flicking her wrist and causing an ethereal white door to emerge at the location beside her.
Nicolas nodded and quickly turned into a white mist that shot into the door, opening it with force as Prenelle watched the explosion happen in real-time.
Nicolas was there in moments and flicked his wrist to gain control of the walls around himself and force them all to collapse into one large thick wall box that contained the explosion and all the other creatures inside it so that it wouldn't spread to the rest of the spirit world.
With the explosion area cleared out, Nicolas stretched his fingers as he captured and dragged down the temperature of the explosion to a manageable degree that only caused a few boils to appear on Fleur and Loki's skin while it passed over and around their bodies.
Fleur had long since fainted because of the sudden disturbance in the spirit world caused by Loki's explosion that sent her senses haywire because of an overload.
Loki himself was still sitting in the position he used to brace for impact to ride out the explosion, leaving his mental state a swimming and stretching mess as his explosions caused ripples to appear through the very fabric of the spirit world.
Nicolas picked up Fleur's body and tossed it out of the door and at Prenelle while he walked towards Loki with a frown on his face.
It was at this moment that Loki noticed someone walk up to him as he looked up and despite the deep frown that Nicolas was giving him he asked-
"How did I do?"
Nicolas felt his five-hundred-year-old self roar with annoyance at what the boy had done.
He wanted to do nothing other than beat up the boy to teach him a little lesson so that he wouldn't do something so stupid ever again but then *sighed* when he saw the boy simply collapse after realising he was in safe hands.
Nicolas picked up the boy by his collar and then swiftly walked out of the door and up to Prenelle who was already treating Fleur by acting as a medi-witch.
"Is he alright?" Prenelle asked without looking up from Fleur.
Nicolas shook his head, "No his spirit body's suffered a little. It isn't as bad as her, but it's still not good."
"*sigh*...I told you this wasn't a good idea…"
Nicolas frowned but said nothing, instead he just flicked his finger at Loki's forehead a few times before he calmed down.
'Those were all creatures I'd painstakingly built!'
'Over half a millennia!!'
He still wanted to wake Loki up and slap him a few times, but he let the boy rest, for now.
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