Atlas felt time slow to a standstill as he raised his hands in a desperate attempt to block the attack. The piece of straw pierced through both palms, narrowly saving his heart from a fatal blow. Waves of searing pain rippled through his body, and the hope of survival faded into oblivion. Even if the Strawman left him now, how could he possibly recover and fight another day?
He stared at his now-useless hands, struggling to keep his emotions in check. With his legs immobilized, his hands destroyed, and his torso partially torn from the previous attack, Atlas felt panic setting in, threatening to overwhelm him. He was on the brink of shutting down entirely.
But deep down, Atlas refused to accept death. No matter how hard his life had been before entering the trial, survival was paramount.
The Strawman, silently and methodically, prepared another shot, this time aiming directly at Atlas's head. Just as the deadly straw shot forward, the environment around them shifted. Suddenly, a wall emerged between Atlas and the Strawman, blocking the lethal attack.
Ching! The straw pierced the wall, leaving the Strawman alone in a slightly smaller room, separated from his prey. He slowly made his way to the center of the room and stood still, as if nothing had ever happened.
Hours later, Atlas awoke. Pain surged through his body, though it was less intense than before. Memories of the Strawman standing over him, his pitiful attempt to swipe away its legs, and the final, fateful moment when the arm was raised to kill him flooded back. Somehow, he had survived—whether by fate or sheer luck, it didn't matter. He was alive.
"Fate has more in store for me," he mumbled.
His legs were still useless, and his hands remained skewered. The torso injury, though initially agonizing, had turned out to be just a graze.
Looking around, he found himself in another hallway, but instead of the usual sand or stone slabs, the floor was covered in a layer of running water.
"The maze must have changed multiple times since I was last awake," he thought.
The idea of permanently losing his ability to walk gnawed at his mind. How could he fight in this condition? From the stories he'd heard, those who conquered a door often gained mystical abilities and a general reset of their bodies. Hair, muscles, eyes, teeth, even skin would be refined, making them more than just human. But this information was heavily censored, either by the government or by those who sought to keep such knowledge behind a paywall.
Atlas knew that staying put meant giving up, so he had to move. In his pitiful state, he gambled that the water was drinkable, hoping it would stave off dehydration long enough for him to survive.
As he drank the water greedily, thoughts of giving up and accepting death crept into his mind. But he gathered himself, determined to keep going. Using only his arms—unable even to place his hands on the ground—he crawled forward. The pain was almost unbearable, but he persisted. One painstaking pull after another, he moved.
He turned his first corner, only to be met with a dead end marked by an eye symbol. Undeterred, he turned another, and another, moving for hours on end. Occasionally, he paused to drink more of the water that kept him alive.
Finally, Atlas encountered a change of scenery. He turned a corner and saw a white rabbit standing in the middle of a snowfield—somehow, the environment had shifted from water to snow and ice. The rabbit sniffed around in the center of a frozen lake, where a single flower sprouted.
The thought of food flashed in Atlas's mind. How good it would be to kill that rabbit and roast it over a fire. But how could he catch it? The past hours had been more grueling than anything he'd ever experienced, and the pain was still overwhelming. Thoughts flooded his mind on how to catch the rabbit. "What if I just hide in this snowfield? Or collect a snowball, throw it in one direction, then hope it will run toward me? Maybe I could try and make a trap… but I have nothing to work with." Each idea seemed less viable than the last.
Finally, he decided on the most basic approach: crawl slowly toward his target. But who's to say this rabbit was even something he could take down? Even in Atlas's peak condition, it might be more fearsome than the Strawman. Yet none of that mattered to Atlas. He had to eat, and he had to try and tackle some challenge to progress. If he didn't, he would die as a pitiful man too afraid to fight a rabbit.
Slowly, he inched forward, trying to be as quiet as possible. The rabbit wasn't standing still; it was messing with the flower in the middle of the lake. Each time it turned in Atlas's direction, he froze, as if a T-Rex were eyeing him, any movement meant his doom. While frozen, Atlas managed to get a good look at the rabbit and noticed scars and marks all over its body.
The rabbit finally worked up the courage to take a small nibble of the flower. As soon as one of the leaves was bitten off, it changed from its snowy white color to a deep red. The rabbit stood still, as if paralyzed, then suddenly collapsed.
It didn't matter what had just happened to the rabbit; this was Atlas's chance. Even if a monster lurked beneath the flower, he wouldn't get an opportunity like this again. He went from being frozen to throwing his arms out one after another as fast as possible. He closed the distance and grabbed the rabbit with his mouth, his hands almost completely useless.
He could still feel the rabbit's heartbeat, which scared him. Instead of hesitating, he did the first thing that came to mind—he bit down on the rabbit's neck, trying to kill it before it woke up. At that moment, the rabbit moved, but barely, as if it could only muster 10% of its true strength. Atlas bit harder and harder, breaking the skin, tasting blood.
He tore at the muscles, ripped through tendons, until finally, the rabbit went still, blood seeping out of its body.
If an outsider had seen this scene, it would have looked like something out of a horror movie—a paraplegic man using only his teeth and the remnants of his arms to decimate a rabbit.
Right after the rabbit was clearly dead, a feminine voice rang out.
"You have killed a Warp Rabbit, Rank: Sentinel."
"Technique obtained: Warp."
What? Atlas thought.