After collecting his weapon from the Fel's corpse, and butchering it for its meat and Ego, Rain forces himself to ingest another stomach's worth of raw meat cubes. For dessert, he absorbs the Fallen Ego, and the Echo commends his excellent taste in food.
[Your Bloodline resonates...your Ichor grows more potent.]
Deciding that it is unsafe to linger in the area of a corpse for long, especially without the protection of a trap, Rain quickly washes the blood from his gear and continues forward into the Labyrinth. After several hours more navigation progress, he sets up camp behind the next trap he finds and falls asleep.
*****
On his eighth, ninth, and tenth days, Rain collectively encounters about a dozen Fallen humanoids. Most of them he manages to sneak past or otherwise circumvent with Glorious Pebble, including a group of three that he runs into on his ninth day. However, he ends up having to fight four of them total. Learning from his first two battles, and practicing his aim with the improvised javelin between encounters, he manages to kill them without much trouble using the same lure and stab approach.
On day eleven, Rain is practically giddy with anticipation. The reason is his Mark – it's quite warm at all times now. Unless he's over-interpreting Aron's advice about how to know when he's close to the Temple...his Trial won't be much longer at this rate. The thought brings a wide smile to his face.
'Oh man...when I get out of here, I'll never complain about nutribars again. Anything beats raw Fel meat...'
As Rain continues past another branch point, he allows himself to relax a little as he feels his Mark grow progressively warmer. About half an hour later, however, his mood sours. As he's walking toward a turn in the path before him, he suddenly senses something through his Ichor. It's the same way he felt the presence of that first Fallen after absorbing the Harbinger's Ego. Except, if that time only felt like a hint of intuitive wariness, what Rain senses this time makes him feel as though someone is caressing his exposed neck with the edge of a cold blade. The creature responsible is exuding a presence of clear, inevitable death.
'Oh god...please not another Harbinger...'
Shuddering despite himself, he gingerly glances around the corner in front of him and lays eyes on the creature responsible for the sinister presence. What he sees is almost enough to make his heart stop.
At the end of the corridor ahead of him, another humanoid Fel is standing with its side facing him. However, this one doesn't look like any of the other Fel that he's seen so far. It's easily three meters tall, it's head almost reaching the ceiling. Unlike the Harbinger, its skin is onyx colored, not grey, and appears hard as rock, instead of wrinkled. In addition, while the Harbinger was somewhat lanky and ghoulish, this creature is ferociously muscled.
It has long, sharp claws like the Harbinger, but there are a couple of deadly additions as well. First, its mouth looks more like a ravenous lion's, with thick, sharp canines protruding from under its black lips. Also, on its back are four appendages, placed like the wings on a butterfly. Instead of wings, though, the appendages are jointed, ending in razor-sharp, meter-long protrusions.
As Rain continues taking is the fearsome visage of the Fel, comparing it to the Harbinger, he involuntarily begins to tremble.
'If...if it's still humanoid, and it d-...doesn't look like the Fallen or Harbinger...then...'
He can't quite bring himself to face the likely reality of his situation. Every piece of evidence he has, suggests that this Fel is...a Curse. As he slowly backs away from the corner, then begins hurriedly retracing his steps through the Labyrinth, he swears furiously to himself internally.
'How is that even possible!? A fucking CURSE!? There's no way I can survive a confrontation with that thing!'
Indeed, that's the inescapable conclusion he comes to. A Curse is the Fel equivalent of a Demigod...someone a whole tier of strength above Aron. The strength it possesses must be unimaginable. From what Rain knows of the Marked, Demigods are right near the top of the existing Prestige food chain. The strongest Marked in the world have only reached Titan Prestige so far, and that's less than ten people. Demigods are one step below that, and there's only a couple hundred of them in the world.
Even Paragons like Aron, who are still two whole Prestige levels above Rain, only number around ten thousand. They're dangerous enough that the military would have to use missiles just to try and harm them. And yet, he's coming face-to-face with something that could easily kill the average Paragon...it's completely absurd.
He admittedly doesn't know a whole lot about the Labyrinth from his upbringing, but the one thing he does know is that it was supposed to be sparsely populated with Fallen, where even seeing Harbingers is rare. Yet somehow, he managed to run into a Harbinger first, over a dozen Fallen – including numerous unavoidable ones, and now a Curse. On top of that, the only trap he activated used weapons that were the equivalent of running into a Harbinger. None of it makes any sense.
Aron claimed that the Trial was meant to be fair...to give you a challenging but not impossible test...but it sure doesn't seem that way in Rain's case. It's like the Trial wants to make sure he dies.
A snarl appears on Rain's face, and his expression grows murderously dark.
"Well too fucking bad...I'm not letting you kill me. I didn't scarf down raw Fel meat for two weeks just to roll over and die this close to the Temple. Save your bullshit standards for someone else."
Staring off into the Labyrinth, away from the Curse, Rain begins methodically making his way back to the last branch point.
*****
"GODDAMNIT!!"
Rain summons the Ideal Protection onto his arm and slams his fist into the Labyrinth wall with all his might.
'Why!? Why does this place want me dead so badly!?'
It's now been another ten days since he first stumbled upon the Curse towards the end of the Labyrinth. In that time, he's encountered somewhere around three dozen additional Fallen, a third of which he ended up killing. Thankfully, he's only sustained minor injuries, but unfortunately, he's no closer to finishing the Trial.
First, he went back to the last unexplored branch point before the Curse, then tried all its alternate routes – they dead ended. Then, he did the same for the branch point before that one, to the same result. Unable to accept that the Labyrinth truly expects him to fight a Curse, he even explored one more branch point further back, to the same result.
At that point, he wasn't sure if he'd remember the turns he made any further back. So, as a final act of desperation, he returned to the branch point closest to the Curse and explored all of its alternate paths again. To his great dismay, he confirmed that there was no alternate way forward. However, he did notice something new.
Whereas earlier in the Labyrinth he would have to walk quite a long time lateral to the Temple before the direction of its pull changed, that isn't the case past the latest branch point. After only a few minutes of walking laterally in this area, there's a considerable shift in the direction of the pull of the Temple. So, while he's not good enough at math to know just how close it is, he's pretty sure that he's right on the edge of arriving at the Temple. The heat of his Mark also supports that idea.
Unfortunately, that all means that the Curse is blocking the final pathway to the Temple – there's no way around it. He already went to check where he'd seen it before, hoping it had moved on while he was away, but it was still in the exact same corridor.
'Honestly, it's almost like the damn thing has been intentionally placed there to ensure my death...'
That sentiment is the exact reason for Rain's recent outburst. He lets out a deep sigh, trying to accept his situation and clear his mind.
"Okay...fine...that's how it is. Maybe there's another way...maybe I don't have to fight it..."
He's been wondering that for a couple of days now. He hasn't done anything quite as ambitious as what this would require, but he's been successful distracting and sneaking past other Fel many times. If he can use the Glorious Pebble to periodically lead the Curse to the last branch point, moving from corner to corner, always out of sight one corridor ahead...well. Maybe he can send it down one of the alternate, dead-end paths away from him, then quickly make a break for the Temple while it's out of the way.
If he doesn't do something, he'll die in here anyway. Plus, if his cat-and-mouse game fails, it's not like he loses the option to die fighting the Curse afterward. Mulling his situation over, Rain resigns himself to that plan of action and lets out a deep sigh.
'Alright...better get a good night's rest...'
One way or another, his Trial will probably end tomorrow.