Midas continued attempting to use the goblin sword fighting technique. It was his only real option.
It was a martial art designed to overcome an opponent with greater strength and speed.
It helped greatly in enclosed spaces. But even in normal fights, one's ability to dart in and out of danger was very lucrative.
Here, however, it seemed to make no difference.
No matter how many times he tried to block the attack of the knights, their speed simply overwhelmed him.
He died again, and again... and again.
Eventually, he even began giving his own life up to reset messed-up attempts that he knew he was sure to fail.
Time? Such a concept stopped existing after a while. Why should it exist? It didn't matter right now anyway.
Sure, completing the task of retrieving the Nine Breath Circulation technique as fast as possible was an interest of Midas's, but he had literally zero control over that.
All he could do was keep fighting. Keep trying.
Eventually, hours turned to what felt like days...
"It feels like a week has passed," Midas said, staring at the boarded door in front of him. His pupils had no shine. Despite being in top-tier health, the drive in his eyes had faded.
During this week, he had attempted to defeat the trail over twenty thousand times.
He did not have a need for sleeping, eating, or even using the bathroom.
Eventually, the mental battle was no easier than the physical.
He had even tried to escape the area.
'It looks like I'm not ready for this yet. I will return when I am ready to conquer it.' He mused, hopping over the burned gate at the entrance of the monastery.
As his feet touched the floor, Midas was once again teleported back to the entrance of the main chamber within the span of a blink.
There was no escape, and no victory.
Death continued to take its toll.
Another week passed... and then another one after that.
By a month, Midas was a shell of his former self.
No longer did he use his mind. His mind? It didn't exist anymore. Apart from using it to move his body, there was no reason to think.
His mind was now only a place where death danced, its words now dominating that space with hundreds of thousands of lines.
He had no use nor memory of emotions. There were no sways in his feelings. Nothing pulled on his strings enough to cause a reaction.
Despite all of this, however, his ambition refused to let him give up.
He stood outside the entrance, staring down at the floor.
Without a thought, he entered the building with low eyes and dim pupils--as if he was staring into the distance.
He moved like a swift cheetah, yet his face remained completely dull and expressionless.
He ran behind a pillar as the sword knight sped toward him.
He had seen this happen many times before.
Since he had tried almost every type of entrance by now, he knew how the knights would react depending on where he went.
It didn't help much, though, since he wasn't fast enough to take advantage of it anyway.
This time, however, a confident idea emerged in Midas's temporarily frozen mind.
Before the blade of the knight was even prepared to attack him, Midas swiftly leaned backward.
With a powerful and extremely quick thrust, the skeleton knight struck its sword forward, right at Midas's neck.
Normally, it would have taken the young man's head clean off.
This time, however, the blade failed to find its mark.
Midas had dodged the attack before even the skeleton had made up its mind on which attack to throw.
With a swift jab from the side, however, Midas was pierced and slain once again.
After blinking and appearing outside the entrance, again, however, Midas's eyes were lit up once again with a fiery drive.
'I can do it... I have found a way...' A thought finally appeared in his mind once again. It was like a light that shone in a cocoon of darkness, relieving him of almost all the stress and fear he had.
'Even if it takes me a million years... I can win.' His eyes only grew wider as a slight smile grew on his face.
...
Several hundred miles away, a crow dove down through the canopy and landed atop the roof of a small hut.
Inside it, Dorian was fast asleep. But then, his snot bubble popped, and his eyes flew open.
A smile quickly grew on his face, "Hmhmhm," He chuckled, "So it's true then..." He said, slowly pushing himself up to his feet.
He cracked his neck and knuckles before walking out of the hut with his hands on his hips.
He yawned with one eye closed, grabbing an apple out of the air before chomping down on it while making his way quite far from Midas's base location. A few hundred feet within a minute or so.
"This seems far enough." He stopped, throwing down the pit of his third apple, "Now that that's settled... It's time to start seeing what there is out there now..." He turned and faced the sky in the northern direction.
He began to bend his knees, the ground beneath him suddenly collapsing. Another circular layer, a few feet farther, cracked, collapsing a couple of feet into the ground as well.
Sparks of electricity zapped and twisted around his feet before he suddenly locked his knees out and leaped high into the air.
In a second, he disappeared into the sky and tore through several clouds like a meteor before rising above them.
His momentum threw him a few hundred feet above the clouds before he began to fall down again at increasing speed.
He closed his eyes and brought his right hand to his mouth before sounding a loud whistle that echoed through the heavens.
A few seconds passed as Dorian continued falling in silence.
Eventually, Dorian furrowed his brows with concern, 'Uh...' He mused for a split second awkwardly.
Just then, a blur of white and blue light blitzed toward him from afar.
An enormous griffin soared above him within a second, snatching him out of the air with its talons.
Its body was one and a half times larger than a tiger's, the powerful frame of a great lion wrapped in dense white fur, while its front limbs ended in razor-sharp avian talons.
A broad, hooked beak and piercing eyes crowned its head, unmistakably that of a great bird of prey. Its wingspan stretched a bit over thirty feet (914cm) in width, massive and awe-inspiring.
Broad and angelic white wings were paired with a fading blue that deepened into a thick, dark hue at the edges of its feathers.
Sparks of electricity seemed to dance around it as it tore through the air like a flying star.
"Hahaha!" Dorian laughed aloud with his arms crossed as he stood atop the back of the massive griffin. "I knew you would come, Midrael."