Chapter 5: Trials: Part Two
I stopped; I was breathing really hard for some reason, while beads of sweat slowly ran down my back. So slowly, I thought.
It was slow enough to drive me insane.
I also tried to move, but I couldn't; it was as if my body were stuck in cement, while my feet felt like I was sinking deep into quicksand.
I could only move my eyes, which also moved very slowly.
It took what felt like an eternity to look around, but it was most likely only a few minutes.
My eyes stopped on a small figure hiding in the background under the shadows of clouds, and in the gaps between the rubble.
Its height was no more than two feet, its width was less than a foot.
As it moved into the light of the red sun, letting me see its black scales and yellow eyes.
Sharper than any knife, and the pupil thinner than paper.
A black snake or Hell snake. They share the same features except for their growth. If it's a black snake, it's an adult with venomous fangs and jagged teeth.
If it's a hell snake, it would be a baby that wouldn't even have teeth, and its spit would be acidic.
It had no arms or legs, just a body, and it slithered around… Fast? Perhaps it was normal speed, after all, I was currently slower than a snail, so perhaps the same was true about my perception.
Regardless, it was coming at me at a speed I couldn't react to; the dirt trail it left as it came towards me disappeared instantly, as if it had never been there.
The snake finally reached me, and slowly coil around my leg. It felt slimy and sticky, like fish skin and syrup had a baby. While it had lumps that made it feel like some kind of jelly.
It's apparently acidic too, since I feel my leg burning.
my skin felt like it was rubbed raw and some poured a glass of ever clear on the wound. The pain never faded though it only got worse. While it would leave this disgusting ooze on my leg like it was a slug.
When I thought it couldn't do any more, It started moving slower at a pace similar to how fast my eyes moved currently. The torture speed isn't the only thing that made it worse.
The snake bastard started crushing my bones ever so slowly, making weird popping and crunching noises as well.
After about an hour it had finally made it's way up to my stomach, after pulverizing my lower body crushing my pelvis.
Every muscle in my body shook with pain.
Causing me to fall, I even fell slowly to the ground and it took about twenty minutes before I finally hit the ground.
It was a rough fall, and honestly its pace seemed to pick up after I landed on the hard ground, which gave me cuts and bruises. Blood was flowing out of my body in several places. It was either that my blood smelled good or maybe it realized that it's a slippery liquid that can help it move faster.
The latter was correct, as it rubbed my back with its tail, smearing my blood on the underside of its body so it could move faster while causing me greater pain.
I was wondering what its goal was when it reached my stomach. As soon as it got to my stomach, it burrowed its teeth into me. It felt like I was a whole roast chicken, and he was the maniac at the dinner table who grabs it and then proceeds to stuff his face like an animal. It felt like he was trying to go back inside his mother's womb, head first through the stomach.
My mental state was a mess. I couldn't remember the last time I felt such pain, but for some reason, I felt my mind start clearing up.
Maybe I'm going insane, but it felt like all my memories were nothing but plastic.
I couldn't even recall the faces or the events in great detail. Truthfully, even when fighting Ryu, it felt like I was playing pretend.
Like some kid in a play who couldn't fully put their heart into the character.
I mean, I'm currently looking like a gutted pumpkin that was dyed pink and red, and it went horribly wrong.
Yet I'm having such realizations.
Despite my realization, I was still in an immense amount of pain.
The fangs were so long that I could feel them bouncing off my ribcage. They snapped back after getting bounced off, banging against my ribcage angrily.
The saliva of the snake seeped into my body, filling my stomach and eroding the ligaments and tendons around my abs. Its saliva was venomous, confirming that it was a black snake.
No shocker there, but it was more than that, for some reason it was even more unsettling because I felt tinier lumps inside the venom.
That's when it dawned on me: this is a black snake. It reproduces by putting eggs inside any being, regardless of race or gender.
Those must be the eggs!
Another thing is, black snakes don't have a gender. They simply exist to cause torment to any and every living being, so they don't need an actual mate.
Instead, it seems it wants to use me as its nest.
The eggs burst inside my stomach, but they died since my white blood cells are extremely strong and have mutated to adapt to things like this in the past.
Not that I remember any of those incidents though,
I could just sort of sense that this was the case.
Well, it got almost all of them, and for some unknown reason, it was born instantly, eating its way out of my abdomen and right back into its father, devouring it whole from the inside out.
With the death of the black snake, my body had returned to normal speed.
Congratulations on passing the first trial. Let's jump right into trial two.
Again, I was instantly teleported to a new area in hell.
Unlike the desolate wasteland, this place had features worth noting.
This place was more dazzling.
As it was only one element, fire, and not just any fire, hell fire.
Which is blood red, pitch black, and purple flames. They also hurt the most.
Hell fire burns everything your entire being soul, body, mind, even your very existence.
This version seems to have got rid of the existence part, but nonetheless it will be painful.
Since I'm still not over the effects from the last trial, my mental energy was already low.
The burns were simultaneous and never ceased.
It felt like the total opposite of the last trial, where everything was really slow.
It feels like everything's happening too fast, I can hardly even concentrate.
If I had to describe the burns, it feels exactly like what I'm in—a pool of fire. Imagine when you accidentally put your hand on the stovetop while it was still on, or the time you got hit by hot grease or oil. Then multiply that pain by a thousand or a million times.
You can't, can you? The minds of humans can't accurately imagine something like that. Yet that what it feel like.
Like an ant thrown into the sun I'm sizzling and popping. Burning into a crisp.
I'm not getting blisters from the heat or getting a nice tan or anything like that.
I've already lost my human form not I'm nothing but a hunk of burnt flesh. My soul and my are also in a similar state.
All I can say for my soul is that I feel almost numb and it feels like this baptism of flames has me thinking my soul will soon evaporate.
When I think about this trial, I find it strange that I haven't been reduced to ash yet.
My head is especially less burnt than the rest on my body.
Maybe they're saving the best part for last.
However,, I can't breathe, as the fire is the only thing in this space, and even if there were space, it would burn, not to mention the air. I can't really smell much but burning flesh. Which smells burnt but also oddly tasty; perhaps the reason my head is burning slower is that they're saving the best part for last.
God! What am I saying!
I'm starting to think I smell tasty. I think I'm going insane.
Saving the best part for last, am I going to eat myself?
I realize I'm truly going insane if I really think about it with my last few remaining brain cells.
My body could take this because of whatever training it had undergone in the past.
I mean, if I'm strong enough to do this from the past, it certainly shows a clear difference in strength and abilities.
I'm running out of time.
I'm literally turning brain dead from the lack of oxygen…
I don't know how long it's been, but my consciousness is beginning to fade.
With that, I blacked out, and I don't know how long I was unconscious for, but when I came to, my body had returned to normal, and I was back in the sea of flames.