Once upon a time, there was a baby. The baby was amazing, able to speak, able to read, able to write, able to walk, able to run, and even able to do mathematics! Naturally, all of that were achieved when he reached the corresponding age, but the baby was still amazing. All of the villagers loved the kid because he was cute. One day, the kid got curious about something. The kid discovered a strange button at the barn and pushed it, obviously because he is a kid.

There is this proverb, “curiosity killed the cat”. So when the kid pushed the button, he got to saw the darkest side of the warm villagers he had always lived with. The villagers realized the kid’s knowledge was bad for their secrecy, so they chased down the kid to kill him. The kid ran with all of his might, but he came upon a cliff. He desperately tried to climb but nothing sort of miracle happened. The villagers were finally able to kill the kid and then they lived happily ever again, without the kid.

The moral of the story? "The button killed the kid", don’t be the kid, be the happy villagers. Or at least, you had to have a greater luck to not be killed as the kid. Poor kid, his luck was so poor that he got killed so early. The connection the story had with Tethra’s situation? That’s a story he remembered back then from Post-Flood Earth. He read them once when he got curious about the example of a children story, as a kid, obviously. That story traumatized him, until his grandpa sealed most of his memory, even the trauma. After pushing the button, part of the seal got opened, now he got that trauma back.

“No no no no! What should I do?! I don’t want to be the kid!” Tethra frantically struck the wall that was once a door.

“Why won’t you open?! My path to the peak of the world still hasn’t been trodden yet!” You’re curious why Tethra was this frantic? Well, a child trauma is always the scariest part of one’s mind, even after you turned adult. Tethra still failed to do anything to the blood red tube-shaped room. After trying several more times, Tethra already had lifeless gazes on his eyes because failing to do anything and because he felt that this wasn’t the end of it.

As expected, the bloody machine then lets out an alarming sound with blinking red lights. It made Tethra become more anxious. He looked left and right to see if anything will happen. He waited patiently but the alarm didn’t stop. It kept getting more and more intense.

“Ahahaha, must be the system’s error, must be it!” Assuring himself of a doubtful reasoning, Tethra still didn’t get reassured, and without a doubt, the machine wouldn’t let the chance wasted, so it began to shake, from a small tremble to an earthquake with the magnitude of 7.0. He got tumbled here and there trying to balance himself. Being trolled like this naturally didn’t feel any good, Tethra’s anxiousness gradually changed to anger. He got angered by this bloody machine. So, he just shouted his feeling to no one in particular.

“Fine! If that’s what you want, I will do what I want!” Having killed a monster for the first time despite having not killed even a chicken before, Tethra subtly changed. At first, even though he always do what he wanted, he never harms others and things. But, by being here and seeing a battle at the city before, while being in one himself, his subconscious sensed that the law of this world is different. He could do anything here! Destroying things won’t be fined if he is strong. Killing others doesn’t matter if he is strong. In this world, strength is everything! Of course, he still has his principle, he doesn’t like unnecessary bloodshed, he will still try to solve problems with soft method first, like what his grandpa had said.

“Let’s see if you’re stronger, or my head is stronger!” Tethra chanted ‘Icarus’, and readied his Insta-Move stance while trying to balance himself. Luckily, his broken leg got healed miraculously. He didn’t know if it was those particles that healed him, but he would just care about his trapped problem for now. Feeling strength in his body and especially his legs, he lowered his head and made it horizontal. He used the maximum power of Insta-Move so the momentum brought plus the hardness of his head can harm this machine. “BANG!”. The machine stopped shaking for a while because of Tethra’s action.

Surprisingly, the wall dented! Tethra got more encouraged even though he already had a bump on his head.

“Nice! Let’s see if you can get more arrogant!” He used Insta-Move two more times and finally, the red metal wall broke leaving a human sized hole. He got sent out and fell to his face because he didn’t expect the wall to break this easily.

“Whoa, I’m finally out of that damned machine. Damned button almost killed me!” Tethra cursed out while inwardly sighed because he got out safely. He didn’t know where he would be brought if he kept staying there. Truthfully, Tethra himself didn’t know why he wanted to get out that thing quickly, he could have waited and the door will open soon after it reached its destination, it couldn’t trap him forever. But his instinct told him that he would regret it if he waited, so he just took an action himself. If you could take an action, why would you watch anything happen to you passively?

That decision seemed like to be made by instinct only, even Tethra doubt himself at first. What if the machine exploded after he headbutted it? What if he got out to a void space and not a room? What if the machine is actually bringing him to the outside? Tethra got rid of those thoughts and just believed his gut. Tethra always does what he wanted and that was his vengeance to the machine for trolling him. But, that revenge actually saved him from an even greater adversity!

The shaking of the machine was actually its movement. It was bringing Tethra to another trial way harder than the trial before because it sensed the foreign energy rated higher than qi inside Tethra’s body. In fact, the button was also one of the machine’s bait after scanning Tethra’s energy quality. If it wasn’t, when a curious talented disciple who passed the special trial with so much difficulty got sent to harder trial, they would cough out blood from frustration and just die there. Tethra’s situation was mostly because the machine felt that the trial is not enough after assessing Tethra’s severity of injury so it was gonna take him to another trial, with the same reward obviously. Truly a really stingy trial!

After Tethra got up from the floor, he looked to the place he was in. The place gave no semblance of a livable environment. Dark grayish color covered the walls and ceilings. Some murals placed here and there at the front of the walls beside him. That combination gave him an eerie feeling. Then, candles lit up from the mouth of the murals. The candles on both sides of him lit continuously toward his front, to the darkness of this eerie place. The candles didn’t help, it increased the eeriness instead. Witnessing the strange sight, Tethra got curious about the place the candles leading him. He also increased his awareness to the maximum in case there are monsters here.

Walking there, he touched the murals fondly. When he was working as an archeologist, he saw many murals like these. He really liked seeing and touching them, maybe he got attached to them because he was an archeologist, not sure. Anyway, after walking quite far away, he started to feel that the murals got more disfigured. The earlier murals are perfect in any way without even getting deteriorated. The mural he just touched, though, was worse than before. He got curious about the differences, but still walked deeper.

Walking a bit more, he started to feel the murals he touched were even more deteriorated than before. Now that made him really curious as to what could make the murals like this. He stopped touching the murals and just walked faster inside.

From afar, he saw a big thing. The thing is so big that he had to raise his head upward to be able to see its upper part. He couldn’t even see its top. Lowering his sight to the bottom, he recognized that bottom part. It was the leg of a monster! He hurriedly raised his sight again and he saw the body of the monster too! Tethra became alerted and instantly readied his fighting stance.

Noticing the surrounding of the monster is quite weird, Tethra observed it more clearly. The space actually grew hazy like there were some sorts of pressure pressing the space around the monster. The murals near the monster also became disfigured worse than before while some of it got destroyed completely.

“The monster is so strong that its exuded presence is that heavy?!” Discovering that fact, Tethra Insta-Moved back and took a further distance from the monster. Just by seeing the presence, he knew that he was no match for the monster, but lacking a decent escape route would eventually force him to face this monster. Tethra grew worried about the fight he would face. It was not like the fight he had earlier, this monster is so strong that Tethra knew that he had no chance of winning at all. Despite feeling that, Tethra still readied his fighting stance.

“Maybe it’s friendly?” Even after waiting for some while, Tethra still didn’t feel any hostility from the monster. He decided to speak to the monster first before attacking to see if it was friendly or not, at least it’s better than fighting a hopeless fight. Tethra walked forward slowly while still maintaining his fighting stance. He remembered from Elder Pan that monsters above grade 6th usually have intelligence. This one is so strong that even the space crack, so it must be very strong, stronger than even 7th grade monster, so he was sure that it would have intelligence like humans. Tethra neared it until he saw the whole detail of the monster. He got dumbfounded after looking at it. Even after looking it many times, the result didn’t change.

“It’s actually a statue??!!”