It was a strange sensation. Red didn’t feel pain or any type of danger, and yet with every step he took, it was as if he was wading through a quagmire. His steps weakened, his vision faded, and everything else seemed more distant.

The boy felt a sense of dread creep in. He wasn’t fighting a monster, or anything he could see or touch. Instead, Red was combating this unknown force which took away his sense of awareness little by little - and he didn’t know what to do about it.

He was losing control of his own body.

Instinctively, he slowed down. Red hoped to find a way to stop this phenomenon from happening, yet not even ceasing movement afforded him the time to think. His senses continued to deteriorate, and the increasing sensation of doom settled in.

‘I can’t stop moving!’

Since meditating on the problem would not work, Red decided to hurry through this storm. He hoped there was an end to this fog, and once he left its premises, his senses returned to normal.

Yet, even if his aim was well founded, it seemed he was lacking in time.

Red felt the pressure in each of his steps weaken as the feeling in his skin disappeared. The boy ordered his body to move, but he could not tell whether he was making any progress or simply lying still on the ground. His hearing had disappeared. His sight narrowed even further as blindness crept in, and what replaced his clear vision wasn't darkness as the boy had expected. Instead, it was nothing - a complete lack of existence or substance.

An unknowing void.

Red felt as if he had conquered his fear of death. He would still hesitate against overwhelming danger, but he could act in spite of that, no matter how risky or certain death may seem. In a way, the boy thought he had won against fear itself.

After all, with death defeated, what else was there to be afraid of?

He had never been so wrong before.

This loss of control over his own body - this silent descent into an abyss of nothingness while still being in complete awareness of his own thoughts - it made him feel horrified.

To die, to feel pain, to be hurt both physically and mentally - this was something that Red understood very well. It was something he had experienced and learned to resist. Yet to be stripped of all your agency, watching helplessly as control over your own being ceased to be without even being able to offer any resistance, it was the most terrifying thing he had ever experienced.

However, no amount of struggle helped.

‘I can’t… I need to do something!’

Red had forgotten about the trial at this point. He focused on trying to regain control of his dwindling senses. The first thing he tried was the Radiant Current technique. It had worked back then when he couldn’t move, so Red thought he could rely on it in this situation.

The boy repeated the mantras in his mind, commanding his hands to repeat the mudras even if he couldn’t tell whether his body was executing the movements. To his surprise, Red felt his mind settled into that familiar expanded awareness that helped him in the past.

When the boy tried to use this awareness to inspect his body, though, he was dismayed. There was nothing but void.

Red tried again, hoping to reach something with his mind he could grasp onto.

It didn’t work.

It was as if his entire body had disappeared, and not even his own mind or this magical technique could detect even the slightest sign of his physical form. Red didn’t know what to do.

‘What is going on?’

At this point, the boy didn’t have the slightest sensation or feeling over his body, so he couldn’t tell what was happening. Was his body truly gone? Why could he still think and sense his own consciousness, then?

Despite being incapable of feeling his physical functions, Red still felt panic at his situation. His emotions were still there, all the terror and anxiety the boy had been left with. In fact, he could feel them even more clearly now.

His consciousness stewed in the nothingness of the void, with no way to resist, no way to escape.

There was no pain in here. No suffering, no struggle.

There was nothing in here.

Only silence.

…

Red didn’t know how much time passed. Perhaps a few seconds? Or maybe a year?

Time had no meaning when one wasn’t capable of sensing its passing. To Red, it both felt like an instant and an eternity had passed at the same time.

He still felt as terrified as when this first happened, and yet he had tried everything to escape from it with no success.

The boy tried to communicate with the crimson mist. He tried to use his crimson sense. He tried to expand his awareness with the meditation technique multiple times, just like he had done earlier.

Nothing worked.

Red had nothing to grasp onto. Nothing to help him out of this situation other than his own thoughts.

And so he thought.

The boy tried to figure out what had happened to him. Was his consciousness separated from his body? Were his bodily functions blocked by some kind of special technique?

‘There’s no point in this.’

In either of these scenarios, what could he do to reverse the situation? Consciousness, Spiritual Arts - they were beyond his purview and understanding.

The boy was not qualified to speak about those matters.

Yet, wasn’t this a trial? If there was an issue in front of him, there was always a solution.

This was what Red had learned in this inheritance ground, so why would this be any different? There had to be a way out - he just had to find it.

Red reigned in his increasing panic and focused on his thoughts.

He had to expand his search.

He reached into the depths of his memories. He considered the strangest possibilities, the most outlandish ideas. He tried to invoke the strangest beings and sights he had ever seen before, hoping any of them could bring him out of this situation.

Nothing worked.

‘It’s useless…’

Was he hoping for a miracle? For another otherworldly being or ability to appear out of nowhere and save his life?

He didn’t know.

Maybe there was no way out. Maybe this trial had been a sham to give cultivators like him hope and then take it away from them at the very last step. It wouldn’t be strange for a cultivator to do that.

‘Or maybe I’m just not good enough to beat this trial.’

Red felt his efforts slip bit by bit. His thoughts slowed down, and the silence of the void seemed to grow inside his own mind.

The boy felt as if he was becoming part of the nothing. Maybe this was what awaited those who failed.

“Hm?! Turns out it’s you that was reaching out!”

A familiar childish voice invaded his mind.

Red felt shocked. He tried to open his eyes and look in the direction of the voice, before remembering he couldn’t see anymore.

“There’s no point in looking for me. There’s nothing to see or feel in this place.”

The boy tried to speak back, before also remembering he had no voice.

The being, however, seemed to be able to discern what he was thinking about.

“Are you surprised?” it asked in a mocking tone. “You shouldn’t be. I told you our fates were tied back then!”

Red’s mind trembled.

“Now look at what you’ve done to your body! As if that curse wasn’t enough, now you also have demonic energy running inside your veins… My, my, it’s like only one impeding doom wasn’t enough for you!”

The boy felt the being probing his mind, and he could do nothing to resist it.

“Ah, no wonder I felt you reach out to me! Turns out you’re right on top of a gate to the void…” the being continued to look into his mind. “This place looks interesting! Maybe I should pay it a visit once I get out.”

Red struggled, trying to expel this force from his consciousness. It didn’t work, however.

“Now, why are you being so uncooperative?” the voice asked in an angry tone. “Weren’t you the one that reached out for help in the first place?”

The boy didn’t deny its claims. However, he had been desperate, and didn’t really think that summoning that image to his head would actually have any effect.

“So, have you thought about it?” the voice asked. “I can help you if you accept that deal.”

Red's struggles intensified. He hadn’t changed his mind. In fact, after feeling the sheer terror of losing control over one’s body, the boy was even more against that idea than before.

He would rather just fade away right now than go through that experience again.

“Ah, well, that’s a shame!” the voice said in a disappointed tone. “Well, I wasn’t expecting you to change your mind so soon anyway, so I guess I can’t be that sad. Either way, good luck with this trial! I’m sure we will meet again in the future!”

Red felt the probing force in his mind disappear as the voice faded away.

He was once more alone in this place, but after the encounter with that dark being, his resolve had instead been reinforced.

‘I can’t give up right now… I won’t let it win.’

Red focused on his thoughts again, searching for a way out. His mind went back to the words the voice had spoken earlier. It had spoken about his body and how demonic energy was running inside his veins.

‘It could feel my body.’

This brought Red to one possibility. Maybe his mind and consciousness weren’t split after all.

‘Even so, what can I do with that information?’

Perhaps his body was still all there, but did that make any difference? He still couldn’t move it.

‘… No, that’s not right.’

Red had assumed he couldn’t move his body at all because of a complete lack of feeling. Yet, there was nothing that indicated that for sure, as losing feeling over touch didn’t mean you were incapable of moving.

Or at least that’s what the boy would like to think. Without being able to feel pressure or anything against your skin, Red couldn’t imagine someone would be able to walk or move around properly.

Yet, what did it matter?

As long as Red could move, he could still make progress. Even if it was by crawling, by spasming, by rolling his body, or by any set of random movements that could bring him forward even by one centimeter. Even if it took an eternity to reach his aim.

‘Even if I’m wrong and I can’t move at all… I can’t give up.’

As long as his mind was still there, Red would never give up.

The boy tried to make his body move - his mind sending the orders as if he could still sense his physical form there. There was no feedback or sensation he could feel that told him whether he was successful in that task, but it didn’t matter to him. He tried to push his feet, one after the other, as if he was walking.

He also used his hands to crawl forward in case he was on the ground. Then, to be sure, he moved the rest of his body, trying to make any movement or commotion he could to awaken himself out of this nightmare.

Red didn’t know much time had passed like this. He began to lose some faith in his plan, but there was nothing else he could do in this situation, so he kept sending orders to a body that he didn’t even know was there.

Then, all of a sudden, Red felt it.

A fluctuation entered his crimson sense. Rickard’s fluctuation.

It seemed like there was one thing in his body that this place couldn’t affect.