Sophia looked up after she stabbed. She felt the resistance and believed that she had penetrated, but as she looked up, she saw the sword grasped tightly in Aren’s hand, the tip stopping a few inches from his chest.
Aren looked down slowly, looking at the shimmering blade, and then he looked up at her. Their eyes met, and she stared in disbelief.
"Game over," he muttered, and instantly, she felt the eyes of not one, but several shadow wolves locked on her, including the lightning shadow wolf. It felt like an invisible pressure was stacked on her, and even breathing got difficult.
While holding the sword, Aren punched. It ripped through the air like a whip and slammed into her guts, indenting her armor and reaching her body. She arched backward, coughing out saliva.
He proceeded to yank the sword out of her hands and kick her right in the chest, sending her flying. She slammed against the ground in a rough roll until she came to a stop.
"Honestly, you are a great fighter, more skilled than me, but ever since we entered the trial, I’ve come to realize it doesn’t favor the strong only. It favors the strong and smart."
As he said that, he gripped her sword like a spear and threw it full force. It ripped through the air and stabbed right through her chest as she was on her knees. Her eyes widened as it came out from her back and penetrated the ground behind.
Blood seeped out the side of her mouth as she burst into light fragments and vanished. Aren didn’t bat an eye after that. He just turned around, summoning all his wolves and ants to help his team fight. In less than ten minutes, the fight finished, but there was nothing to show, as all the dead bodies vanished.
Suddenly, the crystal at the center of the camp shined, and one by one, everyone that was dead suddenly came back without injury.
Their presence shocked the people that had survived. After the battle, only about fifty made it through, which meant over one hundred and fifty died and were now brought back somehow.
It turned out that each of them had a counter, one that only showed after they were killed, with each person here having five lives as long as the crystal remained intact.
Which meant they could return from true death five times in total. It also meant all their enemies that were killed were also back at their camps, all revived.
But all that wasn’t what mattered to Aren, as he noticed something else. Each person that came back no longer had light in their eyes for the most part. It was as though they had seen things that shouldn’t have been seen.
They all faced real death. They all died for certain.
’I can only imagine what they went through, dying and coming back,’ Aren thought.
"Hey, Aren." Leon approached from behind. Aren turned around and was met with a loaf of bread extended to him. Leon held a second piece in his other hand.
Aren looked at the bread and then looked at Leon with a confused gaze.
"You worked more than any of us and helped finish the rest of the enemies. You need to gather your energy," he said, and then took a bite of his.
Aren, not seeing any reason to refuse and the fact that he was extremely hungry, took the bread and bit into it. It felt like heaven in that moment.
"This was really something, wasn’t it?" Leon said.
"Yeah, it was," Aren replied with a straight face. "They took a different narrative for this stage," he added.
Leon leaned forward slightly, clearly intrigued by what Aren just said. "A different narrative? Please do tell," he asked.
Aren paused for a moment. He looked at the people from their group and then asked, "What do you think most people are afraid of?"
"Oh, that’s easy. Death," Leon said.
"Yeah, that’s it, but right now, the trial just made us fear something else, the memory of death," Aren said.
Leon looked puzzled. "What do you mean?" he asked.
Aren bit into his bread again and then pointed at the group, especially those that had just been brought back. "They all have the memory of death. We all fear death because it is the unknown. The uncertainty is what scares us. But they have lived through death, through that uncertainty, and they have discovered what it truly is that makes death scary, and now they are alive again.
They have the memory of death, and that memory has changed how they exist, how they perceive things, everything. The trial has changed their fear," Aren said. He bit into his bread again and then turned around, walking to a rock to sit down.
Leon glanced at the rest of their group, processing what Aren had said. Then he walked up to meet Aren.
"Now why would they do that?" he asked while standing before Aren.
"Why else? To make the trial harder for us. People that once loved and had their hearts broken tend to run away from love. The group that have died will try to run away from death at all cost. It will cause tension, and things might fall apart," Aren explained.
"I see, that makes sense, but shouldn’t that apply to the other group too?" Leon asked.
"I don’t think they’ll be the same, because all of them were killed by us. So now the best answer for them would be to run from us and hide, but they can’t, not in the trial. So they’ll rather attack more vigorously to kill us. That’s how their fear will work for them," Aren explained.
Leon listened to everything and then smiled. "You are pretty darn smart," he said with a smile on his face.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Just give me your bread if you aren’t eating it," Aren said.
Leon handed the second bread without hesitation and walked off. He paused for a moment, looked at Aren, and smirked before walking off.