Rising god

Chapter 66: Another Sense & SYSTEM...

Chapter 66: Another Sense & SYSTEM...Baines stood in the blinding white room of the second test, his breath ragged as the realization hit him like a cold wave: the assassins were cloaked in his own blood, their scent indistinguishable from the coppery tang that saturated the air.

In this environment, where he had acclimated to the overwhelming smell of blood, they were effectively odorless, blending seamlessly into the battlefield.

Then an idea came, ’I haven’t tried to catch them yet,’ he muttered before letting himself die once more, the now-familiar darkness of death enveloping him, only to awaken once more on the staircase.

This time, he was prepared. As he stepped into the white void, he absorbed the blood from his latest corpse with the demon blade, its dark metal humming as it drank in the crimson essence.

The air shifted subtly, and Baines’s heightened senses, honed through countless deaths, picked up the faintest whispers of movement.

Whoosh... Whoosh... Whoosh.

The assassins were fast, but he was faster now, his eyes and ears attuned to their elusive patterns.

His gaze darted across the featureless expanse, tracking their invisible forms like a predator stalking prey.

Ptchch.

A dagger plunged into his hand, the pain sharp and immediate. But Baines grinned, a feral edge to his expression. "Got you," he growled.

The assassin’s blade was lodged in his flesh, giving him a split second to act.

He lunged, the Last Front sword slicing through the air.

Shng. A gash opened across the cloaked figure’s face, blood seeping through the fabric before it dissolved into mist.

’Now, all I have to do is cut them all,’ he muttered and let his eyes dark across the void, tracking the faint disturbances in the air.

With lightning speed, he hurled the demon blade backward, its edge sinking into the shoulder of another assassin.

The figure vanished, but Baines marked it in his mind. ’Two,’ he counted, his focus razor-sharp.

It didn’t take long to deliver gashes to all five assassins, their blood mingling with his own on the white floor. Satisfied, he let himself die once more, returning to the staircase.

This time, when he returned, he distinguished the subtle differences in the blood between his own, thick and familiar, versus the assassins’ tainted essence.

He parried their relentless attacks, his movements fluid despite the mounting exhaustion.

But then, a new sensation or lack thereof gripped him.

’I can’t feel my skin,’ he realized, the absence of touch disorienting. The world seemed to recede, leaving him in a void of sensory deprivation. Maybe this was the worst of all, as he just kept finding himself back on the staircase.

By the 140th time he’d stood there, staring into the white abyss.

"Am I meant to develop another sense or something?" he wondered aloud, his voice tinged with frustration but also curiosity.

He descended again, lasting until the loss of touch overwhelmed him. "I can’t feel anything, so what do I do?" he muttered, returning to the staircase once more.

Random swings were useless against intelligent foes, so he focused inward,

Red chandeliers hung overhead, their flickering light casting eerie shadows across the blood-red carpet that stretched toward a raised platform.

The room, once desolate, now thrummed with life, its gloomy aura both majestic and oppressive.

On either side of the carpet, countless hooded figures stood, their faces obscured but their cheers directed at him.

At the far end, perched on a throne of dark stone, sat a woman with hair the color of fresh blood and eyes that pierced through him like daggers.

Her reckless grin directed at Baines felt like a physical force.