Episode-832
Chapter : 1663
A few of the recruits relaxed visibly. One hour? That was nothing. They could nap. They could meditate. It seemed easy compared to the frantic stress of the Logic Slates.
Lloyd saw their relief and crushed it.
"Do not mistake this for a nap," he said coldly. "The Aegis neural link creates a feedback loop. When the system is stressed, or when you are damaged, the suit feeds your own anxiety back to you. It amplifies your fear. It makes you feel like the metal is shrinking, like the air is running out."
He walked up to the first door and placed his hand on the metal.
"To simulate this, I have made a small modification to these rooms."
Lloyd’s eyes shifted. For a brief, terrifying second, his sclera turned pitch black, and a glowing blue ring ignited in his iris. The Black Ring Eyes. The ancient power of the Austin bloodline flared, sending a wave of primal unease through the recruits. They stepped back, instinctively terrified by the sudden aura of dominance.
"I have placed a minor illusion seal on each room," Lloyd explained, his eyes returning to normal. "It is not a combat seal. It is a psychological one. It projects a low-level field of dread. It stimulates the part of your brain that screams 'danger.' It creates feelings of claustrophobia, panic, and irrational terror."
He looked at them with a clinical detachment.
"It cannot hurt you. It is all in your head. But your head will tell you that you are dying. It will tell you that the walls are crushing you. It will tell you that I have forgotten you and you will rot in the dark."
Kaito raised a trembling hand. "So... we have to sit in the dark while magic tries to drive us crazy?"
"Essentially," Lloyd agreed. "If you want to leave, there is a panic button on the wall. It glows with a faint red light. It is the only thing you will see. If you press it, the door opens instantly. The test ends. And you go home."
He gestured to the open doors.
"Pick a cell. Get comfortable. The clock starts when the last door locks."
The recruits hesitated. This was different from the paper test. That was a challenge of skill. This was a challenge of endurance. It was a battle against their own instincts.
Ren was the first to move. He rolled his wheelchair toward a door. "I've spent my whole life trapped in a body that doesn't work," he muttered. "A dark room is just a change of scenery." He rolled inside.
Vala took a deep breath, her hands shaking. She walked into the next room, looking like she was walking to the gallows.
Kaito pulled a card from his deck—the Ace of Spades, the death card. He grimaced, tucked it back, and stepped into his cell.
One by one, the twenty candidates entered their personal hells.
Lloyd walked down the line. He closed each door with a heavy, final thud. He engaged the locking mechanisms. Clack-thunk. Clack-thunk.
When the last door was secured, the hallway was silent.
Lloyd turned to Spirit Jasmin. "Activate the seals. Intensity level: Three."
Jasmin nodded. Her eyes glowed. "Seals activated. Monitoring vitals."
Lloyd leaned against the wall and crossed his arms. "Now we see who breaks."
Inside Room 4, Kaito was sitting on the cold floor. The darkness was absolute. It was heavy, like a physical weight pressing against his eyes.
It's just a room, he told himself. It's ten feet by ten feet. I saw it before the lights went out.
Then, the seal kicked in.
It wasn't a voice. It was a sensation. It started at the base of his spine, a cold prickle of warning. Something is wrong, his brain whispered. The air is too thin. You aren't getting enough oxygen.
Kaito gasped. He took a deep breath. The air was fine. But his brain screamed that he was suffocating.
The walls, the fear whispered. They are moving. Can't you feel it? They are inching closer. They are going to squash you like a bug.
"No," Kaito said aloud. His voice sounded dead, swallowed instantly by the soundproofing. "Probability of moving walls: Zero. It's a static structure."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his deck of cards. He couldn't see them, but he could feel them. The texture of the paper. The smooth edges.
He began to shuffle. Riffle, bridge, cut.
"Fifty-two cards," he whispered. "Ace, King, Queen, Jack. Four suits. Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, Spades."
Chapter : 1664
He focused on the math. He calculated the odds of drawing a pair. He calculated the odds of a full house. He built a fortress of numbers in his mind to keep the fear out.
You're going to die here, the darkness hissed.
"The odds of dying in a training exercise are less than five percent," Kaito countered, his hands moving faster. "The odds of me folding are zero."
________________________________________
In Room 7, Vala was curled into a tight ball in the corner.
The fear hit her differently. It didn't tell her the walls were moving. It told her she was trapped. It brought back the memory of the carriage wheels, the heavy, crushing weight looming over her.
She felt small. Insignificant. A speck of dust waiting to be wiped away.
Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. Thump-thump-thump.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to hit the red button glowing in the dark like a demon's eye. It promised release. It promised light.
She reached out. Her hand hovered over the button.
Just press it, the fear seduced. Go back to the village. Be safe. Be nothing.
Vala froze. Be nothing.
That was the real fear. Not the dark. Not the death. But being nothing. Being the girl who rolled in the mud and ran away.
She pulled her hand back. She bit her knuckle to stop the scream.
"I am small," she whispered to the dark. "But I am fast. You can't crush what you can't catch."
She closed her eyes and visualized a maze. She visualized herself flowing through it like water. She didn't fight the fear; she dodged it. She let it pass through her and moved to the side.
________________________________________
In Room 12, Ren sat in his wheelchair.
The seal was trying its best. It projected feelings of isolation, of being cut off from humanity, of being utterly alone in the void.
Ren chuckled softly.
"You call this isolation?" he asked the darkness. "Try spending ten years watching children play tag while you can't even stand up. Try watching the world run while you sit."
The darkness felt heavy, pressing down on him.
"You think darkness scares me?" Ren continued. "In the dark, I don't need legs. In the dark, I'm just a mind. I'm pure thought."
He lifted his hands. In the blackness, he began to pantomime assembling a watch. He visualized every gear, every spring, every screw. He built a complex chronometer in his mind, layer by layer.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
He imposed his own order on the chaos. The fear was just static. He tuned it out. He was the watchmaker, and this room was just another broken thing he had to outlast.
________________________________________
Outside, the silence didn't last long.
Seven minutes in, the first scream echoed from Room 2.
"OPEN IT! OPEN THE DOOR! I CAN'T BREATHE!"
The lock clicked. The door swung open. A man stumbled out, clawing at his throat, eyes wild with terror. He collapsed on the floor, gasping for air that had always been there.
"Get him out," Lloyd ordered the guards. He didn't look up from his clipboard. "Failure."
Twelve minutes in. Room 9 opened. A woman ran out, sobbing about spiders that weren't there.
Twenty minutes. Room 5. Room 18.
The hallway became a procession of broken wills. They weren't weak people; they were just people whose minds couldn't handle the specific, crushing pressure of the artificial dread. They were warriors who needed an enemy to fight. When the enemy was their own mind, they lost.
Lloyd watched the clock. Forty-five minutes.
Eight people had broken. Twelve doors remained shut.
Inside those twelve rooms, the battle was silent and desperate. Sweat soaked their clothes. Teeth ground together. Fingernails dug into palms. But they didn't press the button.
"Fifty-nine minutes," Jasmin reported.
Lloyd walked to the master switch.
"Time."
He killed the power to the seals. The oppressive atmosphere in the hallway vanished instantly.
"Unlock the doors," Lloyd commanded.
The guards moved down the line, unlocking the twelve remaining cells.
The doors swung open.
Kaito walked out first. He looked like he had been swimming in his clothes. His hair was plastered to his forehead. He was shuffling his cards so fast they were a blur. He looked at Lloyd, blinked, and then let out a long, shaky breath.
"I calculated... the odds of the hour being over... were increasing," he stammered.
Vala crawled out. She couldn't stand up immediately. She sat against the wall, hugging her knees, shaking violently. But when she looked up, her eyes were clear. She had survived the crush.