The swaying stalks of wheat had become a lethal obstacle. Every time Knight's feet struck the soft loam, the golden grain tangled around his shins, dragging at his momentum. He gasped for air, his lungs burning with the sudden intake of pristine oxygen. Even though his wounds had vanished, his unconditioned muscles were screaming in protest.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
The rhythmic, heavy footfalls of the army were closing in. It was an uncanny, synchronized beat. Their silver plate armor caught the rays of the dying sun, looking like a tidal wave of mercury set to swallow the golden field.
"Dammit... huff... where am I supposed to hide?!" Knight hissed, scanning the horizon. But there was nothing, no trees, no hills, not even a dip in the earth. Just an endless, flat expanse of gold.
Suddenly, a war horn shrieked right in his ear.
THWIP!
A steel-tipped arrow whistled past his shoulder, missing by mere centimeters. It slammed into the dirt ahead of him, the shaft vibrating with the force of the impact. Knight flinched. He realized then that this wasn't just an infantry march; they had mounted archers closing the gap.
"Are you kidding me?!"
He ducked low, trying to use the height of the wheat to mask his silhouette. But the deeper he ran, the more the pressure mounted.
[Advice: Please check your Status Window.]
The cold, digital notification chimed again.
'Check my status?!' Knight snarled internally. 'I'm being hunted like an animal! When the hell am I supposed to find time for that?!'
He pushed deeper into the field until he skidded to a dead halt. A line of Red Cross knights had cut him off. Knight stopped, turning back to face the white-clad executioners who were now less than fifty meters away.
The front rank parted. A towering figure on a midnight-black warhorse trotted forward. The rider was encased in full plate, his face hidden behind a grim visor, leaving only cold, piercing blue eyes visible. He raised a massive greatsword, pointing the tip directly at Knight's chest.
"For the glory... of the Almighty..." a deep, muffled voice resonated from behind the steel. "Surrender, heretic."
Knight dropped to one knee. Despair tried to take root in his heart once more, but in that moment, he remembered the sensation of his finger grazing the Golden Box. A touch so light, yet it had shifted the entire world.
'If this is a Survival Trial... there has to be a way to survive!'
He squeezed a handful of black soil. The rage that had boiled over in the real world returned, but this time, it was different. It wasn't a blind tantrum; it was the cold, hollow calm of a man who had already looked death in the eye and blinked first.
"You want me?" Knight spat through gritted teeth. "Come and get me. But I should warn you... I'm a hard man to kill!"
The ground began to thrum the vibration of a thousand armored men breaking into a charge.
The knight on horseback lowered his blade and gave a curt command: "Slay him."
The Red Cross knights lunged. A longsword whistled toward Knight's neck, but he ducked it by a hair's breadth. As he dodged, a spear thrust aimed for his gut, a coordinated trap. Knight's reflexes, honed by a lifetime of street-side brawls, kicked in. He snatched the wooden shaft of the spear, using his entire body weight to twist and snap the wood.
The splintering wood sliced his hands, but the pain was a dull hum compared to the agony of the real world.
Knight bolted, clutching the jagged spearhead as his only weapon. He vanished back into the wheat, praying for the sun to just set already.
The thunder of footsteps sounded like a relentless war drum. Knight gripped the broken spear-shaft, his palms slick with sweat. The jagged tip caught the sunset, reflecting a lethal glint. He wasn't a mage. He wasn't a gifted Welder. He was just a scavenger from the slums, and his survival instincts were screaming at full volume.
"There! He's over there!" a voice bellowed from behind.
Three arrows hissed through the air. Knight threw himself into a roll. One grazed his hip, shredding his clothes; the other two buried themselves deep in the dirt. He didn't wait for them to notch another volley. He sprang up and dove back into the stalks.
"Fan out! Don't let the heretic escape!" the commander barked.
Knight used the broken spear to clear a path, moving as silently as a ghost. Blood from the gash on his hand slicked the wood, actually giving him a better grip. He could hear the gallop of horses flanking his position. The sun dipped lower, bruising the sky into an eerie purple-orange.
SHING!
An armored knight burst from the wheat beside him, swinging a longsword meant to cleave him in two. Knight didn't retreat. He brought the wooden shaft up to parry. CLANG! The impact nearly shattered his wrists, but as the blade bit into the wood and stuck, Knight surged into the knight's guard. He drove the jagged spearhead into the gap beneath the man's helmet.
"Gkh..." The knight slumped, blood welling from the seams of his armor.
[Notification: You have slain a Swordsman Knight.]
Knight didn't waste a second. He snatched a waterskin from the corpse's belt and kept running. The pressure was suffocating. A black fog began to creep in from the edges of the horizon, shrinking the battlefield.
He kept moving, picking off two more knights using the spear and the sword he'd looted from his first kill.
Finally, the sun slipped below the horizon.
A heavy silence fell, broken only by the rasp of metal on metal. Knight lay flat in the withered wheat, his breathing so shallow it was almost non-existent.
Thump... Thump... Thump...
Three knights marched in a line, just paces from his hiding spot. They had lit torches, the orange light dancing across the field. The flickering glow caught Knight's face caked in soot and dirt, his eyes narrowed like a cornered wolf.
"Where'd he go? The blood trail was right here," one muttered.
Knight flexed his toes, tensing his muscles. He locked onto the middle knight carrying the torch. If he could snuff that light, he had a chance in the encroaching dark.
'Just make it through the night... just survive until then!'
He palmed a stone the size of a fist and hurled it in the opposite direction. CLACK! It struck a discarded piece of plate armor. The three knights spun toward the noise.
"There!"
The moment they turned, Knight exploded from the grain like a lightning strike. His looted longsword arched toward the torch-bearer's hand.
Squelch!
The hand holding the torch was severed clean off. In the same motion, Knight used the momentum of his spin to deliver a brutal, horizontal slash across the man's throat.
[Notification: You have slain a Swordsman Knight.]
The torch hit the dry wheat, and flames began to greedily lick at the stalks.
"I told you..." Knight gasped, his lungs heaving from the day's exhaustion. "I'm hard to kill."
He had no time to feel guilty, no time to be nauseated by his first kills. In his mind, there was only one objective: survive.
Two blades suddenly lunged at him with blinding speed. Knight caught them on his own steel, parrying the weight before dropping low and sweeping upward. He sheared off the hand of one knight and buried his blade into the man's midsection with terrifying accuracy.
[Notification: You have slain a Swordsman Knight.]
He didn't give the last man a chance to breathe. He lunged, driving his point through the gap between helmet and gorget, ending him instantly.
[Notification: You have slain a Swordsman Knight.]
He had taken down three more, but there was no relief. The fire from the dropped torch was spreading rapidly, turning the wheat field into a localized inferno and a beacon for his position.
He had to move. Fast.