“Not bad.”

  Aaron turned as he was leaving the arena. It was Voidrin. What’d he want?

  “Not bad? I got my ass beat,” Aaron chuckled.

  “By a freak who would embarrass most, if not everybody else here. But that’s not why I said it was not bad. That cheeky look on your face. I’ve seen it before. When you figured me out. You’ve got a plan, don’t you?”

  He didn’t have a plan. Not a good one, anyway. He was just excited to bash his head against the near-indestructible wall that was Mo’han, and the inspiration it gave him to achieve at everything else.

  “Plan? More like stubborn determination.”

  “Haha. Sounds about right. Y’know what? We should train together sometime. I like your attitude.”

  Perhaps Aaron wasn’t the best read of people, but he got a good vibe from the cyclops. He just seemed boisterous and cheerful. Many would no doubt consider getting beaten by someone so many levels lower than them an insult, but he didn’t sense an ounce of malice radiating from Voidrin.

  “I got a few things to figure out. But after that? Yeah, mate, I reckon that sounds like a good idea.”

  “Don’t wear yourself out. I won’t go easy on you,” Voidrin said, waving as he walked off. “I’m not in the habit of losing more than once.”

  Another friendly rivalry? The grin on Aaron’s face bent even wider. Steel sharpens steel, and Aaron couldn’t think of anything better.

  After that, he headed for the trial dial. Having more people to challenge him was great and all, but he couldn’t afford to waste time. At least he had his universal pocket watch, which he had tested after the duel and discovered its pleasant ability.

  Flinging it open, he checked the time.

  Tutorial days elapsed: 67.75 (271 Days in Trial time)

  The magical watch provided whatever time the bearer of it wanted to see. He didn’t even have to say anything or make a mental command. It just knew what he desired.

  He had about three months left. That might have seemed like a long time to some, but with the challenge before him, not to mention whatever Voidrin had in mind, Aaron knew it would slip away quickly.

  But he couldn’t just charge into trials mindlessly. That wasn’t the way to complete this, and even a few levels weren’t going to close the gap between him and Mo’han. In fact, even if they were at equal levels, Mo’han would command the advantage when it came to pure power; that much was obvious.

  That wasn’t to say that levels weren’t important, just that he had to be a little more thoughtful than usual.

  I need to think outside the box. Use everything available to me.

  Up until now, Aaron realized his Class and Profession were a little disjointed. Sure, the foods he cooked were without a doubt assisting him in combat, but in some ways, he gained more from just eating random things than the boons themselves.

  This wasn’t ideal, and while he wouldn’t always know what kind of fight he was heading into, he did this time. He could think and plan for this fight against Mo’han and use it as inspiration to cook a dish that would give him the edge.

  Okay, step one, I need a dish that will help me against the big guy—something tailored to bridge the gap between us.

  He didn’t know what that was yet, but at least he had the foundations of a plan starting to form.

  It wasn’t just a dish that he needed, though. A few levels wouldn’t bridge the gap between them, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t help, and Aaron needed every little bit of assistance if he was going to beat the asura.

  If Aaron could gain a decent number of levels in both his Class and Profession before they next fought, it would considerably increase his strength.

  Okay, that’s two things. Gain as many levels as I can.

  Measured by pure skill, he was probably already the better fighter of the two. But he had a feeling he needed to be more than just better. He had to be on an entirely different level if he wanted to close the absurd power gap between them.

  Okay, that’s number three. Tighten up my techniques as much as I can.

  It wasn’t just techniques, though, was it? He thought he was onto something with that new technique he used in their duel. Focusing on pouring energy into his body to empower it beyond its normal capacity. If he could improve that without destroying himself in the process, it too would help close the gap even more.

  Okay, we got four. I need to iron out my powering-up technique.

  He kind of wanted to get to five steps and have a nice round number. But he couldn’t think of another goal right now.

  Okay, that’s annoying, but at least I have something to work toward.

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  He still kind of wanted to work more on his teamwork and knock out another Trial of Companionship, but right now, he had a job to do. Ultimately, teamwork wasn’t going to help against Mo’han, and honestly, he felt like it was one of the least useful things he could learn.

  Okay, where do I start?

  After a quick think, he decided there was no better place to start than the Trial of Endurance. He needed more ingredients to make the most of his cooking time, and he needed both a new recipe and more Profession levels to knock out two of his goals.

  Before starting the trial, he took stock of the ingredients he had on hand and considered what kinds of recipes he might want to employ and what might give him an edge against Mo’han.

  Of course, he only got what the trials gave him. But something told Aaron that having a feeling for what he wanted to achieve would aid the outcome.

  Picking his usual partner for the Trial of Endurance, Aaron entered alongside Oozagh.

  He found himself inside some kind of transparent egg in the middle of a mysterious chamber lined by veins of mana. Several steps away, hooded figures circled around him, standing on some pentagram-like drawing that appeared to have been drawn in blood.

  “Okay, I’m about to be sacrificed or something, am I?”

  Smiles crept across the shaded mouths of the creepy, hooded figures, and then they began to chant some ominous words. A second later, beams of blood magic crackled through the air and engulfed the egg.

  It only took him a second to feel his life energy being sapped away, and Oozagh thumbed his chest beside him. The godly avatar was standing just outside the egg, rubbing its belly with a playful expression.

  Watching the rotund ogre, Aaron got a sense of the message he was trying to pass on. He thought.

  Oozagh wanted him to be strong, and what was strength in the eyes of the formidable ogre? It was size, unending consumption, and gluttony. He prized a gut that would not yield above all else.

  And so Aaron got to work, eating his little finger foods at a stupendous speed.

  This was a competition pitting energy production against energy consumption… or at least that’s what he thought it was.

  However, as Aaron’s energy production rose, it didn’t seem to help all that much. In fact, the only energy that the cultists seemed to actually be drawing from him was life energy.

  Quickly, he got to work converting stamina and mana to life energy, but all that did was strengthen and thicken the beams of blood magic joining the cultists to the egg.

  “What the hell? Oozagh, I thought this was your tip for beating the trial?”

  The ogre shrugged.

  “What? Is that it?”

  But the impossible task was the last thing that would deter Aaron, and as the pull of his life energy increased, he simply got more determined to defeat the trial.

  Soon, the entire chamber was buzzing with blood magic, and Aaron was eating like a madman whilst cycling his Vitality Heart, and converting as much energy into health as humanly possible.

  Unfortunately for the stubborn earthling, the smiles of the cultists grew ever larger as huge amounts of life energy were sucked out of him.

  Against a level eighty that had gone heavy on Vitality, Aaron likely still wasn’t particularly strong; however, he had the regeneration of his food consumption helping him, and so if that was all this Trial of Endurance required, then he should have a decent chance, he figured.

  Reality didn’t seem so kind, though. And the more he produced, the more power was transferred into the cultists. He was starting to believe that there was no limit to what they could consume, and he was just playing into their game.

  And then, it got even worse. Within the egg, blood red energy shot out, pricking his body from all around and increasing the drain.

  “Aargh!”

  Pain spiked, and his body was drained like a sponge as the greedy cultists sucked up all of his life energy. If there was a way to beat this thing via outlasting it, Aaron had no idea how that was supposed to be done.

  He fell to his knees. The pain had become incredible, even for him, and then it hit him all at once, knocking him onto his back and killing him.

  But of course, he wasn’t completely dead. And the scene that unfolded afterward made him focus on restraining himself from immediately resurrecting.

  The egg collapsed, and the blood magic coalesced into a horned, demonoid form.

  Oh, that’s convenient.

  If the egg was destroyed, so was his prison, and Aaron let the aether draw his soul back into his body.

  “Bah!” He gasped as he pushed himself up onto his knees.

  The cultists looked at him strangely, as if they couldn’t imagine someone surviving the egg. But the energy he felt from them was nothing special.

  No, it was the demon standing in front of him that caught his eye.

  The trial’s not over?

  He had thought that the trial was obviously about beating the prison, but apparently, there was a little more to it than that. Perhaps he had gotten into a bad habit by not paying much attention to the trial explanations.

  Then again, what was he trying to achieve anyway?

  Aaron stood up, his health still vitally low, but recovering. He was eating as he stared the room down, and the demon didn’t seem to be happy about his casual expression.

  “What is this? A mortal?”

  “Hey, you talk. You like that crow I fought?” Aaron said and inspected the demon.

  Hellfire Demon [ level 99 ]

  Titles: [ Bloodborne ] [ Invader ]

  “Crow? What is this mortal muttering about? And why have you failed me, my minions?”

  “We–ah…” one of the cultists mumbled and swallowed.

  “We did everything as commanded!”

  “Then why have I no soul?” The demon glared at Aaron. “My summoning has been interrupted.”

  “Oh, yeah. That makes sense,” Aaron nodded thoughtfully.

  “We couldn’t have known, master–”

  “Silence. You shall pay for this later. For now, I have a soul to claim.”

  This was… curious. Could the demon really take his soul? And what would have happened if he didn’t have his ability to resurrect?

  Would the trial have dragged him back to the hallway before the summoning could have been completed, or could they have actually taken his soul?

  If his soul had been taken, then he was fairly certain that not even the trial could bring him back to life.

  Suddenly, he had a troubling thought.

  What if the trial rules don’t work the same as the difficulty increases?

  Not just the demon, but the cultists all seemed far more aware than most of what he had found in the trial, just like the crow had.

  Secret trials… monsters that are aware and thinking? What other secrets is this place hiding?

  As intriguing as that thought was, he still had an angry demon to deal with and lowered into a fighting stance.

  Another thought struck him as he prepared to fight. What better foe for a test run before dueling Mo’han again?

  Beating shadows was one thing, but it was an entirely different thing to beat an aware monster like this, and adrenaline pumped through his veins at the thought of it.

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