“Run!” Gilgamesh shouted as he led what remained of the group away without the slightest sign of guilt. “That proves it. It’s not enough to do something. Something must be accomplished.”

  “You got them killed!” A woman at the back blamed him.

  “I told them to wound it!” Gilgamesh shouted back more firmly than her. “But they held back out of fear. If you wait and hope, you will die! If you do not follow my guidance, you will die! Steel yourselves if you want to live!”

  Gilgamesh shamelessly deflected the blame entirely to the fallen. His words were all nonsense, and some of them even knew that, but in this frantic hellscape, none had the knowledge or courage to dispute him. He was their only hope.

  Gilgamesh led them in search of opportunity, and soon he found it, another frog monster. Perhaps the same as before, perhaps not. Either way, this one was wounded.

  One of its rear legs had been bitten off, along with a chunk of its body. Its jaw hung loose, and that dangerous tongue draped out from its mouth, severed and bleeding.

  "Look! It's wounded. We can kill it. Then the goddess will take us out of this hell." Gilgamesh tapped a hefty man on the shoulder, having observed him before to be near the brink of mental collapse, and urged him forward. "Go! Go!"

  Once again, he led the group to attack, but slowed his own charge. The burly man let out a desperate roar as he ran, as if the option to turn back did not even occur to him. Terror streaked through his face as the monster turned towards him, but he did not slow. With fear as his only fire, he stabbed his branch into the giant frog's wounded flesh and disappeared, leaving behind an iron medallion in his place.

  “Look!” Gilgamesh’s own eyes seemed to shine with his hollow manipulations. “The goddess has accepted him. He has escaped. Attack! Attack if you want to survive!”

  With the proof of hope right before their eyes, the others lost their inhibitions and doubts as they too rushed forward. One after the other, they disappeared. Even the death of one of them from the frog's bucking head could not dissuade them entirely.

  When the last woman charged, the frog just so happened to shift in place from the pain, which brought her face-to-face with the monster. She struck at its bucking head out of pure fear. There was no skill or intelligent intent, but sheer luck guided her branch to pierce deep through its eye.

  As the frog reeled back in pain, she too vanished. But the medallion left in her place was bronze, not iron.

  “Bronze?!” Gilgamesh exclaimed as his mind raced with thoughts. "Destroying an eye is clearly a better feat than stabbing an existing wound. Is bronze better than iron then? Does this test give a greater reward, the greater the feat?"

  "...Is that my path? To gain the peerless strength I require from this Crucible?"

  Gilgamesh tightened his grip over his own weapon, but before he could charge as well, the frog monster keeled over from the accumulation of its injuries, clearly on the verge of death. Gilgamesh lingered for only a moment, then ran off in a different direction.

  He could utilize the knowledge he had to escape right away, but that would only make him mediocre. Whatever reward the Tower granted him, he needed it to rival the Zoraster bloodline. It had to be at least that much.

  Gilgamesh scoured the apocalyptic scene alone, searching for an opportunity. He picked up a broken horn the size of a spear next to a dead beast’s corpse, and threw aside his branch.

  "Damaging a monster results in Iron. A significant injury results in Bronze. Killing one should give me something better." Gilgamesh solidified his audacious ambitions, but he was not foolish.

  Leprosy made him weak, even by the standards of commoners. He stood not a single chance against these monsters in true combat, but Gilgamesh did not intend to fight fairly. It was possible for trickery and cunning to fell what even the strongest arm could not.

  A suitable spot finally caught his eye, and he ran to it without hesitation. Gilgamesh set the long horn against a sturdy tree stump and propped it up at just the right angle using corpses he found lying around.

  His breath had become hoarse and strained from the constant exertion since the start of this hellish test, but Gilgamesh did not rest. He grabbed a flat stone and began to dig deeper into the small ridge in front of his makeshift pike.

  He dug and dug and dug, until that small space became a ditch large enough to hold him. And then he searched. Searched for a suitable enemy. And soon he found one.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  A bloated ram with ominous eyes, the same kind of beast that had devastated the crowd he had appeared with at the start. These creatures were terrifyingly fast, but they had a tell before they lunged, and Gilgamesh had already proven that he could dodge them.

  Gilgamesh made sure that he was not already in the sights of another monster, then picked up a small stone and hurled it with all his might at the beast.

  With his meager strength, the stone did not make it the whole way. But the soft sound of its impact on the ground still caught the beast’s attention, and it followed the source of its direction to Gilgamesh.

  The monstrous ram closed half of the distance with a single leap, but it crouched down more than it needed to when it landed, and its legs began to swell. Expectation bordering on elation filled Gilgamesh as he flung himself into the dirt, and the monster lunged past overhead.

  “I win…”

  A chain of explosions detonated behind him, faster than his perception could acknowledge, the mere aftershocks of which sent Gilgamesh rolling across the ground.

  The bloated ram let out a vile bleating as it tried to will its putrid body up despite its heavy wounds, but it was crushed dead beneath the callous paw of a horned lion with a fiendish face.

  The horned lion then let out a roar like thunder that struck several blurring objects and kept their ensuing explosions at bay.

  “...what just happened?” Gilgamesh pulled himself up in a daze to find a battle of titans.

  Facing the monstrous lion were a dozen large earthen spheres, each with a single distinct glowing blue eye. They whirled around the great beast like flies, but one suddenly cut towards it and exploded.

  He felt the heat of the fiery blast on his face, and the gust of wind smack into his chest. But even with an attack of that magnitude, the lion stood firm, surrounded by swirls of wind that seemed to shield it from harm.

  Gilgamesh looked left and saw a giant being he could only describe as a humanoid castle. The giant golem did nothing but stare at the horned lion from a distance, as more spheres flew out from its shoulders.

  These new golems had circular blades that ran straight around their diameter, which spun so fast he could hear their whirling in the distance. The first of these whirling blade golems sailed straight for the horned lion and cut a deep, bloody line into its hide through its armor of wind.

  To its credit, the lion did not suffer the second. It launched another thunderous roar to knock the rest back, but Gilgamesh did not linger to watch any longer. His trap was nothing more than tattered debris. The plan had failed.

  Gilgamesh discreetly broke off into a sprint, and a blade golem severed him in half at the waist. He fell back into the dirt with his face to the bleak sky, struggling to realize what had happened. He struggled to think, struggled to stay conscious, but it was all fading. Everything was fading.

  In the distance behind him, the horned lion lunged recklessly at the castle golem. It endured all of the blades in its path to unleash a thunderous roar at point-blank range that stripped away the clay bricks that shielded what lay inside.

  The golem started to repair itself at once, but the lion mauled at the glowing red core. Bladed golems struck at the lion but it attacked with no regard for its wounds. A powerful swipe of his claws ripped out the glowing core, and sent the damaged orb rolling away to knock against Gilgamesh's still hand. The lion's gaze followed the path and drew closer to it with labored breaths.

  Gilgamesh was not aware of any of it. A darkness had crept in, one that did not cease. He tried to will it away with what little consciousness remained, but it only drew closer and closer. Deaf to his plight, cold to his desperation.

  It started to consume him, and Gilgamesh felt what it was for the first time. A void. An endless, still, nothingness. It promised to consume his thoughts. Consume his ambition. Consume his name. It promised to take everything he had and everything he was.

  A chill ran through Gilgamesh’s soul. A primary cry from within, one he had never felt before, even in his most dire hour. A deep, dementing…

  FEAR

  Terror surged through Gilgamesh's near-lifeless body as his hand desperately reached for something, anything. And it found the core.

  The bandages of his hand burned away and the skin of his palm seared to a char in an instant. Pain greater than any Clash he had endured struck his mind, but his grip only tightened further in response.

  No pain could compare to the all-consuming nothingness he had brushed against. No torment was greater than the insanity he had felt rise in the face of that hazy darkness. The only feelings he held within him at this moment were fear and defiance. Defiance of death. Defiance of nothing. Defiance of his insignificant fate.

  As the bleeding lion drew near and opened its drooling maw, the golem core within Gilgamesh's hand finally shone. A single bladed drone pierced into the lion's heart at the command given through sheer instinct to survive. And that was enough.

  Gilgamesh suddenly found himself back within the boundless starry space. His fatal wound and indescribable agony were both gone, but he could still feel the traces of fear settling within him.

  And he could feel something else. Something of greater personal importance to him. A state of being he knew without knowledge of what it was.

  [ You have achieved an Incredible Feat. ]

  [ Calamity Slayer I ]

  'Slay a monster much stronger than yourself.'

  [ Your Feat has been reduced to Remarkable since the monster was heavily injured. ]

  [ You are rewarded with a Silver tier Talent. ]

  [ You have acquired Master Golem Core (silver). ]

  [ Master Golem Core has reached lvl. 1. ]

  [ You are rewarded 5 Attribute Points. ]

  [ You have achieved an Incredible Feat. ]

  [ Endurer ]

  'Survive certain death.'

  [ Your Feat has been reduced to Meaningful due to the nature of the Trials. ]

  [ You are rewarded 5 Attribute Points. ]

  The obsidian-faced Ate twitched with malicious glee, and its face snapped back to bleeding white marble. "Praise be to the Tower."