This is Oliver's fourth night in the Wither Castle.
There is still hell in this world, and it was the first time he had such an idea. There are no intricately designed traps, no sharp edges that make people nervous. Remember, everyone's mental weaknesses are different. If they were defeated one by one in a targeted manner, the efficiency of the gatekeeper would definitely be terribly low.
The way they use it is very simple and crude—
No drinking water.
Lack of food is fine, but without water, people die very quickly. The gatekeepers apparently found a solution. After almost three days of restless sleep, Oliver probably understood why the metal ring at the end of the sign had to hit the collarbone directly.
A very low level of magic power flowed into his body along the metal, barely restoring the body to a level where it could survive. But the thirst and hunger did not decrease by half, but got worse. He had no doubt that if someone took off the metal sign at this time, he would definitely fall into a coma due to lack of water.
The gatekeepers are beautifully done, and the death row prisoners used in combat have no access to bathrooms or anything that comes in contact with water. All cleaning is done by the magic circle, and most of the metabolic functions of the death row prisoners are also suspended with the insertion of the metal ring. Compared with people, they are more like human flesh machines being cleaned up at the moment.
There is only pure magic input, and nothing else.
There is also a way to relieve the thirst and hunger that seems to be dying, as long as you win. After defeating an opponent, the gatekeeper rewards powerful healing spells. It will instantly return the human body to its peak state, and all discomfort, fatigue and wounds will disappear. Someone once described its effect in this way - one second is still being burned by the fire of hell, and the next second is lying on the clouds of heaven.
Just obey, just win. There is no more reason to shake the faith of man than instinct.
It's easy to just give up. There's no point in sticking to it except to make yourself weaker and easier to kill.
By now, Oliver knew the goalkeeper's intentions very well. Because now the temptation is whispering in his ear, roaring deep in his brain, making a soft call from every shadow—
Start lightly, don't kill people, just take 100 points of value from others. Even if the other party will enter the test area earlier because of the loss of value... But who can be sure? Anyway, there are still several battles before the other party completely loses value, and the person who personally destroys the other party is definitely not himself. Take a step back and say, maybe the opponent can still win the next game
Go ahead, it muttered. Now your power is suppressed as much as possible, and it is not much different from ordinary people. It's not bullying, it's survival after all, and no one will blame you. Go grab it.
But Oliver knew very well that that would be the first step in depravity.
He chuckled a few times at the empty darkness beside him. His mouth is now terribly dry, and his lips are cracked from thirst, unable to withstand the muscle pull. The small crack that had been scabbed was torn open again, and Oliver greedily licked the blood that oozes from his lips, feeling like he was licking the thick bark.
He was too weak to create wounds on his own initiative, so that he could use his own blood to quench this thirst—it would only drain his stamina, which he already had little, more quickly. The wound on his body was still oozing blood slowly, and the coagulated part was stuck to the inner garment, and it was painful like a tear when moved. But his head was dizzy and swollen due to extreme thirst. In contrast, the pain in his body was not so intense.
The initially unbearable hunger had already turned into cramps and colic, and the stomach acid seemed to be trying to digest his stomach. In a sense, it was a lot of patience. At present, Oliver has only one wish - those wounds had better not get too serious, he absolutely cannot afford the price of a disease right now.
Because what awaits him during the day is still a whole day of uninterrupted fighting, and he can't sleep at night. Oliver held the Sword of Rest tightly, leaned into the corner of the wall, and stared at the darkness in front of him through heavy eyelids.
With a slight friction sound from the front left, Oliver suddenly drew the Sword of Rest from its scabbard. A soft blue light rolled across the snow-white sword. But the friction sound did not disappear, but suddenly became louder. Sharp iron thorns slashed Oliver's cheek, bringing a string of blood flowers.
A heavy meteor hammer came from the darkness and smashed into the cell wall. Oliver rolled in place on the floor, holding the scabbard in one hand and grasping the hilt of the Sword of Rest in the other - but that hand was shaking uncontrollably.
so tired. He thought numbly, once again dodging the weapon that hit him.
I want to rest, I don't want to move anymore.
Oliver swung the sword in his hand and cut off the chain connecting the Meteor Hammer with one stroke. He could feel his muscles screaming and aching, and his body was unbelievably soft.
Please, stop.
But the cell was still filled with hostility and fear. The man with the broken weapon let out a roar, followed by a second opponent, a third, and later Oliver didn't even bother to count. The people in the same cell attacked more and more frantically, and he could only keep resisting those attacks and trying not to hurt them.
But the more restrained he became, the more fearful people became, and the more aggressive his attacks became.
yes. Oliver brandished his sword wearily, and he could guess what those people were thinking—the value of his 300,000 yuan alone was enough to tempt some of them to take risks. On the other hand, his body is obviously reaching its limit. If his mental defense line is completely broken and he decides to seek comfort and relief... Then the first wave of suffering will definitely be the people who are locked up with him.
Those people are worth thousands at most. Even if they were also deprived of mana, they could only rely on physical strength, and the difference in combat skills was clear at a glance.
Then it's good to kill yourself first, a wise decision. Oliver gasped hard. The lack of sleep made his heart beat extraordinarily fast, but the annoying repair magic was still pouring in from the metal ring on his collarbone, and he couldn't even faint.
In the end, it was the prison guards who came forward to end this extraordinarily long night. It's just that he didn't come to protect "precious materials", but to inform them of the rising sun.
The battle of the day is about to begin.
"Are you going to tie again, 300,000?" The big man holding the meteor hammer was full of bloodshot eyes, "Don't underestimate people."
Oliver smiled hard under the skeleton helmet, unable to respond to the opponent's provocation. Indeed, in the hundreds of short battles so far, he has neither won nor lost.
But he was getting weaker and weaker, and at this moment Oliver really wasn't sure if he could come back here alive.
The death row inmates in the test area wearing standard robes were repairing weapons for the big man. Most of them were crawling with dense sutures, and their faces were expressionless. Under the restriction of the collar, death row prisoners in the combat zone and the test zone cannot harm each other. In order to save manpower, each cell will have several death row prisoners in the experimental area who uniformly do chores.
Like McCain. The mole-like man was looking at Oliver with complex eyes, scratching nervously at the stitches on his arms.
"You will kill sooner or later!" he said in a shrill voice, sweat dripping from his forehead. "You will sooner or later... you can't..."
Oliver forcefully glanced at Micah, but still did not respond, he looked down at his left wrist—
There is no more armor on his left wrist. A slightly festering mark was exposed, bulging from the skin and dazzlingly red.
"Hi," he muttered. "I'm alive until dawn today, Nemo."
After speaking, Oliver sighed softly, staggered to keep up with the prison guard, and proceeded to the multiplayer arena as always. But this time, when he was about to plunge into the entrance door, a soft female voice rang in his ear.
"The one who killed 3,500-that's the fat man with the long axe and the red armor." Mora's voice came from behind the white cloth covering his face, "No one usually wants to come up to provoke him, and he was in physical condition yesterday. Not very good. Your words can easily kill him, you have to recover quickly."
"Thank you." Oliver tried to squeeze his voice out of his throat, "but no need."
"Why? Are you a fanatic or something, when are you!"
"Because I can imagine a more painful situation." Oliver rubbed the slightly swollen engraving from the infection, "If I give up my principles here to escape pain... I can no longer believe in myself."
If one day, he needs to kill Nemo with his own hands, it will be hundreds of times more painful than now. But if things really got to that point, he had to get his hands on it—on the basis of this promise, the current Nemo could have the qualifications to live a stable life under the eyes of the Knight Commander of Judgement.
Yes, how could he believe that he could "kill Nemo" if he couldn't bear the pain now
"If I can't trust myself, how can I convince others to trust me?"
He had to hold onto that bottom line, and there was no other option. After all, he and Mr. Cross made an agreement, and it was a promise that could never be broken.
"Then just die." Mora's voice was cold and calm. "If you continue to weaken...anything worth a few hundred can kill you."
"I know." Oliver pulled the sword out of the scabbard, he could already smell the bloody smell that seemed to never dissipate in the arena. "But I'm still alive."
The female killer disguised as a prison guard snorted, sounding a little irritable: "I don't know what to do."
Oliver gave her a slight bow and walked into the vast arena with his sword in hand. The huge wooden door embedded in metal closed silently behind him.
Deeper under the gladiatorial arena.
"Have you heard about the boy who insisted on a tie?" The member of the gatekeeper in red robes pushed his glasses. "The bones are hard enough, do you want to deal with it?"
"That's something you need to worry about in the combat area. What should the management of a test area worry about." Another old man wearing the same robe choked.
"His collar reading is amazing, didn't you see it? That kid isn't very strong. Look at his willpower, maybe it's the perfect material."
"Let's not say whether he can hold on, even if he holds on, do you still remember the previous failure? There is not much space left in the Flesh Furnace, so we have to be cautious."
"Let that lunatic try him? I'm going to make a bet with the combat zone, if he kills the lunatic, then it's just what the combat zone wants... But if he gets killed by the lunatic, we'll go get the body ."
"...What if he didn't kill that lunatic, and he wasn't dead?" A new voice joined them—a scruffy middle-aged man stretched out a hand from the stack of books and waved it feebly. "You are too absolute."
"How is that possible," cried the bespectacled manager. "Then we should have him over—but why would you say such illogical things? It's not like you, Della."
"Hmm." The middle-aged man who was paralyzed in the stack of books replied nonchalantly. "I was dizzy."
Weird. Della Laineen looked at one of the several light screens at hand—
Out of interest, he has been silently paying attention to Oliver Ramon's physical data. It didn't take long for him to make an extremely interesting discovery. If it was in the past, Della Lane would definitely be the first to jump up and ask Ramon for an autopsy.
But given Vance's strange attitude toward Nemo Wright, coupled with some vague premonition, Della Layne didn't want to get involved too actively. If you want to start, let others start first, anyway, you can still study it yourself in the end.
He glanced again at the throbbing runes and flickering images on the vision screen. Oliver Ramon's heart was unmistakably haunted by a curse, a unique response to Trent's blight. According to the data, the curse of slow wriggling has existed for at least twenty years.
That human heart should be completely unable to beat. Trent blight invades the body from the heart, destroying the brain first, then slowly eroding nerves and paralyzing internal organs. Although Ramon's body was terribly weak, he was definitely healthy. It's that the heartbeat pattern is completely different from that of a normal human—
It's as if some external force is forcing it to jump.
It was the first time he saw a human being who had survived Trent blight, a terminal disease born from the curse of the abyss that had disappeared for hundreds of years.
,Wonderful!
(m.. = )