For the 3rd time, the scenery changed again.
This time, Ben was prepared, he grimaced and braced himself for another round of torture. As soon as he braced himself, the world around him responded as he finally arrived in his new location.
As soon as he was transported to the new world, the first sensation that Ben felt was that of something extremely heavy dragging him deep, the 2nd sensation was that of water clogging his breath.
It took only a second for Ben to understand his new type of torture.
At this moment, he was stuck deep inside a great ocean while tied to a massive rock that was dragging him deeper into the ocean at this moment.
Being forced to drown in water was his torture this time.
Ben reacted fast and closed his mouth to hold his breath. He kept still and let the rock keep on dragging him deeper.
With his constitution as an Advanced mystic warrior, he was able to last for the first 3 hours but problems soon came.
By now, Ben's face was already as red as chili pepper as the strain of holding his breath for so long finally started taking its toll on his body.
He jerked for the first time which soon became a constant occurrence.
Out of breath already, Ben finally started struggling to no avail, he felt like his body was on fire and that his head was on a burning pan. His brain was already protesting having not received oxygen for 3 freaking hours.
"Gurgggg…!" He finally opened his mouth only to start choking.
Without the ability to die, Ben was forced to experience all the pain, inconvenience, and torture from all these without being able to die and leave it all.
He lasted only 4 minutes in this state before he passed out.
When he woke up, without any complaints, he prepared himself and took the drowning torture test again. After getting experience from his first 2 torture tests, Ben was able to adapt extremely fast to the circumstances this time.
From every failure that he experienced, he took it with a positive attitude as he worked the next time on remedying any weakness that he had.
With this attitude, Ben continually improved with time.
After an indeterminate time, after increasing his endurance countless times, Ben was finally able to persevere through all the pain past the 10-hour mark.
Once Ben completed this torture test, for the first time, the scenery no longer changed as everything simply disappeared. Ben heaved a sigh of relief on seeing this as he heard the familiar voice of the pagoda speaking again.
"Congratulations! You have completed the test of the first floor".
"Your endurance and willpower have increased, your mystic energy limits have increased, you have been rewarded with 3 fragments of a sword skill".
Instantly after the voice finished speaking, Ben saw 3 fragments of a rock flying towards him. He grabbed them and instantly, a voice spoke in his mind.
'Fragments of the Master Level Sword Skill: Precision Slash!'
"A master level sword skill!" Ben was ecstatic as he instantly felt all the grievance in him of passing through so much torture dissipating.
Apart from the 3 fragments of the master level sword skill, Ben's endurance and willpower increased exponentially which was something that excited him.
He could also feel that his soul power increased too.
After finishing the test in each floor, each of the competitors could see how much time they spent completing said test. When Ben looked, he was completely shocked as it took him 20 days to complete this freaking test.
"F*ck! Just for one test?!"
Ben no longer dared to waste time as he rushed into the entrance to the 2nd floor of the pagoda. Once he passed through the entrance, he disappeared.
When Ben regained his perception, he saw himself inside a battlefield that was set in a medieval setting back in the era of Samurais in Ancient Japan.
At this moment, he was also a Samurai with his sword and standing before him were 50 Samurais who all had their swords pointed at him.
Without a doubt, the goal of this test was him eliminating all Samurais that were before him. At the same time that Ben recognized what he needed to do to complete this test, he also recognized the changes in his body.
At this moment, all sensations of mystic energy in his body were gone. He was stripped of his access to mystic energy, leaving his only battle option to win this test to his swordsmanship.
He needed to complete this test with his swordsmanship.
Another terrible fact was that like him, every single one of the 50 Samurais before him were swordsmen who already unlocked the sword domain.
"F*ck! I'm expected to fight and defeat 50 warriors with sword domain?!"
"Is that even possible?"
Ben felt like swearing for a million years to avenge this injustice but he was not given the time nor energy to do so as the Samurais finally went to action.
Shing! Shing!
The sound of their katanas slashing through the air was rhythmic to the ears and goosebump-inducing at the same time as Ben felt all the hair in his body rising on end, he forced himself to reciprocate their actions.
"Ahhh…, f*ck you!"
Ben overcame his fear and drew his sword as he rushed forward to clash with the dozens of Samurais who were charging at him all with hostile intentions.
Ben clashed with the first one and instantly, he felt the difference from regular swordsmen as this warrior was a genius like him if not even better.
Boom!
Before he could understand what was going on, Ben saw a sword descending from the air like a collapsing mountain as another Samurai descended with it.
Ben was barely able to dodge out of the way, but there were dozens of other Samurai warriors after him as they pounced on him like a group of lionesses after a helpless and abandoned zebra.
Rex was only able to struggle for a few seconds before he lost his head.
This time, Ben experienced death for real and it was traumatic. Despite experiencing this feeling already when he met his family's inheritance ground and died to become a vampire, he never mastered the dread of experiencing it.
Ben was resurrected and he saw himself at the same place, the same battlefield as a samurai, facing the same group of 50 samurais.
The test this time was both a physical test and a test of his willpower to not break when faced with the prospect of dying a thousand times.
"Die!" Ben gritted his teeth, picked his sword and lunged at them again.
This time, Ben was able to last over a dozen seconds before he was killed. He did not give up, not that he had the option as he kept on giving his all to fight these samurais to stop the traumatizing experience of death each time.
Faced against such powerful enemies, Ben was forced to enter a state of absolute focus where he gave 110% of his effort each time he went up against them in battle. This led to him lasting better than the last each time he fought them.
Facing such fierce opposition and the pressure from it stimulated his swordsmanship that was already dull and stagnant for a long time to start growing again, Ben could feel his sword proficiency increasing every day.
Every one of the Samurais were sword masters, fighting against them for so long, it soon became like Ben was getting the opportunity to learn from them.
With each failure and death, he learned something new about swordsmanship. He suffered but gained massively each time that he died.
After the 111th death, Ben finally did it. With blood all over his body having lost a leg and a large chunk of parts of his body, Ben finally dealt the killing blow, beheading the last of the Samurais who were after him.
The familiar voice in the pagoda spoke again.
"Congratulations! You have completed the test of the second floor".
"Your sword proficiency has increased; your tight-space battle instincts have increased; and you have been rewarded with 4 fragments of a sword skill".
After getting his rewards, the first thing that Ben did was to check how much time it took for him to complete these tasks. The test took him 8 days.
After confirming this, without any delay, he continued to the next floor.
On entering the next floor, Ben saw himself appear inside space. For some strange reason, Ben was stuck in the dark endless void of space and left alone there.
After an indeterminate amount of time, Ben finally understood the motive of this test. Minato Musashi once said that to become a master, master patience.
The test of the 3rd floor was a test of patience and perseverance.
After some time, Ben finally knew that this test was the hardest of all. An excess of everything was bad, true loneliness and silence was torture, emptiness was the greatest torture that Ben had experienced all his life.
It got to an extent where he started feeling attuned to emptiness. He forgot who he was, what he was, and the reason why he was here.
Despite everything, only something kept Ben going, patience.
Ben followed the light and he soon found his exit. Once he did, the empty void cracked, finally releasing his soul to the real world again.
"Congratulations! You have completed the test of the 3rd floor".
"Your willpower has increased; you have been rewarded with 4 fragments of a sword skill and a random ability that is compatible to your bloodline".
"You have received the Special Ability: Gene Liberation".
'Fragments of the Master Level Sword Skill: Phoenix Ash!'
"You have acquired all 10 fragments to unlock the Master level Sword Skill: Precision Slash!"
"You have unlocked Master level Sword Skill: Precision Slash!"
"You have unlocked the mystic sword domain floors".
"To access the mystic domain floors, your sword proficiency needs to be at the mystic sword domain realm".
"Opening mystic domain swordsmanship stimulation test…"
Before Ben could understand what was going on, his consciousness was dragged away without his consent again into another test.
The 𝘮ost uptodat𝑒 novels are pub𝙡ished on fre(e)webno(v)el.𝒸𝑜𝘮