4 "Endurance" - 3

Over the years, through millions upon millions of stories, novels, and poems, the deeds of great people have been cemented into the minds of all in our world.

And, whether they were being punished for evil deeds, or accomplished these feats of their own volition, one thing has remained clear amongst them.

The willpower to endure, to endure longer than anybody else.

That was how legends were made.

Atlas: To forever hold the world.

Sisyphus: To forever roll a boulder up a hill.

Prometheus: To forever have his entrails eaten.

And Ren Dover: Who climbed an endless rope and did the impossible by witnessing the end of infinity.

Legends, Myths, and Main Characters, these terms described all the people mentioned above.

Yet, what about me?

Cursed to forever live after death.

To wake up every single morning.

And later on, to record the stories of an almost infinite amount of worlds.

I had endured all of this, and yet, my name was only known by one living person.

And once they died, I would forever be lost to history, my fate being a splotch of ink in one of the infinite books in the Akashic Records.

But I now had another chance.

This time, with endurance surpassing all those mentioned before, I would win.

I would win the world, I would win this game called life.

Raising my head up from its downturned position, I looked at the last few people on the carriage.

"I'm sorry." I whispered.

And then, in a flash of light, they were all decapitated at the exact same time.

I wasn't a monster, I would respect the deaths of other people.

Even when it was I who killed them.

After all, if there was one thing I learned from being an apprentice in the Akashic Records, it was that life, although insignificant, was full of wondrous things no matter the life.

Every story was different, and every story was entertaining.

I mean, if life wasn't entertaining, then why were we all living it?

Yes, it was that simple.

Anyways, coming back to the current situation, I dispersed my Legerdemain and waited for the system notification.

[Error! Error! Only [x1] Life Forms are detected in Designated Area 3475692873642.]

[Error! Rewards have been waived until further review.]

"..."

"..."

"..."

[Congratulations, you have survived the Tutorial!]

[Please proceed to the next area before the timer hits zero.]

[1 Day | 23 Hours | 59 Minutes | 59 Seconds]

[1 Day | 23 Hours | 59 Minutes | 58 Seconds]

[1 Day | 23 Hours | 59 Minutes | 57 Seconds]

...

Wiping away the system interface, I looked at the carriage door in front of me, which surprisingly, was actually the object that was my next obstacle.

And what laid beyond it was even worse, but to survive, which was my first and foremost priority, I had to get past it.

Then after, I would finally see her again.

They had taken the next carriage over after all, and I had a feeling that they would survive again, just like last time.

'Those 5...'

The 5 banes of my existence so to speak.

I mean, I knew why they had separated in the end, but back then, which was now, they had been a group that stuck together through the thick and thin.

Well, there was no point thinking about them now, what I had to focus on was getting this freaking door open.

And, from what I knew, there were only 3 ways to open it.

First off, you could just use brute strength, which was the path that most people who survived "The Culling" would take, spending all their newly earned coins on stat points that now cost 1,000 coins per point and then putting them all in strength.

Obviously, I had already spent all my coins, and the system hadn't yet given me my reward for completing the trial in the way I had, and so I was stuck with my basic strength state, a solid 11 especially when considering a normal human's was 10.

What? I had been a high schooler back then, or should I say, now, and so I was obsessed with working out to maintain a good image.

Anyways, back to the topic of discussion.

The second method that one could take to get through this trial was actually an unintuitive way, which was to place all the bodies in the carriage at the sliding doors, letting the copious amounts of blood slip through the cracks, causing the numerous monsters on the other side of the door to fall into frenzy and break through the door for them, reducing any work that they would have had to do.

This was the most efficient way that I had heard about in my life before coming to the Akashic Records due to the fact that one could save their energy to actually fight the monsters instead of just losing their energy and getting slaughtered by inhuman beings.

But, as I've said above, there is a third method, and it was the one that I would take.

Discovered only be one other in this world, who would actually be dying in a few minutes all the way over in Russia.

Basically, before he had met an untimely demise to the monsters waiting outside the door, he had accidentally found that if one spilled their own blood on the "gate" leading from the area of "The Culling" to wherever the area of the second trial was, one could open a unique instance dungeon that they could either choose to attempt a clear of, or just ignore it completely and get a free pass out the door.

Of course, the guy had chosen the free pass, thus dying, but I was obviously going to choose to challenge the instance dungeon.

In that way, I could receive unique rewards that nobody had ever laid their eyes upon before, even when counting my first life.

Not even moving a muscle in my body, I subconsciously moved my legerdemain on instinct and drilled a hole through my skin to let my blood squirt out onto the door, closing the wound on my skin like it was nothing straight afterwards.

[Would you like to enter the instance dungeon?]

"Yes."