Season 3: Catpurr 14: Rezalia Des’hart.

  “Cease! Cease!” Adam shouted, dodging a blast of concentrated dark energy that liquefied the space he'd once been.

  “A person that doesn't fight,” Des’hart said calmly, her smooth voice echoing out to bounce across the walls lined by undead, “Is only prey for the predator.”

  -34 HP

  “HuLhK?!” Adam winced, blown back and sent flying into the air only to crash into a rack of old tools and vials with an audible crunch of his bones.

  “I thought I taught you better?” Des'hart said, the dozens of undead shifting to move as Adam blinked to get his bearings.

  Great. Two more ribs broken. Fracture… damn it. Adam grit his teeth, his eyes focused on the smirking woman he hadn't seen in nearly ten years as his breath came out shallow.

  An illusion? Most definitely. However despite that being the case, Adam couldn't help but feel like he was dealing with the genuine article as he rose to surroundings familiar to him.

  He was back in The Lair, the scent of lilacs staining the hardwood furniture that lined the homely interior of brown brick supported by pillars of bone and packed with undead.

  “Fine, I'll play along,” Adam hissed, summoning another skeletonal horde of skellie-cats and two large sabertooth skeletons that flanked his sides.

  “This again? Don't you have anything new? Years on the run and at the end of it all, this is all you amount to. I can't say I'm not disappointed Adam.”

  Adam furrowed his brow, the sting of her words weighing heavy on his shoulders. It was one thing that Dungeon mimicked his teacher's appearance but to have the voice, cadence, and demeanor was…

  Unsettling.

  Damn, even the way it chastises me is like her!

  The undead were closing in, dozens of them, medium to low-tier monsters that advanced towards Adam from all sides.

  “Go,” Adam ordered, his skellie-cats darting out in each direction to turn their claws and fangs against the horde.

  Des’hart merely looked on, boredom clearly evident in her eye, the same look Adam recognized before pain would occur.

  “If this is a test, what is the answer?” Adam muttered before dodging an optic blast from her mechanical eye. He shot forward, avoiding the mana blast from her left hand then leaping over the blade wind from her right before pivoting to sidestep the outreach of skeletal hands erupting from the ground.

  Adam knew the patterns, inside and out, the skirmishes he'd had with his teacher still ingrained into the memory of his muscles.

  Des’hart raised a brow, leaning back as Adam's claws came out with mana slicing the air where the woman once stood.

  “Oh my,” The raven-haired woman smiled, clutching her neck. “Aiming to kill these days? Maybe you have grown.”

  “Don't speak to me like her,” Adam hissed, standing upright.

  “Oh? Like who?”

  “Don't play coy. If this is a trial, what do I need to do to complete it?” Adam asked, avoiding a large tendril of bones that wrecked what remained of the cupboards, vials, and desks.

  “Beat me.”

  “Kinda hard to do that when I'm handicapped. It's not really fair.”

  “And what have I told you about fairness?” The woman said as two ghouls lashed out for Adam only to be met by his two sabertooth skeletons.

  “It doesn't exist in a fight,” Adam spat before opening his storage ring and producing a silver item in the shape of an L with a trigger.

  He squeezed the trigger, unleashing the bang of the custom made firearm of steel loaded with a magazine of forty two rounds. A triumph card personally crafted by him with help from Redfield which would guarantee his victory.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Or, that's what Adam thought would happen as he suddenly heard every warning Redfield had given him about firearms before blatantly ignoring them.

  Instead, the gun kept firing, the heavy weapon’s recoil dragging Adam's hand around to hose the horde of undead before he dropped the gun and began dancing in place to avoid the bullets ricocheting off the nearby walls.

  “CRAP! CRAPCRAPCRAPCCEAPBACKSETS?!” Adam shouted, his skellie cats rushing towards him to form a protective dome against the bullets still oozing from the automatic weapon. “WHY WONT IT STOP FIRING?!”

  Finally, after a few moments, the weapon lay still on the floor surrounded by dozens of bullet casings with Adam slowly peaking his head around the barrier of bones.

  “Are you done?” Des’hart said, remaining completely unphased.

  “No,” This time Adam summoned a non-prototype, the revolver spitting its roar into the woman's face with a resounding crack echoing out.

  This time the illusion smiled as the crumpled bullet fell from her face.

  “Well…”

  “I know what guns are Adam.”

  “Of course you do,” Adam grit his teeth, his triumph card ineffective against Rezalia’s magical barrier.

  Must be a copy of my memory of her with my memories.

  “Tell me Adam, in the ten years since my disappearance, what have you done with your life?”

  “Can we skip the questions and get to the point?”

  “Answer the question, imagine each answer as a trial point.”

  “I thought you said I'd have to defeat you to get out?”

  “And what have I told you about trust and lying?”

  Adam clicked his teeth, pouncing out of the way of a tendril of bones only to be hit by an optic blast from Rezalia’s mechanical eye.

  -22 HP

  Real or not, this sure hurts like her!

  Adam clenched his teeth, his eyes darting around to the enemies that surrounded him. He had no more gimmicks, no more allies, no special tools or items that could wiggle his way out.

  Guess I actually have to play this game…

  “So tell me Adam,” Rezalia said, standing over the injured cat boy. “What have you done with your life in the last ten years? Any lie or deviation other than answering my questions could cost you your life.”

  “I…” Adam muttered, furrowing his brow, “I've worked hard to spread your teachings.”

  “My… teachings?” The illusion blinked once before her brow furrowed.

  “Of necromancy.”

  “Is that what you think I wanted? For you to spread what I taught you?”

  “No,” Adam whispered, his voice catching for a moment as Rezalia's eye lit up. “But… it's all I had left of you. So I did my best to share the feelings you gave me when you were here. To share the truth of necromancy and enlighten the masses to a better quality of life. Just like you did for me.”

  Rezalia's face slackened slightly, blinking once before sighing as she turned away.

  “So, you've spent the last ten years doing nothing for yourself.”

  “I did it because I wanted to.”

  “No. You did it chasing after me. To become like me without ever pursuing your own goals or living your own life,” Rezalia walked away, the scantly clad woman sitting a chair of bones that magically appeared beneath her. “Have you experienced love? Gotten drunk? Kissed a girl or made friends?”

  “Uh… no. Ew.”

  “Ew? So you want to enlighten others when you don't even have a clue how the other half lives?” Rezalia said, cocking her head to rest her face on her arm she propped up on the armrest. “How are you supposed to improve others' lives when you have zero insight into their struggles?”

  Adam remained silent, feeling as though he were nine years old being lectured again.

  “I blame myself. Do you think this is the life I wanted for you?” Rezalia continued.

  “I don't know what you want. You left.”

  “I taught you everything there was to know about necromancy, not to paint yourself as a target but to live your own life Adam. To have the means to defend yourself in a world that would consume you. And instead of making a life for yourself this is what you've done.”

  “Is this the point of the trial? To lecture me?”

  “Insight. Reflection. Not all trials are about death, destruction, or survival Adam,” Rezalia replied.

  “And you know a lot about the trials?”

  “I do.”

  Suddenly something clicked in Adam's mind, a theory he hadn't thought of as he looked the illusion of his long lost teacher in the eye.

  “You… were in the trials?”

  “Everyone who gets a system becomes a candidate. Even if they don't want to,” Rezalia said, eyeing her hands boredly.

  Adam held his breath, his mind racing at the implications of what this meant. There were thousands, even millions of people who held systems from where he came from. And that was just one planet. So what about all of the other realms?

  All of us… were candidates? For what? A wish? Adam frowned, piecing together what he knew about the trials.

  One or a few thousand contestants made sense, especially given how fatal the trials usually were, but millions? Perhaps even billions spread throughout various unknown lands?

  The only thing Adam could surmise was that the trials were exactly that, trials. But for what? He didn't know, only that he was just a piece of data in a test he didn't agree to be a part of.

  So what was the end goal? Entertainment? Or something more sinister? Or perhaps every word spoken by this illusion was merely that, an illusion.

  But, eyeing the smirk on her face Adam didn't think so. Not because he could tell from her expression but rather the feeling the woman gave off.

  “What are the trials?” Adam asked only for the woman to shake her head and press a slender finger to her lips in a hushing manner.