Chương 33: "Impawsible Odds (2)”

Celestia proceeded to move forward slowly, using the butt of her spear to tap the ground ahead of her. Each knock against the stone produced a dull, unremarkable sound. Whenever she actually pressed onto a trap, there would be a soft click and then the whistle of an arrow slicing through the air where her skull had been a heartbeat prior. This slow, methodical crawl offered no indication of progress since there was no end in sight. An hour passed, perhaps longer.

Without a sun or moon to give an indication of time, she only guessed through her internal clock. During that hour, she had triggered no fewer than a dozen traps. Each arrow had been aimed with surgical precision at her forehead. The mechanical click of the trap gave her just enough warning, and her body, honed by Jade's relentless drills and her own stubborn morning routines, allowed her to move and dodge them all. Celestia stopped for a moment and placed the spear on her back.

'If I continue at this pace, I'll starve before I reach whatever's at the end of this.' She had just survived fourteen days of starvation on the first floor and had no intention of repeating that experience. So, she took a risk. Celestia broke into a run. The change was immediate. Where the careful tap-and-step method had given her reprieve, running stripped that away. Her boots struck the flor in rapid succession, and with them came the clicks, faster now. Fweee. Fweee. Fweee.

Arrows started flying and she dodged them in sequence, her body twisting and dipping mid-stride. The first one came close, the shaft grazed the fabric of her dress-armor at the hip, close enough that she heard the scratch of the broadhead against the reinforced cloth. The second and third she avoided by wider margins. One after another, she managed to dodge them all. And gradually, she noticed something. The traps were thinning.

Where earlier there had been a pressure plate every few meters, the gaps between them grew wider. She continued running and dodging, but the arrows came less and less frequently. Her morning routine had paid off. She was able to keep her pace without her lungs giving out. Then, something whistled and it caught her off-guard. It hit her even though she didn't step on anything that would've triggered an arrow. It lodged itself above her right collarbone.

"Ugh!" she gasped in pain. The impact staggered her backward half a step. She felt the arrowhead buried in the junction between shoulder and neck, and felt the warm trickle of blood soaking into the collar of her dress-armor. Her left hand flew to the shaft. She was about to pull it out when she noticed the pain was receding. She quickly noticed there was no pain anymore. In fact, it was numb and there was a foul scent coming from the arrow.

'Poison?!' Fuck! She had to run quicker now. She didn't know how fatal the poison was, or how long it took for it to circulate through her whole body. Thankfully, since the arrow hit a part that didn't damage any bone, important muscle, or organs, she immediately pulled it out. She started running faster. Now learning that the arrows were being shot without a trigger, she focused on the sound. Whenever there was a whistle sound, she'd immediately leap to the left or right. Running and running. Another hour passed.

She realized she was getting slightly sick. It wa probably from the poison, she surmised. But she continued on, remaining vigilant and focusing her eyes forward. The torches blurred past her as she kept her breathing steady and her ears open. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. Another hour passed, and she felt her entire right arm go numb, though she could still move it. The numbness had crept outward from the wound.

Her fingers responded sluggishly when she tried flexing them. Then, she grew suspicious. At least three minutes had passed without a single arrow. The corridor was quiet with just the sound of her boots thumping, her breathing, and the faint crackling of torches on the walls. Just when she thought that, she saw a blur of movement in front of her and barely raised her right arm instinctively when an arrow suddenly pierced it, aiming for her head.

The broadhead punched clean through her forearm and stopped, its tip protruding from the other side of the flesh. A silver lining in this was that she didn't feel pain. But the new problem was that the arrows no longer made any sound. How that was possible, she didn't try to logically place it in this fantasy world. How? How was she going to sense the arrows this time?

'Focus... Focus...!' And… nothing. Yeah, that wasn't going to cut it. It was at a time like this that she painfully regretted not preparing a buckler or at least commissioned a portable shield from the Reingarde smithy.

'Wait…' One of the magical trinkets her father gave her. How dumb was she not to remember about it all this time? She frantically rummaged the hidden pocket of her dress-armor, taking out a glove and wore it on her unfeeling right hand. The leather was dark and well-fitted. It was an artifact that transferred damage from the body to the hand, which turned out to be quite useful at this point due to her being unable to feel pain in her right hand. Just then, an arrow struck her forehead with a thuck and bounced off.

She felt her right hand jerk at the same time.

'Thank God it works.' She continued running, and running, tanking the arrows head on. Whenever they hit her, they simply bounced off. The leather on her glove darkened with each impact. Something wet starting seeping through the seams after the fifteenth or sixteenth hit. It didn't matter. As long as the glove held, she could tank whatever the corridor threw at her. Eventually, after around thirty more minutes, she finally saw the end of the corridor. A black door embedded in a wall.

And on the wall surrounding the door, there were countless holes. This was obviously where the arrows shot out from. The numbness at this point had spread to her body, but she didn't have the luxury to care. Running and running, still tanking the arrows while getting closer to the black door. The wall grew larger in her vision with every stride, and with it, the density of the barrage increased. The holes were firing in sequences now, in volleys of three, four, five arrows at a time.

Then, the glove on her right hand flew off, blood spilling out and trailing behind her. What remained was a hand that looked like it was skinned and diced. The flesh had been peeled and shredded by the accumulated redirected force until the leather had nothing left to latch onto. It seemed like the glove had slipped out because there was nothing to grip. Then, an arrow hit her knee, piercing through. Even though she still couldn't feel pain, she was now unable to run. The joint buckled on her next step.

So she slowly limped forward. There was probably about fifty meters from here to the door. She didn't allow herself to stop. With her other hand, she retrieved the spear from her back and used it as a crutch, bearing her weight while her left leg did the work and the right dragged behind. Arrows continued to fire. Without the glove, they struck her and stayed. One buried itself in her left shoulder. Another grazed her temple, a third lodged in her waist. Yet, she felt none of them.

The poison had spread far enough that her entire body had become a numb vessel carrying itself forward through sheer intent.

'Forty meters.' Her vision was starting to blur. The black door ahead flickered in and out of focus.

'Thirty.' Her left leg was shaking now.

'Fifteen.' An arrow struck her square in the back. She hadn't noticed that there were actually holes in the ceiling. She stumbled forward used the spear to keep herself from falling.

'Five.' The adrenaline pumped through her veins. It was the only thing keeping her conscious, surging in hot pulses, each one buying her another step. Another arrow hit her in the side.

'Two.' She could see that the black door was right there in front of her, close enough to touch if she fell forward. And this... this dance between death and survival. She found it fun. Thump. Thump. Thump. As her heart hammered against her ribs, she had just noticed that she was smiling; it was wide and uneven, and it split across her face with the manic energy of someone who had discovered something new. She liked this. The adrenaline singing through her veins.

The gamble where every second had to be something she took for herself. Nothing had ever been earned in her previous life. Even her hobbies had been purchased, and every problem could be solved with money. But this? This couldn't be bought. Every meter she had crossed, she had paid for with her own flesh, blood, and sweat. It was the first thing in either of her lives that this success felt completely, indisputably hers. Losing consciousness, Celestia fell forward, sinking into the black door.