Rhys woke with a start. Correction, he spasmed out of a chair as he fell over to the side in shock. His face pressed up against a rich carpeted surface, hands grabbing desperately at his chest. Phantom pain shooting through his body where the bullets had entered.He'd been shot, he–"Wha-I aghhh.""Well, that hasn't happened in a while, are you alright?"A soothing voice called out in concern as adrenaline pumped through Rhys's veins. He was still in his bloody SpiritSpring uniform, two holes right at his chest. He was still alive? How?Then he saw it; he was in a room of inky black, staring up at the underside of an ornate table at the speaker's legs. They were wearing suit pants but made of no fabric he'd ever seen. At least in real life, the pants looked like they were woven out of the cosmos itself. Galaxies swirled as twinkling starlight blinked at him.Somehow Rhys's heart started beating faster. He knew who this was, he knew what this meant. The phantom pain in his chest disapp

《Now entering a safe zone, please pick your rewards. 5 minutes remaining until you are forcefully ejected from the safe room.》The room was completely white. A stark contrast to the inky black that was the Arbiter’s Void. A large wooden table sat in the middle, an array of medieval equipment neatly organized on top.Rhys appreciated none of this as he tripped over his own legs from getting pushed. He saw the notification from the Trial System as he laid on the ground."What the fuck!"He jumped and stormed around the room, he paced around the blank white room trying to make sense of the entire interaction. The Arbiter, the entity that oversaw The Trials, The Dominion, and was often hailed as a god, had completely screwed him over. Rhys no longer believed that the entity didn't know what it was doing.How was he supposed to deal with that? How was anyone?More importantly, why had this never happened to anyone else? Rhys had poured countless hours into excerpts of others meeting with t

Wrong.That was what Rhys had felt the moment he left the forested path and made it to a village half an hour's jog away. He was walking on open road now, only a hundred feet from the village. It wouldn't have much more than the basics. A general store, a small blacksmith and the farm he was walking through now.The real problem was that the village hadn't been slaughtered yet. As terrible as that thought was, if the adventurers were planning to max out combat achievements, then killing the town would have been done immediately.The only reason Rhys could think of was that a team was maximizing achievements while having one member go for a non combat class. Maybe it was a full team of bloodthirsty crafters? That didn't sound right.He was lost in thought when a friendly voice called out to him."Hello! And where are you from then?"It was an old man in a straw hat, potentially an early warning crier for the village. The man kept a healthy distance from him. If he was alive, then every

Rhys Artisan hid behind a tree near the road, a five-minute jog from the entrance of the dungeon. He had been waiting for over an hour until he finally heard the steps of the drake jog past him.That was the first part of the plan. Wait for the drake soldier to realize something had gone wrong and double back to check on his team members.He hopped back onto the path and into the dungeon. He knew the steps but didn't know if he could act well enough to fool the boss.He made it past the burnt down inn. As far as he could tell, all the zombies had been taken care of. He unsheathed his sword and swung it around, checking his own movements while he walked. Each strike flowed like a dream as he wondered if this was what the truly talented people felt on Terra Prime. The children of adventurers.A realm 0 [Infiltrator]. Peak physical talent comparable to any Olympian on Terra Prime. Enough talent to react to a highly skilled soldier from Terra Prime. If he could have moved like this, he wo

《Now entering the Arbiter's Void.》 Unlike the first time Rhys Artisan did not collapse on his chair. Instead he stood up, throwing his chair backwards and slammed on the Arbiter's desk with both hands. "You sent me into a deathtrap!" The Arbiter looked unimpressed, though its lips did twitch a little. The entity let the silence hold for a second longer, as if to indicate that it was above such outbursts. "If I had placed you in a deathtrap and you had managed to survive, you would have a Legendary Title. Do you have one?" Rhys Artisan blinked, he checked his notifications and found no title waiting for him. That was fairly normal, even an S grade achievement wasn't worth a title anymore. The Arbiter did have a point, if it wanted him dead, he'd probably be dead. It didn't quite make him any less frustrated. "So what was that? Another accident?" He had nearly died in that Initiation Crucible, a Crucible that he should've been able to breeze through. The Arbiter simply leaned bac