The Weakest Hunter Ascends

Circle of Flames 2

Creak...

Creeeak...

The remaining six survivors spun around, their tactical weapons raised.

"What was that noise?!"

"Look at the perimeter!"

"They're advancing!!"

The air left their lungs in a sudden rush of terror.

The smaller guardian statues—the ones that had previously remained perfectly motionless unless a human breached their specific proximity circles—had physically shifted several yards closer to the altar.

Arthur's gaze dropped, tracking the movement of the dust on the floor.

No... the stone limbs didn't move. The stone pedestals themselves are sliding.

The bone-rattling screeches were coming from the ancient tracks beneath the monuments, grinding slowly against the flagstones like a closing vice.

"Wait... they stopped?" Kim panted, wiping a thick layer of cold sweat from his brow.

While the rest of the group kept their weapons trained on the closing circle, Arthur's focus snapped back to the spectral blue embers floating in the air.

One of the flames sputtered, dissolving into nothingness.

Then a second.

Then a third.

Grrrrind...

A secondary screech echoed, closer this time.

"Where did that come from?!" someone shrieked. "Which one moved?!"

Arthur's head snapped up.

The sound had originated from his exact line of sight.

The collection of guardian statues directly facing his position had hitched forward a few inches.

Why only my quadrant?

Was it because his attention had briefly wavered when he looked down at the floor tracks?

To test the variable, Arthur deliberately closed his eyes for a fraction of a second.

Grrrrind...

The moment he opened his eyes, the mechanical screeching cut off instantly.

"What kind of sick mechanic is this?!"

"How are we supposed to fight this?!"

Arthur didn't waste a heartbeat, throwing his voice across the circle.

"Keep your eyes locked on the statues! Do not look away from them, no matter what happens!"

The pieces of the final trial fell into place.

The guardians were capitalizing on human blind spots. The moment the group had clustered around Arthur to look at his leg, the entire perimeter had advanced because no one was watching the walls.

They only move when they aren't being observed.

Right then, a fourth blue ember blinked out of existence.

Yet, the statues in his direct line of sight remained perfectly still.

Arthur cautiously lifted his left arm, keeping his eyes tracked forward as he checked the digital interface of his tactical watch.

Exactly sixty seconds.

The blue flames were extinguishing at perfect one-minute intervals.

The embers are a visual countdown timer.

The core objective of the Third Commandment wasn't a blood sacrifice; it was a test of psychological endurance.

They simply had to maintain a total-party presence within the geometric circle until all thirty-six blue flames died out naturally.

As long as every survivor maintained sightlines on their designated quadrants, the guardians would remain pinned to their tracks.

Desperate to verify the exact window they had left, Arthur did a quick mental count of the remaining embers.

Thirty left...

Just thirty more minutes of absolute, unbroken concentration, and they would all walk out of this hole alive.

But in that exact calculation, Arthur made a critical error.

His eyes had briefly scanned the floating blue lights rather than the stone figures directly in front of him.

In that single second of dropped surveillance, the tracks groaned.

CRRRREAK!

"I can't do this anymore! Screw this!!"

The rookie standing on the opposite side of the circle completely broke down, his nerves shattering as the mechanical grind behind his back pushed him past the brink of sanity.

Turning his back to the altar, he bolted down the steps toward the open double-doors.

The moment his boots cleared the perimeter, a sharp poof echoed through the room.

One of the six crimson flames vanished.

"Stop! Get back here!" Arthur yelled, his voice raw.

But the panicked rookie didn't drop dead.

He sprinted across the cavern floor, tearing through the open archway and vanishing into the natural cavern beyond without a single statue turning to strike him.

Kim gasped, his face twisted in utter disbelief.

"What the hell, Arthur?! You said it was a trap! He made it out! He's completely safe!"

Because Arthur was currently being supported by the other rookies, he couldn't physically turn his torso around to evaluate the exit.

"What's happening to the threshold?"

"The double-doors..." Kim stuttered, his eyes wide. "They just shifted inward. They closed a fraction of the way, then stopped."

Arthur's blood turned to pure ice as he recalled the sudden extinction of the crimson flame.

Oh, you brilliant, sadistic bastards...

The horrific puzzle of the Cartenon Temple was finally laid bare to him.

Every variable of the three commandments made perfect, terrifying sense.

And the reality of their situation was the absolute worst-case scenario for a guy who couldn't even stand up without a splint.

Part 2: The False Hope

The open doorway was the ultimate psychological trap.

It was a calculated, visual illusion of safety designed to tear their unity apart.

If the survivors panicked and abandoned the platform simultaneously, the total-party alignment would break, the crimson braziers would extinguish, and the massive stone barriers would slam shut permanently, sealing them inside a closed room with a pack of active guardians.

Conversely, the altar was their only legitimate sanctuary.

If every individual maintained their designated posture and held their quadrant until the timer cleared, survival was mathematically guaranteed.

The Third Commandment was a clinical test of human resolve: a trial to see if a group could resist the sweet, immediate temptation of an escape route while under the suffocating pressure of an encroaching death trap.

But the internal mechanics of the temple hadn't accounted for Arthur's analytical mind.

Under normal circumstances, a panicked squad would have rushed the exit immediately, triggering a total wipeout.

Arthur's quick deductions during the first two trials had earned him the absolute trust of the survivors, allowing them to dodge the initial trap.

We got lucky, Arthur realized.

But that structural advantage dissolved the moment human nature intervened.

A single deserter had shown the group that the path was clear, and the fragile alliance shattered instantly.

The rookie supporting Arthur's right side suddenly released his grip, his face twisted with frantic desperation as he abandoned the huddle and bolted toward the open door.

Sterling lunged forward from behind, his single remaining hand clamping onto Arthur's tactical vest to keep the youth from collapsing onto the stone.

Poof.

A second crimson flame died out, and the far stone doors groaned inward once more, narrowing the exit gap significantly.

Grrrrind...

"He... he made it too!" Kim yelled, his finger trembling as he tracked the second deserter clearing the threshold.

Arthur evaluated the four remaining red braziers, his voice booming across the cathedral with absolute urgency.

"Nobody move! If one more person abandons this platform, the doors will seal completely and we are all dead!"

Kim's breath turned shallow, his eyes darting frantically between the narrowing gap of the exit and the closing circle of the guardian statues.

The blue embers were still dissolving at a fixed rate, but the physical tracks of the monuments were now dangerously close to the steps of the altar.

"We have twenty-eight minutes left on the clock!" Arthur shouted, trying to anchor their focus. "Just hold your sightlines! Look at their faces!"

"Are you insane?!" Kim shrieked, his shortsword shaking in his hand. "Look at the door, kid! It's closing! If we don't run right now, we're stuck in this box forever!"

"If you break the circle, the remaining parameters will reset!" Arthur countered, his voice cracking. "You won't make it to the archway before the door seals!"

But Kim wasn't listening anymore.

The raw, primal urge to survive overrode every shred of logic Arthur had laid down.

He looked at the third rookie, who was already shifting his weight, his eyes wide with frantic compliance.

"Let's go!" Kim yelled to the remaining boy.

"Kim, don't—!" Sterling roared.

With a desperate cry, Kim and the third rookie launched themselves off the stone platform, sprinting shoulder-to-shoulder toward the narrowing exit.

Poof. Poof.

Two more crimson lances of fire vanished into thin air.

At the far end of the cavern, the massive stone double-doors responded instantly, grinding shut with tremendous velocity.

"Arthur! Julie!" Sterling barked, his single hand straining as he hauled Arthur's weight back toward the center of the platform. "Hold your focus on the front!"

Kim and the rookie threw their bodies into a frantic dive, sliding flat across the flagstones as the heavy stone barriers came together.

Kim managed to clear the gap by a hair, his tactical pack catching on the stone edge before he violently wrenched himself through to the other side.

But the rookie behind him wasn't as fortunate.

CRUNCH!

The massive stone slabs met with absolute, hydraulic force.

The boy's scream was cut violently short as his upper torso was entirely pulverized between the doors, leaving his legs dangling limply inside the cathedral room.

Then the final echo died away, leaving a suffocating, dead silence.

Arthur looked around the altar.

The space felt incredibly large now, completely empty.

The roaring circle of thirty-six blue flames had dwindled to twenty-six, hovering quietly in the dark.

And standing within the geometric ring were the only three people left alive in the entire double dungeon.

Mr. Sterling, down an arm, holding up Arthur, who was down a leg.

And Julie, kneeling in a pool of blood, her hands still faintly glowing with the last remnants of her emerald mana.

Exactly two crimson braziers remained lit on the perimeter, casting long, dancing shadows against the ancient masonry.

We don't have enough bodies to cover the sightlines, Arthur realized, his heart sinking into his chest.

From all four quadrants of the cathedral, the low, mechanical screech of the sliding tracks initialized once more, grinding slowly, relentlessly toward the center of the room.