Loudbark kept his voice low. "Hey, we don’t all have to pick a barrel, right? If one of us finds the reward, the trial ends, right?" He looked around as if asking the air to confirm it.

This trial clearly favored investigation skills. The mixed-race group had people built for that kind of work, yet none of them looked confident. Faces tightened. Eyes slid away. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to move first. No one wanted to be the one who stepped in blind.

The Gorathim waited as well, steady but uncertain. Confusion sat on their features. Their senses could not pierce the barrels. Whatever lay inside stayed hidden even in front of their eyes.

"Brakhtar, can’t you find it?" Thalira Luna called across the ring, voice calm and controlled. She understood the danger of stillness. If no one acted, they could stand here for a very long time, with no guarantee the Tower would end it for them.

"The risk is high. I cannot choose without sacrificing some." His tone made it clear he had a method, but it came at a cost.

"Then sacrifice some. We do not have all day." Thalira’s reply was almost casual, as if she had already stepped back from this round.

Also, if the Gorathim lost people here, the Lunari would only benefit. Letting a rival bleed itself was a strategy she could live with.

Should I step in and take the reward, or wait? The question passed through Adyr’s mind without heat. He had already found the barrel that held it.

Thanks to his Gaze and the way he had taught himself to use it, he opened every barrel in his head and watched the next 10 seconds play out.

Each time he chose wrong, he not only watched himself die but also felt every instant of the pain; nevertheless, he ran the sequence again and again until he reached the barrel that held the reward.

Using Gaze

like this was not simple. To trigger the 10-second future, he had to commit completely in thought: choose a barrel, accept that he would open it, and accept that he would die. Only with that level of resolve did the Gaze treat that path as a real future and show him what would follow.

The worst part was not the mental strain; it was the deaths themselves, replayed one after another.

In the first vision, thousands of worm-like creatures burst from the barrel and swarmed him. Before he could move, they latched on and drained his blood in seconds.

In the second, thorned vines uncoiled from the dark and wrapped his limbs, pulling until joints parted one by one.

He found the correct barrel on his 38th attempt, which meant that in a span of moments he had experienced 38 deaths, each as ugly and painful as the last.

He absorbed every second in silence, and from the outside his face did not so much as tighten.

If anyone had known he already had the prize located, their surprise would not be at the knowledge but at the method. They would have called him unhinged, a psychopath who treats death not as a warning but as a process to run and a tool to use.

As Adyr weighed whether to step in and take the reward or wait a little longer, someone from the Gorathim side finally moved.

"I don’t think I want to watch this," Loudbark muttered, almost certain the ogre was about to meet his maker.

It unfolded exactly as he feared.

The Gorathim approached a barrel, studied it for a moment, then began to lift the lid.

The instant the seal cracked, an impossible wind erupted from within, a pressure surge that turned into a ravenous pull.

The current seized the Gorathim’s massive body and dragged it inward, as if the barrel’s wooden mouth were slurping spaghetti.

Blood sprayed in a wide arc. The wet crack of snapping bones rolled across the arena, sharp enough that several spectators clapped their hands over their ears.

He had actually chosen one of the better endings . Adyr’s mouth twitched with a faint smile. This one was fast and almost clean compared to most, and therefore acceptable.

On the Gorathim side, faces tightened with grief and resolve. Jaws set, eyes met, and a silent exchange moved down their line. When their decision was settled, another of them stepped forward.

But a voice stopped him before he reached the barrel they had chosen.

Adyr took a step of his own. "Why don’t you let me try this time?"

His boldness held everyone still for a moment, then Maruun and the others from the mixed-race group broke the silence. "Brother, don’t. You just saw that Gorathim die without a struggle." Maruun caught his shoulder, trying to hold him back.

"Your courage is unquestionable, but it is unnecessary." Rhadak kept his voice respectful, though the warning in it was clear.

"No, no, I cannot let this happen," Loudbark blurted, ears twitching with panic. "What would I tell my sister if she found out she’d become a widow before she even met you?" The words tumbled out in quick, breathless bursts.

Reactions split cleanly between the Lunari and the Gorathim.

The Lunari held their tongues and watched with cold patience, each of them quietly wishing for Adyr to choose wrong and die so that their side would have 1 less threat to contend with.

Meanwhile the Gorathim, in contrast, wore open surprise, confusion flickering across their faces as they tried to make sense of his confidence.

"Should I believe you have already found the barrel that holds the reward?" Brakhtar turned his heavy, round head and fixed his small eyes on Adyr, studying him for a long moment, as if he could peel back the surface and see the secret the small body was keeping.

"No way." Adyr let out a short laugh. "I just feel lucky today."

His tone was easy and sincere, yet the confidence beneath it said enough, making everyone think that this Velari carried secrets deep enough to reassure allies and strike fear into his enemies.

After the previous trial, when an unknown skill made the cloud veer away from him as if he were a plague, they were already unsettled. Now, seeing him step forward with what looked like an investigative skill, they could only wonder which Sparks he carried that no one in the arena could even hazard a guess.

Under watchful gazes, Adyr walked to the nearest barrel and began to examine it. The arena fell into a held-breath silence as the Practitioners and the spectators in the stands watched without a word.

After studying the barrel as if trying to see through the wood with his naked eyes, he moved on to the 2nd one.

"Don’t tell me he is really relying on luck," one of the Practitioners whispered, watching him casually check each barrel’s sides and seams without using any visible skill.

As he kept at it, tapping the wood with his knuckles and testing each barrel like a shopper picking watermelons at the market, murmurs stirred as more onlookers began to believe that was exactly what he was doing.