Awakened weapons were sapient and could convey their experiences to others. If it ever came out that Herb Mask could communicate with Stormsong clearly, that wouldn't raise many eyebrows. Most people would consider it a matter of compatibility.

  If it came out that Herb Mask could also communicate with other awakened weapons, now that would be a serious problem. It was the sort of thing that he'd be unable to explain away.

  Caen needed to communicate with Blight without the sword’s awareness.

  He sent a gentle and impersonal impression through their connection: ‘Futility’.

  At the same time, Anomis—within the thinning cloud of spores—slashed an intangible blade through Caen's neck.

  A portion of his mind focused resilience on the path of the sword through his neck. Anomis blinked to the side, sword still extended and stabbing through Caen's neck, but from a different angle. Caen's heightened processing speed kept up easily, and adjusted resilience accordingly.

  An illusion of Caen—courtesy of the zone—dashed to the side and jabbed an illusory Stormsong at Anomis. The man blinked away, then seemed to realize that it wasn't real.

  While all this happened, Caen sent another subtle impression to Blight, conveying how none of this was working; how this participant was too resilient, too durable.

  From his connection to it, Caen felt a… waning of the sword’s interest.

  Anomis blinked several times through space and came to a stop a good twenty yards away, coughing from the spores. A silhouette and its illusion attacked him. Anomis blinked out of a clawed slash, then plunged Blight through the silhouette’s eye. Its copy vanished.

  Blight’s interest returned.

  Caen sent another impression. These trial grounds were full of much easier prey.

  At the same time, Caen dropped resilience entirely and began drawing the partially dispersed spores back towards himself with Flora magic. Sharp pain racked his entire body from Blight's attacks.

  Anomis blinked back into the reconstituted cloud of spores along with illusory copies of him. Caen paired resilience with Dream-guarding again. Within the space of two more attacks from the man, Caen conveyed vague impressions of futility to Blight.

  The sword roiled with irritation and impatience. This fight had lost its appeal. It wanted to inflict real harm on something, on someone else. It liked to harm its wielder every time its primary enchantment was used, but that was not enough.

  Caen sent an impression of ‘Stubborn wielder’. Anomis needed to be convinced. Needed to be forced to see reason. Too stubborn.

  This seemed to resonate with Blight. Indeed, its wielder was not listening. Even the increased pain was not coercing him.

  Anomis was growling now as he blinked around Caen, slashing with more vigor. An illusion of himself attacked them, but they both ignored it.

  Caen could feel several approaching presences. Blight suddenly retracted its blade.

  “What are you doing?” Anomis growled, seemingly at the awakened weapon’s hilt.

  A group of silhouettes rushed into the cloud. Blight extended instantly, and Anomis began blinking around as he cut through both real and illusory silhouettes. Caen ignored all the illusions and only bothered to decapitate one silhouette after blocking its clawed grasp with his Chasma-buckler.

  Anomis blinked in front of Caen, already swinging his sword.

  Blight retracted its blade instantly.

  Growling in rage, Anomis cast the weapon to the ground, blinked into Caen’s personal space, and delivered an empowered punch to Caen’s helmet. It was a minor issue to focus resilience at the site of the blow, supplementing his endurance with Body-enhancement spells. Caen’s head didn’t even rock backwards. He remained as still as a statue, holding Stormsong with both hands, biding his time.

  Anomis blinked around Caen. Delivering empowered kicks, punches, and elbow strikes. Caen held still. His indicator necklace grew warm and vibrated, hinting at an imminent emergency teleportation. Which meant that the healers thought his condition was dire. But Caen channeled mana into the artifact with intention and rejected the transport.

  A group of invisible silhouettes and their visible copies finally joined the fray. Caen dropped resilience and seized control of his strongest vine. Pain racked his entire body. His mind was working overtime.

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  One of the visible silhouette copies clawed for Anomis. He punched through the illusion, sustained a slash from an invisible silhouette, but blinked away quickly to where he’d thrown his sword… which was beside Caen.

  As soon as Anomis appeared, Caen swung Stormsong down with empowered might. At the same time, a vine grabbed Anomis’s bag of holding.

  Caen only cut halfway through Anomis’s leg before the man blinked away. Caen’s vine returned to him, holding the other man’s pouch, as he used Stormsong to slash through two silhouettes in an instant.

  Anomis was leaning on one leg many yards away, gritting his teeth and panting, hatred in his eyes. His other leg was mangled at the knee, hanging by mere tendons. The sand around him was dyed a deep red. Caen had intended to cut the leg clean off.

  Caen’s own body shook from torturous pain. He coughed up blood. All a result of Blight’s attacks. He immediately paired resilience with Dream-guarding and waited. If Anomis was stubborn enough to—

  The man vanished, but did not reappear anywhere nearby. His breastplate was an enchanted artifact that allowed for longer-ranged teleportation.

  Caen waited a moment longer. When nothing happened, he let out a sigh of relief. The next moment, he noticed a subtle change in his soul structure. He felt just a tad stronger. His posture shifted slightly to accommodate his injury. The improvements were nowhere near as remarkable as they’d been the first time. His Body-enhancement affinity had crossed a threshold. A rating of 2. He’d have to check.

  “You only struck your opponent once,” Stormsong noted.

  “I wanted my decisive strike to count,” Caen said.

  Stormsong rumbled.

  As he made for the safe area that Goat mask and Jum had run into, Caen paired resilience with Blood-healing, stopped the bleeding from the wound in his thigh, and began scanning his body. Resilience granted him a sense of any intrusion into or breach of his magical resistance. Between this and Blood-healing, he quickly located the source of all the pain in his body.

  There were clumps of… something in the portions of his body where Blight had passed through. They didn’t seem to be spreading, but they were very slowly necrotizing every nearby tissue. Only a few vital organs were affected, however. Handling this by himself in his current condition would take him time he didn't have, especially because he wasn't skilled in Venefic magic.

  He used a spell chain to combat the necrosis and then paired Blood-healing with absorption. He stumbled forward from the pain that crashed into him. It radiated into his mind and into his spirit. He focused absorption on the necrotic clumps near vital organs and began to diminish them. A soothing spell helped with the immense pain. His indicator necklace vibrated again, and, as before, he rejected the emergency teleportation.

  Caen felt so tired despite having stacked up both sleep and vitality in preparation for this trial. Several participants nearby were watching him with varying degrees of emotion: terror, awe, wariness, and even pity.

  A bald, elderly participant with a spinning halo above her head was standing by the totem pole with her arms crossed. Tantasio, the Corona witch. Caen was a huge fan of hers. She nodded at him.

  He returned the nod.

  “Ate two swipes of that vile weapon myself, years ago,” she said grimly. “The adverse effects will fuck you up seven ways if you don’t get yourself to a healer immediately. Might even kill you.”

  Caen grunted as he walked past her. “I’ll be fine.”

  He moved into the safe area and found his teammates. “Let’s move.”

  Goat Mask and Jum didn’t hesitate. Caen paired resilience with Body-enhancement. The improved endurance would also allow him to weather the next zone, which was sure to have Spatial afflictions of some kind. Moments later, they pushed their way through the wall of fog and into the eighth and final zone.

  The force of gravity doubled. Hundreds of wide crystal pillars, twenty feet tall, littered the entire zone. The floor was covered in rough crystal that stretched out all the way to the fog wall in the distance, which could barely be seen due to the pillars. There were many participants in this zone already, most of whom kept being teleported around while being hounded by swarms of floating crystals as large as a fist.

  “Space, Kinesis, and Crystal,” Jum noted.

  Caen took a step forward and was instantly wrenched through space and deposited a few feet away from his teammates. That had been a violent transport. Just as bad as going through a root-portal in the Odaton-plane Plane. With resilience, he withstood the severity of it.

  A couple of those floating crystals darted towards him. Caen left Stormsong sheathed and batted aside the floating crystals as he tried to make his way back to Goat Mask and Jum, who were fighting off a small group of crystals themselves.

  One of Caen’s crystal foes slammed into his helmet with concussive force. The force spread over his body, but didn’t hurt too much. Midway through an empowered step, he got wrenched through space again and appeared a fair distance away.

  He eventually met up with his teammates, at which point he paired resilience with Flora magic, so he could tie his vines around Goat Mask and Jum. This ensured that they were always teleported together. However, the spatial transports were so much more violent and transported them over longer distances.

  More than anything else, this zone was simply annoying. Between his ongoing necrosis, the violent spatial transports, the increased gravity, and the force attacks of the floating crystals, Caen was starting to feel very unwell. He was panting heavily beneath his armor and trembling quite a bit. His indicator necklace was vibrating every few minutes; he rejected the emergency teleportation each time.

  Portions of his armor and the clothing underneath that had been directly subjected to Blight’s incorporeal attacks were starting to lose their structural integrity.

  When they were only a few feet away from the wall of fog, they got transported several yards backwards, and Caen was slammed into a crystal pillar. This was the longest he’d spent in any zone within this trial.

  Just as they made it through the wall of fog, He paired absorption with Blood-healing. Caen had successfully completed the trial, but he did not appear in the victors’ lounge.

  Coughing up blood, he stumbled onto the pristine tiles of the healing bay and was caught by the steady hands of healers.