"Hey," B67 whispered again, voice barely above the hum of the drone. "You think… you think they'll give us an easy one?"
Liu Xian stared at the kid for a moment then looked away.
What did he know. The portal's secret was more of a mystery to him than to anyone else in the room. So what kind of answer did the kid possibly expect?
The only certainty in Liu Xian's mind was that death was not an option. Not for him. His fingers clenched hard around the hilt of his blade.
The B67 voice cracked under the silence.
His grip on his crossbow tightened until his knuckles went pale. He glanced down, embarrassed, then tried again, softer this time. "If we get separated… if things get bad… don't leave me, okay?"
The words hung there.
Liu Xian felt them. Heard them. But he didn't react. Didn't bother to move his lips, didn't give him the courtesy of a lie. His eyes stayed fixed on the wall, the glowing countdown, the letters of their team assignment.
"Sorry," B67 mumbled, dropping his gaze to the floor. "That was a stupid thing to say."
The silence swallowed him whole again.
27:02.
26:59.
The drone pulsed. "Reiteration: points system—clear portal objectives. Each portal yields gem drops valued variable points. Minimum threshold to exit probation: fifty points. Team points combined. Loss of a teammate redistributes their collected points to surviving members. Team formations are final."
Liu Xian's fingers flexed on the grip of his blade, fingers twitching.
The drone beeped once.
"Portal initializing. Stand by."
The room pulsed with strange light leaking through the door.
B67 lips pressed thin, crossbow trembling faintly in his hands. Whatever hope he'd carried a moment ago had shriveled into silence.
The countdown hit zero.
00:03.
00:02.
00:01.
The door hissed open, light spilling in like blood across snow.
The portal waited—twisting, alive, sucking in the air around it with a low, endless growl.
The drone's voice cut through the glow: "Team 17-A. Proceed with trail."
And without a word, they marched in and the first thing that hit Liu Xian after stepping into the threshold was the brightness.
It was… Blinding. White-hot. Like someone had taken the sun, shoved it in his face, and told him to stare until his eyes burned out of his skull.
Liu Xian staggered, the world pulling itself apart around him. His stomach lurched as if he were falling and floating at the same time. His knees buckled, but before he could hit the ground—he wasn't falling anymore.
He landed.
Soft.
Too soft for comfort.
For a long second, he thought he'd collapsed into a pile of pillows, but when his vision stopped screaming with light, he saw where he was.
The ground beneath him wasn't ground at all. It was like… fluff.
Rolling pink mist stretched in every direction, thicker the closer he looked. Cotton candy—yeah, that's what it looked like. Swirls and tufts of pale pink and blue-white, like some giant had spilled sugar clouds across the floor and walls and ceiling of a dream. It didn't feel like sugar, though. It was damp against his palms, sticky in a way that clung, and when he pulled his hand back, the fluff curled like it wanted to crawl up his skin.
"Where am I?…" he muttered under his breath.
Then he froze.
Because he wasn't alone.
All around him—on mounds of that cloudy fluff, sliding down soft hills of pink, dangling from floating wisps—were creatures. Dozens of them. No… hundreds. Small, round things no taller than his knee. Their bodies looked like plush toys, squishy and pastel-colored, with tiny arms and oversized heads. Huge black eyes blinked at one another, and little squeaks bubbled out of their mouths as they bounced a ball made of the same pink fluff between them.
His chest rose and fell, slow and careful.
They looked… cute.
Sickeningly cute.
Like something a child would cling to in their sleep. Like decorations in a baby's nursery.
Not the kind of nightmare he'd expected.
They didn't even noticed him.
Not yet atleast.
They played, rolling the ball between them, giggling in their squeaky voices, so wrapped in their little game that the world might as well not exist.
Liu Xian stayed still. His instincts screamed at him not to move, not to even dare to breathe too loudly. There was something off. Something under the skin of this picture-perfect scene that made his stomach twist.
Then the ball bounced wrong.
And It rolled across the sticky ground, wobbling on the uneven fluff until it came to a stop. Right at Liu Xian's boots.
The sound of play stopped instantly.
Silence.
A hundred little heads turned at once.
Those massive black eyes locked onto him, unblinking, soulless. Liu's fingers twitched toward his weapon before he even realized it, the faint hum of the blade calling to him. The silence stretched thin, tighter and tighter, his heartbeat loud in his ears.
Then…
"It's another one," one of them said.
The voice wasn't squeaky. It wasn't playful. It was… wrong. A low, stretched-out whisper that scraped down the inside of his bones.
"Yes," another one answered.
"Yes," another echoed.
And then all of them, voices overlapping, too loud, too jagged, like a choir of children mocking a song:
"YeS. aNoThEr oNe hErE tO pLaY wItH uS."
Their smiles stretched, mouths tearing open, peeling back into gashes that split almost to their heads. Pink fluff clung wetly to their faces as rows of sharp, teeth pressed out, hundreds of them, too many for something that small. Their eyes bulged, black pools trembling with hunger.
Liu Xian's blood ran cold.
The ball at his feet began to pulse. Slowly at first. Then faster. Each beat heavier than the last until it burst into a shower of wet pink that sizzled against the sticky ground.
Something hissed in the air above him.
Ding.
A system window blinked to life in front of his eyes.
[ Portal Trial: Phase One ]
Objective: Survive.
Duration: 30 minutes.
TIMER: 29:59
The numbers ticked down instantly.
He stared at it, lips parting without sound.
What was the point of giving them teams if they were going to be dropped alone in places like this? What was the point if it was just going to be him and a hundred smiling nightmares crawling closer on stubby limbs.
WHAT WAS THE GODDAMN POINT!
The timer dropped another second.
29:58.
"Fuck!"