3rd POV:
The world turned dark as Samael was put in his illusion. He was still conscious, but he couldn't see anything, feel anything, or even hear anything. It was like he was an incorporeal spirit in an uncaring void. Then a blinding light made him try to look away. No matter where he looked, the light was there, and soon, a world unfolded in front of his eyes. *This is strange… why am I seeing the formation of the illusion? Something seems off about this. Huh, what was I thinking about?* Samael found himself in a large field; green grass, a clear blue sky, and the occasional tree dotted the landscape. It was peaceful, incredibly peaceful. The kind of place you could just stay forever. Samael fought against the sudden drowsiness that overcame him. It seemed the very world was fighting against him. Trying to force him into a deep sleep… Forever. *I must… find the… weak point. No matter… what.* Samael's eyelids grew heavier as the world began turning dark once more. *No… I have to… fight.*
An unknown amount of time later, Samael woke up. He was still in the same field he had fallen asleep in, but now there was a small box floating in the corner of his eye. It held a timer on it, slowly ticking upwards, second by second. *If that timer is showing how long I've been inside the illusion, I've been unconscious for five minutes. Luckily it wasn't more. I need to hurry now, find the weak point, and destroy this illusion as fast as possible.* Samael spread out his Void Essence in a thin layer all around him, opting to feel the world through his aura rather than the normal five senses. Samael closed his eyes and felt the world using his Void Essence. It was incredibly different from how he usually perceived the world around him. Instead of seeing in color, everything was muted to a grayscale; even so, he could feel with incredible accuracy, able to view hundreds of square miles at once, and yet he could pinpoint the equivalent of a needle in a haystack. Samael could also sense the very spatial layers covering the illusion. He could feel them shifting and moving as they imitated the look of reality.
The boy walked slowly across the large field, searching for the cracks and imperfections that inevitably would occur in an illusion. He searched for about half an hour before he found the first flaw. The flaw showed itself in the form of a small patch of grass, less than a quarter inch across. The patch was strange, a brownish-orange color, rather than the pristine, brilliant green of the grass around it. The blades of the grass were malformed, like someone had ripped each individual blade to form a jagged edge. When Samael looked closer, he also noticed the small spatial crack hovering right above the grass. Samael covered his hands in a layer of Void Essence and began ripping the space apart to form a passage large enough to exit through. The groan, like that of a cracking glacier, rang out across the space as the crack became bigger and bigger. After 3 minutes, the spatial crack was large enough to pass through, about six feet tall and three feet wide. Samael passed through the spatial crack, and the sound of shattering glass was heard as the entire illusion shattered.
Samael opened his eyes. He was back in the courtyard, sitting in a lotus position. Looking around, he saw that he was the first one out. The elders, standing on their tall podium, had shocked looks on their faces when they saw Samael open his eyes. "How is he already out? Did he shatter the illusion already? What an incredible talent. We already knew of his immense battle prowess, but his mind is far stronger than what should be possible at his cultivation. He hasn't even broken his mortal shackles and achieved his First Ascension. It's only been forty-five minutes!" Samael continued to look around for a few more minutes, and in that time three more people woke up. As he waited for Augustus to wake up, he went back to regaining his strength for the third trial. Like the rounds before them, this one took about two hours total to finish. As Samale spoke with Augustus and Immael, the golden embroidered youth at the 4th stage of Chaos Acceptance and Chaos Soul Realms. "My illusion was very different from yours, Mael. It wasn't a large field; instead, it was an active battlefield. I was a nameless soldier fighting in an interdimensional war. I had to kill a cultivator that was supposed to be impossible for me to kill. We fought for hours, and I barely won after managing to find an opening in his fighting style that I could exploit with my war hammer." "Indeed, our illusions were very different indeed. I had to escape an inescapable enemy. I couldn't see it, couldn't sense it, but somehow I always knew it was right behind me. Whenever I tried to fight it, it would just disappear, only to reappear again once I began running again." Immael said, his tanned face showing apprehension at the memory. "That's a truly terrifying trial, Immael. I guess I got lucky with my trial then. Having to search hundreds of thousands of square miles for a small spatial crack is easy in comparison." Samael responds, laughing lightly.
Six and a half hours later, the last group had finished their trial. With that, the youths headed to their rooms for the night. At the peak of the Chaotic Soul Refinement Realm, neither Samael nor Augustus needed more than two hours of sleep per day. As a side effect of their empowered body and internal energy circulation. As a result, they didn't need nearly as much food as a normal person either. The two boys made their way back to the courtyard the next day, meeting up with Immael and Ismael, Immaels twin brother. They made their way to the courtyard, and by 8am they were standing there, waiting along the 300 large battle platforms that would serve as their arenas during the third Trial.