Time passed... I continuously killed the snakes in the pit.

I paused only occasionally to mark down whenever the large scale battle in the grasslands was repeated.

As the number of death visions increased, I began to feel more connected to each of the memories. The visions that used to feel like a distant memory, something that wasn’t actually happening, changed and become more realistic. I felt that I was actually there.

As the number repetitions increased and the clarity of the visions was enhanced, the increased connectivity and realism began to exert an unpleasant side-effect.

Massive pain.

Before the visions were painless and just annoying to experience. As the connection has been strengthened with the most recent change, I started to feel their pain as they died. Not exactly the most pleasant experience, to be honest. I had to temporarily stop my killing spree considerably because of this notable change.

Pulling out the notebook, I counted the current number of tally marks and found that I’d only reached 5,000. Halfway finished, and the difficult had increased by mere virtue of my ability.

I’d noticed my muscular control and coordination returning to normal levels as the number of animals killed here has increased. My hypothesis for this change is the sublimation of the soul mentioned earlier in my notebook. Hopefully, the situation continues to improve as I continue killing the snakes.

Speaking of snakes… they were still hissing loudly from the pit below. Before I arrived and started this massacre, the snakes had been hibernating (do snakes normally hibernate?).

They’ve definitely woken up at this point.

…And they sound extremely angry.

None of them left the pit, though… so everything’s fine.

Whilst the snakes need to be killed, I couldn’t help but groan in frustration. I mean, I hadn’t been expecting the main obstacle to my success to be my brand-new ability.

The snakes themselves were no threat at all! They weren’t poisonous (I don’t think? I didn’t test it.)

Regardless, the idea of experiencing the pain of dying, repeatedly… was unappealing to say the least. I’m not a masochist.

I already had to put up with the fact that each death vision takes approximately ten minutes (five thousand visions each ten minutes long). To put that into perspective, that means I’ve experienced just below a thousand hours in these stupid visions. Almost a thousand hours!

That’s… Uhh, mental math… hundred divided by twenty four is… four-ish? So, close to forty days.

Seriously, forty days of mental torture (it’s closer to thirty five days since not exactly a thousand hours have passed but regardless). The vast majority of that time was spent just watching myself die for stupid reasons.

I’ve silently put up with it as I have no other choice.

Supposedly ten thousand hours are needed to completely master a skill, and I wasted nearly a tenth of the time silently watching myself die.

I don’t think I need to say this, but dying... Dying is painful. Experiencing the pain from dying in rapid succession, sounds like the opposite of pleasant. (Not that I have much choice in the matter.)

Biting my lip in annoyance, I decided to just get it over and done with. Creating another piercing strike, I unleashed it into the pit of snakes. The strike slashed through nearly a hundred of them. (I’d improved considerably in choosing the location to strike.)

The death visions began once again.

Visually scanning the surroundings, I appeared in the middle of the summer in a forest once again. Birds were chipping and cricks singing.

I had no control over my body, and observed myself walking through the forest. Spear in hand, but clearly absent minded.

I slowly counted, knowing that in ten seconds the crickets will quiet down.

In twenty seconds, the nearby birds will fly away. By that point, the entire forest will descend into silence.

When just over a minute passes, an automated rifle will open fire and shoot thirty three shots. Five will land in my chest, seven hitting my various limbs, and the rest barely missing.

After that, everything will be quiet for eight minutes as I slowly die on the floor.

A cloaked man with an automated weapons will approach my dying body, rummage through my bag for approximately a minute. He’ll disdainfully snort after seeing the contents inside, before shooting me in the head with a pistol.

Each death has repeated fifty times at this point. I have basically memorized everything that happens in them. Memorization of what happens, though, is completely different from personally experiencing.

Time slowly ticked down.

When bullets landed in my chest and injured my arms and limbs, I wanted to scream in pain. Sadly, no control over my body means exactly that. I couldn’t even move a muscle, let alone cry out in pain.

…

[One week later…]

Needless to say, neither none of the death visions are pleasant experiences.

Considering my only other option to avoid the visions was suicide and I had learned exactly how painful death was, I forced myself to just deal with the pain.

Granted, I took breaks over the process… which slowed down the kill count’s rise considerably. I’m not a machine that can just ignore pain.

However! All of that is over!

I’ve quietly managed to achieve ten thousand kills. The massive pit of snakes was extremely helpful in that regard. Without the snake pit’s appearance, who knows how long it would take to acquire that many kills?

Whilst I hadn't gotten the chance to get revenge on that panther from earlier, I decided to just be magnanimous and forgive it. The difficulty and pointlessness in tracking it down to kill it might've played a role in my sudden forgiving nature.

When the death visions for the ten thousandth kill ended, I found myself back in the pure white room (without doors or windows) from earlier.

The useless tutorial girl appeared in the middle of the room, still wearing the black t-shirt and red mini-skirt. Unlike the last time, this time tutorial girl seemed excited and enthusiastic.

“Tada! First trial passed.” She gleefully exclaimed, throwing up confetti (or some equivalent). “Ten thousand kills. Lucky you~”

I simply stared at her with an emotionless face. There was no reason to put up pretenses for a recording.

“Don’t get too excited, there are still two more trials to go!” She winked in the wrong direction, portraying her complete and utter cluelessness. “Or… you could be cowardly considering giving up?”

Yep, that me. Coward, who is going to give up. I had no intention of falling for this girl’s manipulation tactics.

“But, I know you won’t give up!” The tutorial girl exclaimed, her entire existence excluding confidence as she lean forward and blew a kiss, “You can do it!”

“Nope, I choose to give up.” I said aloud, fearing it would automatically throw me into the next trial if I didn’t say anything. Nothing happened because of my declaration.

Sadly, the girl continued talking as if I'd never spoken, “Now then, let’s take a look at your grade for the first trial!”

A screen popped up in front of me.

<Kill Distribution>

<Snakes: 8,384>

<Rabbits: 621>

<Wolves: 543>

<Birds: 356>

<Bears: 51>

<Monkeys: 25>

<Telap Plants: 7>

<Kinvar Bears: 4>

<Giant Serpents: 2>

…

<Number of deaths: 468>

<Overall Grades>

<Kill Quality: D>

<Completion Speed: F->

<Number of Deaths: F->

<Overall Grade: F>

<Rewards: None>

The tutorial girl stepped toward me and looked over toward the screen, before whistling in awe. “Impressive.”

“In addition to the rewards mentioned, anyone with an overall grade of C gets an advantage in the next trial.” The tutorial girl explained, “Those with B or higher can choose to skip the second trial, and anyone with an A can automatically complete all the trials.”

I backed away as the tutorial girl had stepped slightly too close for comfort. Even if I knew it was a recording or an illusion, it felt strange.

“Now, then. The next trial-” The girl disappeared mid-sentence, left with a completely empty room.

Soon after her disappearance, the tutorial girl reappeared in the center of the room. The girl’s lazy persona had returned and she stated with a bored voice, “An error has occurred, please wait.”

Obviously, this projection had been recorded at a different time than the previous record. The atmosphere of this recording was completely different.

I blinked at the suddenness of the situation. “What do you mean an error?”

“The test will begin-” the girl yawned mid-sentence, “-momentarily.”

Frowning at the news that the test would begin soon. Past-Tobias mentioned that he was able to leave after the first trial.

Walking up to the girl, I poked her in the head and confirmed once again that she was projection. My finger went straight through her face. Hoping that there might be a back-up system, I tried to trigger it, “Error Diagnostics? Backup system?”

Nothing happened, until several seconds later when the girl disappeared and reappeared back in her previous position.

The tutorial girl’s enthusiastic attitude had returned and she continued speaking from before the error took place, “-will be different! So don’t be afraid if you did badly on the last trial.”

I blinked and turned my gaze back toward the talking girl previous location. Did the error fix itself?

The girl spun in a circle, her mini-skirt lifting up in the process. Before leaning forward toward me and asking, “So, any questions?”

I sighed and pinched my nose in annoyance. “Yes, how do I quit?”

“Don’t be like that! I promise this trial will be fun!” The girl enthusiastically responded and skipped forward grasping my hands.

Feeling the sudden warm touch of skin on my hands, I nearly jumped in surprised.

“Wha-” I pulled my hands out of her grasp and stepped backward. “Weren’t you a projection?”

Tutorial girl wiggled her finger side to side, “Don’t be silly. I’m an interactive hologram! You can call me, Lisa.”

“Then, Lisa… Can you tell me how to quit?” I cautiously asked, staring toward her carefully.

“Are you a broken or deaf? No quitting!” Lisa huffed and refused, “This trial will be fun, I promise!

Of course, life wouldn’t be that easy. “What is the next trial, then?”

Lisa’s face lit up with excitement, “That’s easy!”

We teleported into some type of library, and Lisa gestured around in toward the books, “The next trial is to read all these books!”

I glanced around the library… The library wasn’t massive, but there were still thousands of books.

“There is a test afterward… but I promise not to tell anybody if you cheat!” Lisa winked toward me, “I never liked learning that much, anyway.”

Walking up to the nearest bookshelf, I pulled out a book. ‘A stylized method to create glass droplets’.

Pulling out another book, ‘Crafting arrays and you! First edition.’

“Are all these about crafting?” I asked, before looking around the room.

Lisa nodded as she jumped up onto a table, “Yep. Everything here discusses the creation, utilization, or destruction of items.”

That… tempting.

“There is knowledge about creating magic weapons here?” I inquired, still debating whether it was worth wasting time here.

“Definitely.” Lisa eagerly confirmed.

I quietly weighed the advantages and disadvantages of staying here. The main disadvantage is an obviously the wasted time, but...

“Is time still accelerated here?” I said, reexamining the room. The books didn’t look particular old or new, they had leather hard-covers and white paper inside.

“Mhmm.” Hummed Lisa with a prideful look, “Unless you counting by the macro-seconds, time basically won’t be passing in Centally.”

“Centally?” I said with confusion.

Lisa twirled her hair and attempted to explain, “Uhh… it’s the name of the universe you came from.”

Right… okay. She means the main universe, then.

I wouldn’t mind reading a few of these books. Reading all of them does sound boring, though. I need to assess how important this knowledge is before deciding whether to stay or not though.

“Didn’t you promise this trial would be fun? I don’t see how this is fun.” I replied glancing around at the various books.

“That-” Lisa turned nervous and looked around at the books, “We can read them together! Studying together is fun.”

“No, it’s not.” I stated without caring for the projection’s feelings. “How about this, I’ll try reading them for a bit… But I can quit whether I want.”

“No quitting!” Lisa protested, hopping off the table and grasping my arm, “I’ll make sure it’s fun!”

This girl is way too enthusiastic and pushy for my liking. Still, books like these probably have various information that is important to know. It wouldn't hurt to learn a bit before figuring out the method to leave this place.