BANG!
Zarek and the others smashed heavily against the ground. Despite his usual calm, Zarek himself almost screamed.
Even moving lit all the pain receptors in his body on fire. Actual pain, though? Felt thousands of times more acute.
This bump into the ground was at worst a bruise for the current Zarek, but right now it was like he had just been thrown into a vat of lava.
At this point, he was running out of expletives to censor from reaching his mouth, and the number of ways he had to describe the pain were quickly diminishing.
'This was no normal toxin. That lizardman Turned might have had the chance to become an A Class in the future. No, it probably almost certainly would have if given the chance to grow. Fuck me…'
Zarek's pain tolerance was probably the stuff of legends, but that sort of thing didn't carry over into a new life.
It was similar to how a martial artist or powerlifter would have to condition their shins. Pain tolerance was more than just mental, it was physical as well. And there were also certain points that one would reach where no amount of mental fortitude would even matter.
Pain was an evolutionary failsafe for a reason. Those born without the ability to sense it actually had a very dangerous genetic disorder that could likely one day take their lives.
Despite all of this, Zarek regained his senses quickly. Looking around at the stone room he was in, he cursed beneath his breath.
'Son of a bitch…'
A cell. He was trapped in a damn cell.
He wasn't surprised, but he was pissed nonetheless.
From Priya's observation, this was a Dream Godsfall Tear. Unlike many other Godsfall Tears that would have a set challenge, Dream Godsfall Tears dropped you into the middle of a storyline, forced you to take up the life of a character in the Dream, and reach an achievement goal of some sort at the end.
It seemed that Zarek got the short end of the stick, ending up trapped in a damned cell.
The good thing about Dream Godsfall Tears, at least for Zarek's current situation though, was that there was no known entry limit, and figuring out the goal was the hardest part—something Priya had already done for them.
This was why Zarek was confident in arriving late. And he was also much more confident in Priya's abilities, so he wasn't nearly as worried about leaving her alone.
Now, he just needed to figure out how to get out of here.
'Hm… not necessarily…'
The pain was clouding a bit of Zarek's judgment. It was hard to think when you felt as though you were being boiled in a vat of crude oil, but he still forced himself to re-center.
Priya had analyzed the Godsfall Tear for them when they entered. According to her, the energy had a medieval sort of feel to it. They would likely be sent back to a time that matched that.
Of course, it wasn't literally being sent back in time. None of the Dream Godsfall Tears Zarek had ever entered reflected a time period of Earth he knew of.
Zarek never really thought much of it. If the system could change so much about their reality, just forging a new one didn't seem like that much of a leap.
However, after his experience with the Hero Godsfall Tear, it made Zarek wonder if these Dream Godsfall Tears were based on real places…
Shaking his head, Zarek forced himself to focus again. Without a choice, he began to circulate [Limit Break] again, pulling himself up. If the pain became more focused, forced to do work for him, it would be easier to compartmentalize it. Otherwise, it just felt like his entire body was a sensitive button.
'Okay. Judging by the clues Pri was able to pick up on, this is probably either an assassination or save-the-damsel sort of Dream Godsfall Tear. The time remaining is probably what's most important, and there's about a week or so, so we're halfway through that.
Now, it's just a matter of the details.'
Priya wasn't yet good enough to suss all of those things out, but that was already great. It gave Zarek a lot of information.
In these sorts of save-or-kill scenarios, the target had to be the central figure in the whole Godsfall Tear. There were only a few people that could be, and once he understood the central event of the Godsfall Tear, there would only be one obvious candidate.
Once he knew this, he would have to feel out the rest of the Godsfall Tear to decide whether they needed to be killed or saved. Usually, this would be decided by which had the greatest positive impact on the Dream World.
This was less obvious, though. It wasn't often easy to tell this, because something that might cause acute harm might allow for long-term positive consequences.
However, while less obvious, for Zarek—who was so sensitive to Time Godsfall—this was incredibly easy.
A Dream Godsfall Tear had laws far looser than the real world. As such, feeling the ebbs and flows of time here was orders of magnitude easier. This was because time in a Dream Godsfall Tear wasn't even linear to begin with. It was stuck in a loop, wherein anyone that entered and failed would be expelled or trapped depending on the severity, to allow for the next group to enter and give it a try.
This was to say that the past was connected to the future here, and whether it was his time affinity or expert usage of Harmonic Recall, Zarek would be able to suss out these details himself.
So long as Zarek found the person in question, he should be able to quite easily feel which of the paths would have a better long-term effect.
Now, there was only one thing left to answer: was it more valuable for Zarek to remain trapped within this dungeon? Or to escape?
The answer to this question wasn't nearly as obvious as it seemed, which was why Zarek shut down his own instinct to immediately find a path out of here.
Looking around for a moment, Zarek found a bowl of water and a tray of eaten food. He reached over and touched it.
Harmonic Recall.