A solitary challenge

Odin had walked about twenty meters when a scream suddenly came from the fog to his left.

"Aah!"

It was a man's voice, filled with terror and pain.

Then came the sound of something heavy falling into water, followed by frantic splashing.

Odin paused.

"A real candidate, or a Deceitful Crow?"

He tightened his grip on his knife, hesitated for two seconds, then headed toward the sound.

He wasn't going to rescue anyone.

In a place like this, keeping himself alive was hard enough. He had nothing to spare.

He only wanted to check the situation. If he found other candidates, they could at least exchange some information.

After passing through a patch of low shrubs, he stopped at the sight before him.

It looked like a peaceful grove, with tempting fruit growing on the trees.

But Odin knew it wasn't a grove at all. It was a group of enormous creatures.

Looking carefully, Odin spotted a massive turtle-like creature moving slowly.

Its shell was over five meters across, covered in moss and aquatic plants that blended perfectly with the surroundings.

And a person hung from its mouth as it swallowed.

"A Man-Eating Turtle."

He turned and left, walking faster than before.

That scream had been real.

These wetlands were even more dangerous than he'd expected.

In the anime, the candidates had merely been numbers. But to him now, each was a living, breathing person.

After walking for another few minutes, Odin suddenly stopped.

Something was moving in the fog ahead.

It wasn't human. Its movements were too stiff, as though the air were stirring it.

Nor was it one of those large creatures from earlier. It was much smaller.

He narrowed his eyes. With his motion vision enhanced by the Rabbit Talisman, he barely managed to make out what they were.

A cluster of mushrooms.

These mushrooms were about half a person's height, with umbrella-shaped caps covered in honeycomb-like holes.

"Landmine Mushrooms."

Odin remembered these things. Once disturbed by vibrations or approached within a certain distance, they would explode, not only releasing huge quantities of hallucinogenic spores but also detonating.

Creatures that inhaled the spores would die amid pleasant hallucinations, then rot and be digested.

He tried to estimate how much ground the mushrooms covered, but couldn't. Visibility was too poor.

"I'll just have to rush through."

Odin put his knife away, freeing both hands.

He stepped back, took a deep breath, then accelerated sharply.

The Rabbit Talisman's output instantly rose to the speed of sound.

The world slowed down again.

The mushrooms' swaying and drifting spores turned to slow motion, the yellow powder spreading gradually like smoke.

He could see every spore's flight path and the rhythm of the honeycomb holes contracting and expanding across the mushroom caps.

Whoosh!

Odin darted through gaps in the clouds of spores.

His first step landed on an empty patch between two mushrooms, then he stepped onto a mushroom cap. Before the mushrooms could react, he had already rushed clear of the cluster.

Looking back, he saw the spores the mushrooms had only just released drifting slowly outward, forming a patch of yellow fog.

Several mushrooms along his path had already exploded, their caps blown to pieces and spores filling the air.

"Being fast really does come in handy."

Odin took a few breaths, then drew his knife again.

He continued onward.

Suddenly, footsteps sounded ahead.

Steady and regular, exactly like Satotz's footsteps.

There were other candidates' footsteps, too.

Odin perked up and quickened his pace to catch them.

He could faintly make out a group of figures in the fog. The one leading them wore a suit and was tall and thin. It was the examiner, Satotz!

Odin hurried after them.

The distance narrowed. Twenty meters, fifteen, ten...

Just as he came within five meters of the figures, another group of footsteps suddenly sounded in the fog to his right.

Just as steady, just as regular.

Odin stopped abruptly.

Two figures?

He looked ahead. Satotz's back, leading the group, was still flickering in and out of view through the fog.

He looked right. Another figure in a suit was moving parallel to them, with exactly the same stride.

"Two examiners? Two groups?"

Impossible.

Alarm bells rang in Odin's head.

He immediately realized that one of them-no, possibly both-was fake.

Those were footsteps imitated by Deceitful Crows, paired with illusions produced by some kind of mimicry ability.

The story hadn't shown anything like this, but this was a real world. This was the Trickster's Swamp. There couldn't be only those few kinds of creatures here.

Which one is real? Or are both fake?

He stood still, gripping his knife, every muscle taut.

The "Satotz" ahead suddenly stopped and turned around.

The fog was too thick to make out his face. Only a blurred outline was visible.

The "Satotz" on the right stopped as well and likewise turned around.

The two shadows faced Odin through the fog.

A mass of figures stood behind them.

Then they spoke at the same time, their voices overlapping with an eerie echo:

"Follow us."

Hah, no need to think about it. Both are fakes. As the examiner, Satotz would never wait for anyone.

Odin didn't move.

He stared fixedly at the two shadows, his mind racing.

The accelerated thinking granted by the Rabbit Talisman let him analyze vast amounts of information in an instant.

The frequency of the footsteps, the details of their turns, the waveforms of their voices...

But there was too little information.

The fog interfered with his sight, and the echoes distorted his hearing.

He couldn't tell them apart.

Just then, the fog to his left was suddenly torn open.

An enormous, dark-brown arthropod burst from the mist, its body as thick as a bucket and over ten meters long.

It had no eyes, only a round mouthpart filled with sharp teeth on its head.

Short legs lined both sides of its body in dense rows, rustling as it crawled at an astonishing speed.

"Swamp Centipede!"

Odin's pupils contracted.

This thing hadn't been in the original story, but one look told him it was bad news.

The centipede lunged straight at him, its mouthparts opening to reveal spiraling rows of teeth.

There was no time to hesitate.

Odin pushed off and dodged to the right.

The Swamp Centipede's mouthparts brushed past his back and snapped shut on empty air, the sound of its closing teeth setting his teeth on edge.

Seeing the carapace beside him and the gaps between its plates, Odin drove his knife into one without a second thought.

With a cry of pain, the surrounding figures flickered, then burst like soap bubbles with a pop and vanished.

The fog flowed in to fill the empty space.

The Swamp Centipede was turning, its mouthparts aimed at him. Its short legs scurried rapidly as it lunged again.

Worse still, more sounds came from the fog in every direction.

Countless footsteps: Satotz's steady stride, candidates running in panic, women screaming, men roaring.

They overlapped in a chaotic jumble.

"Fuck!"

Odin swore aloud.

He couldn't distinguish anything anymore.

He couldn't even trust his own ears.

The Swamp Centipede lunged again.

This time, Odin didn't dodge. He rushed straight at the centipede, dropping into a slide just as its mouthparts were about to bite him, slipping beneath its body.

At the same time, he stabbed backward, driving his knife hard into a gap between the segments of its abdomen.

Half the blade sank in, and his momentum tore open a huge gash.

The centipede let out a piercing hiss and thrashed violently. A long cut had opened across its abdomen, spilling dark-green bodily fluid.

Watching the centipede go berserk, Odin had no intention of fighting it any longer. There was no need.

He rushed deep into the fog, leaving the centipede's hissing and the chaotic human voices behind.

He had no idea how long he ran before the sounds around him gradually faded. Only his breathing, heartbeat, and the squelch of his feet in the mud remained.

The fog grew thicker.

Visibility around Odin was now less than three meters.

Other than up and down, he could no longer tell one direction from another.

No examiner, no other candidates. He couldn't even get his bearings.

"Now I'm really in trouble."

Odin gave a rueful laugh, took his water bottle from his backpack, and drank.

He put the bottle back, tightened his grip on his knife, and straightened up again.

He couldn't stop here.

Stopping meant failing the test, and that would affect his chance to learn a Nen Ability as soon as possible.

He chose a direction at random. They were all the same anyway.

He jogged onward at a brisk pace, no longer too worried about any overwhelming danger.

After all this, Odin had grown somewhat accustomed to the place, and had put at least some of his theoretical knowledge into practice.

The fog flowed around him, coiling as though alive.

Another sound came from the distance.

This time, it wasn't footsteps, but some creature's cry, shrill and drawn-out, echoing through the wetlands.

Odin ignored it and kept going.

He now had only one goal: pass the test.

As for how he would pass?

He could only rely on luck.

"Good thing I learned a little wilderness survival. It's coming in handy," he muttered.

The mud sank again, but Odin was already standing off to the side, watching and waiting for the Ambush Giant Frog to swallow that boulder.

He had spotted its ambush long ago and had deliberately teased it.

Hmm, the fog seems to have thinned a little!