“Oh, no. Not again,” Hugo complained upon finding himself in a completely dark room. “Mica!? Cat!?”
“Silence, squire,” María reprimanded him from beside him. “We don't know where we are. We could be surrounded. Don't reveal our position.”
“Great. I got lost with the crazy one.”
Above them, a spotlight turned on, revealing that they were in some kind of stadium with perfectly trimmed grass covering the ground. Two enormous screens, one at each end of the venue, lit up to display the words “Floor 38.”
“What the hell…?”
Hugo hadn't finished forming the sentence when another dozen spotlights turned on, fully illuminating the stadium and revealing its immense size. It was surrounded by enormous, incredibly tall concrete walls, each one marked with a large thirty-eight.
“Champion number two?” María asked, pointing at the gray one-piece outfit Hugo was wearing. “Then I'm… Forty-two!? This has to be a mistake. Why are you closer to one!? The owner of this Dimension knows nothing!”
“I think it's accurate,” Hugo mocked her. “Who's useless now?”
“You! I don't care what some stupid pair of overall says!”
“Welcome to Challenge Thirty-Eight,” said a mechanical voice that seemed to come from the ceiling. “During the Three-Night War, the greatest heroes of the continent fought without rest against the cosmic threat, only to perish in a crushing defeat. However, the Empire could not afford to lose those souls. With haste…”
“What is it telling us?”
“Shut up.”
“The engineers of the Holy See devoted themselves to creating the first Bioslammer, and thus they were able to recover and preserve the souls of nine hundred and ninety-nine fallen heroes. Now you, champions turned invaders, must face those forces.”
The number on the screen was replaced by a nine hundred and ninety-nine.
“What do we have to face what? Bio… what?”
The ground began to tremble beneath their feet. Nervously, Hugo felt around for his spear, but found nothing. María planted her feet apart and held her hands out in front of her, waiting for whatever was coming.
Suddenly, humanoid beings with red eyes began charging out from all four walls, as though the walls were curtains of water. Their bodies appeared skeletal, but made of black bones, with several tubes and cables wrapped around them and connecting to one another here and there. They carried a wide variety of weapons. Hugo caught sight of hammers, swords, greatswords, daggers, and axes.
“How are we supposed to fight these things without our powers!? There are too many!” he exclaimed. “María, we need to find a way out.” He nervously looked around, but it was impossible. The enemies were coming from every direction.
“Stay calm, squire. You're with María, Sarah's knight.” With that declaration, María charged into battle.
Running straight ahead, María extended her hands to her sides, and two handles emerged from the ground in front of her. She grabbed them as she ran and tore them free. The handles brought chunks of stone with them, taking the shape of two gigantic hammers that seemed inconceivable for the small, slender girl to hold. But she did.
When she reached the first group of mechanical soldiers, she crushed them with her two impossible weapons. The number on the screen changed to nine hundred and eighty-eight.
María dropped the hammers and leaped into the air, launching herself off one of the handles as though it were a trampoline. Once she was about five meters in the air, she faced the ground and aimed one open palm at the group of enemies waiting below. A circle nearly ten meters in diameter sank at a dizzying speed, then closed in on itself without leaving any evidence of what had happened. The number dropped to nine hundred and fifty-three.
Hugo was stunned by the girl's display of skill. But he had to snap out of it when another group of soldiers approached him.
Instinctively, he reached for his spear on his back again, and this time he found it—or rather, he materialized it. He now held a long metal shaft in his hands, from whose two segments a dancing light shaped like blades emerged.
When the enemies reached him, he was ready. With the first swing, he enjoyed watching the light sever their metal bones, leaving them glowing red-hot. The enemies weren't much of a challenge. Although they attacked, they did so slowly and without coordination. None of them fled, blocked, or, least of all, retreated.
What did surprise him was realizing that there were no dice anymore. He didn't even feel like he needed them.
María passed by him, spinning with two greatswords made of stone, but so sharp that they cut the robots in half.
“Very good, squire. Only seven hundred left.”
Hugo sighed. He didn't feel exhausted yet, but fatigue was already beginning to catch up with him, and he had only fought about fifty. He said “only” because he was comparing himself to María, who seemed more like a natural disaster than a fighter.
“Thank goodness I'm with her,” he muttered. “I don't know what would become of any of us in this challenge without someone like that girl.”
“What did you say!?”
“Nothing! Focus on your batch!”
María leaped into the air once more, and nearly four-meter-tall stone spheres broke away from one of the walls and traveled across the stadium in a straight line toward the opposite wall, only to bounce and change direction like billiard balls. Nearly a hundred enemies were defeated with that single move.
“If you need to rest, step aside, squire. I'll take care of them!” she told him mockingly as she passed by him again.
“Nah! I'm fresh!” he exclaimed, although he was struggling to catch his breath as he shouted and fought. He looked at the screen: Four hundred and twenty-one.
It was insane that in only a few minutes they had… An enemy sword struck his left arm at the exact moment he became distracted by the screen, opening a gash from his shoulder to his elbow.
Blood began pouring out, making it impossible for him to hold his spear properly and counterattack. Thanks to the fact that he dropped to his knees from the pain, an axe aimed at his head passed over him and sliced through the mechanical, red-eyed face of the enemy that had just wounded him.
“Hey!” María exclaimed as she reached him and surrounded them both with a stone dome. “Just because I don't like you doesn't mean you have the right to die,” she scolded him. “Especially when my Master explicitly asked me to bring you to her.”
“S-Sorry?” Hugo said, tears in his eyes as he bit his lips to endure the pain.
“Let me see that.”
Hugo didn't move, but María went to his side and crouched beside him to examine the wound.
“D-Does… does it look as b-bad as it… h-hurts?”
“Well… I'm not going to lie to you. Yes, it looks terrible.”
Against all expectations, Hugo let out a laugh.
“I'm not a Healer, but I can try… Excuse me,” she said, picking Hugo's spear up from the ground and using it to cut off both sleeves of his outfit so she could bandage the wound and try to stop the bleeding.
“I-I guess I owe you… I owe you a new shirt… r-right?”
“Shut up. Stop trying to be funny. Focus on not dying. I'll finish off our friends outside and come back. Stay still in the meantime.”
Hugo nodded. Remembering his enemies, he noticed for the first time the noise they were making as they struck the dome, trying to get inside. María stood up and, with a gesture, opened a hole in the ceiling. She leaped through it and closed it again.
Once outside, María split the ground in two in front of her and jumped into the hole. The enemies looked toward the place where she had disappeared, curious but with no intention of following. Meanwhile, she emerged several meters away with a stone pillar. She crouched on the new structure, crossed her arms, then jumped up with her arms extended and palms facing outward. The two slabs of earth around her tilted roughly forty-five degrees, causing the few enemies that hadn't been thrown into the air to slowly slide toward the infinite abyss at the center.
After returning everything to normal, María looked at the screen: One hundred and twenty-five. There were still some left.
She summoned two greatswords once again and charged at the group that was beginning to emerge from the walls.
It took her only another two minutes to finish off the remaining hundred, and when the number on the screen reached zero, a victory song replaced the silence of the battlefield.
“Congratulations, champions,” the mechanical voice celebrated while the song continued playing. “You have managed to defeat the heroes of the Empire once again, and their souls are finally free to wander eternally through purgatory with the guilt of not one, but two humiliating defeats weighing on their backs. You may advance to the next challenge.”
María felt a breeze surround her, seemingly coming from nowhere, and when it withdrew, she felt rested.
Hopeful, she ran to the dome and dispelled it. Hugo was waiting there, sitting on the ground and clutching his injured arm. He looked very pale.
“I'm glad to find someone with a worse sense of humor than me,” Hugo said when he saw her.
“What are you talking about?”
“The voice on the speakers.
They'll wander eternally through purgatory with the guilt of not one, but two humiliating defeats
,” he mocked, imitating the unknown host's voice.
María snorted, but she couldn't stop a smile from appearing on her face.
“You look terrible.”
“But I don't feel that bad,” he declared. “After you won, I felt a breeze that restored my energy. I can't move my arm, but the wound stopped bleeding and it's numb… At least there's no pain. I don't know if that's a good thing or not. But as long as I'm alive, Rose will surely be able to do something when we find each other again.”
“Do you think they're still here? That we'll find them?”
“Why wouldn't we?”
“…Never mind,” she replied, shaking her head. “We have to move forward. Come on, Floor Thirty-Nine awaits us.”
“Wait, go up?” Hugo asked after examining the walls and remembering that they were on Floor Thirty-Eight.
“Of course.”
“No, no, no. Shouldn't we go down?”
“Down? Going down means going backward.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Instinct. Besides, obviously, there's the fact that my shirt has the number forty-two on it and yours has two.”
“And what does that have to do with anything?”
“Please, it's obvious that I'm much better than you,” she explained with a shrug. “In fact, I'd say I'm at least twenty-one times better than you,” she added, pointing at the number on Hugo's chest. “Therefore, it's obvious that the numerical logic of this place is ascending. That is…”
“Your explanation doesn't make the slightest sen—”
“Silence, squire. Stand up and follow me.”
“But…”
“Stand up and follow me!”
Reluctantly, Hugo stood up and followed María toward the door that had appeared on one side of the stadium. It displayed the number thirty-nine with an upward-pointing arrow.