Kaiden exhaled slowly and rolled his shoulders again, forcing the tremor out of them through sheer repetition. Gluttony sat steady inside him, dense and compliant, waiting for direction. The memory of being consumed alive lingered, phantom-tight around his ribs, but he pushed it down where it belonged.
The titan in the distance did not move, its seven arms frozen like pillars anchoring the horizon. Kaiden didn’t look away from it as he took his stance, feet spreading, weight settling until the ground accepted him again.
The particles around him began to drift faster.
He drew them in without ceremony. When the pull around the realm shifted again, he was ready for it.
The Bottomless One reacted instantly.
The ambient draw collapsed inward as the hollow contracted and locked onto Kaiden’s position. The ground between them tore loose as particles screamed past him, dragging debris and air along with them. Kaiden leaned forward and broke into a sprint before the force could take his balance, boots hammering the ground hard enough to fracture it. The pull clawed at him from the front, trying to strip his momentum away, but Gluttony packed his stride with crushing weight, and he pushed through it.
The distance vanished faster than before.
Kaiden hit the creature like a wrecking charge, shoulder first, then followed through with a sequence of tight, compact blows meant to maximize transfer instead of spectacle.
He cycled between driving punches, short kicks, and full-body slams, testing angles, timing, and how quickly Gluttony could reinforce him mid-motion. He tried staying close, tried skirting the edge of the pull, tried committing fully and letting the draw amplify his momentum. Each approach bought him seconds at best. The Bottomless One adapted with brutal efficiency, its mass stabilizing faster each time, its hollow tightening and deepening until the pull overwhelmed whatever advantage Kaiden carved out.
What did change was him.
With every engagement, Gluttony responded faster. The intake sharpened, particles funneling into him with less effort and cleaner flow. Power stacked denser and earlier, packing into muscle and bone before the first exchange even finished. Kaiden felt the difference clearly, the way his frame accepted reinforcement without lag, the way weight and presence settled into him almost immediately when he reached for it. The creature still outpaced him, but the gap shortened in small, measurable increments.
He pushed harder every time.
The fights blurred together after a point. Charges that ended with him dragged screaming into the hollow. Barrages that slowed the creature only long enough for it to swell and tighten its grip. Moments where he thought he had it, where the pull faltered and the hollow warped under concentrated damage, followed by crushing pressure snapping shut around him. Each failure ended the same way, with the void closing in and sensation collapsing under invasive force.
Then the world snapped again.
Kaiden’s eyes flew open as his boots slammed into solid ground. Sweat streamed down his temples and neck, soaking into his collar as his chest heaved violently. His hands shook as they hovered near his ribs, breath coming in ragged pulls that burned all the way down. The phantom pressure lingered longer this time, tight and invasive, his body remembering what his surroundings no longer showed.
"Consumed again. What a violent trial..."
He stayed bent forward for several seconds, forcing air into his lungs and ordering his limbs to still. The realm sat calm around him, particles drifting lazily through open space as if the last battle never happened. Kaiden straightened slowly and wiped his face, jaw tightening as he replayed the last exchange in his head.
Rushing it kept ending the same way. He believed that killing it as soon as possible was his best bet. But, clearly, he was missing something.
And he already had an idea of what that something was. Each and every time the fight reset, he had time until the creature appeared. Perhaps that was the key. Kaiden frowned and counted instinctively, breath syncing with the rhythm he felt settling into his core.
Gluttony began consuming, empowering Kaiden.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Always five.
Then, the pressure hit.
The Bottomless One manifested as it always did. His eyes stayed sharp, mind racing as understanding settled in. Every reset gave him the same window. Five seconds where the creature didn’t exist, yet Gluttony was ready to be used.
A head start.
To beat this trial, that opening mattered.
Kaiden’s lips pulled back into a slow grin as the realization settled fully into place. His shoulders loosened, posture easing instead of coiling for another charge, and his gaze lifted toward the forming pressure with something close to anticipation.
"Is this how you do it?"
He didn’t move forward when the Bottomless One finished manifesting. He didn’t brace or sprint or lean into the draw. Kaiden stayed where he stood and opened himself to Gluttony with intent instead of restraint.
He inhaled.
The particles around him screamed as his pull flared outward, violent and indiscriminate. They tore free from the ground, the air, the suspended haze between moments, funneling straight into him in dense, blinding streams. Kaiden widened the intake deliberately, shaping it after what he had felt inside the creature’s hollow. He copied the rhythm. The greed. The way the draw ignored balance and priority and simply took.
His body responded instantly.
Power slammed into him in overwhelming volume, far more than he had ever taken in a single moment. Muscle swelled. Bone thickened. Density stacked brutally fast, his frame stretching upward as mass packed into every inch of him. The ground groaned beneath his boots as his weight surged, cracks spiderwebbing outward as he grew taller, broader, heavier by the second.
Across from him, the Bottomless One answered in kind.
The hollow tightened and deepened, its pull sharpening into a focused, ravenous draw. Particle streams bent violently between them, caught in competing currents as both forces fed at once. The air between Kaiden and the creature warped under the strain, space itself bowing as matter was stripped and devoured from every direction.
They stood like that, facing each other, unmoving and feeding.
Kaiden felt exultation ripple through him as his power climbed at a rate he had never reached before. His presence crushed downward, his shadow stretching across fractured ground as his height pushed past familiar limits. This worked. He was growing fast enough to feel the gap closing, fast enough to believe.
Then the balance shifted.
The streams began to bend away from him.
Kaiden’s grin tightened as he felt it, the flow subtly skewing toward the creature despite his effort. He widened his pull further, forcing Gluttony to take more, to take harder, to drag power in with reckless intensity. His body surged again, frame expanding, weight multiplying until the ground beneath him started to sink under the pressure.
The Bottomless One still pulled harder.
Its bulk ballooned outward at a rate Kaiden could only blink at, mass layering over mass with obscene efficiency. The hollow widened, its draw refining itself as it consumed faster and cleaner than he could manage. The particle streams thickened on its side, torrents ripping past Kaiden’s shoulders and chest despite his effort to hold them.
’This obese fucker’s stealing my calories!’ he hissed as the difference became undeniable. Having consumed all around it, the Bottomless One expanded its reach and ate what Kaiden considered his own.