Opening his eyes, Lucifer realized that he was in a strange land. He was no longer in the modern living room like before but inside the Trial.
While Lucifer was still trying to understand his current situation and where he was, the system suddenly sent a message to him, or rather, to all the Trial participants.
[Welcome 842 participants to the Trial. Your mission is to kill the Demon King - a cruel being who is causing destruction to this world. Defeat the Demon King and save humanity. The Trial has a deadline of 365 days, if no one completes the mission within this period, everyone will die.]
[Good luck.]
Just like what Owen said, unlike the first Trial, the second Trial will show the participants what they needed to do to escape the Trial. And it seemed like the mission this time was to defeat the demon king.
Lucifer didn't know what the demon king looked like, but just based on his nickname "Demon King", he could tell that this was an extremely powerful and brutal monster.
And such a monster, Lucifer had no chance of defeating it. So it was best for him to hide somewhere and wait for the others to solve the Trial.
This was the reason why the second Trial had so many participants anyway.
'But where am I?'
Lucifer looked around, trying to determine his current location. He was standing on a hot sandbank, in the distance was the sea and only the sea, Lucifer couldn't see anything else but the vast, endless sea.
Behind Lucifer was a forest. The sky was clear and cool, the warm sunlight shining down on Lucifer's body, making him feel very comfortable.
At first glance, it seemed like there was nothing special about this place, it was a very peaceful place.
Suddenly, a map similar to the treasure maps that often appeared in pirate movies that Owen often forced him to watch appeared in his hand, probably from the system.
[This is a map of this world, it will tell you where you are. This map will disappear 10 seconds after you start reading it.]
Without hesitation, Lucifer opened the map. The first thing that caught his eyes was an extremely large continent, and this continent was divided into two halves.
The right half was green, meaning that this was where humans lived. Meanwhile, the left half was red, meaning that this was where demons lived.
And the participants of the Trial needed to go to the red half and defeat the demon king.
But Lucifer was nowhere on this continent. He was neither on the left nor the right. Suddenly, Lucifer noticed a red dot that looked very different on the map, perhaps this was his current location.
Lucifer's current location was…
'Oh shit…' Lucifer took a deep breath to relieve his anger.
He didn't expect his current location to be this unlucky. Perhaps Lucifer's luck had hit rock bottom.
Lucifer was on an island, and the island was extremely far from that continent. Not only that, what was worse was that this island was on the left side of the map, meaning that the closest place to this island was the territory of the demons.
Lucifer hated the system so much. Just a month ago, he was still praising the system as a god, and now it had betrayed his trust like this. This was unacceptable.
'Cheer up, Lucifer!'
Lucifer encouraged himself. Even though he was closest to the demons' territory, it didn't mean he would have to go there and face them.
He could choose to stay here and rest, waiting for the others to solve the Trial and he would be released outside without threatening his life.
10 seconds had passed and the map had disappeared. Now, Lucifer was looking at the gentle, elegant waves while thinking about what he should do during this time.
According to Owen's instructions, Lucifer first needed to find a water source, and right now, there was water in front of his eyes. Therefore, he didn't need to worry about water anymore.
Next, Owen said that there should be somewhere to take shelter at night since that was also the time when the monsters were most active.
Perhaps Lucifer would build his base on a tree?
So everything was clear. Now, what he needed to do was build a shelter, it didn't have to be beautiful, just something that could be lived in. Only then would Lucifer think about finding food.
Lucifer turned his back on the ocean and entered the forest. He needed to find a big, sturdy tree, and maybe some animals for him to eat.
***
Ever since entering this forest, Lucifer somehow felt that something strange had happened to him. He felt as if time had passed more quickly.
And what confused him the most was that sometimes he wouldn't remember what had happened a few seconds ago no matter how hard he tried. But Lucifer tried to ignore it. He needed to focus on his current goal, he couldn't be distracted by other things.
Earlier, he had found a tree that met all the criteria he set, and this tree was also quite close to the beach. It was only about a 20-minute walk to get from that tree to the beach.
An ideal place to build a base.
Furthermore, since this tree had a branch that was quite large, enough for Lucifer to lie down on, he didn't need to build anything else, and he didn't have any tools to build anything anyway.
Suddenly, a field with many different colored flowers entered Lucifer's vision. This flower field was extremely wide and large, but that wasn't what Lucifer needed to care about right now.
That should have been the case, but he couldn't help but head towards that flower field. It felt like something was forcing him to do so.
…Wait, he was willing to head towards that flower field, wasn't it? No, why was he walking towards that flower field?
Lucifer was getting closer and closer to that flower field. He finally stopped when he was only 1 meter away from it. Lucifer knelt down on one knee and looked at the colorful flowers.
Lucifer felt so tranquil. He had never felt so peaceful before.
Lucifer brought his right arm closer to a yellow flower, intending to touch it. His arm touched that flower.
'It's so gorgeous…'
Before Lucifer's body realized it, the arm that was touching the flower had disappeared, it was no longer there, it had been cut.
The cut was so perfect and sudden that Lucifer's body didn't even have time to react, it took 2 seconds for blood to start flowing out and the excruciating pain to come.
"Damn it! Someone save me!" Lucifer screamed in vain, but screaming could not stop his bleeding, it only made the situation worse.
In his panic, Lucifer accidentally stepped into the flower field.
Lucifer's two legs immediately disappeared, they were also cut off. Because of that, Lucifer's crippled body fell into the colorful flower field.
The softness of the flowers under his body, cool and gentle as if he was being embraced by nature. But Lucifer did not feel that way, he only felt death getting closer and closer.
'No...'
Lucifer's body was cut into pieces. He died, died in the most painful way possible, died on the first day when he entered the 2nd Trial.
[Unknown Ring: This Artifact will revive you right after you die to the place you were at 10 seconds before you died. In return, you will not be able to remember what just happened. But you will feel the full pain of all the times you died after your death count is 1000.]
[Number of times Unknown Ring has been activated: 23/1000]