Chapter 197: Trial 2 Detected…

The crossing point was where the cathedral’s geometry made its intentions clear.

Three corridors… left, right, and center were stretched out before them. Each one descended deeper into the structure, with light vanishing within twenty feet of the arches.

The water was colder here, and its currents falling still. Dark, fibrous growth replaced the kelp on the walls, clinging to the stone like ancient, woven cloth that seemed to have grown with a purpose rather by accident.

Akira’s system was scanning and coming back with partial readings.

[INNER CATHEDRAL: THREE PASSAGE CONFIGURATION]

[TRIAL 2: DETECTED]

[NATURE: PSYCHOLOGICAL — INDIVIDUAL]

[CONDITION: PASSAGES RESPOND TO OCCUPANT]

[RECOMMENDATION: DO NOT ENTER ANOTHER’S CORRIDOR]

As Akira read through the text before his vision, he couldn’t help but wonder if he was the only one who entered the gate.

“It’s reading us,” Ayaka said. She was looking at the left corridor. “I can feel it.”

“Each passage is tuned to whoever enters it,” Akira said. “We go in alone and come out the other end. Should reconnect at the choir chamber further in.”

Rina looked at the right corridor. “And if we don’t come out?”

“Give it ten minutes. If someone doesn’t emerge, the other two go in after them.” He looked at both of them. “Don’t fight what you see in there. That’s my read. These kinds of trials don’t respond well to resistance.”

“Very comforting,” Rina said, and swam into the right corridor.

Ayaka moved left without a word.

Akira took the center.

The center corridor was only shoulder-width wide, with stone walls pressing in on both sides.

The ceiling was low, so he had to keep his arms forward to swim. The water here was completely still; there was no current or movement at all.

His body moving through it felt intrusive, as if he were disturbing something that had been quiet for a very long time. Each kick of his legs sounded louder than it should have.

Then the walls changed.

The change was gradual. The stone texture shifted and the carved details on the archways became familiar: a school hallway, a gymnasium, and a library appeared.

The cathedral hadn’t vanished; its structure was still visible beneath the surface, like bones at the edges of his vision. But it was as if Kawakami High was layered over it, appearing both familiar and unsettling, much like a dream.

The lockers were slightly off-color, and the lights buzzed with a frequency he didn’t remember. Everything was close enough to reality that the subtle differences made the wrongness even worse.

Mia was standing at the end of the hallway.

She wasn’t swimming, but standing, as if gravity worked differently there. Dressed in her school uniform with her arms crossed, she watched him with an expression he had never seen before. It wasn’t jealousy or anger, but a coldness that suggested she had already processed both and moved beyond them.

“You know what you are,” she said. “Right?”

Akira kept moving toward her. “This is a trial.”

“I’m asking if you know what you are.”

He didn’t stop. She didn’t step aside.

“You use the Heart Strings skill on me,” Mia said. “You did it the first time to stop me from asking about Yuki. You’ve done it every time I got close to something real. Every time I was about to ask the right question, you pulled a thread and I forgot what I was doing.”

“I know,” he said.

That seemed to surprise her, or whatever the trial was using to wear her face. “You’re not going to argue?”

“No.”

“Then say it.”

He stopped in front of her. The hallway around them was starting to blur at the edges, the cathedral stone bleeding back through. “I’ve manipulated you… on purpose. Told myself it was management, not lying, but the outcome was the same.” He held her gaze. “I don’t know yet if I can stop doing it entirely. That’s the honest answer.”

Mia’s expression didn’t soften. “And the others? Rina, Aoi, Satomi… all of them.”

“Yes.”

“Does it feel wrong when you do it?”

Akira thought about that… he actually thought about it, not reaching for the quick answer. “Sometimes, but not always. And that’s the part that bothers me more than the doing.”

Slowly, the hallway dissolved. Mia dissolved with it, and he was back in the stone corridor, swimming forward, the far arch visible ahead.

The water tasted faintly metallic, like old coins held too long in the fist.

[TRIAL 2 — CENTER PASSAGE: COMPLETE]

“Well,” Ai said quietly. “That was the least fun version of self-reflection.”

“Did I pass or just survive it?”

“With these trials, darling, I’m not sure there’s a difference.”

The choir chamber on the other side was larger than the crossing. It had a high vaulted ceiling and the remains of a pipe organ on the far wall, its pipes overgrown with pale coral.

The colored light from above was dimmer here, as the surface was further away. The organ looked like it had been beautiful once, before the ocean decided to make it its own.

Rina was already there, sitting on a submerged pew with her knees pulled up, staring at nothing.

Akira swam to her. “You okay?”

“Fine.” Her voice was flat in the specific way that meant the opposite. “What did yours show you?”

“Something true,” he said. “Yours?”

She was quiet for a moment. Her hand, the one that had cut earlier, was completely healed, but she kept looking at it as if she expected to find something there. “I went feral. In the trial. Lost control of the feeding instinct and went after…” She stopped. “It doesn’t matter who. It wasn’t real.”

“But it felt real.”

“It felt real.” She exhaled slowly, a stream of bubbles rising from her lips. “I’ve been terrified of that happening since Ayaka started teaching me to feed passively. Every time the hunger spikes, that fear is right underneath it. The trial just made me watch it play out.”

“But you came through.”

“I stood there and watched it happen and didn’t run from it.” She looked up at him. “Is that the same as coming through?”

“I think that’s exactly what coming through means.”

Ayaka arrived two minutes later. She didn’t explain what she had seen, and neither of them asked. She simply gazed at the pipe organ for a long moment, something unreadable moving behind her eyes.

Then, looking toward the corridor that continued deeper below the choir chamber, she said, “He”s down there.”

Akira looked at the descending passage. It was wider than the corridors and sloped downward at a sharp angle. The light beyond it shifted in a way that suggested movement… large movement.

[GUARDIAN DETECTED: LOWER SANCTUM] [SCANNING…]

The scan was still running when the pressure wave hit.

It wasn’t water pressure; it was a presence… the kind of weight that large predators carry, an instinctive signal that something in the environment had just noticed them.

This feeling settled heavily over all three of them at once, like being watched by a creature that had never once needed to hide.

A voice came up through the water from below. It was deep enough to vibrate in their chests… resonant and distorted by the distance, yet perfectly clear in its intent.

“Three entered my cathedral.”

It wasn’t a question, neither was it a greeting.

Akira looked at Rina and Ayaka. Both of them had gone still, the way trained fighters go still when they’re measuring something.

“Three are about to leave,” Akira said, loud enough to carry downward.

The silence that followed had weight to it.

Then: “Come down, then. Let me see what walks into the Tidecaller’s sanctum.”

[GUARDIAN SCAN: COMPLETE]

[ENTITY: THE TIDECALLER]

[CLASS: BETA — AQUATIC SOVEREIGN]

[PHYSICAL: APPROXIMATELY 8 FEET. HUMANOID UPPER BODY, EEL-FORM LOWER. SCALE-COVERED. TRIDENT — WATER-ESSENCE CHARGED]

[COMBAT TYPE: TERRITORIAL AGGRESSOR — NO SEDUCTION MECHANIC. DIRECT PHYSICAL DOMINATION]

[KNOWN ABILITIES: WHIRLPOOL GENERATION, PRESSURE CRUSH, TIDE COMMAND, DOMAIN AMPLIFICATION IN WATER ENVIRONMENTS]

[WEAKNESS: THERMAL DISRUPTION. ELECTRICAL CONDUCTIVITY]

[WARNING: GUARDIAN IS ENRAGED BY MALE PRESENCE IN DOMAIN]

Akira read the last line twice.

“Enraged by male presence,” Ai repeated helpfully. “So you walking down there is going to be received badly.”

“How badly?”

“The kind of badly that skips the monologue and goes straight to the trident.”

He looked at Rina and Ayaka. “He’s going to target me first. Priority threat response to a male challenger; it’s territorial instinct, not tactics. Use that. When he commits to me, you both hit his flanks.”

“And if he doesn’t commit to you?” Ayaka asked.

“Then we adapt.” He activated the Voidfang Gauntlet on his right hand, felt the void energy sitting ready beneath his fingers like a coiled thing waiting to unwind. He checked his essence reserves… it was still solid. “Shirayuki, can you manifest down there?”

The familiar cold presence stirred in his chest. Her voice came quiet and direct: “Briefly. The thermal environment will cost me. Ten minutes, maybe less.”

“I’ll take it. Stay back until I need you.”

He looked at the descending corridor one more time, at the shifting light below that was the Tidecaller’s sanctum, at the specific quality of darkness that meant something large was moving through it.

“Let’s go,” he said, and swam down.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep