Silva spent the night watching everyone, and there was one thing that showed: all of them were pissed, angry at losing their fights.
So they trained through the night, trying to get better, using what little health potions Silva provided to heal themselves.
Finally, the second day arrived, and they were all active and ready to fight. Sleep-deprived, but ready to move. But no abominations came, and nothing else.
So the day went on through morning till noon, and nothing happened. But all of them knew Silva; there was no way Silva would allow them to rest.
So at every single moment, they could not rest, their minds thinking about what could happen next or what attack would be next, and that was exactly what Silva wanted.
When it was a few hours past noon, their panic had reached the peak. All of them could not even sit down to fake a break; they felt like someone was watching them.
They used all their senses to try and find something, anything, but they couldn’t.
But then, all of a sudden, they started seeing a very fast shadow moving through the forest. It moved so fast that they couldn’t identify what it was.
But its presence made them uneasy. They all started looking around to find what was moving in the forest. The more they searched, the less they saw that figure.
But whenever they relaxed their minds a little, they would see it run past. The process went on slowly for hours, and their minds began to shatter due to it.
Silva was capitalizing on their wasted minds to make this a mental torture for them, and it was working. They had started to break down, trying to hide themselves, though the figure kept showing up.
The first person to snap was Roxy. She yelled and took out her blades, screaming at whatever it was to come outside. She screamed in all directions.
And finally, the figure responded: a completely faceless man in tight black clothes. He walked in a crazy pattern, and an irritating giggle came from the man.
The giggles seemed to have snapped what little sanity Roxy had. She charged at the figure blindly, swinging her blade like crazy.
The man dodged her like he was dancing, whilst still giggling, and at every opening, he would throw a punch straight into her face.
The punch didn’t really hurt to the point of a knockout, but it was persistent and irritating. She got pissed every time he landed an attack, and her attacks got more and more erratic.
The figure kept doing this for half an hour, and then suddenly, it split into two. The laughs got louder, the fight got harder, and Roxy was close to losing her mind.
It got so bad to the extent that she fell to the ground on her knees, buried her head, and started sobbing. She couldn’t go on; whatever wanted to happen should happen.
“Your mind is your strongest asset, Roxy. A fighter and a warrior must have a stronger mind. Your mind was not strong enough,” Silva spoke into her ear, but when she looked up, she didn’t see him.
—
After Roxy, the next to crash out was Mike. Ever since the Silva incident way back then, his mental state had never been top-notch again.
He knew that he wasn’t really okay, but he had managed to keep himself above water. But today, everything crumbled with this test that Silva had set up.
Mike started chasing the figure in the forest, and when he couldn’t find it, he was starting to lose it.
It got to the extent that he started cutting down trees to clear out space and ensure that there was nowhere for the figure to hide.
Finally, the figure surfaced, and without a word, Mike started fighting against it, but the figure was too fast and too crazy.
So he kept blindly fighting until he completely ran out of all energy possible and fell to the ground, limp. His body refused to move at this point.
The faceless man stepped on his back and kept giggling. He started stomping on Mike like he was a carpet.
Mike was filled with rage, so much rage that he forced his body to move. He grabbed the man by the ankle and pulled him to the ground.
Mike got up and started kicking the man repeatedly, but the man kept laughing and laughing. It changed from giggling into a wild cackle.
The more that Mike hit him, the more he cackled like a wild maniac until the sounds got so loud that it was echoing in the forest.
Mike could not take it anymore. He started to stomp the face of the man. He kept going and going until the face shattered and blood spilled everywhere.
Yet despite that, the figure was still laughing crazily. And Mike could not take it anymore. He fell on his butt and moved away from the laughing figure.
He leaned his back on a tree and watched as the man kept laughing.
The man then stood up and started walking towards Mike while laughing, and that was the final straw. Mike immediately got up and ran into the forest without looking back.
He ran like his life depended on it, and the man chased him with a completely broken face. Mike started getting dizzy as he ran, and his coordination dropped. He tripped on a stone and fell down, striking his head so hard that he passed out.
“It seems Mike’s mind is still a heavy cluster,” Silva said as he walked up to Mike.
“Don’t you think this is going a bit too far? I think they might have all forgotten that this is training and are now seriously fighting for their lives,” Drake said.
“That’s the plan, Drake. I want them to not see this as training. I need them to forget that they are training and believe that their lives are at risk.
Forced Evolution isn’t easy. We have to go above and beyond to get it done, even if it means causing some temporary damage,” Silva said.