[Escape the world. Time remaining: 2 seconds.]0

I let out another sigh as I triggered Flash Strike. The trial had reset once more.1

This was my eighth attempt. I had wasted the first in panic, spent the second organizing my thoughts, used the next four to check the four cardinal directions, and when that failed, I devoted my seventh attempt to searching for a hidden lifeform.0

After scouring the entire area with lightning, I confirmed there wasn’t anything living nearby. The strike had consumed nearly all of my strength, including both causality and divinity. Even if some creature possessed an extraordinary power of concealment, it should have left at least a trace. Unless it had been hiding far, far away.0

If that were the case, I had no way of finding it now. I would have to leave that possibility for later.0

Hmm.0

Purely in terms of elapsed time, fourteen seconds had passed. At last, a faint sense of unease began to gnaw at me. If I only had ten respawns, then, counting this one, I had merely three left. When I had organized my thoughts during my second loop, I had believed in my plan...0