The Great Oni
Volume (1) Benoni Chapter (1)
Li Fan—that was his name. He was just an ordinary fourteen-year-old boy. His looks were so average that if someone dropped him into the middle of a crowd, he would disappear at once. With only one month left before he had to start high school, he was blissfully enjoying his summer vacation. Because it was already the year 2040, he spent his days indoors, playing online games with friends, reading comics, watching anime, working out, and happily coasting through each day.
Yet on this particular night, just before he went to bed, something utterly shocking occurred.
[Choose one of the three options]
[Number 1 – Pass the Rat Test]
[Difficulty – Demon]
[Reward – Speed of Sound]
[Speed of Sound – Move at the speed of sound and obtain a body sturdy enough to endure such velocity.]
[Number 2 – Pass the Water Droplet Test]
[Difficulty – Madness]
[Reward – Height Manipulation]
[Height Manipulation – Freely control your height. Limitation – Cannot exceed ten feet or drop below three inches.]
[Number 3 – Pass the Ten-Blade Test]
[Difficulty – Pain]
[Reward – Ordinary Human]
[Ordinary Human – Your current physique will be augmented to the level of a normal adult.]
"Whoa, so this is a system!" Li Fan shouted in excitement. Like any teenager who devoured fantasy comics and web-novels, he understood exactly what a "System" meant.
"And those rewards are crazy," he muttered. "Speed of sound plus a body that can take it… Option 2 lets me change height at will… Option 3 isn't flashy, but I'd get a lot stronger than I am now."
"But what in the world are the Rat Test, Water Droplet Test, and Ten-Blade Test?" he asked in confusion. "Is the System not going to explain the fine print?"
The appearance of the System thrilled him, yet he wasn't about to pick an option based only on the prize. After all, the System never promised a life-insurance policy, and it left plenty unsaid. The difficulty labels—Demon-level, Madness-level, Pain-level—tangled his thoughts, making him sweat.
After a long time deliberating, drenched in perspiration and no closer to certainty, he finally made up his mind. He would not be reckless. He chose the seemingly easiest path: the Ten-Blade Test. His reasoning felt sound—choose something too hard and he might die; better to tone down the risk.
The moment he selected the Ten-Blade Test, he blacked out.
When his eyes opened again, he found himself somewhere completely unlike his bedroom. He was bound—his legs and chest tied to a post. A large room was illuminated only by a single dim yellow lamp. There were tables and chairs, and on one table lay ten knives of various kinds: a plain kitchen knife, a samurai sword, a rusty blade, an unevenly chipped dagger, and more.
Seated on a chair was a person wearing a dirty black coat, calmly polishing the knives with a spotless cloth. The face was hidden under a hood, invisible in the gloom.
Noticing that Li Fan had awakened, the man polishing the blades turned toward him and smiled. Even with the obscured face, the smile was unmistakable, and the dark room sent a shiver up Li Fan's spine. Li Fan clicked his tongue and spoke.
"Big brother… w-where is this place? Do you know?" Li Fan's trembling voice sliced through the cramped, deathly-quiet room.
The man in the chair said nothing. He simply lifted one of the knives and stood. As the rickety wooden seat scraped backward, it let out a shrill creak that set Li Fan's skin crawling.
"B-big brother, w-what are you going to do?" Li Fan asked, terror filling every syllable.
A horrifying thought flashed into his mind: Could this be what the Ten-Blade Test really means…?
His suspicion became fact in an instant. The unsettling man, still wiping each blade to a spotless sheen, now gripped a gleaming kitchen knife and advanced, step by deliberate step. The wooden clogs he wore clicked against the floor, each hollow clop echoing like a countdown.
Li Fan went rigid, eyes fixed on the stranger's hooded face. Though it was shrouded in shadow, he could swear he saw a smile stretching underneath.
The man lunged. Li Fan's muscles locked; his eyes slammed shut—
—and a searing bolt of agony ripped through his abdomen.
"Aaaahhh!" he howled. Normally, a stab wound numbed beneath hot, pulsing blood; but Li Fan's blood ran cold, and the pain struck pure.
His scream rang through the room as sweat poured down his face. A strong-willed boy, he refused to cry, but his vision blurred.
The hooded man gazed at Li Fan's suffering, clapped his hands in delight, and hopped from foot to foot—sometimes even twirling in a full circle.
Li Fan clenched his jaw and glared, fury blazing through the tears he would not shed. Then the realization hit him: nine knives remained. His face drained of color.
The man grinned wider, bounced back to the table, and seized the next weapon—an uneven, chipped dagger. He skipped forward and drove it into Li Fan with a sudden thrust. A fresh, distinct wave of pain ripped another scream from the boy. The man clapped again, overjoyed.
A rusty blade, a samurai sword, a knife still hot as if forged in fire—one after another the stranger buried them in Li Fan's body, each strike punctuated by his gleeful applause and the wooden clatter of his clogs. Li Fan's tortured cries, the man's claps, and the sharp heel-beats mingled in a hideous symphony beneath the single dim bulb.
After half an hour of horror, all ten blades pierced Li Fan's abdomen, the tips embedded in the post behind him, turning him into a gruesome human pincushion. Miraculously, no vital organ was hit, and the knives themselves stemmed most of the bleeding.
Only then did the hooded man, ever smiling, pull each knife free, letting them clatter to the floor one by one.
"Khlunk!"
Li Fan's jaws locked in a soundless groan. With each withdrawal, blood spurted unchecked, spilling like a burst dam. By the time the last blade struck the ground, a dark pool had begun to spread beneath him.
Returning to his chair, the man planted an elbow on the table, rested his chin on his hand, and watched Li Fan fade—smiling all the while.
Blood loss did not claim him instantly; first came the hollow weakness. Li Fan's face turned chalk-white, his lips trembling dry.
"Mom… help…"
"Dad… help…"
"I… I don't want to die… please…"
His voice had shrunk to a whisper, little more than the scrape of breath. Gradually that breath grew shallower, until no sound emerged at all.
Within minutes, Li Fan's consciousness slipped into a vast darkness.