Chapter 403 - I’ve had worse nightmares (Patreon)

The giant flying Sunless creature was nowhere to be seen when Sofia and Bookie resurfaced, so they ran to the spot where the rat was. Bolting a few Sunless drones on the way and realizing that extra skill shards for [Relocate Core] were completely useless as the mana hearts wouldn’t even absorb them.

Finally, reaching their destination, they did not even need to dig down as there was actually an iron hatch at the surface, just sitting there in the middle of the frozen swamp. Sofia almost missed it, it was Crowie who pointed it out from up on her shoulder.

Like that, in the middle of nowhere?

Sofia kicked the hatch open, it wasn’t locked, and it revealed a round pipe-like opening with a rusty ladder going straight down. There was no lighting whatsoever and Sofia could see that the ladder went pretty deep.

I wonder if I could land that without losing health. Maybe with the title that reduces Environmental damage?

Anyway. Sofia grabbed Bookie under her left arm and jumped down the hole. Rather than letting her landing up to chance, she let her Dragon-Scale claw rap against the wall and used it to slow her descent when needed, her claws effortlessly digging into the metal pipe.

She stopped a bit before reaching the bottom. Her mana senses did not pick up anything weird in the room at the bottom except for her own rat skeleton, waiting for her.

Should be safe, but still, go first Pareth.

While Pareth did not fit inside of the pipe, he could easily stand in the room it led to. Appearing inside it, he looked around, and Sofia looked through his eyes.

Pretty much what I expected from my mana senses, but not reason to take unnecessary risks.

The room was rather large, with metal-sheet walls reminiscent of the surroundings of the IPS shuttle. The ladder leading up was on one side and a chunky stone-like double-door was on the other, more than tall enough for Pareth to go through. The rat skeleton was waiting in a corner, it had entered by clawing an opening through the metal wall.

“I expected a Sunless cocoon or a Skitrill hive, but not this…”

It’s clearly system-made… And I cannot sense anything beyond that door. Nothing at all. Strange.

Sofia walked up to the door, it had no handle or anything like that and was perfectly flat, so she placed her palm on it to open it and as soon as she touched it, the room lit up with faint blue light.

[You have discovered the dungeon : Northside Marshland test center]

“A dungeon? Here? It says discovered, not entered… Because we’re first to find it? I don’t know if I’ve ever heard a precedent of that. I’ve entered quite a few dungeons and it never said that…”

[Detected players : 2 - Please wait during calibration]

“Players… Me and Pareth, I guess. But calibration? For a test center… Are we the ones being tested, then?”

Sofia took a step back. She still could not feel anything beyond the door. As if the space there simply did not exist.

After a few seconds, the doors creaked and slowly slid open, dust and gravel falling from them onto the metal floor. Sofia’s perception opened to the space beyond the doors, it looked like nothing special, a twisted corridor of more metal walls, but to her senses it was quite weird. As if nothing existed outside of said corridor.

[Calibration successful - Difficulty : Nightmare]

[The dungeon has been successfully calibrated according to your skills]

[Time until closure 9h36]

[Rewards : Random Heart Catalyser *1 ; unknown imprint; unknown imprint]

Oh. We only have nine hours? Closes at daybreak. Are there Sunless monsters inside?

Calibrated according to our skills… So it’s a dungeon that adapts to the person challenging it. A small trial inside the trial? At least it looks optional.

Heart catalyser does sound like it’s for using with the mana hearts. But Kyle never mentioned anything like that. Go figure… It might be optional. Or it might not.

An entire world wasn’t enough, they just had to add dungeons.

Sofia looked at Pareth and Bookie. “Well, I’m mostly worried that we may only be able to challenge it once. There’s no explanation for the closure thing at all so it could go any number of ways. What do you guys think?”

Pareth activated his light armor and Bookie brandished his high-priest scepter.

“Fair. But let’s not go in right away. Go back Bookie, let’s reset your timer. No reason to leave you on a two hour timer when you could go back to five. I should pre-cast a [Saintess’ madness] effect, too. Probably fire. Mana burn is never a wrong choice.”

When everything was ready, the small group entered the dungeon, and the doors closed behind them.

“Well shit. We got completely cut off from the outside. I can’t even feel the link to Alith and Ihuarah, not even faintly.”

Sofia summoned the graveyard crew, only to find that they could not even come out.

Great.

Trying to teleport back to the outside through the door was fruitless. The teleportation magic failed to even activate. Sofia then punched the door, breaking a hole into it.

The other side was no longer ‘the outside room’. It was pitch black. Extending a long bone in there resulted in absolutely nothing happening, it was like empty space, and the broken door soon reformed, closing onto the bone piece and crushing it to dust.

Are we in the margin right now?

That would be a very good explanation as to why everything is so weird.

The graveyard skeletons normally work in the margin, though.

And now that I think of it. How is it that they can still phase through walls in the margin but Alith can’t transform at all?

Strange.

Well, let’s focus on that ‘Nightmare difficulty’ dungeon, then, since it looks like we’re trapped here.

Not like being trapped does anything to my mental anymore, anyway. Just another day. Let’s see what the system prepared just for us.

The rat advanced first, followed by Pareth, then Sofia and Bookie were safely at the back.

STOP!

Sofia ordered everyone to freeze. Further down the winding metallic corridors, she could finally feel something. A big lump of mana, one would say.

Fuck.

Amalgam. It’s coming our way.

Corridor is about ten meters tall and wide. Can’t hide outside, no ambient mana, graveyard useless… This is going to be tough.

Bookie, giant ice spiders. Pareth, prepare the Sanctified ground, you have to hold that thing back.

The amalgam had been advancing slowly, still a few turns away in the long metallic corridor, but as soon as Sofia’s group started using a lot of mana, it charged.

The five skeletal spiders spread around the walls and the ceiling, covering the corridor in their thick webs, while Pareth braced for impact, two giant shields of light brandished before him.

Sofia was as far back as she could, raising her scepter high, she prepared a piercing bolt.

The amalgam finally entered the group’s field of view, crashing into a wall before abruptly changing direction toward them.

[Twin-Headed Sunless Amalgam - Lv. 299 - Imprint power : 200 - Effect : ??? Skill shards (2/10) ]

‘A large number of Sunless Drones turned a bit more than one, very dumb, mercilessly dangerous.’

Crap.

The amalgam this time reminded Sofia of a slug’s face, two big ‘eyes’ linked to one thick base. Of course, it still had the characteristic slick and oily pitch-black skin of the Sunless.

Sofia wanted to cancel her bolt, but let it go instead. It flew through the corridor, and when it reached the Amalgam, the ‘head’ the bolt was aimed for just moved out of the way, then it charged Pareth.

Piercing is definitely not the way to go.

Sofia blasted the creature with rotting light as it rammed into Pareth’s shields in a deafening collision. She started channeling an explosive bolt.

Two hundred-thousand mana could do the trick. Leaves me most of the other half for [Runeforged Overlord] if needed.

Sofia’s plans were cut short by the Amalgam’s next move. A bunch a black goo shot out from it, not forming a black lance, but lobbed over Pareth’s head and landing all around Sofia before returning to their form as Sunless drones.

Sofia jumped and slammed the explosive bolt below her. It was still relatively low power but it killed the closest drones.

‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 236]’

‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 240]’

‘You have defeated [Sunless Drone - Lv. 209]’

There were eight more, some within the explosion’s radius, some not. Bookie turned around to help, while Pareth was busy with the amalgam.

[Title changed to ‘THE GLORIOUS’]

[Title change function is locked for the next 24 hours]

A ray of Holy light flashed over the sunless drones, covering them and the ground in rot, while the tip of Sofia’s scepter changed to a sword-like spine with a core of light.

Sofia had never given any Drone a chance to attack until now, but as it turned out, they had their own spells. Dozens of black orbs appeared above each of the Drones, each charged with thousands of mana. Sofia’s legs hit the roof, and she used that foothold to leap back down at the drones.

The black orbs all shot at her like deadly inverted raindrops.

Author's note: 

Hey everyone!

I hope you're liking the start of this trial so far, I've got plenty of things in store for this one :p

In other news, the book on Amazon is not doing terribly well... The reviews are incredible and yet... It's just not selling.

Would more of you consider throwing an eye that way to help defeat the evil Amazon Algorithm? I'd say it's worth giving a quick re-read, I worked hard on polishing those old scenes and dialogues, you wouldn't believe how bad my early writing was... Actually you probably would, since you've read it once before, but let it be said, it was horrendous in a lot of ways, and I do believe I've improved it a lot! (๑*ᗜ*)

Anyway, thank you for being around, your support means a lot, and the daily comments are what give me the motivation to keep going, so I'm infinitely grateful for that. 

I'll try to get a good rest over the weekend, I wish you have the opportunity to do the same. 

Have a nice weekend, and Happy Reading! (｀• ω •´)b