This discussion did not take long for them to conclude… Aiden chose to go into the cave. Since they were still unsure about what the noble team scouts had seen, it would be best to have a relatively capable person take on the job.There also wasn't much to talk about, and Princess Eleanor seemed to have taken heed to Aiden's advice and was no longer disturbing them. She was watching everything they did, however, with Eloise right there with her.After picking out representatives from each group of people to act as scouts, they walked into the cave together. Aiden was part of this group of people, and he chose to trail slightly behind the group. As he walked into the cave, he moved to one side of the cave and let his hand brush along the walls as he walked.No one seemed to care much about what he did, as each of them had their eyes opened wide to try and pick out anything that was out of place in the cave. Anything that they could report to their groups.You could imagine the looks on
Aiden and the rest of the group watched the large crowd of arcanas in front of them turn into specks in the distance after a few minutes. As they watched, Princess Eleanor came up beside Aiden and asked in her normal voice, not that there was no need to disguise much."Now what?"Aiden was not the one who answered this question, rather it was Deirdre, and she did so by speaking to Eloise who stood quietly in her little space."Hi, Eloise", she greeted in her normal voice.She had not spoken since they were brought onto the island, and her voice made Princess Eleanor pause in her tracks while it made Eloise raise an eyebrow in surprise. Deirdre did not take off her disguise or do something that would prove her identity, she simply continued speaking."The plan is the cave", she started. "Hopefully we are right and make it through safely", she added. As a footnote to her explanation, she turned to Princess Eleanor and said the following, "Your Highness, if you would be patient, and help
Diane followed them and stepped through the mountain. It was at this point that they saw a sight that raised thoughts. For Aiden and Connor, this was a very familiar sight, one that they had seen and walked through before, however, it was wrong in the order that it appeared.For the rest of the group, their thoughts ran back to memories of Aiden and Connor explaining their experiences. They also figured that the order was not as it should be, despite fitting the description that was given.As for Princess Eleanor and Eloise, their thoughts were a lot different. Their only memories of anything similar to the sight were through Aiden's explanation of 'the plan'. They were very surprised by this sight, and the order meant nothing to them as they glanced at Aiden simultaneously.At the same time, Aiden and his group crossed the threshold, stepping out of the mountain into the grasslands with an overwhelming resemblance to the one that they knew in one way or the other. The crowd of arcana
At the gates of the third community that they came across on their way, Fraser and his men looked out of the window of the carriage. They had gone through two other communities, and now that they got to the third community, they found a trend.The farther they went, the smaller and less developed the communities were. This was also very understandable, given that the farther they went, the closer they came to the boundary.They had been traveling at a relatively slow speed. Fraser did not explain his reasoning for doing this and his men did not question this decision after he told them that They should leave this particular one to him… As they entered the community, they found that people came out of their houses or looked at them from the windows, curious as to who was passing by.With this kind of reaction to their passage in the last two communities, the men had formed a rough understanding of why they were doing this.Looking past every person that came out to see them, Fraser see
"We need to do something to avoid getting destroyed by any beast that shows up", Tristan of the house Grist, started the conversation with a massive conundrum.In his relatively husky voice, as well as his oversized frame, he looked and sounded like someone who shouldn't be taking part in this test. This made it so that his voice drew enough attention, such that they listened to him.They all agreed with what he said and responded with nods of agreement, shown to varying degrees. There were more than fifty party leaders there, including the nobles. So, Eugene pitched in a much more reasonable tone, "if you have any ideas, it would be very helpful to share them with us", he said.You could almost see the gears turn in their minds as they all considered ways that they could fix this issue. They knew the horror of the attacks well enough, having gone through one already.For a moment, every person there fell into a ruminative mode, and the silence persisted. But this was until a hand sho
"Move", Hadrian and Tristan shouted at the same time, speeding up the process of choosing sides… And as you would expect, only a few people were indecisive, bouncing back and forth between the choices laid out for them before ultimately choosing to sign away their freedom.No one had chosen to be an outlier, standing against everyone else to hold onto the idea of freedom. They had all decided that the rules were okay with them and that they would follow them even though, they did not know if the rules were reasonable or not.Oscar looked over the crowd and nodded, "since that is the case, the second rule is this: order is paramount, which means that, if any of the party leaders, as well as we nobles, give an instruction, you are to follow them immediately, and without question… Of course, if a party leader uses this power unjustly, or orders anything immoral of you, you can report to any of the nobles and we will see that the party leader is stripped of his authority.In addition to t
"The next test will be a test of your strength. No one cares what your bound artifacts or any others like that are, all we need to see is your base strength... So, what do you say to arm wrestling?", Eugene said to them.They were taken aback for a moment, but it was a relatively quick way to determine their base strength. The good part there was that activating their fighting techniques gave a boost to the body, even if they did not actively use the moves."You will be ranked based on the number of wins you get; this means that you wrestle with everyone. So, pick someone and begin", he gave the order.It was that simple and they got to it immediately. The atmosphere grew heavy as the force of fighting techniques came pouring out of more than half of the Arcanas who were there.This was understandable, because, fighting techniques were a commodity that could be bought with points in this test world.Same as advancement elemental potions, they cost a lot of points, but many managed to
"Three days?!", Raven started."Oh, don't get worked up, it was more like two and a half days", Princess Eleanor chipped in.Unfortunately, this did not change the reaction Raven had; in fact, her reaction got worse at that moment as she got frantic and almost lost her mind as she looked around."Calm down, Raven. Things are not as bad as you think. We are out of the grassland maze; of course, we had to wait for everyone to de-petrify before we continued…", Deirdre explained."So, what trial do we have now?", Raven asked and immediately got a response."Oh, the long rope bridge, strung across the chasm that has a tentacled beast living in it", Deirdre responded like that piece of information was of no consequence.Raven was silent as she stared off into space for a moment. When she got her mind back, she asked almost immediately… "Are we crossing now that I am awake?"A question to which Princess Eleanor answered in a snarky and sarcastic tone… "Hopefully". Her comment got a few gazes
The crowd was pulled from the tragedy that the nobles caused, and some people started to point to the group suspended above them, whispering and murmuring various pieces of gossip.This was a topic that excited them all, however, the ones who were most excited for the revelation were the nobles who finally knew the people who beat them to occupy the highest floor of the tower.They did not hide the wicked grins on their faces and Aiden saw these grins on their faces. He also saw that the group were starting to descend from the sky into the midst of the crowd. That was bad and was quickly made worse when he noticed the nobles setting their hounds on the group.He could guess their thoughts. Even if the group was stronger than they were, given the position they occupied, they did not believe it and wanted to know for themselves how powerful they were.This gave Aiden a headache and his mind began to spin quickly, looking for a big enough distraction that would give the group a chance to
None could ask the other for help because each had someone attacking them, however, they were not noble scions for nothing. Despite being overpowered by the golems, they dealt some damage over time.It was not immediately obvious, but they managed to hold their own, and avoid grievous injuries even though there were several close calls.It took them each about an hour to circumvent their respective golems and deal enough damage to break through their chests.Hadrian was the first followed by Oscar shortly after with Tristan clocking in third, a few seconds behind Oscar. He was unhappy with this but he had no time to be unhappy because his face soon changed into a somber look. Oscar who had just tried to pick up the glowing multi-coloured orb was surprised to find the orb roll away from him and float up to meet the orb that came from Tristan’s golem. This also meant that the orb in Hadrian’s hand was the only one that remained.Oscar and Tristan noticed this, but they could do nothin
No one cared who had said that word because they all ran. The sight of the gray tentacles rising like pillars from the depths of the abyss was enough to scare every one of them.At the same moment, there was a rumble that spread across the skies of the city at that moment. Everyone heard it. Aiden, sitting in the restaurant was jolted from his thoughts and joined everyone else as they looked up at the ruin.He witnessed a few of the tentacles of the beast appear on the edge of the ruin as he had seen before they entered the ruin.‘That bridge, huh? They might be lucky enough to escape'.He did not care much if these people beat the ruin and made it to the temple. He had gotten his rewards and he was happy with that.Tristan and his group had immediately dashed off the bridge, but the tentacles came down on the bridge at a lightning-fast speed.This attack ripped the bridge apart, leaving just three people from Tristan’s group unscathed.Tristan’s face was painted with horror like ever
Aiden was dumbfounded. How was this a reward? It simply contradicted itself. The problem it caused was having him be a prime target for the Zaltyr, but it would also save him from them once.Then, is the mark erased once the life-saving opportunity is used?[Yes, everything returns to normal after that]This made him heave a sigh of relief. He tried to look at this from a positive perspective. This meant the mark was not meant to specifically protect him from the Zaltyr, its main purpose was to protect him from every other thing that tried to kill him.Thinking about it this way made it easier to accept the fact that he was going to be in trouble with the Zaltyr sooner or later, albeit only slightly.Elder Zarek watched Aiden go through his thoughts for a few minutes while he thought of the command he had received from The World Seed.Aiden had recovered his thoughts at this point and decided to check on his elemental seed. He was elated to see the changes to his elemental seed.The mu
None of the thirty remaining survivors was stupid and they took things as calmly as they could. There was no visible harm to resting till a problem was identified and this was something they unanimously agreed on.As they expected, there was something that was out of the ordinary and it was found after two hours of waiting.The quiet rumble that came from the depths of the chasm was enough of a wake-up call.Theo of the Arco twins was the one who made the first comment, breaking the silence. None of them believed that crossing the bridge would be easy from the start, however, the realization that some unknown danger lurked beneath was enough to bring them flashbacks of their time in the maze.“There’s something down there as well? Why is this trial so difficult?”“Good thing we were patient…”“Patient? What does that do for us?”“Theo is not completely wrong. Every stage of the trials had been harder than the last”, Oscar took a deep breath.“Indeed… Something that can cause such a ru
“You just had to jinx it?”Raven rolled her eyes in response.The orb glowed and the rubble spread across the hall was drawn to it. One piece after the other, they mashed together and barely a moment later, a statue had formed.This statue looked the same as the ones they fought before, save for a few important differences. One, this new statue was massive, at least three times as tall. Two, the statue now had a weapon – A halberd which it swung around. Three, most importantly, it had lines running all over its body. Looking close enough these lines were runes just like the ones Aiden and the rest had, but these were very close to being complete, easily dwarfing the ones they had.Their expressions turned grave as the glowing eyes of the massive statue locked onto them.It was a golem, and it wasted no time. With a roar that sounded like thunder, it wielded its halberd and charged at them.There was no running from it, because, a sweep of its halberd made the hall feel claustrophobi
Raven who had suggested was the first to move, and the moment she did, everyone else followed her one after the other. They got to the stone coffin amidst their careful creeping without any problems. The unnerving feeling that they felt from the statues kept them on their toes as they expected everything to go wrong at any moment. "Now what", Raven asked. Aiden and Connor stepped here, and as he instructed; "Keep an eye out", the two of them pushed the lid off the stone coffin. They were right to be worried, because the moment the stone coffin opened slightly, light burst out of the opening. They were taken aback by this absurd light show, however, the light was like a tonic, one that breathed life into the surrounding. Life into the several warrior statues that lined the walls. Each of their eyes opened with a snap, glowing a bright orange, followed by cracks that came from the loosening of the joints on the statues. Gadiel was the first to speak regret about the situation, but
With Aiden and Connor leading the way, they stepped onto the rope bridge. The silence that fell on them at that was quite unnerving, but it helped them keep their focus. This meant that their reactions were spot on as they responded immediately to Aiden making any signals.This was the moment that they finally understood the danger that lay in the chasm beneath them. Apart from the scary chasm that looked like a bottomless pit, a sight that already promised them death should they fall into it, there was something else living in the chasm, and the dreadful atmosphere it brought with evidence of its existence sent chills running their spines. The conclusion here was very simple, there was trouble and they needed to be careful.Listening carefully, they heard the silent rumbles gradually fade away, taking with it the tense atmosphere they felt. You would expect Aiden to make a sudden dash to get across as quickly as possible, but he didn't. He was taking no chances, so continued steadily
"Three days?!", Raven started."Oh, don't get worked up, it was more like two and a half days", Princess Eleanor chipped in.Unfortunately, this did not change the reaction Raven had; in fact, her reaction got worse at that moment as she got frantic and almost lost her mind as she looked around."Calm down, Raven. Things are not as bad as you think. We are out of the grassland maze; of course, we had to wait for everyone to de-petrify before we continued…", Deirdre explained."So, what trial do we have now?", Raven asked and immediately got a response."Oh, the long rope bridge, strung across the chasm that has a tentacled beast living in it", Deirdre responded like that piece of information was of no consequence.Raven was silent as she stared off into space for a moment. When she got her mind back, she asked almost immediately… "Are we crossing now that I am awake?"A question to which Princess Eleanor answered in a snarky and sarcastic tone… "Hopefully". Her comment got a few gazes