This white orb safeguard... It feels like a trap. If you leave when you fall unconscious, it means you cannot sleep. But we can piece together that there is downtime between levels, and we have no indication of how long the trial will last.
But then again, it also allows you to survive if you pass out during a fight…
No way I’m picking the white orb, though. I’m here to break everything. I’m ready. I’ll say it; this is rank one or nothing. I’ll push this trial to its limits.
Even if I’m unconscious, Pareth can fight. Even if I die, the rune can bring me back. I have no reason to play it safe.
Sofia was curious to see what everyone would pick, so she did not move. The old warrior was first to stand up. Black orb.
Mornn was next, followed by Alith. Bothblack orb.
Then Astelia stood up. She seemed hesitant but in the end… Black orb.
There was only Sofia and the mage left.
The man looked at Sofia, he seemed to want to observe what everyone else was doing too, but he was nervous, shaky. And seeing Sofia so nonchalantly waiting cross-legged on her chair did not help.
“Come on, my arms hurt,” Sen called out.As if.
The bespectacled mage finally gathered the resolve to stand up. He walked up to Sen. Raising his right hand; he reached for the black orb.
He stopped himself at the last second. His palm hovered above the black orb… Then the white… Then the black… And he picked. White orb.
No shame in that.
Sofia felt the magic that was preventing her from speaking was lifted.
Sen looked at her with a smirk. “Any last words, Miss Aphenoreth?”
“Prepare to see your ranking drop by one, Sen.”
“Hopefully, more than one. I pray for your success.”
“You pray?”
“Figure of speech.”
“If you say so… Oh, I meant to ask, if I die with my rune, that will not disqualify me, right?”
“Did you really die if you’re still alive?”
“I see; thank you for your answer.”
Sofia touched the black orb.
Sofia’s first reflex was to put on the Orichalcum armor, activate the bone armor which layered itself over it, summon Pareth, and immediately start casting all the skills.
But then she stopped because although she was alone in the center of a large circular room, it was completely empty. It was well-lit, thanks to rectangular sources of light resembling windows lining the top of the wall, but Sofia could tell these were no windows. The light feels the same as Zerei’s ritual.
For a second, she wondered if the first enemies were ghosts, but a few system messages came along that explained the situation.
[Ranking Spire Phase 1 : Floor 1/10]
[Objective : Find the poisoned food item, hold it, and say ‘This one’. You have 3 attempts.]
[Preparation time : 20s; Time limit : 24 hours]
“Poisoned food…”
That’s not the battle I expected. Maybe to ease us into the trial? I can see a few ways to solve this. I guess they test us on multiple things again. After all, the first trial wasn’t all battle either. I could’ve gone through it without a fight had I done things differently… Let’s focus on the task ahead. First, I need to see how many food items we’re talking about.
When the timer hit zero, banquet tables appeared, lining the whole circumference of the room. They were covered in foods and drinks of all kinds.
That’s a lot… A huge lot.
Each table had wildly different-looking foods. Sofia recognized that one table, in particular, looked much like the traditional Skyreach cuisine she had come to know during her prolonged stay at the orphanage.
“How do I do this… I can still see a few ways.”
I do have a dog in the book now, but even if he’s a good dog and can smell well, he’s not trained to recognize poison.
I can go around with a silver coin and rub it against everything. I know some poisons react with silver. If it’s not one of those, though, I’ll just be wasting my time. This could work, but there’s so much food to test that it would take all day.
I still have the poison gas detection ring. It could detect vapors if it’s one of the hot items. Seems too long.
[Identify] can probably show the poisoned item, but identifying an item takes about ten seconds… That's very tight timing again; if you commit to that, you can only try that within the time limit.
I can rune myself up and taste everything as fast as possible until I get poisoned. It’s possible that the poison isn’t that potent, and anyone could do that and survive. Any healer could do that without worrying too much as well.
Or! Sofia walked up to a table and grabbed a loaf of hot crispy bread. She couldn’t resist trying it after identifying it to ensure it wasn’t the poisoned item.
“Ich gud… I vish I cud stei heer.”
But if that works, then I’ll be out.
She took out a Silverwater jar and dipped the bread into it. “This is a poison, right? Ingestion causes soul damage. That can’t not be a poison.”
She held the soaked piece of bread up, “This one.”
[Objective completed in 1 min 48 seconds, teleporting to floor 2]
“Easy enough. Too bad about the free food.” Sofia’s vision warped, and the room she was in changed to another similar round and empty one.
If they all go that fast it’ll be easy.
[Ranking Spire Phase 1 : Floor 2/10]
[Objective : Reach 10 000 points. The following each count for one point : ‘Squat’; ‘Push up’; ‘Sit up’.]
[Preparation time : 20s; Time limit : 48 hours]
“Well, shit.”
That’s what… About eighteen seconds per move with no break. I hope Astelia finished leveling up [Menial chores], or she’s going to have a very hard time.
Those were very basic, boring physical exercises that everyone knew about. There didn’t seem to be any loopholes this time. When Pareth performed the activities, it did not award any points. So Sofia just got to work. Ten thousand times…
Sofia changed her mind; instead of the slow and steady route, she was going for a more explosive one. She unequipped the armor and such items and started carving her three false immortality runes onto her body.
By her calculations, to be on time, she needed to score slightly more than a hundred points every half hour to pass. So she started after carving her runes while already being about a hundred points behind pace.
Then she burned through her stamina as fast as she could. Blew herself up with a bolt and started again with full stamina. That allowed her to keep going as fast as possible the whole time, much faster than pacing herself or waiting for stamina to regenerate naturally.
She only had to repeat this process a second time, and after burning through seven times her regular stamina, she was done. Almost.
[Points : 9998 / 10 000]
“This sure took a while. It’s bad, but not as bad as activating and deactivating [Armor of bones] for two weeks straight to get it to overcome the level 100 roadblock. I just kinda worry for Astelia… Though if she reached level 100 of [Menial chores], she would finish even faster than me with no stamina consumption.”
Since I have time, I’ll regenerate first before continuing. And maybe take a short nap.
[Objective completed in 8 hours 12 minutes 08 seconds, teleporting to floor 3]
[Ranking Spire Phase 1 : Floor 3/10]
[Objective : Defeat the level 200 enemy]
[Time limit : 10 Hours]
Hey, now we’re talking… Kind of?
A thin masked man wielding a buckler and a rapier appeared at the other end of the room. He was already running and casting a skill.
The masked man was still about ten meters away from Sofia. Mana was swirling around him, and Sofia could already see the hints of an incoming swarm of magical projectiles. She also noticed the rapier was made of mithril, and the man’s light armor was thoroughly enchanted and reinforced with Orichalcum to protect the vital points.
He was no doubt a fierce opponent. To a lot of people my level, without a doubt. But not to me.
“Your time to shine, Pareth.”
Pareth appeared in between the two, towering over them both. Wielding a farmer’s scythe made of light, Pareth reaped the man’s head in one fell swoop. Sofia watched the man’s severed head and his headless body disintegrate into a mist of man.
No skeleton. Too bad.
‘You have defeated [Invader - lv. 200]’
“Underwhelming.”
[Objective completed in 6 seconds, teleporting to floor 4]
Maybe I over-trained.
Sofia was teleported to a small dark room with stone brick walls. Her four limbs were shackled to the wall. And there was a closed iron door in front of her.
Prison cell?
[Ranking Spire Phase 1 : Floor 4/10]
[Objective : Find and reach the exit]
[Time limit : 1 Year]
YEAR?
This room is too small to summon Pareth… If the whole place is like this…
I can already feel the headache.
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