There was no contest in the race, the robed people won quite easily and while some players placed highly on the impromptu race, Jack arrived towards the middle of the group as they were waiting beside the doorway where the elders have reappeared. They don't say anything and just watch over the group for a few minutes then elder Fuanzhi speaks up as a few more people show up.
"Good job on making it so far, the temple will begin closing its doors momentarily and you don't want to be on the outside when they shut," Elder Fuanzhi says causing a slight chuckle from the elders, "once you enter the next stage will begin immediately. If you cannot figure it out then you don't deserve to advance…," the elder says while looking over the remaining players who have dwindled in number from the several hundred to the less than, "I would say good luck but you shouldn't be undertaking this trial with luck. Perform your best and rewards can be expected, don't push yourself and expect to fail. Now go."
The robed people give a quiet salute to the elder and begin to enter the door without making a sound, some of the players enter while the rest turn towards Lucas and Petr as if expecting them to say something.
"Elders, can you tell us anything about the inside at all?," Petr says with a respectful tone.
One of the elders snorts, "You think you deserve guidance?"
"Would Elder's take anything in exchange?"
"Do you have any Legendary equipment or Earth-grade skills?"
"No, not even we get easy access to that sort of stuff," Petr immediately responds shaking his head, this is mostly true as Legendary gear can be difficult to find whereas Earth-grade skills even rarer.
"Useless, enter and find out," the elder says before adding, "the door will shut in twenty seconds so you should hurry through."
The group of players notices the door now swinging shut more quickly than it was previously, they begin to run towards the opening whereas Jack was already standing beside it walking through and finding himself seemingly teleported to a brand new area.
A thick luscious and noisy jungle abuzz with the sounds of insects everywhere, set to the strange white colour that is this under the ocean space so far.
Jack looks around with his spiritual sense and finds no one nearby, a step forward reveals the ground is incredibly wet and muddy meaning the journey through the thick foliage will be difficult and dirty, nonetheless he sets out working his way through some of the trees, vines and bushes towards a nearby rocky outcropping standing above the landscape partially.
The journey is truly difficult with the vines refusing to make way, his new sword proving its usefulness by clearing them out of the way but being useless in prevent falling on the muddy ground.
The dirtied young man makes his way towards the rocks and then uses 'Bunny Dash' to easily make his way to the top of the sloped rockface giving him a visual over the entire white tree lined landscape revealing a giant expanse of trees that seemingly never end. A giant white ball is hovering slightly over the horizon and slowly rising higher casting its weird white-light drowning out all sorts of other colours.
Large scale battles have also broken out all over the place with large sections of the trees missing or on fire, luckily none of them are nearby but it's still difficult to work out exactly what the point of this place is. There's simply no clues about what needs to happen next…
"It's no use trying to sneak up on me," Jack announces to the thin air, nothing around him moves for a moment until he turns around where a shimmering figure appears before him.
"I forgot you found Elder Li," a short stature blue-robed black haired young man says, "doesn't matter. Hand over all your stuff and I'll let you live."
Jack blinks blankly for a moment, "What?"
"I can just kill you and take your stuff, the insects will devour your body and soul so there will be no evidence so are you going to hand it over and live or die where you stand?"
"Huh?"
"Wrong choice," the blue robed young man says, he pulls out a sword and gathers some energy around him. His sword slices out towards Jack who uses 'Bunny Dash' to move away from these heavily telegraphed attacks.
A blade of water extends from the young man's sword and cuts through the air in a large arc from the swing nearly hitting Jack where he lands, the young man isn't done yet as he quickly moves for a follow up strike. He moves into close range, this time bringing his short straight sword in for a low angle stab, it seems like he's truly out for the kill.
Jack isn't trained with sword very much, he only has a limited experience training with his soldiers and using the city lord sword a couple of times. It's simply a case of sword not being good for fights unless they're meant to be flashy or flowery, if both sets of people agree to a set of rules and are meeting a fellow sword user it truly is something to dedicate your life to, but unless you're willing to dedicate yourself then you'll really just using a tool to deliver power and that's all this young man is doing.
A blue qi gathers around the sword's tip as he's only two steps away, Jack doesn't have options to get away unscathed from this encounter but he can try something.
He holds the sword in his hand up and throws it at the young man who's unable to avoid it in time as Jack uses this distraction to use 'Bunny Dash', but this time not away from the young man but to jump towards him.
The blue robed young man isn't able to react to Jack's sudden movements as he's trying to dodge the sword that has been thrown, his eyes wander off to the distance trying to gauge where Jack has landed but he suddenly finds himself kicked backwards as Jack's feet land on the young man.
Jack grabs his sword flying through air and takes a swing at the young man.
The young man redirects his sword and sends a blade tip of energy piercing towards Jack.
Jack's sword connects with the young man's right shoulder cutting into it deeply before he's forced to kick away from the young man forcing the two of them onto the ground some distance away from each other.
"AHHH, AHHH, YOU FUCKER, I'LL KILL YOU, I ONLY WANTED TO ROB YOU BUT NOW I'LL KILL YOU, I'M GOING TO KILL YOU!," the blue robed young man says from the ground before standing up with reddened eyes.
Jack nurses his newest wounds for a moment before forcing himself up, the young man is trying to pick up his sword but finding his right arm unusable causing him to be enraged even more.
A formless blue energy appears surrounding him, Jack gets a bad feeling from this as he senses an immense power from the energy gathering around him.
"DIE SCUM!," the blue robed young man says.
Jack's eyes light up purple as an even larger amount of energy gathers beneath the young man, Skyfall saturation has reached a usable point which is both good and worrying. A purple arc of energy cross over his blue eyes for a moment before he shuts them as a giant bolt of purple lightning appears near him.
He opens his eyes afterwards and notices a small crater where the young man was standing, Jack doesn't have time to bask in the glory of killing someone stronger than him as he looks in the crater quickly gathering the items then disappearing into the dense jungle.
That was anything but discreet and watching behind him through spiritual sense reveals that he was correct in leaving as several other robed people have shown up, ones that have never been friendly towards him and he'd rather not have to explain himself in this sort of situation.
He was able to gather three items left over from the young man alongside his weapon, unfortunately there's no storage device and the weapon was damaged meaning it's not usable. Jack uses 'Bunny Dash' through the thick jungle as best as he can until he comes across a cave on rock face big enough to hide within. He enters the cave after killing some large insects that called it home and inspects the items one by one, there's a blue-orb that seems to contain quite some power alongside, two differently coloured beast cores.
A brief inspection of the orb reveals it might be some sort of skills orb, not wanting to use it just yet Jack turns his attention towards the two beast cores. One is red and the other is water, both of them are emanating an energy that reflect their colours so fire for red and water for blue, so they're from beasts that use those elements but so far he has only seen small insects.
A moment of rest later, he puts the items away inside his internal storage that has some stability and heads out of the cave, the moment he enters the strange white light.
"Hold it!," a male voice says.
Jack looks forward and spots a group of players wearing their ragged yet somewhat modern styled clothes, their weapons look incredible compared to the dulled blades of the robed ones, "Yes?"
"What were you doing in that cave?," the man and several other players next to him can be seen looking behind Jack and towards the cave.
Jack laughs internally, it seems like they have no idea about this place and suspect there might be something about the cave, "I was just resting up for a moment, I got attacked," he says while showing the damage on his skin.
"Right well if you find out something regarding this place, you need to tell us," the young man says while looking at the others with him. One of them begins to walk towards Jack.
"Well you tell me something first and I'll tell you what I know," Jack says watching the person walk straight past him and into the cave, this causes him to frown as it shows that he's not trusted at all.
"Well we know that the orb in the sky is a timer, it has risen 4% since we arrived here. It will take 5 hours and fifteen minutes to go the whole distance, that's when this place closes."
"Ah, smart," Jack says while nodding.
"Your turn."
"It seems there are different elemental type beasts, we might have to collect the orb from the strongest ones?," Jack says while changing his thoughts mid-sentence to not speak what he truly thinks. It's still probably true but a tougher route, it'll be a good test for their team work if they do listen to him.
The person that checked the cave has returned shaking his head, "Nothing," he says while returning to the line up.
"Right well let's leave it there, if you find any more information then we players need to help each other."
Jack begins to walk away then turns around, "Oh one of them said something about souls dying in here too so I suggest trying not to die."
A few murmurs develop upon Jack saying this, "Who told you?," the leader asks.
"Some robed guy trying to kill me," Jack says leaping away not wanting to elaborate any more leaving the people far behind watching the land around him trying to see if he can spot anywhere that has what he's after, elemental type beasts of some sort. It doesn't take him long to come across the first one, a brown haired young woman holding a large heavy sword almost as big as her. She's fighting against a large red conch-shaped snail, its shell has an engraved pattern and a flame at the end of it that seems impervious to the young woman's attacks.
She waits for the creature's fleshy underbelly to show itself and strikes at it, not using any sort of skill but relying on the weapon itself to do the damage which it does very well. It just not enough damage to truly matter to the simplistic snail that has an almost slime-like substance for a body.
Jack stops nearby and she immediately notices him, "This is mine go away!," she yells.
"I'm not here to steal the kill, just want to see if you need help. You good?," Jack asks.
"Yep now go away," she says while dodging the flame covered strike from the snail trying to consume the young woman whole, "haaa!," she yells while slicing off the appendages and strikes at the underbelly again.
The creature hides away allowing the young woman respite for a moment, "Well good luck, make sure to collect the different elemental core before the orb in the sky reaches the other side, you seem skilled."
"Go away, thanks you're distracting me," the young woman says as the creature emerges from the shell again completely fine.
Jack leaps away finding his ability to land among the trees improving as he makes his way through them, he spends a few minutes practising this when he catches eye of the next interesting thing. A small group of robed people, they didn't seem to notice Jack travelling nearby so he in turn follows after them quietly noticing that they're travelling back the way he came.
They arrive at the site of the young woman fighting the snail, she's hurt while the creature is even more hurt with large chunks of its shell missing and its flame flickering.
"Good job getting it to this state, we'll take it from here. You go along now," one of the green-robed people speak up.
"I'm not going anywhere, I'm killing this thing," the young woman responds.
"You're outnumbered and you have no back up, you should leave and find something smaller. This is a tier 5 beast, you should find a tier 3 sea fire slug or something," a red robed woman laughs, "we're doing you a favour."
"No thanks, I'm nearly done here please leave."
"Why you…," red robed red haired woman says moving forward angrily, she's held back by a yellow robed man beside her.
"Young ma'am, we're truly doing you a favour. The final stage of that beast is hard to handle, you will die if you try to handle it alone."
"I said no thanks, I'm nearly done here and this thing should reappear within a few minutes," she says wiping her sword and angrily glaring at them, she seems to have noticed Jack too but doesn't let his presence to be known as they make brief eye contact.
"How do you know that?," the green robed woman asks with a questioning tone.
"I tested it out, now please leave as I want to concentrate," she says and holds her sword before her face concentrating for a moment. The is completely silent as this happens.
"Tested how? It took our sect ancestors thousands of cycles to find out the spots where these creatures appear, did you steal it?," the green-robed woman asks, the yellow robed man places his hand on her shoulder causing the woman to cower slightly.
"We don't want to be hostile with you," the yellow robed man continues to speak when Jack makes his presence known.
"You'll be hostile with her? Why?," Jack asks loudly.
"You…," some of the robed people react, they have been neutral for the most part so far, it seems these people either respect him or Elder Li but not all of them as he looks over the crowd, the green robed woman in particular. Jack looks at the yellow-robed man with a simple face and bob-hair cut.
"It looks like that thing is nearly done, good job, please kill it before these pests before you further," a visible vein can be seen developing on the young woman's forehead, she doesn't move nor say anything though. That gives Jack enough of a response for now.
"Young man, you should leave… if you want we'll give you some information about how to pass this trial."
"Oh information? Well tell me now, I won't trust you if you tell me you'll tell me later."
"This…," the yellow-robed man says while looking towards a slightly older man wearing blue robes who nods his head.
"Collect the elemental beast cores and enter the next stage, stage 5 beasts here drop 5 cores and there's 5 of us in our group so we made an agreement," the yellow robed person says followed by a swift punch by the green-robed woman.
"You said too much idiot, now leave little lady," the green robed young woman says returning attention to the brown-haired woman facing off against the snail.
"The name is Luna," she says while lowering her sword, "leave me the fuck alone!," she yells as she leaps forward and slams her sword on the snail.
The snail reacts by flinging tens of short tentacles covered with flame, her sword is able to fend them off as her body continues to travel towards the body of the creature and makes contact.
A large amount of fluid begins spewing out the bottom of the creature, it has been cleanly bisected where the sword landed. Everyone is silent including Jack… well not everyone as the creature's body begins to fall over flailing to its death.
Its body begins to visibly decay revealing five shining orbs, "We'll take those," the green robed woman says rushing forward.
"I don't think so," the brown haired woman, Luna says bringing her sword down on the ground sending a distinct sound through the area.
Jack himself can feel the word in these powers, he almost feels in awe at the power her voice contains at the moment as even these powerful people are held back by her words.
"Well you only need one so we'll trade you, we have spare orbs here so 4 of yours for 4 of ours," the blue robed black haired man speaks up for the first time, "we'll trade information too,"
Luna looks to Jack for a brief moment, he shrugs not knowing what she wants, "Fine," she says collecting the orbs and walking towards the group.
The yellow-robed man walks out holding four different coloured spheres; blue, yellow, green and black.
Luna passes over four orbs and collects the others from yellow-robed man who walks back to his group with a smile yet not all of the group has a smile as the young women of the group have a sinister gaze on Luna.
"So what information do you have for me?," she asks glancing at Jack again.
"You need to hold them together to advance to the next stage which has an unlimited time span, you just need to pass it. It's called the true trial and why this is called the red lotus temple instead of the ten-seat lotus temple…"
Luna gathers the beast cores together and holds them causing a black light to be emitted, a door appears where the black light is protected but even Jack can tell that he cannot touch it.
"That's it, go through."
"Right thanks," Luna says while looking towards Jack.
Jack nods towards her and watches her, alongside everyone else, walk inside the black doorway that appeared. She passes through the doorway that immediately disappears as she steps inside not revealing anything about its inside.
A brief moment of quiet comes over the crowd until attention returns to Jack, "Do we need to ask you to leave too?"
"Would you?," Jack asks outright.
No one immediately answers, "Leave now, I'll say it," the red robed woman speaks up.
"That's not nice of you," Jack taunts back.
"Oh it is, nice is holding back from killing someone that hasn't formed a false core such as yourself," she retorts.
"Am I really that weak?," Jack asks.
"Yes, now leave and go hassle tier 2 creatures," she says.
"Fine I'll leave," Jack says while using 'Bunny Dash' to leap away quickly.
"No… wait… I didn't mean…," the red robed woman can be heard saying behind him but he ignores it rushing into the distance. He's acquired enough information for now about this place and he already has the fire element creature he just needs the other orbs that Luna acquired, simple enough. He was just messing around with the woman now, they don't seem outright hostile in a death sense but in a hostile to player sense… Not bad for residents but not good.
Jack leaps through the forest further and arrives at another scene;
A scene of bloodshed where two players are laying face down on the ground in a puddle of blood while another one is held with a sword by his throat, another eight players are standing nearby glaring angrily at a green-robed young man with blonde hair standing before them talking loudly. They haven't noticed Jack allowing him to get into audible range.
"You can only blame your fellow 'players' for this result, don't blame me."
"You killed six of us while robbed the rest of us, that's not to speak about the things your elders did," the person being held by sword point speaks out angrily, "how can we forgive that?"
"We have been quite lenient, we gave you the chance to leave several times. We have claimed all the beasts in this region and you were going to force us to be worse off compared to the other group, you can only blame yourselves for killing the beasts too quickly."
"There's enough of them to share, you didn't need to do that," one of the players yells out, "look there's even another one now!"
The cracking sound of branches can be heard nearby drawing everyone's attention to the slow and lumbering shell creature peering out of the dense trees, it casts a green colour in this annoying white-lit landscape suggesting it contains a green beast core.
"It doesn't matter, we still need 15 of them so I won't tell you again, leave!"
"Give us back our stuff, we need our weapons!"
"No," the green-robed man raises a hand in the air laying it flat, a spinning circle of green qi appears within it spinning around faster and faster gathering in size as a moment passes.
'That looks just like…,' Jack mutters internally watching the man launch the wind blade that appears above his hand land on the creature's giant body splitting it in half alongside the landscape behind it with a large gust of wind kicking up debris for the entire length the blade travels.
"We're going now, don't get in our way," the green-robed man says before jumping away towards the disappearing creatures body and collecting the core then leaving the scene far in the distance.
The crowd reacts in each of their own ways, it seems like none of them are willing to accept this but none are willing to do anything about it. The young man who had a sword by his throat seems particularly hard hit by what has happened.
Jack turns around to leave the scene but he gets noticed by a new group of players that arrived behind where his current hiding spot is, "You!," someone shouts.
