For a moment I thought I had lost consciousness, but as I was still awake after several moments I was sure the darkness was intentional. Worse than the darkness being intentional was the fact that it probably was magical darkness as I couldn't even see a single trace of light, even the light my own body produced was obscured from my vision. After I got used to all the new colors I could see after I was reborn there wasn't a single moment where I couldn't at least see some form of light, even if that light was cosmic background radiation I saw whenever I looked up to the sky, even whenever I closed my eyes I still could see something but this was different. I couldn't see anything, the only other time I couldn't see anything was the time after I died and before I was reborn and because of that my anxiety was beginning to show on my facial expression, even if I couldn't see it I could tell.
As my anxiety rose to dangerous levels, the number 5 appeared some distance away from me and judging by the angle I had to put my head to look at it, it was higher than me, more or less around the same height or a little bit more than the trio's goal.
"Well, well, well. Look at who managed to push us into the second phase of the game" The human said, appearing from thin air as if the darkness blanket that covered him and the others was suddenly lifted.
"Second… phase?" I asked unsure if what I heard was correct or I was just losing.
"Yes, second phase. You proved yourself to be a highly trained person… or I guess I could say you have the same physical status as a highly trained person, because let me be sincere. I just saw high status numbers and not a single ounce of training on you" he said.
Did he… did he just insult me… right in my face? I thought incredulously.
"Having scored 5 points on us has finished the first half of this trial, to test your raw status and how skilled you are. Now we are ready to start the second part of this trial, where we test your adaptability to various environments that change constantly" the kobold explained.
As he finished the small explanation, a series of what looked like holographic cards with each one having a different image of a different environment all tightly packed in a circle.
"This is the environment selector" The goblin explained. "Every time you hit it with the ball, it doesn't matter if the ball was charged with magic or just rolled over, every time you hit this, a random environment will appear in the place of the old one. After every change, the selector will enter a small period of recharge where it won't select any new environment. Did you understand?"
I nodded.
"Good, cause I wouldn't have time to explain again" He said, and before I could ask what he meant, the ball reappeared on top of the selector and fell on tip of it, causing the selector to begin spinning fast.
As the ball bounced on the black void that was the ground, the selector came to a stop on a card with the image of green plains. As the card stopped, all the other cards disappeared and the remaining card became a ball of green light that began expanding. Everywhere the light touched became the plains that were in the image the card had, creating grass, trees and even the blue sky. The only reason I knew these weren't real plains but some kind of hard light construct, was that while in the visible spectrum everything looked normal, on the far sides of the electromagnetic spectrum everything was a mess of jumbled colors and patterns.
The light even painted the walls in a way that looked like they weren't there and that the plains would stretch for kilometers, but a single glance at them and the mess of colors that a normal human wouldn't be able to see told me where exactly the walls were. I hadn't thought about this until now, but it's weird to see all those new colors I've never even imagined could be possible and still see the colors I am used to normally.
I was so distracted observing my surroundings that I missed the moment the kobold caught the ball and ran past me with the ball in hands. I pulled my focus back towards the game and jumped into a sprint, or at least that was what I was planning to do, but I jumped twice and that was enough to overshoot the kobold by a couple meters. I turned around to face the kobold, but luck was apparently on my side as my tail caught both his legs while I was turning and caused him to flip in the air, landing on his back after doing an involuntary front flip.
He lost the grip on the ball and it was sent bouncing on the "grass". I had already completed my turn, but decided to try to hit the ball with my tail nonetheless. I wanted to try something else while I was at it, so I began casting [Fireball] and at the same time I began drawing a modified [Fireball] spell changing the fire aspect of the spell to the cold aspect using my tail the same I would use my hand, except it didn't quite work. I wasn't too proficient to use my tail in fine motions like the ones needed to draw a magic circuit, but it didn't matter as I discovered I could draw using just my mind instead of having to use something like a pen, the downside of this however is that it requires way more concentration that if I had just pushed magicules out of my finger to draw.
I pushed the magic circuit I had drawn with my mind on the ball and as I turned to finish hitting the ball, I pushed the [Fireball] magic circuit inside, or at least tried to. The moment the magic circuit began to fuse with the already cold ball, an energy explosion went off like a bomb, throwing me to the ground and making the ball fly through the air like a fighter airplane. The sound of the explosion was so loud that made the other two put their hands in their ears to try to cover them, while the kobold had blood flowing from his ears and my own ear was ringing so much I was surprised I didn't get disoriented at all.
The ball reappeared right in front of me while the human and the goblin were still disoriented and the kobold was straight up knocked out. I wasn't dumb enough to just straight up waste this opportunity, so I grabbed the ball while casting [Fire Spear] and threw it at their goal. The ball flew in the air uninterrupted until it got inside their goal and then exploded into rainbow mist. By the time it reappeared next to them, the human and the goblin had already somewhat recovered from the disorientation. The human called out the goblin and kicked the ball in his direction, and just like last time, the goblin began spinning.
When I saw he was starting to spin, I jumped over one of the power ups to grab it, and by the time the goblin shot the ball, I had a golden ring around my arm that I knew how to use. I quickly made some calculation guesses about the trajectory of the ball and sent the ring a few centimeters in front of me, which opened as a portal right where I wanted it to open, and thankfully it was the right place as the ball was coming straight at it. I extended my arm and casted five [Fire Spears] at the same time and sent them directly at the ball.
The five spells connected to the ball and I felt resistance to the movement of the ball, it was a weird sensation, like having a disconnect limb still able to feel things put some distance away from you, in my case I was feeling the resistance from two different directions but only a general area of the five spells, as I said, it was a weird sensation. Feeling that I still could command the spells after they were cast already, I tried to push them towards the ball, and to my surprise I felt the resistance to my push, so I pushed harder and harder until the resistance suddenly vanished and the ball absorbed my spells and launched to the other side.
Even after five spells absorbed the ball was much slower than it was when I placed just one [Fire Spear] or [Ice Spear], but it probably has to do with the way the spells ended up inside the ball, as instead of the magic circuit being absorbed, only the final spell got inside. Deciding not to place too much thought into it, the world down to half the speed it normally is as my thoughts were accelerated by [Thought Acceleration] and I casted two more [Fire Spears] and used the extra time I hat to cast [Fire Spear] using only my mind as I had done when I casted it on my tail. Doing that in the position I was wasn't easy as I had to push a line of magicules outside of my body and then began drawing using it, and it is a lot harder than I imagined, I was only able to complete the magic circuit because I had [Parallel Processing] to focus in different places at the same time, but at least I discovered that when I accelerate my mind, my casting speed speeds up as well.
| [ Proficiency points have reached the threshold. Skill [Abnormal Mental Condition Resistance] achieved Lv. 7 ] |
Oh gosh, isn't that ominous to suddenly appear out of nowhere reminding me there is literally a thing inside my mind that is trying to erase my very being. I thought. … I really hope this skill is doing what's advertised and is stopping that shit dead on its tracks. By the way, what are these proficiency points anyway?
[Proficiency points is a complex mathematical formula tied to the laws of this world and the souls that inhabit it to calculate the evolution and integration of one's skill with the user. As one's skills is used, their proficiency points increase as a result of the integration of said skill with the user's soul]
So the skill level goes up whenever it is used enough… and [Abnormal Mental Condition Resistance] just went up without anyone trying to mess with my mind… At least now I know it really is protecting me from becoming an irrational beast because of [Instincts Overdrive] I thought. Oh wait, I'm letting myself drift into thoughts.
As I finished casting almost entirely focusing on my thoughts, I thank [Parallel Processing] for being able to almost be lost in thoughts while I still focus on what I was doing… So many matches were lost because of this… anyway, after all my three spells were ready, I launched [Ice Spear] in an upside-down arch first before releasing the first [Fire Spear] and then after a few moments, releasing the second one.
The fist two spells I calculated for them to hit each other mid-air right before the ball, antes that was what happened. The arch I made the ice spell travel reduced it's horizontal speed just enough for the fire spell to collide with it, and the moment they touched another explosion went off like a bomb and throwing the human and the goblin to the ground as they were hit by the shockwave. The other spell cut through the shockwave like hot knife cutting through butter and hit the ball, except the explosion had made it stray a little off course, and when the spell hit it, it accelerated and hit the edge of the goal and not the goal itself. The ball bounced from the edge of the goal and hit the ground, bouncing from it and hitting the terrain selector that had just gone off cooldown.
The ball kept bouncing in the ground until it stopped and just kept rolling as the fake grass was putting a lot of friction on it like normal grass would. The goblin and the human both got on their feet just as the selector stopped spinning, revealing that the next environment would be what looked like the… inside of an active volcano? As the card disappeared and a glowing orb appeared and started to expand, the greenery from the field was being exchanged to a warm dark stone and rivers of lava.
I saw that one of the rivers was being placed right where the kobold was fainted. I quickly got up where he was and picked him up with my paws before putting him on the dark stone, because unlike the grass from the field, I knew the dark stone wouldn't change to lava as it had already changed from dirt and grass to this hard rock. I had put him in a place somewhat safe but the same couldn't exactly be said to me as my hind legs fell into the lava river that had replaced the field. In theory I should be… you know… screaming in pain as my legs burnt off… except that I was a Solar Dragon, I could feel the heat inside my body was ten times over the temperature of the lava and [Heat Immunity] pretty much poured cold water in the face of whoever try to attack or use anything related to extremely high temperatures against me.
The ball fell onto the kava and floated on top of it, or better, rolled on top of it as lava is so dense most stuff just stays on top of it, and that means that I was literally more dense than lava as my hind legs sinked on the stuff.
The goblin and the human didn't stay put and moved towards the power ups while I moved towards the ball, leaving the lava river and carefully avoiding being too close to the kobold as there was some lava dripping from my legs. The moment I left the lava river I felt my body being lifted upwards, but as I looked around everything seemed the same and that when I noticed the ceiling, that was "painted" with ash clouds and lightnings but only in the visible spectrum, was approaching the floor, and the walls, that were also "painted" I'm the visible spectrum with a volcanic area, we're slowly sinking in the ground. I sped up towards the ball, fearing being crushed between the ceiling and the floor, but the raising floor stopped a couple meters up and the reason why it was raised was to increase the quantity of lava on the rivers as when my legs sinked I actually touched the real floor of the arena and I felt a magical reaction.
The ball was floating in the middle of a larger portion of the lava river and there was no way to get near it without jumping on the river, so that was what I did. My body sinked halfway through the lava before I began floating. The sensation of being swimming in lava, even if it's fake lava, was strange to say the least, it looked just like swimming in water but at the same time it felt like I was pushing hundreds of kilos of stone with each movement I did, I was sure that without my current status I wouldn't be able to actually swim, or at least I would get tired pretty quickly.
As I approached the ball, a blue lightning hit the lava near the ball and it cooled down enough to solidify and just be warm to the touch. I looked over and saw the goblin with a wand freezing the lava and the human then throwing an orb near the ball that when it crashed onto the solid lava it broke and a lot of water came out of it, so much that it produced a steam wall and solidified more lava. I actually became trapped inside the stone as the lava around me cooled off.
Then the human came running on top of a newly frozen bridge and caught the ball, before running back and going out of my vision, blocked by the steam wall between us. I tried to leave the rock I was in, but my body wouldn't move a millimeter no matter how much force I put into my muscles. I tried to launch a [Fireball] to melt the stone like I had done in the guard station, but no matter how much how many I casted at the same time, it didn't quite reached the melting point of the stone, also, yes, I was casting [Fireball] on myself and not taking any damage whatsoever, I know that if a lot of people who play with wild magic on DND finds out about this they'll be jealous… anyway, what matters is that I wasn't able to actually escape this accidental trap.
The only parts of me that I was able to move were my neck, which was almost a meter long by my calculations, and my wings. Even if I could move my wings, I couldn't actually fly out of here because of the mass of the entire lava turned stone that was what, a couple tons of mass? Suddenly the ball appearing in front of me told me they had scored. I couldn't exactly move, so I had to do what I had already done and casted some [Fire Spears] and put it on the ball, then direct it towards their goal. Except it was blocked by the goblin, who kicked it using that same spinning move he already did before.
Before I knew it, they kept scoring more and more until everything just began to dissolve into light particles that vanished after a few seconds, returning everything to the normal room that it was before at the start of the match. The stone I was trapped inside also dissolved into light and I fell one meter to the ground with a thud. As I was moving around as my members became quite stiff, the goblin and the human walked towards me before saying.
“Well, well, well. You played quite well, scoring 6 points in total and all, but unfortunately we turned the tables in the end. The game finishes when one of the teams gets 10 total points, you almost got there, only missing by 4 points, but the unfortunate situation you encountered yourself into marked your downfall” The human said.
“Normally when we win, it means the other team is not qualified to continue and must go back to the original floor they skipped. But a special exception was made in your case” The goblin said, before casting a glance where the kobold was passed out in the ground some distance behind me and then returning his eyes at me. “Not only did you saved one of us, a thing anyone has ever done for as long as I remember, but the only reason you lost was because you’ve got stuck inside the stone created by when we solidified the lava around you by accident trying to get to the ball”
“Meaning that even if the total score was 10 points to us and 6 for you, you’ve passed” The human said, and with a move from his hand a door that was so tightly shut I didn’t even notice it wasn’t a wall began to open.
The door was next to the original door I had seen, and as the goblin said that when they win the losers need to go back, the original door must have been the way up as unless you can fly one wouldn’t be able to return in the same way as I entered. I looked back towards the now open door and the only thing I could see was a long dark corridor.
“Beyond that corridor will be the next test. I hope you do well” The human said.
“Hummm. Would you mind sharing any tips?” I asked.
“Sure. For how long can you hold your breath?” The goblin answered.
“Fifteen seco-...” I was answering without giving much thought as I never managed to hold my breath for too long, but then I remembered it was in my previous life, not this one. “I actually don’t know”
“Then all we can say is, good luck” The human said, before he and the goblin walked towards the kobold to see if he was alright.
With that not very helpful tip, I began walking the dark corridor, even though it wasn’t so dark to me.
Thanks for the chapter