Aumo and LisiA left the city through the gate they entered, but had to get a pass this time around since they didn’t take a quest. It costs a small fee and only works once, but made it more convenient to enter the city, since they didn’t need to line up to enter again. It is also linked to their Guild Registration, so not just anyone can use it.
Getting to the gate didn’t take long, and they both soon arrived where the gate was located. As it was late, the guards seemed to be setting up tents near it. Why didn’t they just leave the tents out all day, so they don’t have to set them up every night?
As people rarely go to check out the gate, the guards almost immediately recognized the two when they got closer. One of the guards quickly finished up what he was doing, and went to greet Aumo and LisiA. It was the same guard that they had talked to when they first came to the gate.
“Hello again, I’m guessing you two were the ones we were told to allow passage,” said the guard as he got closer, “I don’t get what’s so important about this doorframe still though, needing us to guard it and everything.”
“It’s not really that important,” replied Aumo, “Could I touch the doorframe?”
“Go on ahead, we’ve been told that you two have full permission to do whatever to this doorframe. We were also told that when you two are done with whatever you need to, we don’t need to guard it anymore,” the guard allowed them through.
Aumo moved towards the gate, but then suddenly hesitated for a moment. She remembered what Ria did to activate the first gate, and it was something that was inappropriate to do in front of all these people.
LisiA saw Aumo suddenly stop, “Aumo, is something wrong?”
“Uh, no, nothing’s wrong,” said Aumo, and she started moving again.
“Ria, is there any safer way to activate the gate,” Aumo immediately asked Ria, since the method last time was simply not safe at all.
Just touch it with your hand.
It was just that simple. It was as if Ria did what it did the last time around to mess with Aumo. Keeping this in mind, Aumo started pouting as she got closer to the gate, and then touched it. The only issue was that since Aumo was this close to the gate this time, she was in a huge risk of getting hit by a swinging door.
By the time Aumo realized, it was too late the door appeared and… slid to the side. The parts of the door that slid out of the frame of the doorway seemed to just disappear into nothingness. Only a tiny portion of the door was left, and it was just enough for the handle to not disappear. Aumo curiously tried to close the door with the handle, and the parts of the door that had disappeared slowly appeared as Aumo closed it.
The Guards watching were dumbfounded by what had just happened. To them, it was so mysterious, the doorframe that did nothing, no matter what they did to it, just immediately reacted by a touch, and even came with a really weird door that defied physics.
“It’s an interesting door, but we need to head in,” reminded LisiA.
Aumo stopped playing with the door, and headed in, and LisiA followed her in. What they saw inside was completely different from the last door they entered. When they turned around, they saw that the sliding door was also whole on this side when opened. When LisiA stepped through completely, the sliding door, unlike the last gate, slowly slid closed and disappeared into light particles.
This time around, there were no walls at all, they were surrounded by trees and other plants. They could hear the rustling of the wind along with birds and bugs. It seemed like a normal forest, yet something felt off about this forest.
LisiA tried to touch where the door was and surely enough, there was something there, it was like an invisible barrier. That said, it was only invisible to LisiA. Aumo could clearly see some light blue pulses around where LisiA’s hand was touching the barrier.
“Activate that sheet of metal,” said Aumo, and LisiA immediately started seeing the same thing that Aumo saw around her hand.
“Is this forest just an illusion, or are these trees actually here?” LisiA looked at the trees that she saw in front of her. It was either a wall with an extremely realistic picture, or the forest actually extends that way, but they are not allowed to go that way.
“There is a barrier,” Ria suddenly said, “My database states that this is due to a thing they call a Playzone, and you are restricted from accessing anything outside of this said Playzone. These dungeons were modeled after games from more advanced civilizations, and this is one of those things that those games have.”
“Alright, so what are we supposed to do here anyway?” LisiA immediately understood and decided to not question it any further. She decided to focus on the more important thing at hand.
Unlike last time, there was no obvious path to take, and there were also no signs that tell you where to go. Aumo looked around for a moment, and then realized that there was an arrow on the floor that followed wherever she went.
“I think we have to follow this arrow,” said Aumo as she pointed to the arrow below her.
“I don’t see anything there,” said LisiA, and then she saw that there was an arrow below her as well, “Or rather I see one over here.”
As they both made up their mind to follow the arrows, they both inwardly complained how the tutorial was completely useless.
Of course, following the arrow directly was nearly impossible, as there were many trees that blocked a straight path forward. Even if they wanted to go through those trees, a barrier blocked them. It was really starting to get on their nerves, not that they have any nerves.
It didn’t take long before they reached the first checkpoint. When they reached where the arrow was pointed, two giant barricades appeared in front and behind them. A counter suddenly appeared in their view and said: “Kill all the enemies 0/15”.
As soon as the counter appeared, some wolves appeared, or at least they seemed to be wolves, but some seemed to have horns, and some appeared to have more than one tail. Their colors were also really weird. All of them had a bar on top of them, and they slowly approached Aumo and LisiA.
Without any hesitation, Aumo unleashed an Air Slash at 3 of the wolves, but instead of completely demolishing them when the air decompressed, the bar above their head emptied, and their bodies went flailing through the air.
The counter immediately updated to 3/15, and more of the so-called wolves appeared.
LisiA created some Ice and shot them through the wolves, hitting 5 of them, but even though the ice shards went right through the wolves, there were no wounds at all on the wolves that were killed. They similarly went flailing through the air, as if the ice had hit them and didn’t penetrate.
The counter updated to 8/15.
“This makes no sense,” commented Aumo, “It’s like their bodies can’t physically be destroyed.”
“We can talk about it later, let’s kill the remaining seven,” said LisiA, as she kicked away a wolf that tried to attack her.
They quickly killed the remaining wolves, and soon there were just 15 awkwardly posed “wolf corpses” around them. The barrier that blocked the way forward and back quickly disintegrated, and then all the corpses started shining, and soon became nicely packaged meat and fur, along with some fangs and horns.
Some orbs of light also came out and flew towards Aumo.
“Those are EXP orbs, I can use them to upgrade our core. It seems that these dungeons also give you EXP to get stronger,” Ria suddenly said when the orbs started getting absorbed into the core chamber of Aumo’s body.
You have gained 32 EXP!
“Rather than that, you better explain what is going on,” said LisiA, “Tell us everything that the tutorial was missing.”
“Fine,” Ria agreed that a better tutorial was required.
Status:
-----------------------------
Name: Aumo
Core Level:8
XP: 37/300
Status: Normal
HP: 2200/2200
MP: 1200/1200
MP Stored: 132.4
-----
Skills: Mana Manipulation, Mana Sight, Mana Sense, Mana Analysis, Mana Item Storage, Levitation, Mana Vibration, Small Fireball, Ice Throw, Air Slash, Body Reinforcement, Body Strengthening
Upgrades: Map, Gate Detector
Stored: Heater, Giant Breadstick
