Without a waver in his steps, he walked to the portal and entered the fields beyond. I took a moment to watch the swirling portal as a certain chill rippled through my body. I very carefully stepped to it, a sense of deja vu in my mind.

How I hated portals…

Seeing no changes in the gateway’s behavior, I finally stepped through with a hop, my hands shaking as I stood behind Selleron. I heaved a sigh of relief to see all was well.

“Are you okay?” Selleron asked as he turned around.

“I’m… okay. I’ve just had a bad experience with portals.”

I shook my head, trying to shrug off what had just happened, and started looking around. Hills with long, dry grass stretched out as far and wide, with small streams of water cutting up the landscape into segments. A calm wind traveled across the fields, rippling through the grass. In the distance was a rocky ridge that doubled as a wall. If I were to guess, it marked the dungeon’s borders.

The other soldiers stepped through the portal behind me as I took notice of a strange creature in the field before me. It didn’t look dangerous to me, but there was no messing around with dungeons, that much I knew.

“Please, do explain how this trial works,” I said. “What is the idea? Do I need to go around and kill things or?”

“More or less,” Selleron said, his arms crossed. “I’ll give you just the basics. If I were to tell you everything, it wouldn’t be a real test now, would it?”

I nodded.

“This dungeon is called the Proving Grounds. Not because it’s easy, or simple, but because it increases in difficulty very gradually. There are no surprises here. The further you go, the stronger the dungeon creatures become. The idea is for us to see how far you can go before you start getting into trouble. As soon as you do, we step in and call off the trial.”

I nodded again as I took in the information.

“You two are going to be a steady party, correct?”

Cellestra and I both answered ‘yes’ at the same time.

Selleron cast a glance at Felmar, who nodded.

“We’ll consider you a team and judge your strength as a team then. We’ll go that way.” He pointed at the rocky red ridge in the distance. “And that is your first target.” He moved his index finger towards the long-nosed creature before us. “Good luck.”

I took a good look at the animal that was about the size of a large boar. It had seemingly soft black and grey fur with a white stripe that ran from its massively elongated snout all the way to the base of a giant, fluffy tail.

The animal in question didn’t seem to be bothered by my presence. It was just crawling through the long grass when it raised its nose into the air. I narrowed my eyes when I saw a thin, seemingly unending tongue protrude from it and flick the air before it disappeared inside again.

It made me chuckle as I realized I had an ability that I could acquire that would also grant me some sort of long tongue. Still though, what was this creature? I’d never seen anything like it.

My curiosity peaked, and I was thankful to have this blessing as it would literally tell me the name of whatever I killed.

I stepped closer to it, whilst trying to find out what weaponry and weaknesses it possessed. My keen eyes couldn’t find any threats. I fired off a high-velocity ice lance to gauge its defenses and saw it penetrate the creature until it had disappeared entirely inside.

“Anteater, huh?” I let out as I observed the message. “I guess the long tongue is to fish them from heaps?”

I shook my head and continued through the first segment. Another of the same kind of creatures was easily dealt with.

“Are you not going to eat them?” Cellestra asked.

I shook my head. “I think I’ll need something bigger to sate my hunger. Besides, I want to get through this as fast as possible so I can’t really spend time eating right now. If we near the end of our ability, I’ll start thinking about it.”

The brunette nodded as another one of the Titan Anteaters neared. “Mind if I take that one?” She asked.

“I was about to suggest the same thing. Go for it.”

The one offensive spell that I’d taught Cellestra proved to be a valuable asset in this area. There was not a single spot in this place where the spell couldn’t be cast. She easily dispatched one of the animals with an earthen spike and seemed happy about it.

“With some luck, I don’t have to use any of my other spells.”

“That would be quite nice,” I said in response.

Several more anteaters roamed about, but they seemed in no way aggressive. I called out to Selleron who’d moved to the back and asked if we could ignore them from this point. He replied with a thumbs up.

I skittered forward until I reached one of the streams that separated this area into smaller ‘islands’ of some sort and noticed there were no more anteaters in this new spot. Instead, there seemed to be a few horse-like creatures. Well, they looked like horses, but they were slightly smaller, and their color schemes were… odd to say the least. Possessed white and black striped running vertically across its body and horizontal across the legs.

It somewhat reminded me of bees and wasps.

“Well,” I said, sighing deeply. “This fucking blows.”

“I can see why,” Cellestra replied softly, petting my hair. “If it’s any consolation, dungeon creatures have no souls. They are controlled by the dungeon in everything they do.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “But still.”

Horses had always been my favorite animal, and killing something that so much resembled them was just a cruel task.

“Wait,” I said as an idea entered my mind.

I was only here to prove what I could do. With that in mind, I did something entirely different.

I fired off two venom bolts at the striped horse-creature all the way in the distance and watched as it looked around in shock, before galloping off, only to slow down and eventually collapse to the ground.

“Will that do?” I called out for Selleron.

“Will what do?” He replied.

“I didn’t kill it.”

“Huh?”

I motioned him to follow as I skittered to the felled animal. It lay in the grass, restless, but unable to move due to my paralyzing venom. I lowered myself and tried to calm the creature down by stroking its head and healing the two wounds that I’d created. Selleron approached, scratching his head before kneeling.

“What did you do?” He asked in surprise.

“I paralyzed it. I could kill it if I wanted to, but I can’t bring myself to kill a beautiful horse like this.

“It’s called a Zebra… and I think this is okay. I have the feeling you’re going to get quite far anyway. Felmar?” He called the guild clerk over his shoulder. “You can tick off this area as successful.”

The captain stood back up. “Let’s continue, then. Word of advice, be careful in the next area.”

I nodded as I left the creature to recover its strength and moved on until the next stream. I stepped through it and peered over the next zone, which was covered almost entirely by even longer grass. It reached all the way to the bottom of my spider eyes and I noticed Cellestra try to suppress giggles as it tickled her legs.

I wondered just what lurked inside this grass. That was what I got from Selleron’s warning.

My eyes ran over the grass, trying to find what was in it. My thermal vision was working overtime. There was no way I could rely on normal sight here.

Then, at some point, I noticed a dot of red and yellow hiding in the blackness. I couldn’t quite make out what it was as most of its body was always covered by plenty of vegetation, but I knew it was waiting for me.

“You have your barrier active, right?” I asked. I just wanted to be sure.

Cellestra nodded. “Always.”

“Good. I’m going to see just how tough this thing is.”

“You see something?”

“Yes. And it doesn’t know I can see it, so I’ll make use of that.”

I slowly and stealthily approached my prey until it was in the range of my surprise spell; earthen spike. I used the synthesized version for extra lethality.

A spike with its tip laced with venom shot up from the earth underneath the creature. A loud growl followed within a fraction of a second, telling me I had successfully harmed my enemy. I started moving closer to see the result of the attack, my weapon at the ready, when a message showed up.

So it was a lion. At least those were creatures that I knew and heard about. Although I’d never seen them in the flesh, I’d seen plenty of their depictions, especially on some armors. A lion’s head and mane looked noble, if not intimidating.

I turned around to see Selleron’s reaction. I was curious to see it, given he had deemed it necessary to warn me. It had proven unnecessary.

Ah, it was a shame he was wearing a helmet that hid his face. I did, however, hear him mutter, thanks to my sensitive ears.

“But how?”

I chuckled, loudly. “Well, wouldn’t you like to know?”