Chương 55: Chapter 48 - Last hit is the best hit

The door sealed behind us. The hallway past it had nothing in common with New Haven. No dark metal, no holograms, no screens. Pale stone and air that tasted old, like a library nobody had argued in for a few centuries. Very few people took this trial, apparently. Venn's ears swept a full rotation, hunting for sounds that weren't there. We walked. The hallway ran thirty steps and opened into a round chamber under a domed ceiling. Light bled from seams in the stone, soft and sourceless.

"Candidates." The voice came from everywhere at once, formal and dusty, very much unlike the machine-run trials of the previous floor.

"Welcome to the Trial of Ascent, held under the authority of—" Static. A burst of dead air exactly where a name should have been. Ren and I exchanged a glance. A bit more static.

"—and witnessed by the covenant of the tower. Present yourselves for measure." A band of light swept Ren from head to toe.

"Candidate accepted." It swept Kael.

"Candidate accepted." The light paused, then flicked to his shoulder.

"Familiar-class companion. Noted." Venn sat up and preened. Actually preened. Then the light hit me. And stopped. The seams in the walls brightened, dimmed, and brightened again, the entire room squinting at me.

"Candidate..." A pause long enough to be rude.

"... accepted. Classification deferred." Ren snorted.

"It likes you." Hmph, so most people probably failed the initial scan. That was why there were so few teams trying. On the previous floor, you could try as many times as you wanted, for as long as you didn't get killed. The randomness of the tests gave at least the illusion of chance. But if here an initial test was a scan, then one didn't need to get scanned a dozen times to receive the same result every time.

"The Trial of Ascent measures worth," the voice went on, unbothered.

"Not strength. The first measure is restraint." Stone ground against stone, and a door opened across the chamber. As the stone moved, I caught a glimpse of modern-looking servos. So, it was all automated and run by a machine. It was just stylized medievally. The next chamber held a single pedestal, and on the pedestal stood a vessel of pale crystal, tall as my forearm, a hairline mark etched near the rim.

"Fill the vessel to the line of the covenant," the voice said.

"Hold it there for a count of one hundred. Exceed the line, and be found wanting." Ren looked at the vessel. Then at me.

"Don't even think about it."

"I didn't," I lied. Kael snorted.

"You did. But this is an anti-you trial. Watch and pray we don't fuck up." I sighed. That was exactly what I wanted to be doing. Then again, I needed to be on budget with mana. Inaction fits that requirement. I stood aside. Ren handed his katana to Kael. He took this seriously. He set both hands over the vessel, closed his eyes, and breathed. His mana went in the way he drew his sword. No flourish, no waste. A single, even thread.

The crystal drank it and began to glow from the bottom up, a waterline of light climbing toward the mark. Three-quarters up, the thread wavered. Ren's reserves weren't deep, and holding a stream steady while it drained you dry was a miserable exercise.

"Kael," Ren said through his teeth. Kael was already there, sliding the katana into his sash. He pressed two fingers to the crystal and added small pulses, filling the gaps whenever Ren's thread thinned. Not smooth, but honest. The light crawled to a finger's width beneath the mark. Then a hair. Then it kissed the line and stopped.

"Hold," the voice said.

"One hundred. Ninety-nine. Ninety-eight." The count went on forever. Sweat rolled down Ren's temple. Kael's jaw worked, chewing on curses without opening his mouth. At sixty-two, Venn sneezed. The light lurched a hair over the line, my stomach lurched with it, and Ren strangled his thread down so fast the level dipped, wobbled, and steadied. We all stared at Venn. Venn made itself very small.

"... three. Two. One. Measure accepted. Restraint: sufficient."

"Sufficient," Kael exhaled, and braced himself by the knees.

"Typical" Another door ground open. The second chamber was a hall. Long, high, and lined with archways. Three arches to a row, seven rows, every one of them opening onto the same pale stone corridor. Identical. All twenty-one of them.

"The second measure: clarity," the voice said.

"Walk the true path to pass. The false arches show what you desire. The true arch shows what is."

"I hate it already," Kael said. I blocked the path.

"One second." From my pockets, I fished a silver coin. I flicked it through the leftmost arch of the first row. It sailed through, glinted, and never landed. No clink. No coin. The corridor behind the arch went on being a corridor, minus one coin.

"Great," Kael said.

"I hate it even more now." Stolen story; please report. I pulled on my power. Yushi. She unfolded out of thin air, floating a polite inch above the floor.

"Ku ku ku... Damian-sama requires me. And in front of the company, no less." With a nudge of my head, I motioned toward the corridor.

"Scout the arches."

"As you wish." She drifted through the nearest arch, sank into the wall, and was gone. Ren shook his head, hand on the sword. He didn't like ghosts, apparently. Yushi's head emerged from the ceiling, upside down.

"Damian-sama, this place is very rude. The wards keep attempting to register me as staff. One of them requested my centennial paperwork." She sniffed.

"The left and center arches of this row do not continue. There is a pit behind them, which has boots in it."

"Boots?"

"Ownerless boots, Damian-sama. Just boots." Wonderful. An illusion-covered maze filled with traps. My coin vanished because it passed through an illusion. Also, we needed to walk correctly to pass, so it was safe to assume that sending Ashy to brute-force the correct path could be disastrous. As in, we would find the way through, but the machine evaluating our performance would fail us because we stepped into all the traps. Kael pulled his hood up and walked the first row slowly, eyes narrowed at Yushi.

"So, ghost girl, you sure the right arch is the correct one?" Yushi giggled, floating down, still with head down and legs up.

"Yushi says what Yushi sees." She unfurled her fan, covering her mouth.

"Plus, Yushi needs Damian-sama to pass. He won't pass if Yushi lies." Kael walked into the right arch. No issues. Ren and I followed. We stood at another crossroad. Yushi floated above the leftmost arch. She bowed.

"This way." Row by row, we moved. Yushi pointed at the correct archway every time. Row four was where the arches changed. The next archways stopped being pristine but turned into burnt stone. That made it even harder to see through any illusions. With everything damaged, everything looked the same. Yushi spun around a bit, then stopped by one archway.

"The other paths have pressure plates in the floors. Those are not pressure plates for congratulations and celebrations, Yushi thinks." Yeah, they indeed likely weren't. We navigated to the paths without the pressure plates. Row seven released us into open space. The voice announced, "Measure accepted. Clarity: sufficient." All right. I unsummoned Yushi. As if my ability to cheat puzzles and traps wasn't sufficient already, she added an entire dimension to how wildly I could cheat them.

The final chamber was the size of a ballroom, and in its center, kneeling in a pool of dim light, waited a construct. A smaller cousin of the giant praying at the waystone outside. Two arms instead of four, a faceless head with a single vertical seam, pale plates gone grey with age. Only one man taller than me.

"The final measure: resolve," the voice said.

"The Warden calibrates to the heaviest soul present." The seam of light ignited. The faceless head turned. To me. Obviously. I quickly pulled on my power. Astarielle. Ashy. Yushi. They all appeared in their respective flashes. The heaviest soul didn't necessarily mean the strongest one. It could be the most burdened or the most sinful one. The head turned toward Ashy, a red light lighting up on its forehead. We all turned to Ashy.

I had a pretty serious score from floor twenty-five, and she apparently beat those numbers. She caught a faint pink blush on her dark red cheek.

"What? I didn't do anything. I swear!"

"For what did you get sent into Hell, precisely?" I asked. The pink blush brightened.

"I might have not-so-accidentally caused a not-so-little flood on the Yellow River." I frowned.

"Are you originally Chinese?" She waved at me.

"Ni hao! My original name is Qingling Ah Shui. But you're not getting the goddess to pronounce that, so Ashy. It's much edgier!" The Warden rose. I glanced at Astarielle.

"No resummons today." With a giggle, Yushi vanished, floating as a chill wind to the warden. Ren and Kael drew their weapons. Astarielle started preparing crimson fireballs. Ashy turned into a sword, floating up. I stepped toward the construct. Saving mana or not, we had to win first. The warden bolted at us. It reached us in an instant, slashing at me with a horizontal cut, at me because I stood the closest. So much for saving mana.

The sword hit my shields, pushing me slightly to the side, pain shooting from my arm. I needed advanced shields for this. But those cost too much mana. Astarielle flung her arms forward. The fireballs hit the warden. Six explosions thundered through the hall, licking my shields. Its shoulder blew apart, an arm falling off. The arm didn't stop moving. It landed, jumped off the ground, and launched itself at Astarielle. In a smooth backslide, she dodged.

Oh, so she could dodge when she knew she wasn't getting respawned. Would you look at that. Ren joined my side with a massive slash. He aimed at the construct's left knee. The blade hit, energy booming through the hall. The joint blew apart. It spun on the other leg, slashing at me again. Ashy flew into the way, parrying the blow, and both she and the construct were thrown aside. Kael dashed to the arm attacking Astrielle. He stabbed a couple of daggers into it, trying to pry open the exterior chassis.

Yushi appeared behind the construct and shrieked. It came out as a super-high-pitched sound. It made Venn on Kael's shoulder curl up. And it caused the construct to spin aimlessly on the spot, slashing at nothing. Astarielle released crimson lightning, hitting both the severed arm and the main body. They both shook in the current. The head turned, opened, and a little rocket flew out at Astarielle. Kael jumped away, standing in the trajectory originally.

Astarielle first leaned to dodge, then glanced at Kael, and then jumped into the rocket. It exploded, blowing her to shreds, which instantly vanished in crimson flame. Ren jumped on the construct and stabbed his blade into the slot that just released the rocket. He whispered something, and teal energy exploded from his blade. The construct's head tore apart. Ashy flew around, grayed as she turned into tungsten, and slashed at the arm. With a thunderous boom, she severed the arm in two. The construct stopped moving.

And so did the arm. Everything went still.

"Measure accepted," the voice said.

"Resolve: sufficient." Sufficient. I started becoming allergic to the word.

"The covenant finds the candidates worthy of ascent," the voice continued.

"Ren of the twenty-sixth floor. Kael of the twenty-seventh floor. Damian of the sixth floor. The path to the twenty-ninth floor is granted." I smirked. Nice. Ren went very still. Then he looked up, past the ceiling, toward a station he'd spent most of his life watching from underneath. For about one second, he wasn't composed at all. Then the second passed, and the katana slid home into its scabbard with a click. Kael grinned under the hood.

"She's going to be so mad it's you showing up." Venn remained curled on Kael's shoulder. The shriek really didn't do it well. The exit ground opened, both to the elevator forward and to the cathedral chamber behind.

"I'll catch up," I said and headed to the cathedral.

"We'll wait," Ren replied and sat down, clearing his watery eyes with the back of his hand. I walked back to the cathedral chamber and toward the other trial room, the one with the waystone. Aurelio, Liu, and Henrik were still fighting. About twenty broken constructs lay scattered around the floor. The four-armed warden had two arms left, major damage on most of its surfaces, but still slashed at Liu, stumbling in the process. Liu partially blocked with a flat palm and a burst of golden light.

He still got thrown aside. Henrik pointed the staff at the construct, and swirling energy hit it in a torrent of pure force. Aurelio stepped into the opening and slammed a maul into its chest. The hit released a boom of thunder. The construct stumbled back, chest front plate blown apart. Ashy flew in and stabbed into the opening. She pierced all the way through the construct.

"Ha! Got him!" The construct stopped moving. I walked into the chamber. Aurelio, Liu, and Henrik all turned toward me.

"You cannot be serious," Henrik said, panting. [ENEMY DEFEATED — ANCIENT BLADEWARDEN (x1)] [Drops: Bracelets of the Blade Warden (Epic) (x1), Fragment of the Blade Warden (Rare) (x2), Ancient Stone Fragment (Uncommon) (x7), 97 silver, 785 copper] A pile of loot appeared in the chamber. Ashy dislodged from the warden, and flew toward the loot pile.

"Wee!" She shifted into the succubus form, flying at the loot pile. In a golden blur, Liu slid past her, and swiped the bracelets from the pile before she landed. Undisturbed, Ashy landed on the pile, grabbing everything she could.

"Mine!" I unsummoned her. Aurelio rubbed his face with his palm, covered in sweat.

"Your timing is impeccable." I grinned. Yes, I arrived when the boss had one hp, and stole the last hit.

"I don't know what took you so long with the boss."

"Anyways," Henrik said.

"Let's touch the waystone." We all walked to it. Aurelio counted it down, and we all put our hand on the waystone. [FLOOR COMPLETED] [NEXT FLOOR: 31] [3/3] [WOULD YOU LIKE TO PROCEED?] Nice.

"Did fate bless you with a floor?" Liu asked.

"Yes. Floor 31." I pulled on the connection to Yushi. Head-down, she descended from the ceiling. Everyone else jumped in their skins. They hadn't seen her yet.

"Damian-sama?"

"Tell Ren and Kael I wish them well."

"Of course." She vanished with a giggle. I refocused on the waystone. [YES]