The group walked through the door and each of them ended up in a different location. Fortunately, they were now in their mission gear including their weapons and spells.
"Congratulation on passing the trial of the soul. Welcome to the third trial. To complete this trial you must reach the exit. Warning this is your real body and any casting of spell will lead to immediate termination."
They heeded the warning of the now familiar voice. Even if the voice was lying it would be prudent to be careful.
Each member of the party walked out of the room and the door behind them disappeared and they had found themselves surrounded by solid white stone walls on all sides. Each member of the party walk around and soon discovered they were in an underground labyrinth.
Upon realising it was a labyrinth Chris had attempted to send out his surveillance drones and have his AI Argus map out the maze and help.
"Sir, There is a problem. The information from the drones is a mismatch. Drone's covering the same area are reporting different routes. The highest probability reason is that the labyrinth isn't fixed" Argus had analysed all the data feeds from the drones to come to this conclusion.
Chris was shocked at hearing a voice in his head instead of the normal data feed but then remembered that Littleman had upgraded his AI system. It was a long shot anyway, he guessed there had to be another way out.
Lisa had a similar idea but instead of trying to map out the labyrinth paths, she was using her AI Sia to help track all the geographical changes. She had hoped that by tracking the changes she could map the overall structure of the labyrinth. This would enable her to discover which routes took them closer to the surface. This method proved to be ineffective as there didn't appear to be any pattern to the geological features of the labyrinth.
Jania tried the traditional method for solving a labyrinth by placing her hand on a wall and trying to trace a single wall to the exit. She believed she was making progress but that was until she realised she was tracing a large loop and had ended up back at the start. Jania knew she wasn't one for thinking so decided to use the brute force method of randomly selecting a path would have to work.
All three of them had found evidence of the gruesome fate that had befallen the previous trial competitors. There were numerous corpses within the labyrinth, some had even been chewed upon. The lack of animals suggests that other competitors had tried to eat the corpses. While others looked like they had died from starvation or dehydration. Even energy lifeforms required some form of energy to survive.
The labyrinth had played with their sense of time even the clocks in their suit seem to struggle to keep track of time. The hours and then a day had passed. After 2 days they had each separately stumbled upon a room that was different from the others. The room was mirrored on all sides and once they entered they couldn't leave.
"It can't be a coincidence that we all ended up here. I wonder what has happened to Null" said Lisa. She was glad they had all come back together but still wasn't sure what was going on.
The story was different for Null. He had been reunited with his system and quickly caught Infy up on what had happened. Apparently, they had only been out of contact for a couple of seconds. This meant that time had been sped up in the spiritual realm.
Null entered the Labyrinth and found that the voice of the universe would change depending on which direction he went. The voice would become more harmonious if he followed one specific path. He followed the path and found the mirror room and then also the exit to the mirror room. The Labyrinth had posed no problems to Null.
It had turned out the Labyrinth was a test that only those that could channel the fields would pass. In other words, it was a trap.
"Congratulation on finishing the trial of Pythia. Please wait here until all competitors have finished the trial" said the voice of the trial.
This announcement worried Null, that had hoped by finishing the challenge the others wouldn't have to.
"Can't the other be returned to the ship?" Null believed the others would not be able to finish this trial and wanted to save them.
In reply, a door opened and a winged creature walkthrough on all fours and spoke.
"There can be no interference once the trial has started, they will either succeed or they will die like all the others before them. I am sorry Null but I am only the keeper of the trials." Null now had a face to put to with the voice they had been hearing but they weren't pleased with what it had said.
"So what and who are you?" asked Null
"My name is Pamphilos and I am the Keeper of the trials. I belong to the dragon race. Welcome to Delphi the last lands of the dragons"
"The last lands?" Null was interested in this place, it seem to be running completely on true magic and he was hoping by learning about it they might gain the missing piece of information on exactly how true magic works. It seemed they could mimic technomagic with true magic which would be useful for future projects.
"That is a discussion for later, now we wait" and wait they did.