The silver flash of light fades, and a light blue background covers my surroundings.
I prepare to endure the bodiless, sensory-deprived reality or something equivalent this time as well, but soon a body materializes below my eyes.
Access to my links of loyalty is severed again, and my system skills are too, so I believe this is just another illusion.
However, that odd feeling I sensed when starting my last round is far stronger.
The Divine Ether left in my mind feels far more comfortable melding with my consciousness. It feels warm, flowing, and far less foreign than it did before; but I can't quite figure out why...
Other than this feeling, the body below me is certainly not real. It is like a mirage controlled by my mind, with no organs, cores, or access to mana or divine energy.
Before I can inspect it any further, my vision is filled with squares of shimmering glossy glass that appear like mirrors, but when I look into them, nothing at all is reflected. They just show more endless light blue sky.
More and more squares appear, easily thousands of them, forming a curved wall shape before me.
They finally stop multiplying, and then a silver text box shimmers in my vision reading [0/50] [0/50].
No voice comes with it, but simultaneously, the thousands of clear glass mirrors begin to shift in color and reveal a familiar face.
Every single one of them reveals Ember in his human form.
His eyes move back and forth identically on all the mirrors, and when he speaks, his mouth opens on all of them as well.
"I can only guess you see the same as me...? But... a better question would be, are you still sane?"
I raise an eyebrow, crossing my arms and looking at the wall of mirrors reflecting the long red-haired dragon, and reply.
"Am I sane? Even if I wasn't, that would not be an easy question to answer... Why?"
Ember's eyes don't stop darting around, as if he's looking at all of the mirrors on his end. Then they sharpen, and he moves forward with a palm in front of him.
I hear the crashing of glass, and the silver text before me changes to [0/50][1/50].
Ember nods, then his eyes go back to darting around while speaking.
"I was left to withstand over 900,000 years of darkness. I have both the experience to endure this passage of time and a mental technique that speeds it up for my conscious mind. I am curious to know how you are still understanding my words and not driven to insanity with merely two decades of life experience."
My eyes begin darting around the wall of mirrors, understanding what I have to do now from the change in notifications. The objective was to make it to the finish, and as Ember destroyed a mirror to move forward, we both need to pick the correct mirror 50 times to reach a middle ground.
I reply while the warm feeling in my mind subconsciously guides my eyes.
"Maybe we had different tests? I only remember a few months, or maybe a year of darkness at most. I just remember everything going dark after a while and waking up like nothing happened..."
As these words come out of my mouth, one of the mirrors in the top left corner of my vision feels warm in my mind. There is no visual feedback, but something tells me that this one is alive while the others are just mirages.
Without thinking any further, I jump upward and effortlessly crash through the pane of glass with Ember's confused face on it.
[1/50][1/50] appears in my vision in front of a whole new curved wall of mirrors.
I raise an eyebrow, grin, and try to jump high enough to fly over the wall, but I'm pushed down by an invisible, immovable force. The same thing happens when I try to fly under it or to either of its sides.
"The only way is through..." I whisper under my breath, but Ember responds with a pondering gaze not paying attention to my odd actions.
"I don't believe it... the Trials are meant to be fair. A challenger must face the burdens their bonded partner brings. Your trial must have been just as hard as mine, because our combined skill has been equalized to create a challenge of the mind. While anything learned during the trial doesn't affect the difficulty later on, our mental and physical strength was tested before. If I were alone, it would have been hundreds of millions of years longer... for sure..."
While Ember tries to figure this problem out, his eyes continue to dart around his side of the wall, and he jumps through more mirrors, bringing his counter up to [17/50] in under a minute.
I have to take quite a bit longer, but the warm feeling rushes through my mind every time I lay eyes on the correct mirror, and in the same time, I reach [4/50].
Ember doesn't come up with a reasonable explanation for this phenomenon, and since I can't remember a thing, I decide not to prod any further.
Maybe my mind is just that strong. Even this challenge seems to be moving by really quickly. It could just be that this throne was created for unintelligent monsters and demons.
I smirk and crash through the fifth mirror while Ember passes his twentieth.
Then, his voice comes through with an alarmed tone.
"Wait! How are you able to complete this round of the trial? It shouldn't be possible to do this without—"
He stops himself mid-sentence as he ponders further, but an idea dawns on him as I reply in a nonchalant manner.
"I don't know, I can just see which mirrors contain life. It's like I'm sensing your mind through each mirror. I don't know how to explain it other than you feel warm."
Ember grins, finishing his statement with understanding in his eyes.
"Divine Ether. It seems even a drop of low-quality ether in this realm is enough to do such a thing. That prize from the last trial was quite valuable..."
He looks upward as if he's looking at nothing and mutters to himself.
"Almost a million years... Let's say your subconscious shielded you from the passage of time and used this as a pseudo-closed cultivation room. It would be slower than the real thing, but the conscious mind couldn't have done such a thing... Genius... But—"
He looks back at me, clearly understanding something I don't.
"What? What happened? You're telling me that white pill has something to do with why my brain didn't melt in the last round and why I feel this warm pressure now?"
"It does... You've managed to awaken the beginning stages of what is called an Ether Sense. Though in a very unorthodox fashion, it has still occurred... Knowing your past accomplishments, I don't know what else I would have expected..."
We continue breaking through the glass as Ember explains the process that took place in my mind while time passed in that endless black void.
Apparently, this is just scraping the outer surface of what this foreign energy can do, but I need more time, a better environment to train, and more ether itself to actually progress.
[50/50][50/50]
In less than half an hour of perceived time, I break through the final mirror, and our conversation comes to an abrupt end once we both see each other's fake bodies, followed by a flash of silver light.
My mind is still wandering with a sense of awe at the reality that I, too, really managed to survive almost a million years of isolation.
Even now, this second round was completed with such ease... it feels like I cheated.
Both of us turn to each other back inside the throne, and my links of loyalty all return to me along with the perception of the outside world.
It seems not even a second of time has passed, as everyone in the battlefield outside is in the exact same position I left them in. Raven hasn't even activated the new power I granted her yet.
These thoughts of the outside world fade when my eyes meet Ember's. They focus with far more discernment as I've been searching for a very specific energy for the past few minutes and find exactly what I'm looking for.
His entire dragon's body burns hot with the same Divine Ether Energy, in far more clarity now that I know what I'm looking for. But, it is still very strange, giving off invisible readings that I can't quite understand. His voice echoes through my mind.
"Focus on the trials ahead. This next round may be easy as well, but don't lose focus. Just because you lucked out here doesn't negate the fact that there will be a new calibration on the next Trial above us. So, prepare for the worst."
His words sink in, and I nod, looking up at the next silver snake head coming down as more shimmering silver text covers my vision.
[Round 3 of 3 Shall Commence]
[Round 3 of 3 Title: Fortitude]
[Objective: Withstand the Pressure.]
As soon as I ready myself, a silver flash of light blinds me, and my vision turns red once it's done.
The sound of bubbles boiling enters my mind, and the sensation of burning surges through my body.
It feels like I've been dunked in a red-hot pool of magma, and the sensation of my skin, organs, and even bones burning away begins to repeat over and over. In addition to the burning, it feels like the heavy molten material is pushing in on me, simultaneously crushing my muscles and bones.
At the same time, a wave of pressure hits my psyche, that can only be described as a brutal wave of intimidation, making me want to pass out the second it hits me.
Just like the last two rounds, this is an illusion. I can't move my body, so I have to just allow this horrible pain to massacre my senses.
Every second that passes, the pressure seems to get stronger, and the burning sensation also gets hotter.
However, this is paired with the fact that the warm feeling in my mind is still present. It may be an illusion that I can't defend my body, but I can easily defend my mind now even without my system present.
In the first few seconds of this round, a smooth invisible mental barrier is put up, forcing the intimidation waves away; however, the physical attacks can't be stopped.
This pressure, I have to endure.
However, again, as most beings would be in excruciating pain like nothing they've ever felt before, this isn't much worse than most of my life-and-death battles.
With my mythic-grade self-regeneration skill, I've had my limbs torn off, body parts burned to ash, and blood boiled; constantly regenerating many times in the past.
The odd mental bliss about what is happening now is that I know for sure this isn't my real body.
It's just pain. I can withstand it.
If I could move this body submerged in molten rock, I'd be smiling throughout this entire last round.
A few days pass, but it is nothing compared to the perceived months that went by in the darkness.
I almost feel as though this throne is going too easy on me when the silver light returns me to the trial room, and notifications blare in my vision paired with an ancient voice.
[Round 3 of 3 Complete.]
[Trial 2: Mind: Complete.]
[Calculating prize based on trial difficulty...]
[Prize Calculated.]
The three headed serpent dissolves in a flash of silver light, just like the demon did on the floor below, and two identical black boxes fall from the ceiling.
As they hit the ground with a thud, I almost want to laugh out loud at the difference in difficulty from Trial 1 to 2, but I remember what Ember said before this one and silently approach the boxes.
The third will have another calibration to account for this new mental shield, but also, I'll be meeting the two remaining members of the big three if they've managed to survive.
If they are the same strength as Redgrave, I don't fear their presence at all...
The only being I'm concerned about is the Arch Demon that was so confident in its ability to become this world's lord.
While these thoughts race through my mind the two boxes in front of Ember and myself open on their own.
Simultaneously, the sensation of Raven pulling 1% of the power from the 36,004,922 links pops up in my status. It is paired with the imagery of her pulling a black spear from her chest and jumping upward off the desert floor.
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Author's Note:
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