Pov Meilin:
When Illios sensed my aura, he immediately changed his mind and guided me towards that strange structure.
Upon entering, I didn't see anything messy, as it looked like some sort of sect reception room or something. Also, its design was quite interesting, as it had some law of space built into it.
"Your perception of cluttered, no doubt, is different from mine," I said in a sarcastic tone.
Illios just shrugged his shoulders and replied:
"Maybe Mery cleaned it in the morning," he said something that sounded more like an excuse than a fact.
The place didn't look like a place to train, as I didn't see any tools for cultivation and there was no wide space to practice exercises either.
I continued analyzing the place and found something that caught my attention: a strange object that looked like a board.
When I took it in my hand, a light came on in its outline, and letters appeared that read as follows:
[ Welcome to The Forge of Heroes 2.0: Immortal World!]
[ The favorite spot for legendary heroes to train their skills and get rewards without any risk!]
"It's certainly an fascinating artifact," I thought, rather surprised.
This is because there are similar artifacts where you can communicate with text, but the sharpness with which the characters are presented has a quality quite superior to those I've seen on the floating continent, where you can commonly find this kind of thing.
Carefully analyzing the text, I realized that this was the secret that my instincts detected in this young man. If what he says is true, this artifact may be similar to the Tower of Legends, located in the Holy Land of Mythical Beasts, which you can only enter every 100 years.
The artifact is quite simple: you enter and on each floor of the tower, there are different enemies from different eras. You know, ancient cultivators, extinct beasts, among others.
The point of going there is to defeat the enemies and earn rewards without any risk of dying, since what you face are not real enemies, but spiritual representations created by the artifact itself.
"How do you use it?" I asked Illios next to me, who looked a bit resigned.
"You select the mode, the difficulty and start it," he replied listlessly.
His answer was simple enough, but understandable. Besides, I'm not an idiot, so I don't think this artifact would be difficult to learn.
Several options caught my attention, such as:
Immortal Dungeon
Crazy Dungeon
Tournament
Although I don't know what "dungeon" means, it sounds like something fun. However, I decided to go with the "Custom Training" option.
When I selected it, a message appeared before the options that should appear.
[ Achievement unlocked: The killer of 10,000 goblins.]
[ New gameplay sub-modes have been unlocked!]
So Illios and his sister have killed over 10,000 goblins?
"They don't sound very powerful, honestly," I thought and took a small glance at Illios.
He was simply sitting and reflecting on his life, I guessed.
"Now let's see…"
The message disappeared after a few seconds and finally showed me the options, which I customized to my liking.
[ Custom Training:
Scenario: Blank Space.
Enemy: Fire Dragon Commander (Magic)
Difficulty: Hard
Number: 1
Additional situations: Balanced combat (both have equivalent strength level)].
"Fire Dragon Commander... Magical? Will he use evil arts?", I opined a bit quizzically, but I just let it go.
"This fight will just be a small warm-up," I assumed, as I had faced people with a higher realm than mine and had come out victorious, so I was confident.
That was the option I selected from all the available ones, and as I was about to start, Illios woke up from his reflection and said to me:
"I suggest you change your clothes before you start."
When I heard his words, I realized that I was still wearing light clothing, which I had been using to captivate this young dragon.
"You're right," I replied, and simply pulled out my light armor from my storage ring.
To keep it simple, I put the armor on over my current clothes and also pulled out my favorite spear, which was made of an extremely expensive material.
"Well, do you have any other recommendations?", I asked, half jokingly and half seriously.
"It will hurt, so don't go overboard with the number," he told me.
Well, if you're going to train combats, it's obvious that pain is vital, as you get used to the pain and also exercise your subconscious so that you avoid attacks without thinking too much about the timing of an actual fight.
In the Legendary Tower, although there was pain, it was not a very strong sensation. Some people speculate that this was done so that you would not develop trauma when facing certain situations, and in the end have the opposite effect of the training.
However, other people believe that it is better for the sensations to be fully lived, so that later generations will know what a pain in the ass it is to face certain beasts.
As for this belief, my opinion is mixed, as there are fucking horrible critters in that tower with very painful attacks.
One of them is the Soul Eater, which, although it doesn't physically hurt you, you wish it would. Even my brothers and I, when we attended 100 years ago, were defeated when it was our turn to face three of those guys, us being six dragons.
The summary of that battle was disastrous.....
"Let's stop thinking about the past and focus on this," I thought and hit the "Start" option.
As I did so, space twisted and, before I knew it, I was in some sort of very large, white room.
A screen appeared before my eyes that looked like a marker that was receding from the number 10, as if it was telling me to get ready.
I took a battle stance and waited for my opponent to materialize.
When the counter reached 0, an enemy formed from clusters of light that appeared out of nowhere.
It was about five meters away….
The enemy was a dragon like me, but it was in human form. He wasn't much different from me, except for his armor, which seemed a little heavier than mine.
The guy was a man and had crimson armor that denoted his position as a fire dragon commander. In addition, he also carried a spear that looked quite expensive.
The battle did not begin immediately, as we both looked at each other warily, analyzing our opponent.
My final analysis was to test his strength a bit in a quick exchange, because his stance didn't seem to have many openings, and the ones there were seemed purposefully created to distract.
I began the fight by lunging in with great momentum and, when I entered his living space, I immediately directed a lunge at his chest.
Clang!
The guy reacted quickly and blocked my attack with ease.
After that attack, I backed up a few steps and quickly concluded that this guy had physical strength equal to mine, but I couldn't be sure, so I set out to attack and test his technique with the spear.
I attacked again, this time using quick and precise attacks to his vital organs.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
The guy blocked my attacks and when I directed an attack at his head, we clashed both spears and began a brute force combat to see who would yield.
It looked like I was going to win this exchange, since I could feel the guy was yielding to my strength, but as I was about to destabilize him....
PAM!
"UGHHHHHHH!" I felt a huge punch to my stomach.
This punch felt fucking real, like I had been hit in reality. It was so hard that I was knocked out for a few seconds....
Which the enemy took advantage of, changing his stance and aiming his spear blade directly at my neck.
Clash!
I managed to recover fast enough to deflect the attack, but obviously I was not in my best condition due to the aftermath of that mysterious attack.
My enemy showed no mercy and launched a barrage of attacks aimed specifically at disarming me.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!
Its intensity was so great that I couldn't figure out how the guy hit me in my stomach with both his hands on the spear.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
My situation was grim as I received a barrage of attacks, thinking about how I could reverse the situation, but unfortunately I couldn't think fast enough.
PAM!
I received a blow to my leg with similar force to the previous blow, completely disrupting my balance and sending me crashing to the ground.
Schlick!
Taking advantage of my helpless stance, the enemy stabbed me in the heart and while I was "dying", I could see the thing he had hit me with by surprise to defeat me: it was his tail, the tail of a dragon.
After seeing that, my vision darkened.
--
When I regained consciousness, I found myself sitting in the same place where I was killed by that guy, but now no one was there, and a message appeared in my vision:
[ You've been killed!]
[ Retry? ][ Exit ]
I did nothing else and started meditating to calm my heart Dao, which was very agitated.
After meditating for a few minutes, I finally calmed down and started to analyze the reason I lost.
"A tail…"
We actual dragons don't use this part of our body, at least not in our humanoid form. The reasons are varied, but we could say that our combat style evolved in a way that this part was eliminated from our schematics.
It is also because ancient humans designed very useful techniques for our dragon clan and our tail was a problem for the vast majority due to the need to have a perfect balance, so we simply discarded it.
However, that dragon's tail was quite powerful, which suggests to me that its training was based on strengthening all of its muscles. In addition, I also detected a strange energy in him during combat.
His spiritual energy was very strange, or rather, it was completely different from the energy usually used.