The towering pagoda had an equally imposing open entrance.
As Valerius stepped through it, the torches affixed to the walls came to life, brightening the surroundings, and he found himself in an empty hall with a mirror in the center that immediately caught his attention.
He moved closer to inspect it.
Once he stood before it, the mirror reflected his image for a brief moment before his reflection vanished. Words in black then began to appear on its surface:
"The Primordial Pagoda Spirit has detected that the challenger is a Level 3 Spirit Warrior. The Primordial Pagoda has a strict entry requirement. Its first floor and all the floors after that cannot be challenged by anyone less than a wizard. Its 0th floor, however, can be challenged by non-wizards and Spirit Warriors.
"As a Level 3 Spirit Warrior, you can only challenge its 0th floor. Would you like to do it?"
Valerius didn't hesitate. "Yes," he said firmly.
Upon his affirmation, the mirror transformed into a portal. The spirit of the pagoda then instructed him, "Please pass through it to begin your challenge on the 0th floor."
He turned towards the source of the noise and saw that the chairs, which had been resting against the wall, had slid a few steps towards him.
He immediately became wary of these furnitures.
'Are these chairs alive? And if so, what's their purpose in coming closer to me?' he thought.
Unlike a typical side character in a horror story, he wasn't about to stick around to find out and potentially meet a grim fate. He sprinted away from them as if his life depended on it.
Then, a ripping noise came from behind. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the seemingly soft and fluffy seats of the chairs ripped apart, revealing mouths with red tongues and sharp, triangular, razor-sharp teeth that glinted in the dim corridor lights.
'What a dreadful trap.'
Had someone sat on them to disorient themselves from the teleportation, they would have had their butts ripped apart!
Whoosh!
The tongues shot out from the mouth of the chairs, cutting through the air, aiming straight for his heart and neck.
These tongues were each adorned with a pair of eyes. They had a small protrusion at the front and they were barbed with wires all over. They somewhat resembled the favorite bat-type weapon of one of Valerius's favorite actors in shape and thickness.
A direct hit from these tongues would be fatal. If they managed to meet the mark, he would certainly breathe his last.
He dodged, rolling to the side as one tongue missed him by a hair's breadth. The other brushed past him, its sharp wire scratching his forearm and drawing blood.
As a result, he lost 0.2 Hp.
With a dull thud, one tongue smashed into the wall, cracking it, while the other quickly turned, targeting him again.
Valerius's glove-wearing hand transformed into a shield, blocking the tongue. The tongue fell to the ground after it was blocked.
The chairs, seeing their ambush fail, retracted their tongues. The second chair succeeded, but the first did not. Before its tongue could fully retract, Valerius rushed forward, bashing the massive tip of the tongue with his shield violently until it was reduced to a pile of flesh and blood.
A mournful cry sounded as the remainder of the tongue remained sprawled on the ground and the first sliding chair remained motionless.
Destroying the tongue had seemingly killed it.
Valerius realized that their weapon-like tongues were also their greatest weakness.
The remaining monstrous chair no longer seemed terrifying. He looked at it with a menacing grin.
"It's your turn next." he mouthed.
The other chair, seemingly frightened, slid away rapidly, screeching against the tiled floor as it moved.
"There's no escape!" Valerius said as a ruthless glint equal in ferocity to a murderer's flashed in his eyes.
His shield-like hand transformed into a hook, which he aimed at the retreating chair.
Whoosh!
The metallic hook sprang out with incredible speed, quickly closing the distance between Valerius and the monstrous chair. The chair only felt a gust of wind before it was stabbed in its mouth. The hook had lodged itself firmly in the tongue of the monstrous chair.
"Come here," Valerius said in a low and husky voice as if mimicking a murderous psychopath that rips people apart for a living.
The chains retracted the very second the words were uttered, pulling the hook back, and the red chair that was attached to the hook was lifted off the ground and pulled towards Valerius. He quickly transformed the Shielding Glove back into a shield and swung it forward, smashing it into the incoming chair with such force that it shattered, revealing a blob of flesh with a huge mouth inside that fell down the air.
The moment it hit the ground, Valerius brought his shield down on it.
A resounding 'Pah!' echoed.
The creature was squished to a red paste by his "Shield Bash" skill.
There was no other monster in sight. He was safe for now.
One of the common tropes of the novels he'd read back on Earth was that when you kill a monster, inspecting their body might yield something valuable.
This rule might apply in his case.
'It is worth a try."
He decided it was worth checking their remains for anything useful. He got his hand dirtied as he followed through with his words. His efforts weren't in vain as he discovered two blood-red crystals. They were each the size of a finger and hexagonally shaped.
He gazed at them intently, but no semi-transparent game-like window popped up. He pressed them into his status screen like he did with the orbs, but again nothing happened.
'I guess what I have isn't an inspect skill, but a special feature that only works for things listed on the status screen. It can't be used to gain a deeper understanding of these crystals.'
"No worries, I'll find out what they do once I get them appraised,' he thought.
In this world, there was no shortage of professions.
The strength of each wizard was unique, leading to the existence of all sorts of professions.
To name a few: alchemist, runesmith, artificer. These were the main or major professions.
There were also less common professions. One such profession was that of an Appraiser, who could discern the functions of various objects.
Although wizards with such professions were rare, Serph's wizarding community had many such appraisers, so finding one to assist him there would be a piece of cake.
For now, he set the crystals aside and continued moving along the corridor.
After his recent encounters, he knew that danger could lurk around any corner in this mysterious and unpredictable building, so he moved cautiously and kept a vigilant eye out for any potential trouble. He was prepared to react swiftly to any new threats that might emerge.
He encountered no trouble whatsoever until he left the corridor.