In the dark cave, everyone walked around using a ball of light in their hands shining brightly and revealing the locations up front as all adventurers walk down the straight but narrow path as the one up front says "Careful here, the cave's formation seems like it has set up multiple traps in this path… watch your steps at all cost" as they all agree and continued moving, one of them pressed on a tile as it slowly pressed down and suddenly the numbers of adventurers start disappearing from behind them when one of them finally noticed this, he shouted "RUN!" as the tiles below have started opening up short holes dropping multiple adventurers in them.
All of them began running down the path trying to dodge this trap, Luke and his friends were now behind everyone when Luke noticed the paths open up below Roy and pushed him out the way and took the fall for him, Roy was shocked to see but before he could do anything, the path below him also opens and then fell Diana and Reyna as well all into different holes.
As Luke slides down the narrow hole as he closes his eyes due to the speed he was falling at as light falls from on him from below as he slowly opens his eyes to see him falling down a well lit giant room with everyone else around him, when suddenly his falling speed begins to lower down. He slowly lands on the ground below as he sees multiple others falling to their death when he hears Diana's voice, looking above he sees about 10 people in the air as they all land slowly on the floor after which Reyna breathes heavily.
"How are you feeling Reyna" asks Roy to which she replies "Not good, I used too much of my mana" "But you saved us all, thank you"
"Frisk!!!" shouts someone in agony as Reyna replies "Not all" and was quite depressed about that fact when they heard some footsteps approaching them "Everyone" says the leader as all looked towards the man?, no the thing approaching them, a monster with a body standing straight… a muscular body with a lizard's tail and a mouth extended from his face. The ears were pointed and his body was of a armor like shape as it takes in a giant breath of air and announces his presence.
"Welcome, Humans, to the test of our race against yours… my name is Klaksh, and I belong to the ancient race of Roogu… Nice to meet you all"
"Roogu, Diana?" "Never heard of it, they are not even in any books"
"Sorry to say, but humans didn't get to record our presence because we were seen in front of them" replies Klaksh "You heard us?" asks Roy "Of course, our ears have quite a range" "Oh, so why weren't you seen?" "Its because we have always lived in this cave, you can say we are trapped here due to a curse placed on us, and due to that reason we have lived for more than a 100 years…and our wish to be set free from this curse"
"So, what do you want from us…?" asks the leader "Its simple really, give me a great fight and kill me" "Huh?" suddenly Klaksh was right in front of the leader with a smile and beheads him with just a slash from its hands surprising everyone "Now then, let's begin the test of your strength against mine"
"Luke protect Reyna!" shouted Roy as he takes out his sword "Got it!" as he does the same when the monster teleports right in front of Luke and says "Protect who?' He quickly reacts by charging his sword at it but the lizard teleported again "You missed" as it suddenly teleported behind both Reyna and him and was about to kill Reyna when Dian approaches and charges her punch at its face.
Klaksh grabs the punch with fidgeting an inch surprised, she launched her other fist at its waist but the body was too hard to even feel it as Klaksh says "Are all you humans fools like this one, or she is the only one who doesn't know how to punch " the aura around Klaksh was too strong that Diana felt it right into her heart "Want me to show you?" as suddenly she is blown back quite a distance and hits the ground multiple times, before smashing into a wall, its then when she feels the pain the pain of the punch hitting her body as she throws out blood and falls to the ground
Everyone was shocked, they all immediately lost hope of winning this battle after this demonstration of its power as Roy shouts "THIS IS UNFAIR!" "huh, what is?" asks the monster "You are fighting alone against all of us, let it be a 1v1" replies Roy as hearing this Klaksh let out a small laughter which slowly turned into something so big that it couldn't control it.
While Roy looked at all of this with a face of seriousness as the monster slowly tried to control its laughter and said "You want to fight me all alone, while I just…I just easily defeated… 2 of yours?" "Yeah, in return I want to let them all go" replied Roy as the monster with still a smirk on its face said "Are you serious?, and why should I do that?"
"You said this was a test right? A test of strength… shouldn't you be then fighting the strongest of us?" "Oh, and how shall I know who is the strongest?" as Roy takes out his adventure card and shows his rank "This is an adventurer card, it ranks us all based on our strength… mine is C-3 and the rest of the members remaining alive are below me… if you want I can show you?"
"Hmmm, interesting way for humans to rank your strength, fine then… your reason makes sense hence I agree to your ordeals…" it snaps his fingers and the walls behind them all start rising revealing an exit… everyone except Luke, Diana and Reyna begin running towards the exit. "Can you stand, Reyna?" "Yeah" as she slowly stands up and replies "Go take care of Diana" Luke quickly runs and picks up Diana as they start walking away while Roy stands in front of Klaksh ready to fight
Luke looks towards them and continues walking while observing them up close. "You are a brave one, you know you are going to die but still want to let your friends survive… I respect that bravery, I hope you can rest in peace" as it gets ready to fight… Roy tightens his fist on the hilt of his sword and takes a fighting stance as their battle begin.