The room was simple, 5 by 5 meters square, and the ceiling was more than 5 meters high... all made of hateful marble. Three torches illuminated the room, in the center of which there was a large scale...
The next striking thing was a large relief in an unknown language that I could strangely understand...
"Your willpower has brought you here; this is in itself a reward, unload the weight of your shoulders on a pan of the scale and see how the will to change the world rewards you."
Each pan of the scale could be one meter in diameter. The mechanism was clear; however, I couldn't miss the opportunity...
I made three separate piles, one with the 75 gold ingots, another with the 75 silver ingots, and another with the 75 copper ingots...
I sat in front and began to meditate...
The energy of the metal was rigid; it resisted, it moved in jerks, but little by little I noticed it flowing in me...
"Congratulations on being the first player to complete a second secondary mana core during the tutorial."
Metal Mana Core, Level 1. 1/1000
Common skill: meditation. 326/1000
This time, it was my left shoulder that created the vortex of pulsating energy. This energy was different; it had a hard time flowing... I touched one of the ingots, trying to project the mana towards it. It bent a little... It was exhausting. After several attempts, the ingot only managed to bend into an S. It was impossible to shape it at will... it didn't come out... only the metal reacted to the mana, nothing more...
Deciding not to waste any more time, I put the ingots in the saucer on the left...
I piled them up as best I could, but nothing changed; the scale didn't even move... It wasn't until I put both my hands and all my weight on the same scale that it gave way, and it did so in a big way, hitting the ground. Little by little, in the other saucer, a crystalline white sphere was created. At first, it only floated, then it continued to grow until it had the size of a fist. The scale was rebalanced in a small part... It was not until it reached the size of a large watermelon that the scale was balanced.
The "watermelon" began to float, and was shot at my head... I would tell you that it didn't surprise me, but no, a scream escaped me, and I couldn't dodge it... A light filtered through my skin and through my bones. Because of my flesh, the back of my head was burning. It was burning...
I sat down to meditate, partly to calm the headache, partly because I sensed that I had to absorb that energy...
"Affinity with the mana of the created will. 1/43100"
43100, but what the hell... the secondary cores until now did not require more than 100...
I meditated for hours, and finally a message resonated in my head:.
"Congratulations on completing a main mana core during the tutorial."
"Congratulations on being the first to complete the hidden quest in the room of Will."
"Congratulations on being the first to complete a main core during the level 5 tutorial."
"Congratulations to the Player for reaching the next level with the meditation skill. Meditation Skill*Common* Expert Rank: 1/5000* The player will gain double the mana during meditation in half the time.
Mana Core Will Level 5. 1/70000
The creation of the mana core was painful; my head was burning. I think I became dizzy from the pain, and I lost consciousness for a while... When I woke up, there was no scale or unfortunately gold ingots, just the empty room.
I wanted to try... I took out one of the knives I had left; just like with the ingots, I projected my metallic mana, but this time I concentrated on imposing my will on the shape of the knife. Soon, the knife bent into an angle of 90 degrees, and I forced it to roll up on itself... I even managed to somehow compact it by forcibly removing the impurities from the metal...
After passing this stage of testing, I felt that my metallic mana reserve had been emptied, but not my willpower. Since I was not tied to the nature of metal, I could not do anything else.
At the moment, the magic was nothing spectacular, but it existed; I couldn't explain it; it was a force within me...
I used one of the torches to light the only one I had kept with me, and I entered the tunnel. After 25 steps, a cauldron appeared to my left, I lit the torch and continued moving forward, its corresponding one appeared on the right, further ahead on the left, right... after ten minutes of walking I found a broken cavity and its empty chest...
I continued moving forward, lighting torches, until I found the bloody mark I had made on the wall...
The rest of the way was a walk, without surprises, without shocks, with light...
I arrived at the square with the statue; if it weren't because I was walking very quickly, I would say that the statue winked at me...
It's not that I had any kind of paraphilia with statues or any fetish like that, but I couldn't deny that the goddess was attractive and that, in some even intimate way, she attracted me. Also consider that she was the first human-looking being I had seen since entering the tutorial.
Which path would I choose now? Discarding the ones that any player would choose first—fire, ice, water, air, stone, lightning—there was life and death left. I don't know why I didn't want them; I didn't want any more headaches at a moment like this that I discarded the eye or the psyche as I deduced...
Light, darkness, space and time...
We would try with time.
The walls of the tunnel were also made of marble, although they were an indefinite gray. I stepped into the hallway when a stone wall closed behind me. Spikes came out of the wall, which I avoided by pure miracle. With a roar, the section began to move slowly inside the tunnel. Although it was not dangerous, for every 5 steps I walked, the wall moved 1 step...
When I reached 25 steps, a torch appeared to my right. As I passed it, a noise sounded and the spiked section moved faster. I started running down the hallway, but every time I crossed a torch, the speed of the pursuing wall increased. There came a time when the speed of the wall was equal to my sprint speed, at this pace it would soon catch up with me... a gap opened up to my right and I dove headlong before it reached me.
I fell or was sucked down a slide. By the time I realized it, I was thrown over one of the walls of the statue room, landing not very gracefully on my butt in front of the "time tunnel" entrance. It was clear as if nothing had happened...
What the fuck? I headed back to the tunnel, but I didn't start walking, but I started sprinting... I reached the first torch and turned it off, there was no change in the speed of the pursuit trap, I ran to the next one...
I repeated the story until I was tired, my legs hurt, and I was short of breath. I had been doing quick sprints for more than an hour, one after another, interspersed with just enough time to extinguish the torches. I had a huge advantage over the wall, but my body needed to rest, so I walked to the next torch...
I continued walking and recovering until I could see how the wall was gaining ground on me. When I was sufficiently recovered and the spikes were already close, I ran again, but this time I only lasted sprinting for half an hour before exhausting myself. I repeated the cycle of rest and running until my strength only allowed me to walk...
With the spikes less than a meter away, I had to rule out turning off the torch... I gritted my teeth and ran, but with the new acceleration and momentum of the wall, it didn't take me long to see the slide again, so I launched myself to avoid being crushed or skewered on the spikes...
I was back at square one... How to get rid of the damn metal spikes... A pretty crazy idea occurred to me... I went deeper into the tunnel, but only went far enough to not be skewered or crushed. Along the section of wall...
I began to walk backwards. With my right hand, I touched one of the spikes, and with my mana and will, I transformed it into a handle. Before reaching the first torch, I managed to do the same with a low spike, moving it to a place to rest. Before it picked up more speed, I got on the strange transport.
I continued turning various spikes into grips, and supports to be as comfortable as possible while the wall gained speed... There came a point where it was like being stuck in front of the cabin of a train. When it reached the point of the high speed of a bullet train, my body was stuck to the left side of the wall; moving laterally was already a feat...
At that moment, I could see, about 300 meters away, how the tunnel ended with two spikes determined to skewer me. The slide luckily appeared on my side, and almost by miracle, I managed to jump onto it without being crushed against the walls...
I slid, although this time only a few meters... I appeared in a square room, 5 by five meters, with ceilings of equal height. To my right, a staircase went up, and in the center of the room, another damn scale...