Zen felt the same dizzying sensation he felt when he went through the portal but he had dealt with it before so although it was disorienting he didn't take long to recover. Opening his eyes Zen looked around confused as he seemed to be in the same desert but he quickly realized it was different,there was no pyramid here but wherever he was ,this desert somehow felt more endless than the one he was coming from . Zen looked to his side and noticed Maximilian was gone, he suddenly remembered that dungeons would randomly teleport people to random locations on the first floor, but the problem was Zen suspected he wasn't even in the dungeon, usually,high rank dungeons had subspaces in them and would even create images identical to the outside world and considering how large this dungeon's domain is,it wasn't too far-fetched to think this was all part of the dungeon however it was simply too large, it seemed like it expanded to the edge of the world, there was no way a dungeon would make a room, especially the first floor so grand.
Zen was still in thought when directly in front of him a road that was made of something that resembled a white stone and led out to an unknown location emerged from the ground .
Seeing the path Zen suddenly had an ominous but familiar feeling. He bent down, grabbed one of stones that made the road and managed to pull it out surprisingly easily and once it was out of the ground he saw exactly what it was.
In his hand was a pure white skull of a human being something that would have terrified most. Zen closed his eyes for a brief second as several bloody images passed through his mind, he had a faint sense of familiarity with this scene,once it was over, He simply sighed, his cold soulless eyes as tranquil as always and put the skull back where he had taken it from. Zen stood back up and took a closer look at the road and realized that what he had mistaken for stones were actually tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of bones all wedged together to form the road.
"This is definitely a trap".
Although Zen said that he knew it was his only option so the next second he stepped on the road without hesitation and began walking on the road of bones.
After a while Zen suddenly stopped and looked around, he felt like he had been walking for hours and he wasn't even sure he was moving forward at all, there was definitely something wrong with time here or at least his perception of time and he knew he couldn't stay here and just keep doing the same thing.
Suddenly remembering something Zen brought out a water bottle from his pocket, Although he could stay still keep going it wouldn't be smart to move around an unknown place at anything less than a hundred percent if possible.
He opened the bottle and brought it to his mouth but suddenly stopped to think, why exactly did Nora give this to him. It was quite clear she knew about the test but why help a random participant?. Zen couldn't help feeling a bit suspicious as he realized there was really no reason for her to help him. A worrying thought suddenly passed through as Zen realized he had completely let his guard down around her without even knowing it and he started to examine his memories to make sure he hadn't seen her before but even after a while other than the sense of mystery shrouding her he couldn't remember having seen her.
"Hmmm, so she's not one of them, she didn't seem to give off that aura but something's definitely not right about her". As Zen was speaking to himself he decided to tackle another issue, how to get out of here,however he didn't even know where here was, one thing was clear however, he wasn't in the dungeon.
Zen looked at the water bottle in his hand for a few seconds and suddenly turned it over and poured it onto the ground. As the water fell onto the ground something strange happened, it looked almost like it had fallen through the ground like it wasn't even there and just vanished.
Zen tilted his head curious, and as he did he suddenly squinted and retracted his head as some sunlight had been reflected into his eyes .
"An illusion?.... of course, that's why it doesn't feel like I'm moving at all" . Zen didn't want to waste any more energy moving on an unending path and suddenly stopped to think.
"Although I read some books on breaking illusions I doubt i could break or even disrupt something so powerful.... but if something like water could reveal its nature then it must be either have been damaged or tampered with so maybe I can....."
Before Zen could say anything, the chaotic voices suddenly flared up and at the same time his instincts exploded and his back started tingling but it was too late.
Zen suddenly felt a stinging pain on his back and suddenly flew to the left and crashed into the ground a few meters away.
Zen grimaced and shakily stood up before spitting out some blood, wiping the blood off his lips he looked up and saw as multiple large creatures made entirely of sand rose up from the ground .
Once they were completely emerged Zen realized they somewhat resembled scorpions with the only two difference being size as each and every one of them were at least twice his size and the fact that they had four pincers instead of two that regular scorpions have.
"Sand elementals, well this is gonna be a pain".
Unknown to him a strange humanoid presence directly next to him was smiling in a pleased manner
"Now i can truly see what this child can do, The fact that he walked so long on the road of bones means his mind is strong, enough of testing his mind, show me what your body can do child of the void". Saying this the presence lightly tapped its ten foot long staff on the ground and almost as if triggered by this the scorpions began to charge at Zen.
This presence had actually been watching Zen the moment he had appeared in its realm and had decided to test him with the road of bones , it had been pleased with his performance and had eventually decided to test his physical prowess
As it watched on it couldn't help thinking
"This child root is active yet doesn't have a gift from any of the three realms, infact it seems his body rejects them,but it should be fine to use the old minions of the fallen pharaoh to test him, and if he can impress me then i, Anubis shall bestow a gift upon this child although it may need to be a bit special considering his body".
Zen who still didn't know what was happening looked at the sand elementals that numbered at least a dozen and a faint smile could be seen on his lips as a silhouette seemed to form behind him however it all lasted for less than a second before disappearing.
Zen looked around trying to find some kind of opening for him to escape as he knew very clearly that his chances of survival were slim to none.
He hastily took a fighting stance and prepared to fight for his life at least until he could escape, strangely all throughout his eyes were still tranquil and empty without a hint of fear or any emotion of any kind for that matter .
Zen's vision rapidly slowed down as his brain started working in overdrive, trying to find a way out of this. He suddenly thought that if 'that' could happen again then he might just be able to get out of this mess considering what had happened last time.
Pushing aside his distracting thoughts,Zen focused on his current situation ,He knew that if he just stood there and waited for them to surround him he'd die a horrible death, although he could attempt 'that' after letting them surround him but it was too risky it, not to mention his lack of a weapon of any kind.
So Zen decided to do the most stupid and at the same time the most logical thing . He looked at the scorpion that was closest to him and muttered a single word under his breath before charging straight at the scorpion.
Reaching it, Zen quickly threw out his fist in an uppercut which landed somewhere between the head and underbelly of the scorpion and the force of his punch caused it to stagger as it's first set of feet were slightly lifted off the ground.
Zen's eye suddenly grew sharp as he noticed this but there was no time to be distracted. The area of the sand elemental where he had punched which was originally solid suddenly became loose and soft like it was an actual pile of sand. Zen noticed this and hurriedly thrust his hand through the sand elemental's body as he expected it to do this to protect itself.
Elementals were creatures formed of pure elemental energy. They were capable of either mobilizing that energy to form a somewhat physical body which if not for the fact that it was made of elements would be almost impossible to tell apart from the real thing, or they could simply do the opposite and enter a form of pure elemental energy and the element itself of course. Each had their pros and cons however the most obvious were that the former allowed for better physical attacks but were left vulnerable to damage from any kind of attack as they had real organs and such while the latter was nearly invulnerable to regular attacks and could even passively heal if In an area filled with their elemental energy but their options for attack would be limited and their beast core would be at great risk due to their non-solid body .
Zen was planning to take advantage of that very weakness, he had suspected that the elemental was a low tier one with limited intelligence and knew that the elemental would follow its natural instinct to protect itself with its elemental form while risking its core due to its limited intelligence. It was a known fact that the intelligence of beasts grew with their rank of intelligence with lower ranked ones being no different from normal animals.
Trying to remove the core was very risky because if the scorpion suddenly solidified its body he could loose his arm.
Zen could suddenly feel his hand around something spherical and with a smooth surface. The scorpion suddenly began to panic as it swung its tail which suddenly expanded beyond reason and quickly turned to strike Zen.
Zen looked to his side and unable to move he raised his other arm letting the tail slam against his side and quickly bringing his arm down to keep it trapped. With a grunt Zen suddenly dug his feet into the ground and with a twist he threw the scorpion out using the leftover momentum from the tail slamming into him and then releasing it's tail.
The scorpion struggled for a while on the ground before it suddenly stopped moving.
Anubis who was watching was surprised at what happened and looked to Zen's hand which had been in the scorpion and could see a faintly glowing small brown or in it , seeing it Anubis couldn't help but think
"He grabbed on to the core and when he flung the beast he simply held on to it and didn't have to actually pull it out.... not bad, I'm eager to see what you do next child".
Zen looked at the core in his hand which was only a little bit bigger than a ping pong ball with his breathing ragged and thought
"Success".
Zen looked around and realized that he couldn't just use that to escape, he was pretty sure one of his ribs was at least fractured and his breathing was ragged and unnatural, However he was still composed so at least there was that.
Zen knew he couldn't do that again, the only way he'd be able to repeat this move to defeat them all was if the rest of the scorpions were as stupid and slow as the first and although the chances of that being the case were shockingly high he still needed to find one that was all on its own so he couldn't be interrupted by another scorpion which was a problem as some of them were beginning to group up.
Wait! they were grouping up!!
Zen looked on somewhat surprised, basic tier beasts whether elementals or not normally lacked the intelligence required for team attacks and sometimes even fought among each other with the only exception being fantasy dungeon creatures, so how was it possible that basic tier sand elementals were teaming up against him?.
There were only three possible explanations ,either he was wrong about them being basic tier which was an impossibility because there was no way he would have defeated one so easily or even defeated it at all. As such it was one of two options, either they were actually fantasy dungeon beasts which only seemed similar to sand elementals or they were being controlled by someone.
The former couldn't be possible as he had already seen the extent of their intelligence and they weren't exactly too bright, plus if they were fantasy beasts they would have attempted some sort of communication with Zen or at least showed some emotion when he killed one of their own but there was nothing.
Zen suddenly realized the irony in that thought about one of their own being killed and noticed an unfortunate similarity between him and beasts but didn't have time to reminisce.
With the other options being impossible only the last one made any shred of sense, it would also explain how he got into this illusion, he was trapped,for a moment Zen thought of celia but eliminated the possibility as she wasn't strong enough to make something like this and even if she was,her ability had nothing to do with illusions.
For a moment Zen couldn't help but wonder why someone so powerful they could create an illusion like this and coordinate beasts would have an interest in him unless they were a high rank beast . Zen suddenly thought that perhaps the person,if they were a person had figured out where he was from or if Murphy, alma or celia had exposed him to this person as that was the only reason he could think of aside from the person being a beast. And so he decided to find out
"Excuse me! Who are you?! , and why are you doing this!,do you....know who i am?"
Anubis who was confused as to why he had stopped moving was suddenly surprised as he heard Zen call him out.
"Hmmm? Did this child really perceive my presence? No it seems more like i made things too obvious for him and he noticed the patterns.....seems I've gotten rusty over the past few hundred years , its been a while since a mortal has been able to get one up on me, the last one had something in common with this one, it was in their essence, she said something about a....."
Anubis suddenly stopped there and continued to watch Zen.
Zen didn't doubt his hunch despite not getting an answer and suspected that either the entity couldn't or didn't want to talk.
Zen braced himself as the scorpions closed in looking for his next target.
Suddenly all the sand elementals suddenly stopped moving almost as if frozen.
Zen looked around confused by why they had stopped and at that moment he heard something in his mind louder and clearer than it had ever been before
[System reboot protocol complete]
[System-host sync has reached 100%]
[System has been fully bound to host]
[Greetings from the Astral soul system ,host:Zen]