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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 156
🕑 Added 2024-10-28 08:33:18 +0000 UTCI stayed on guard for a while, at least until the man-sized golems walked back into the hidden doors they were deployed from, and the tentacles melded back seamlessly into the pillars, the only signs of them being anything but pillar designs being the nicks and gouges that they received upon me smacking them around.
When the coast was clear, I brought the three keys to the door to the next trial, matched the corresponding symbols on the keys to the locks, and opened the door to find another gate with a sign above it.
The sign read, “Trial 2: The Enchanted Puzzle Room”, I then looked to the wooden board beside the gate “Objective: Solve the puzzle unlocks the exit, but beware, mistakes summon hostels.”
Alright then, let's get this over and done with. I pushed open the gate and entered a room filled with magical glyphs, arrays, and inscriptions, they formed five clusters around the room, each magical cluster was linked to each other, and each cluster had a line connected to one of five bolts keeping the door closed, and in the middle of the room, there was a pedestal with a wooden case and an instruction signage beside it.
“Inside this case, are ten pairs of Mana Transmission beads. Each bead can be used to bridge mana anywhere in the trail room between their identical pair.” well, that's a nifty tool, but first, let's see what we are dealing with.
I began by studying each magical cluster, all the glyphs, arrays, and inscriptions, and found that everything on display here was covered in class, but twisted in such a way that looked right, but upon closer inspection, some key components were missing or wrong. As I looked over all the clusters, I found some of those missing components and knew what the trial was about.
This whole room is like a math problem that uses words to obfuscate the true answer, and I also see some logic problems in the mix. I cracked my fingers and went to tackle the problem before me.
After a few minutes of scratching my diagrams and calculations on the ground and double-checking them, I was satisfied with my answers. I fetched the Mana Transmission beads and placed them on the glyphs, bridging mana between them, some within their own cluster, and most linking to other clusters.
As I did so, I saw the lock bolts connected to the magic clusters lock and unlock themselves until I placed the last bead in its place, and all five bolts unlocked themselves. “That was easy enough, a few tricky logic traps, but it was a nice short challenge.”, I said to myself as I dusted off my pants from all the kneeling I did to place the beads.
Once I was through the door, I came to the next gate which was titled, “Trial 3: The Arcane Obstacle Course”, and the sign beside the gate was short, “Objective: Reach the door to the next trial.”
I opened the gate and saw what I would expect of an obstacle course, walls, stepping poles, and swinging ropes. What I did not expect to see were swinging pendulum mallets, some kind of chamber that had the first ceiling I have seen in this event, and beyond that, a misted area so thick that I could not see the other side.
Not wanting to waste any more time, I activated my aura and blitzed through the first part of the obstacle, I cleared the wall with a single bound, went through the stepping poles by only ever stepping on two of them, and used my forward momentum to the swinging ropes with one swing and a jump.
Next came the chamber with the ceiling, I could feel mana emanating from the chamber, but even when trying to figure out what was going on with it, I could not due to its magic structure being obfuscated, all I knew was that every surface was covered in arrays.
When I entered the chamber, everything felt normal, until my fourth step that I was suddenly thrown against the left wall… no… I was not thrown, I fell to the left wall. The gravity changed direction.
I picked myself up and advanced. A few more steps and I felt myself fall upward, but this time I was ready, I flipped myself midair and landed on my feet before advancing once again, but I was not prepared for the next gravity shift.
Instead of falling up, left, or right, I fell backward, which threw me into previous gravity shifts and landed on my ass just outside the chamber. “Tricky…”
I went into the chamber once again, but this time, I was prepared. When I came to the gravity shift toward the chamber entrance, I powered up my weapons with my aura stabbed into the ‘floor’ and used them as climbing picks until I reached the next gravity shift and was hanging on to my weapons that were stuck in the ceiling. The last stretch of the chamber was gravity in the correct direction, but it felt like my body weight increased three times, but it was of little issue with my aura active.
Eventually, I got out of the chamber and walked into the cloud of mist. From what I could sense, the mist was clearly magical, and even when I cast a wind spell to blow away the mist, my wind magic did not interact with the mist like it should, in fact, it did nothing at all, telling me that this mist was pure illusion, no mist involved.
So I just decided to negotiate this illusion obstacle the easiest way I knew how, just go straight ahead.
After a minute of walking, I started finding it weird that part of an obstacle course was long enough to accommodate a full minute of walking, so I decided to jog, and after half a minute, I was still surrounded by mist.
Something is seriously wrong here, is the mist screwing my up sense of direction even though I am just going straight?
After stopping and thinking of a solution for a moment, I looked down and saw that the floor tiles were still in a grid fashion, and I was confident enough that the floor was not an illusion… I think… but it will have to do. I followed the tile seams straight ahead and reached a wall. From there, I used the most fool-proof method to navigate a maze, I put my left hand on the wall and followed it. This eventually led me to the gravity chamber I came from, so I turned around and followed the wall in the other direction.
Less than a minute of walking later, reached the other side of the mist illusion and found the door to the next location. I went through the door and saw the gate to the next trial, “Trial 4: The Arena of Strength”, as for the instructions, “Objective: Fight and win.”, No shit Sherlock, but is there anything more specific?
