Dashing Devil 6: Tender Trials by G.D. Brooks

Author:G.D. Brooks [Brooks, G.D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 30

Victory Seeker stared at the glowing white shell that blocked his path. Grumbling to himself, he resisted the urge to scratch his head. In the months since he had arrived at the ‘root of it all,’ he’d had several such moments. Though there were plenty of times when he was not sure what to do next, this one had puzzled him the longest.

When he’d first arrived, he’d spent a day exploring the abandoned city. It was small, as far as the modern walled cities went, with only seven hundred and twenty-nine buildings. The place was orderly, neat—tidy even—and was obviously intended to be self-sufficient.

Everything was functional and therefore had a purpose. He found himself approving and wished the Authority had stuck to the architectural design for their cities. Even the hostile flora and fauna of this deadly planet could not overcome the solid construction.

After exploring it, he focused on the massive, central building and the labyrinth it housed. The massive construction was a sight to behold in its simplicity. The challenges it housed, on the other hand, were incredibly complex. He quickly recognized that the labyrinth wasn’t a maze, but a series of tests. It required a high level of Power and intelligence of those who wished to go deeper—obviously weeding out those not strong enough for the knowledge they sought or ensuring that only the fated would be able to wake the ‘sleeping father’.

There were signs that others had failed to pass the first seventeen traps and deadly puzzles—mostly old bones, and a few faded blood stains. Some of those seventeen traps had been disabled by another’s hand and he had taken care of the rest. He’d grown tired of having to clear or avoid them as he came and went, so had destroyed or dismantled them all at some point in the past few months.

While smart and powerful, Victory Seeker still required sustenance and had the usual biological requirements that went along with such needs. He despised being unclean, so had occupied a small apartment in one of the buildings next to the administration center. It was relatively simple, but had electricity so he could cook his prepared meals and clean water for bathing and drinking. It was all that he required.

He then set himself to the task of overcoming the next nine trials, each one more dangerous than the last. The labyrinth was a sinister cornucopia of lethal contraptions and devices, each engineered with such intricacy and malevolence that they posed a threat—even to someone with his Power.

The first of these nine personal challenges was an expansive field of gravity wells that yanked and tore at his very atoms, threatening to unravel him into nothingness. There was a pattern to the field’s activation though, and by using pebbles to plot out that sequence, he was able to find a safe path through it.

Next, came walls of pure energy that crackled with raw destructive power. They pulsed and seethed in rhythm with his heartbeat, their intensity surging at every throb.

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