The Beginning After The End 08 by Turtle Me

Author:Turtle Me
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-30T12:13:28+00:00

Wasting no time, I channeled aether into my legs and leapt from platform to platform. The entire chamber had been transformed into a sort of vertical maze, with rectangular platforms crisscrossing each other to block my view of the top.

309

Goldenagato

Additionally, the platforms moved at random intervals, keeping me on my toes more so than the oversized spiders.

Regardless, with my draconic physique and aetheric enhancements, the assessment was little more than a casual climb up a children’s playground. High above the floor where I fought the spiders, I found a fist-sized crystal hanging from the center of the ceiling. Below me, the water had filled less than a quarter of the space.

As soon as I grabbed the crystal, the platforms slowly receded, and the water drained through a series of empty tiles in the floor. The pillar I stood atop lowered until I was again standing in an empty square room.

After the water had completely drained and the chamber was back to its original empty form, the central squares of the room began to glow with a dull blue light. A single square at one corner glowed white.

“Please step onto the white square,” the judge announced in his eerie, echoing voice. I did as I was asked, though a part of my mind told me it was stupid. What did I really know about this whole place? They could have detected my lack of mana, or Alaric could have turned me in, and stepping on that white square might disintegrate me, or teleport me into a prison cell, or—

I caught myself before I dug myself into a hole and steeled my nerves. There was no reason for them to be suspicious, and I had already decided to trust the old drunk. I was in the heart of the enemy’s empire, but here I was Grey, not Arthur Leywin.

Once I was standing with both feet firmly placed on the white square, further instructions echoed down from the shadows above.

“Step only on the white tiles. Your goal is to reach the black tile”—one blue tile turned black in the opposite corner from where I stood—“without leaving the platform or touching the blue tiles. You must do so before you pass out from mana loss.”

‘Wait, what did he just—’

Regis was cut off as a sucking pressure began pulling at every inch of me, and I felt the aether in my body being drawn out through my aether channels. How the hell?

‘It’s like that platform in the Relictombs!’ Regis shouted in my mind. ‘They must have modeled this place on those crazy djinn’s tests.”

He was right, of course. I immediately pulled all of my aether back into my core, similar to what I had done with my hand back in the Relictombs, and it seemed to work. My physical body was weakened due to the lack of augmentation, but it drastically slowed the rate at which aether was being sucked out of my body.

310

Goldenagato

I bet they don’t even realize what they’ve created here. There is no way they know that this place can manipulate aether as well as mana.

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