The Third Step: Chapter Six

I appeared on sand, and forced myself not to move. I’d never beaten the mid-fourth competition so far, but I had entered it twice before. The first time, I’d tried to take a step forward, and immediately been blown up by something under the sands – a ward trap, single use enchantment, or alchemical explosive most likely. The second time, I’d tried to extend my mana senses out, only for them to hit a weak wall. I’d pushed through, only for the explosions to set off again.

I slowly unfurled my mana senses again, and once again, I ran into the magic blocking my senses from moving forward. It was an odd shape, strangely trapezoidal, but with slightly curved lines, rather than straight ones. The shape was just large enough for me to stand within, and stepping over it clearly was what set off the explosions. 

I pressed my senses against the ward, down into the earth, and up into the sky, sweeping them around with Sky Dagon’s Senses, and… There. 

The wards extended about sixty feet up into the sky, and about the same amount below the earth, but after that, they simply ended. I teleported up into the sky, then locked myself in place. With the advantage of being up in the air, my senses swirled around, and I didn’t need to figure out what was going on over here, I could just teleport over to th–

I froze and immediately flared Placid Mind, pushing back at the mental prodding with my mana senses. It was powerful, more than I was, but it was also fairly subtle, pushing my attention away from other things. If I’d truly been in the desert, wandering around, and had my attention diverted away from a random patch of sand, I wouldn’t have noticed it at all, and it was only because of the fact that I was in the middle of a trial orb that I had even been able to notice that it was strange.

As things were, I was able to push back, at least for a while. Using my Runelight Lens so much in such a short time was draining, and while I could keep this up for a bit longer, I wasn’t likely to be able to do so forever.

I spread my senses out again, and slowly caught the top of the ward formation, without pushing through, like a liquid moving through the holes of a sieve without breaking any of the metal wiring. Not possible from within the sieve, but easy from outside. 

The entire thing seemed like a massive net of wards, or maybe a spiderweb with nine rings. The outer three rings were increasingly potent layers of diversion wards, pushing people away from noticing, then preventing them from approaching, then trying to force them to leave. The middle three rings were more standard, altering the sand in some way that I wasn’t entirely sure of – maybe a sandstorm ring, a quicksand trap, and then a sandstone wall? The core three rings, on the other hand, were the ones that had blown me up. 

Frankly, I felt a little bit bad for appearing in the middle of the explosive ring. If this had been real, then it was probably some sort of desert spider trying to defend its home and keep other desert creatures out, not a predator. 

Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, this wasn’t a real situation. I turned and teleported outside of the ring. Since I’d appeared in the innermost ring, it seemed likely that the designer wanted me to push through the entire web in order to get out. 

Yet when I actually landed outside of the ring, still pushing at the mental compulsions with Placid Mind, I wasn’t able to find a door. I circled the web twice, looking for the door, and even went out a bit further into the landscape until I hit the dome and the psionic voice warned me that I was going out of bounds, but nothing. 

With that plan scratched, I went back to the drawing board, Foxstepping back up into the air and hovering there. Was I technically hovering? I was locked in place, but my mental image of hovering involved slightly bobbing up and down. Was that accurate to the definition, or– No, focus! 

I shook my head and looked down at the center of the web, the circle protected by the innermost ring of wards. It was right behind where we’d started, so I had initially dismissed it, especially since there wasn’t an obvious door there, but maybe…

I powered Witch Eyes and carefully pushed down into the center, trying to peirce an illusion without breaking through the wards surrounding the circle. There was no illusion, but there was still…

There. 

I teleported down, pushing my hand through the sand until it encountered something with a texture almost like fabric. I pulled, and with a force far greater than I could have managed without my magically enhanced body, managed to wrench open a large trapdoor. 

The tunnel that it revealed was large enough for a horse to ride through, and was surprisingly well lit with strands of webbing that gave off light. They weren’t lighting enchantments as I knew them back in Mossford, as they seemed more like wards overcharged to the point they were giving off light and slowly burning through the silk. Horribly inefficient for running a person’s home, but if you were a giant spider that produced the silk and could use the magic yourself, I supposed it made sense. 

I slowly pushed my mana senses through the tunnel, but the tunnel seemed unwarded, other than the meaningless ones that were being used to produce light. I stepped inside, half expecting to be blown up, but… nothing.

I walked deeper and deeper into the tunnel, until it expanded out into an underground burrow. A massive tarantula, about four or five inches taller than I was, had huddled back into the corner of its burrow, and was watching me with large, black eyes. 

I flexed my mana, ready for a fight. The pattern thus far had only been direct combat with a creature every fifth challenge, but that didn’t inherently mean it would stay that way. 

The tarantula remained huddled back in its corner, not doing anything. I waved. It lifted one of its legs and waved back, very hesitantly. 

“Sorry to barge in like this,” I said, feeling slightly silly for speaking to a mental illusion. Speaking to a spider was fair game, as far as I was concerned, but illusions were a different matter. “Do you know where a door to the next challenge is?” 

The spider pointed its long leg toward the entry to one of the branching side tunnels and spoke in a voice that was only half comprehensible. 

“That way.” 

“Thank you,” I said, nodding to it, then turning and teleporting over to the passage. I checked for wards, but either they were more subtle than I could detect, or else they weren’t there, so I began down the passage. After about fifteen feet, the door appeared, and I stepped through it, feeling cheerful. 

I had officially beaten my first mid-fourth gate challenge. Now it was time for the second!

I appeared in a room with a multicolored floor with a door on the far side of the room. Four massive statues of a man who kind of looked like Ikki were situated on each end of corners of the room. The Storm King, maybe? Their eyes had large, sapphire-like stones set into them, and a brush with my mana senses confirmed that each of the eyes was a conduit for a lightning spell. I didn’t recognize which one, but it seemed to be designed to channel continual bolts of lightning from a sphere of centralized power – presumably, the gemstone itself was storing the mana and serving that purpose?

I didn’t have much longer to think about it, though, as the tile I was standing on was shifting in color. It had started out as green, and it was slowly turning yellow, then orange, and was quickly approaching red. I immediately tried to Foxstep to the other end of the room, only to hit a spell blocking teleportation. 

So that didn’t work. I stepped forward onto the blue tile to my north-east, and immediately the statues started to hum, then unleashed four bolts of lightning at me. I stepped onto the next tile, an orange one, and once again they released another blast of lightning. This time, I leapt into the air, before locking myself in place to dodge the lighting the instant I heard the humming noise, then took a moment to take it in. 

The tile I’d started on was now a void of nothing, as was the orange one I’d stepped on to dodge the first lightning blast. The blue was currently orange, and before my eyes, it faded to red, then to the same void color. 

Alright. I thought I got this, then. I had to cross the room fast as possible without getting blasted by the lightning, and without falling into the void. Given that the moment a tile turned red, it vanished, I’d bet that the red tiles were traps.  

So the room clearly favored speed, but it could also be brute forced with a defensive power, so long as it was at least a little bit mobile. In that way, it was like the opposite of the blade puzzle in early third gate. That one had patterns a speedy person could take advantage of, but defensive magic just let you bowl through it without issue. 

I was betting that flying over a new tile would probably still trigger the lightning, as that seemed to be the most obvious counter. I could fly with a potion, but I needed to be fast. For that, I had a better option. 

Though, I was still stuck over a void, and unable to teleport to the next tile. That was inconvenient. 

I withdrew a haste and flight potion from my bag. The haste was a biological haste, not a temporal one, so it wouldn’t alter my flight speed at all, but that was fine. I only needed to fly to stop myself from falling into the void once I released Immovable Lock. 

I downed both, then landed on the next tile. The very second I landed, even as the statues started to hum, I began to run. I sprinted in a slightly zig-zag pattern to avoid the red tiles, even as lightning struck right on my heels, then I plunged through the door and into the next challenge, where I slammed headfirst into a wall of briars. They tore my skin and clothes, and I pulsed Starfish Regeneration even as I came to a stop. 

I was completely enclosed within a sphere of plants, with them above me, below me, and on all sides. They were slowly tearing into my shoes, and I couldn’t find a way out. Worse still, the plants glowed with desolation energy, mid-fourth gate.

For a moment, I considered Foxfyre or Mantle Dragonfyre, but trying to burn my way out felt like a good way to cause myself to suffocate to death.

I started to cast Mass Harvest Plant Life, then let out a gasp. The plant had to have either evolved defenses against being drained, or else had been bred for it, as the instant the life energy was converted and flowed into my mana-garden, the desolation energy began to stream in, dissolving the life mana I should have been recovering four times over. 

Unlike most plants, however, the draining spell left the thorns withered and gray, and I was able to cut through them with a sweep of blademoss. I tried to combine the gemstone loupe with a more focused Harvest in a specific direction, targeting the small, individual strands of the plants, and the combined effect was better, but still drained mana rather than recovering it. By the time I’d cut my way to the door, my life mana was running low. 

In the future, I might be able to prepare a more specific counter to the room, but for now, it was a rough one. I stepped through the door into the fourth challenge, and grinned. 

A horde of ghostly knights, each one on the back of a ghostly horse, was charging me, weapons at the ready. There was no door here, and this wasn’t the fifth room, so I assumed I didn’t need to kill them to pass, but I probably did need to pacify or contain them. 

I thrust my hands out, conjuring a gourd. My life mana was low, but I should have enough for this trick if I played it right. 

I summoned a spirit gourd and began teleporting it around as fast as I could, even as the knights were halfway down the hill. I left anchors wherever the gourd was, and then, when the knights were in range, I cast Magical Echo. 

Twenty-eight spirit gourds flickered to life, all of them active, and the ghosts started to be pulled in. 

But they were fourth gate warriors, while my gourds were still mid-third. I was too weak to activate the single gourd I’d boosted to fifth gate, and had yet to bring all my plants up to peak third. I had for most – things like blademoss, which I used every fight. But not all. 

In my defense, I had a lot of plants, and this was another thing to improve for my next run. For now…

I spun soul mana through Magical Echo, my nails turning blue, heart black, and a rainbow crown of morels appearing on my head. The ghosts vanished, and the door appeared. 

I only had a split second to decide – did I push on to fight the mid-fourth boss, knowing I was low on mana and that spiritual strain did carry over into the real world? Or did I tactically retreat, and come back better prepared and when Dusk and Dawn weren’t busy?