The break time was over.
The party gathered at the glowing magic circle and responded to the notification that was waiting for them.
Everyone in the party agreed, accepting the Heroic Challenge prompt as a staircase appeared leading to a door.
As the party entered and arrived at the other side, they were surprised to see the drastic shift in the Heroic Challenge area.
“What the fuck?” Natalia spluttered as she looked up, her eyes popping out.
Not just her, but everyone’s surprise also shifted to shock.
The party was at a cliff-off sort and thirty meters away from them was a stream of waterfall that flowed from above, with no end in sight, even Almond.
‘So it’s over four kilometers high? Damn.’
The width of the waterfall was also stupidly two hundred meters wide, and the other side across the cliff there was just darkness, marking the end of this area. It was both a dangerous yet beautiful sight, especially with the floating stone platforms that suspended at various spots alongside the waterfall, littered across the air close to the waterfall.
[The heroic challenge of the 6th floor now begins—the Leviathan of Pearl Belly.]
[Task 1]
-Objective:
—> Climb the waterfall using the stone platforms to reach the top. Beware of danger. Falling off will increase gravity by 100 on yourself, resulting in falling to death.
-Rewards:
—> Divine Boon Selector (Active until the Heroic Challenge is finished)
Almond teleported everyone near the edge, just twenty meters away from the waterfall flowing to their left from the sky.
They looked over the edge and gulped.
Your journey continues on empire
“If we fall, we are indeed falling to death. Wtf?” Marcus muttered.
“There have to be some traps on those stone platforms,” Mira dryly smiled. “After all, this is a Heroic Challenge.”
“Though this won’t be hard with Almond’s teleports-” Julian said before turning to Almond,”-we should still check out the stone platforms. Your spirit wraiths can help in that.”
“Yep,” Almond waved his hand and summoned Sylvia.
“Syl, can you summon a few of your plantlings?”
Sylvia summoned three plantlings and Almond directly teleported them to the top of a stone platform ten meters above.
The moment they arrived on it, the stone platforms produced vines and bound them before throwing them off.
“…”
“…”
“Those vines should be easy to handle. We can just destroy them first, but other platforms must have different traps as we go higher,” Lily said. “Well, we can just check them as we go.”
“Yep,” Almond smiled and snapped his finger as everyone’s expression changed.
They quickly became alert with their weapons out and Mana rushing with the activation of Mana techniques.
The vines emerged around everyone, ten for each as they went for their limbs to disable them.
However, Almond’s eyes flashed as every single vine was instantly severed at the same time.
Everyone remained alert, but they didn’t spawn again so everyone relaxed.
“Great.”
“Almond, just how powerful are you right now?” Kira speechlessly asked.
Everyone had the same question.
“Not much, just a little bit,” Almond laughed and turned to Sylvia. “Summon a few more, Syl. I am going to send them to the further stone platform in my range, so we can cross a large distance.”
Shortly, Almond sent the plantings on a stone platform nobody else could see due to the shorter range of their focus fields.
Seeing that three explosions ravaged the plantlings made Almond speechless. ‘The hell…that means everyone must have individual barriers around them to protect them arriving on that platform.’
“How’s that platform, boss?” Adrian asked.
“Is it explosions?” Roken asked.
“That would be nasty.”
“Well, they are explosions,” Almond chuckled. “Brace yourself. Use your barriers and defensive skills. We are going there in five…four…”
Everyone speechlessly started to prepare hearing his countdown because they had a feeling he was really going to go there at his pace.
Meanwhile, Almond’s eyes glinted while he did the countdown, creating a rather peculiar spatial layer around everyone by severing the space layer around them and connecting them to voidbound rifts.
‘This should be interesting. With the Void Layer now in my control, I can cut the space layer as I please, and the space here is different than the space I feel on Earth… Maybe once I am able to differentiate the space and able to see its structure, I will be able to awaken Space elemental mastery. I can’t manipulate the space for now, I am only able to cut it and connect it, but with space elemental mastery, it will open new, wonderful applications,’ Almond’s eyes glinted. ‘I have to awaken the space mastery.’
“Zero,” Almond said as the countdown ended, and he teleported as everyone arrived on the stone platform almost four kilometers high. ‘If this works as I intend, the explosions shouldn’t affect them unless the magic of the explosion itself negates the space layer, like passing through it.’
*Boom…boom…boom…boom…boom…*
A series of explosions rang around everyone, but a second later, everyone was dumbfounded to see all the smoke and energy magically getting sucked away.
Almond felt pressure on his connection, his heart racing. ‘Damn, so it pressures me like this. If I lose the connection due to that level of impact, either physical or magical, the space would revert to default, erasing my work.’
“What the fuck?” Finn exclaimed.
“My super skill was wasted,” Marcus said, his jaw dropped.
“Is this you, Almond?” Maya turned to Almond.
“It has to be this monster,” Xavier wryly smiled.
Everyone looked at them, and Almond snapped out of his thoughts as he nodded at them. “Yeah, I was trying something, and it worked. Anyway, we’ve arrived. The top is just one kilometer away now.”
“But what was that thing? It’s very powerful,” Anya curiously asked before adding with a grin, “Like, if it has such a magical defense that can suck away attacks like this, you gotta name it.”
Nobody could see Almond’s spatial art because Almond affected the space layer from inside the Void Layer, unlike before when he cut it from outside, which was basically making void rifts.
But now, he was above the space layer, so he could prevent voidbound rifts from appearing and simply reconnecting one point of space to another by cutting them—This was his new way of teleporting swiftly, unlike before when he replaced space from two points, but he was sure the real teleport done with space elemental master was different than both of his methods.
‘That said, with how I am doing this, I should make a new series of skills,’ Almond grinned and said, “Alright, I got the name. This skill will be the first one in my Spatial Craft series—Devouring Veil.”
“Noice, that’s a cool-ass name, boss.”
“Indeed.”
Everyone couldn’t help but agree.
“Now, let’s see what lay ahead for us now,” Almond chuckled and snapped his finger, teleporting everyone to the top as they arrived over the stone platform that was suspended at the very top.
Almond used Devouring Veil again, but there were no traps on it since nothing happened.
Looking ahead, everyone looked at the grand scenery of a beautiful, vast ocean with small islands roughly 30 to 50 meters big littered all over it, growing nothing some small grass and flowers.
[Task 1 completed. Please choose your temporary Divine Boon.]
Everyone saw a panel appearing in front of them containing a list of five boons.
When they looked at the options and the kind of boons, everyone was dumbfounded, including Almond because the divine boons were utterly ridiculous, reality-breaking, and batshit crazy…
Next chapter. (▰˘◡˘▰)