The other side of the door which opened after Daimon killed that strange creature, was like a completely different world, it was a light blue colored room which only had one thing, a white jade pillar with a socket whose form was pretty familiar for Daimon.
Daimon thoroughly scanned the pillar with his infinity eyes this time, there were some inscriptions on it, which were in a different “language” than the ones he previously saw in the black stone hall.
This time when he tried to decipher the inscriptions he couldn’t, not even one of the “characters” changed, which made him frown.
“This should be the true place to use the badge”, he mumbled and then entered through the door, which closed as soon as he stepped into this new place.
Narasha who was curiously looking the room suddenly remembered what Daimon did a moment ago.
“How did you fid out that monster’s true nature, judging by the nature of the hall and the color of the badge it was natural to suppose that was the actual end of the trial?”.
Daimon raised two of his fingers as he answered.
“First because that darkness which I absorbed was contaminated with something, if it was other people magic core, that thing would have rip a hole through theirs, unfortunately there is no mana I can’t consume… as long as my stupid core decided to cooperate”.
“The second hint was actually a mistake committed by that creature, what kind of golem would call their master’s den a “ruin”, I guess that after other people’s minds got affected by that strange darkness as well as the anxiety and tension that the things engraved on the walls would put them through, they wouldn’t notice minor mistakes like that, so after years of getting used to those conditions, that monster grew confident”.
“Erin would have mocked me if I didn’t notice such amateur mistakes, when someone tried to trick me”.
Evangeline nodded from the space she resided in, while Aura was in charge of Daimon’s physical development, Erin poured all her time in teaching him how to analyze things, including behavior, reactions and every detail, as small as it could be, her title as the most cunning woman in the White Fang galaxy wasn’t just for showing after all.
Daimon walked towards the white jade pillar and this time he personally placed the badge on the socket, unlike the previous time, the pillar sucked in the badge and then the inscriptions came up to life… literally.
The inscriptions separated from the pillar taking the form of a giant shark made out of small blue plaques, which each contained a character of the inscription, it was a technique Daimon has never seen nor heard about before, and that is quite a bit to say considering he has worked with Liz who is considered the best magic blacksmith in the White Fang galaxy.
The white pillar emitted a dim light which covered the whole room, before some words appeared on it, this time in the common language used in the Wonder Myriad stellar chart.
“#$&% thirty minutes against the shredder shark”.
“Huh?”, Daimon noticed the phrase wasn’t complete, but he had no time to think about it as the aggrupation of blue plaques in the form of a shark, opened its jaws and rushed towards him.
Daimon extended his hand at Narasha and she dispelled the light body, returning to Gram’s form.
The sword then flew towards Daimon’s hand, Daimon injected mana in Gram just in time to block the jaws of the shark.
Daimon’s eyes contracted a bit, although his strength was insufficient to cut through anything of Arch grade, without using core synchrony, Gram kept Disaster’s sharpness property, which meant that if a mountain were to fall on it, the blade would cut through it.
And now, these blue plaques were clashing against Gram’s edge making sparks flew all over the place, without being cut even though the “jaws” applied pressure against the sword, making Daimon take a step back as none of them conceded.
Daimon frowned, he injected mana into Gram and the sword lit up in white light, this wasn’t Demon Light but one of Narasha’s skills in Gram’s form, Light Conversion.
The sword ate up 10% of Daimon’s mana pool and then a white flash was radiated from it, but to Daimon’s surprise the wave of light mana only forced the shark back, and then bounced upwards clashing against the roof making some dust fall.
‘What’s going on here’, thought Daimon, this time he didn’t inject any mana in the sword and just slashed Gram against the shark, to his surprise he was able to easily push back the shark this time, contrary to when he used mana when attacking the shark was like swim against the current, there was close to zero resistance when he didn’t.
“So, your weakness are physical attacks, what a shame”, he mumbled.
Narasha returned to the inventory and Daimon this time used his bare hand to punch the shark, which flew a few meters back due to the impact.
Curiously although the shark wasn’t a living being, it shook its head a couple of times as if it was recovering from the impact, before it rushed against Daimon one more time.
This time Daimon focused all his strength in his right hand, but as he threw a punch with the intention of destroying the shark, his instincts warned him to not do it, which made him frown.
But he still changed the angle of his punch avoiding the shark.
“Booom!”, a punch with about twenty tons of strength behind, creating a blast of air which traveled all the way towards the wall in front of Daimon.
Daimon slowly turned to see the shark whose jaws stopped midway into biting his left arm, he retrieved his right hand and placed it on his sides, to his surprise the shark also stepped back.
The eyes of the shark then became more “intelligent” and the thing actually swam in the air around Daimon, the white jade pillar illuminated and then the black badge was ejected from it.
The badge floated towards Daimon and then shark became small blue light particles which entered the badge, before the latter fell on Daimon’s hand.
The word “Black” which used to be on the center of the badge disappeared, instead of it, now there was a blue shark engraved on it.
Daimon saw that the message on the white jade pillar changed.
“Be wary of the black sea and look for the altar”.
Before Daimon could do anything, the ground below him illuminated and he disappeared, since the feeling of the dimensional tunnel was the same as when he entered the ruin, Daimon didn’t resist the transportation.
Then as soon as he disappeared, the white jade pillar cracked before it crumbled apart, followed by the whole room, leaving only behind a black gate which had shark’s tooth embedded on it, floating in a white space.
…
Unlike when Daimon entered the ruin through the arc, this time there was no light flashing his eyes as he wans transported, he carefully evaluated his surroundings and was marveled by the starry sky scenery which surrounded him.
That wasn’t all, he now understood what was that light which flashed him before, while moving through this starry sky he was surrounded by a white sphere, making him look as if he was moving inside a shooting star.
But that also made him wonder why wasn’t he flashed this time, at least until he saw the black badge radiating a dim blue light which was functioning as a second layer of the white sphere.
“Last time the travel was around five minutes, I hope it doesn’t last more than…”.
When Daimon was about to start speaking with Evangeline and Narasha to pass the time, the starry sky scenery suddenly disappeared, changing for a blue sky which would have been worth admiring… if it wasn’t for the fact that he was falling right onto a rock in the middle of the sea.
After making sure that the water was clear and not black, Daimon looked at the east where he could see a mass of land with some trees here and there, and then used blink to go up one hundred meters before he repeated it frontwards this time.
Daimon’s image flashed through the air, whenever he lost altitude, he simply used blink to transport himself some meters upwards, before he kept advancing to the east, the skill blink was certainly useful, although he could not maneuver like Arch ranks who had the ability to fly, blink was instant meaning that if he wanted to dodge, this skill was better.
After about ten minutes of constantly using blink, Daimon noticed the mass of land was actually further away from him than what he thought, he then remembered all the mana he injected into his eyes earlier, which he forgot to dispel, making things look closer than what they actually were.
His vision returned to normal and then noticed how far was the mass of land from him, he has advanced a few dozens of kilometers, but there were about another twenty kilometers or so to reach the shore.
“Mom, can you hear me?”.
Since he was now out of the trial, he tried to contact Aisha as a mean to see how far he was from her, since he didn’t receive any response from her, then that meant she was at least more than one thousand kilometers away from him.
A couple of minutes later Daimon safely landed on the mass of land, his feet slightly sank on the sand, but he didn’t just stop to rest and instead he entered into the jungle as there was a familiar smell floating in the air… the smell of blood.
There was no race better than a vampire to identify the characteristic smell of blood, so it wasn’t hard for Daimon to notice the smell didn’t belong to a magic beast, in fact it was the smell of human’s blood.
And his supposition was soon confirmed as he reached what seemed to be a temporal camp in a clear space inside the jungle, there were signs of a bonfire and a tent created with the leaves of a tree which were nearly one meter sized.
But none of that was important compared with the left-over bones as well as the red colored sand, which resulted from litters of blood which spilled on the ground.
Daimon recognized some pieces of cloth spread near the bones, and after making memory, he realized they matched with the uniform of the Blue-Sky galaxy, so this poor bastard used to be a paladin.
Daimon raised an eyebrow feeling the left-over warmth being radiated from the bonfire, which meant this guy died not too long ago, but whatever ate him completely cleaned his corpse leaving only some bones, that or this camp didn’t belong to the paladin… but to whatever preyed on him.
Daimon’s mana sense spread across the area and he immediately heard some noises coming from a nearby bush.
Purple lighting crackled on Daimon’s hand as he pointed at the bush, purple lightning was shot towards the bush, forcing the little spy to come out of his hiding spot.
“Seriously what’s wrong with this place”, said Narasha as she saw the creature that came out of the bush.