“Holy crap!” Ben yelled out as he caught sight of a certain area of the trial's enchantments briefly activate. “There’s no freaking way, that should be impossible!”
“What?” Greed yelled in a panic as he sat in Ben’s hand, eating the only source of food available to him. “Don’t tell me we’re in trouble again?”
“Oh, no sorry, I just saw something I really wasn’t expecting. That food the trial provides? If I’m right, it looks like it makes it straight from mana.”
“And that’s so shocking you need to scream?” The crab asked with a groan. “Legs, I know you like your research, but come on.”
“Greed, if you could see the enchantments and studied magic a bit more you’d understand just how insane this is. The trial materialized it from non-affinitied mana!”
Ben was no stranger to seeing something materialized at this point, it was how Thera’s father had made the nation of Anailia so wealthy. Along with doing it from the earth affinity, Ben knew for sure it was possible to do for the water affinity and was positive it could be done for air magic as well, though there was simply no need to and it would be hard to determine if a person succeeded since air was all around them at all times. As well, fire and light affinities both seemed able to turn mana into energy, though at a lower mana cost and without any way of being certain that was what was going on.
This was different thought. He’d never heard of non-affinitied magic being able to do such a thing, nor had he heard about anyone setting up an enchantment that would be able to automatically alter the structure of mana like that. He couldn’t help himself as he rushed over to get a better look.
“Alright, alright, I get you're excited but what’s the big deal?” Greed asked, willing to take any sort of entertainment after all of the time he spent doing nothing but healing Ben and waiting for him to get to the point where they would enter the next section. “Is it really so amazing?”
“It absolutely is. Greed, part of the mana cost of materialization depends on how well a person understands the properties of what they’re materializing. For any awakened earth mage that has the skill, they’ll typically just make a lump of iron since it’s a pure material, and they’ll have their affinity to bring down the cost as well. For this, assface had to somehow encode knowledge into the structure of the enchantment itself, while using a magic that as far as I know is never put to this sort of task, or if it is manages to be such a fringe case that it’s not even talked about, as well as making something as nightmarishly complicated as food!”
“Think you might be overestimating food a little, especially the crap you’re being served,” Greed said with a laugh. “It’s just some poisoned bread.”
“Just because it’s poison for you doesn’t mean it’s poisoned for most people, and I cannot stress enough how much you’re underestimating food. It’s got a complex structure made of multiple elements with the way they're arranged being the difference between biting into bread and biting into a rock. Aside from the fact that if I could put this on an item then nobody would ever starve from a bad harvest again, the level of complexity might let this trial do insane things like create life.”
“Wait, don’t tell me you think we’re going to have to deal with monsters in this fucking thing, do you?” Greed asked, his mild curiosity quickly flipping to despair.
“No, I’d say that it could probably create microbes if it can at all, but that’s still something we should worry about when we get to the life section of this. Actually, I’d say the biggest concern now by far is if there really is a non-affinitied section.”
“Do I even want to know why?”
“Greed, the jerk that made this is doing things with non-affinitied mana I didn’t even know were possible. I’m not going to pretend I’m an expert or anything on the subject, but I’m pretty damn well-read. The god that made this has to have mastered it in ways I couldn’t begin to imagine, meaning that there’s no way for me to even start to guess what a trial devoted to it might contain.”
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After his discovery, Ben spent almost a full day looking over that section, memorizing the arrangements of the enchantments as he studied it in the hopes that he would be able to take the knowledge out of the trial with him as he went for whatever good it might do.
He poked and prodded it, trying to determine what parts did what and eventually learned how to stimulate it, forcing the trial to give them more food than it normally wanted to, leading to more discoveries as he went.
“Uh, hey Greed? Not sure if you know much about trials in general, do you?”
“Probably the average amount. Why?”
“That’s fine. So you know all trials have limits to how many people can take them at once?”
“You mean as part of the same group right?” The crab asked, getting a nod in return. “Yeah, it varies a bit, but the higher end is typically around five, right? At least that’s what all of the magic towers max out at.”
In the trial of Anailia it had been teams of two per entrance, no more, no less, but that could vary as they went. Some had lower limits of what was allowed, but most only had upper limits, restricting just how many people could work together to complete a task.
“Yeah, well as I was looking at this, I think the trial marks how many living things enter it to determine how many rations to hand out when it gives them,” Ben started, feeling uneasy as he did. “We’re marked as two, but I think I figured out the upper limit for this one.”
“Out with it legs, you’re freaking me out here.”
“Twenty-seven. The god that made this trial made it so up to twenty-seven people could take it at once.”
The silence hung between them as it was said. Neither of them had heard of a trial on the world allowing anything close to that number of people in at once and they didn’t like the implications of it one bit.
“...So what does that mean for us then?” Greed asked, feeling worn out just hearing it.
“Ultimately, not much. It doesn’t help us and it doesn’t put us in a worse position either, at least not worse than we already are. It’s just the implications of it that are a little troubling. Gods typically set the maximum as what they expect mortals to struggle with completing. I’ve heard gods give slightly better rewards if less manage it but… Well, if the expectation for getting through this is a team of twenty-seven, I don’t really like the implications.”
“Fuck legs, got any good news for us while you’re at it? With the way you keep pouring over the walls, I could sure use some.”
“...I’m not sure if it’s good news, but I’m working on a bit of a theory. An alternative we could use to finishing the trial if we really want to.”
“Wait, really!”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Yeah, the only small issue is that it might kill us.”
“You really know how to get a guy’s hopes up, you know that?” The crab complained. “So out with it then. What’s your idea?”
“So I don’t know how well-known this is, but you know how items have rankings?”
“I’d say that’s pretty common knowledge, yeah.”
“I’m not talking about that bit. See, things of a certain level of power can’t exist on this plane of reality. For items, upper mythic is as high as things go, and I’m told that a trial is the equivalent of one, carefully balanced by the gods to be just weak enough to exist on the world.”
“Okay?” The crab said cautiously, wondering where this was leading.
“The thing is, I think it’s a pretty delicate balance depending on how these things are made. It’s just a theory, but I think if I forcibly activate enough of the enchantments that make this up at once, it might be enough to force it past its current rank and shift us up to a higher plane of existence.”
“And that would help us how?”
“Hypothetically, if we ended up in the realm of the gods, they might actually be able to get us out. I know they’ve been weakened in a way that makes it hard to exert their presence on the world as a whole without taking some pretty big steps, but in their own realms they might just be able to crack this thing open.”
“I’m liking what I’m hearing so far so stop raising my hopes and give me the bad news already.”
“Where do I begin? It’s not like there’s only two layers to this reality. Hell, if you’ve ever gone through the gate you’ve gone to a slightly higher one and on the opposite end of the spectrum you have a lower one like the infinite hells, that’s already four different planes and I have no idea how many more there are. We could be bumped up a reality only slightly, not shifting to anywhere we could get help but to some empty realm. Of course, there’s always the chance that we would fall back to our current one once the trial corrects anything I do to it, but there’s really no way to know for sure so it's a big risk. Just as importantly though, I don’t know if we could even survive being in the realm of gods.”
His mind went there plenty as Myriad brought him there, and he could force his consciousness there without any issues, but that was just his mind. He had no idea if his physical body could exist there, nor did he want to think about what might happen if it couldn’t. Still, it was an option, and as such he wanted his companion to be aware of it.
“When you put it that way I’m not sure I like that idea any more than I like going through the proper one. Any chance you’ve got a secret third option hidden away for us?”
“Ha, if only. I think I’d need to figure out a bit more anyway to give it any chance of working, but what do you say? Should we take the risk?”
Greed stood quiet for a moment, thinking it over and weighing options before he spoke up. “I don’t really like the risk that we could do it, only to be thrown to a different plane and still need to complete the trial to get out of here. What do you say we keep it as a maybe and consider again after the next section?”
“Works for me.”
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As Ben finished laying down an enchantment, he felt the suit of armour he’d carefully constructed with his magic crumble in his hands, leaving him all the more annoyed at his current situation. He had so many different advantages that should have made a problem like that basically non-existent. He was now the proud holder of the divine enchanting skill which had boosted his previous ability to all new heights, as well as the knowledge he’d gained from the enchanting system of the trial, which added a level of structure and stability to the way he did things that it had previously lacked.
In theory, he should have been able to make things miles beyond what he had previously, if not for a single thing holding him back. The materials. Ben had no choice but to make use of anything in the room with him, much to his annoyance. That meant he couldn’t blend the metals at his disposal with other things to enhance their effects or handle the enchantments he put on them, which in turn meant he had no choice but to keep making more armour to place them on again, at least until he was sure it would be impossible.
At least I’m not losing anything when the item breaks now. He thought to himself as he swept together the dust of his third failure, taking the time to recombine it all into a single mass of metal before he flattened and shaped it all to match his needs.
Since he was basically treating the metal as if it were clay and sculpting away it, it was still gaining the benefits of his awakened crafting as well, it was clear enough to see as he looked at it. His hands moved exactly as they needed to in order to get the look he was hoping for and the end result was perfect. A full set of armour that would completely cover him when it came time to don it, but he still couldn’t help but wish he had access to his hammer and forge as he did. If he had, he was sure he could have reached all new heights, but it wasn’t to be.
Or maybe I could? He thought as he cast a look to the remaining items around. No reason I can’t sculpt a hammer and forge and put a good fire enchantment on it. If this one fails too I’ll give it a go.
With the armour ready Ben placed his hands on it and began building his enchantments in a way unlike anyone else in the world would. Starting with his blending as he always did to get the desired power and effect, he then had to not only shape the rings as he’d learned to during his time in there, but looped each one around another, creating a compounded weave of mana in each one he laid down. It was harder and more mana intense than how he’d been doing it before ending up trapped within the trial, but not so much that he wouldn’t be able to do it, even without Greed’s buffs. More important than that though, he didn’t need to build it all at once like he had been each time he’d make one to affect the trial as a whole. He could work at his own pace, building it up as he went until it was done.
He held his breath as he watched and waited, but the enchantment held, along with the armour he’d put it on. He couldn’t stop the relief from flowing through him as it did either, but he double-checked his enchantments to be sure they would work.
His skills were telling him he’d broken into lower ultra-rare with it, his third item that had made it to that quality and only his second that hadn’t used anything as exceptional as his coat had, and given the complexity of the magic he’d placed on it, he wasn’t surprised.
The armour was made with every defensive skill at his disposal, including taking the fire aspect of his new skill, all affinity resistance enchantment, but it was so much more than that too. It was not only also build to have a small barrier projected from it with all of the previous skills incorporated into it as well, it also had a water enchantment added to it to constantly cool not only the armour, but the small space between it and the barrier to cool down anything that got through as well.
Finally and just as important as anything else was the time magic enchantment on it, designed to affect its wearer, namely him. It was built to speed up the way he experienced time, not only letting him move and react faster, but as a side effect it would make anything he encountered seem slower too.
It was brilliant and he was patting himself on the back as soon as he thought of it, while ignoring the voice in his head asking why he hadn’t come up with something so useful much earlier, and as he added the mana crystals to power it he slipped it on, activating the enchantments and immediately feeling the effects.
“Hope you do alright in the cold Greed.”
“Hey, I wasn’t the one who was dying after the last trial.”
“True. Actually, haven’t you come out way too well in all of the sections so far compared to me? Where’s the fairness man?”
“Blame yourself for not being blessed with a magnificent shell, not that it’s going to help much this one. Are you sure you’re ready? I hear being cooked to death is pretty damn unpleasant.”
“At least I’d say ready as we’ll ever be.”
He did have his concerns. Considering the air and water trials had tossed them into those elements without much else, he still worried that fire would do the same. If he was tossed in a never-ending void of flame then there wasn’t much he could do about that. He’d considered adding an air enchantment to the suit as well as a way to allow for some flight, but the mana cost of such a thing would have left them running on empty so fast that it was more likely to hurt than help.
Just gotta hope for the best. The earth section had breathable air instead of just tossing us into a rock, I’ve gotta assume at least parts of this are survivable according to the race it was meant for. Of course, if they were naturally able to fly…
He shook the thought from his head and picked up Greed before shoving him into the suit.
“You going to be okay not seeing much this time?” He asked the crab, getting an all too positive response.
“Legs, you wouldn't believe how much happier I am not seeing what you’re about to go through. If we live you can give me a rundown of what I missed after, but for now just tell me if you need any buffs refreshed or healing anywhere.”
“Will do.”
It was with that final bit of confirmation that Ben lowered his helmet to protect his face and stepped through the door, into whatever the trial had to offer.