[Dimensional Rebound in 42 Hours]

[In 42 hours, System power will run out, causing ejection to Bloodstone Continent]

I looked between the prompt and the others. Then I dismissed the prompt. These people were real — really real. And this was an entirely different world.

“Feng! Open this one!” Eros said, pressing his face into one of the stasis cubes. There were plates stacked with steaks inside. The steam wafted off of them was frozen in the air.

“I think we shouldn’t.” I said, circling around. “Also, I’m not sure that’s safe to touch. With your face.”

Eros leaned back, then squint suspiciously at the food. “Why not? If we don’t loot it, whoever comes through after us will.”

I mulled over my words.

“It’s probably a test.”

“A test of how much food we can eat?” Eros asked.

“A test of character…” Poppy said. Her boots clanged on the tile floor as she walked over to us. “Of greed. It seems like the whole place is designed for a single person.”

She scanned the room around us. The distant dais of food grew taller, larger, and more abundant, some literally overflowing with food.

“The people who leave legacies like this behind normally want to make sure their inheritors share their same goals.”

Though the goal of magnanimity and not taking more than you needed seem to clash with the names of the skills and techniques of this place. Anti-Light? Void Qi? Insurgencies? The person who made this place didn’t seem like the good guy.

“Trap!” Anna shouted.

Eros nocked an arrow instantly, poppy spun around, getting close enough to protect the others. My hand went to my sword.

“Wait… it’s okay!” Annabelle said. She walked over to where the flowing river of water along the wall was. She rested two arms on the lip of it and leaned in to squint. “There’s a… a door here to seal the drain the water is flowing into. It looks like it’ll maybe flood the room if its shut?”

“Can’t you start with that?” Eros asked. He put his arrow away.

I touched the back of one of my hands to one of the pots of soup. They were still hot.

“Well, let’s eat and move on.” I said, loading up a bowl.

We joined in a semi circle on the floor, demolishing the food. These adventurers ate like cultivators, practically glutonous. Eros kept casting sad looks at one of the other cubes of food.

A door ground open on the other side of the hall.

We demolished every last piece of food on the first dais.

“One more can’t hurt, right?” Poppy asked.

“Worst case? We run for the door.” I replied.

Besides their want of the food, I wanted to test something else. The so called Skills the system gave me shouldn’t be the only way to open these Zones of stasis. This entire thing was set up for cultivators. So the way to open the Zones should have been through a technique. And there was only one that fit.

I stepped to the stream of water and washed the dishes I used.

“Do you think that’s part of the test too?” Anna asked, looking down at her bowl then over at me.

I paused, looking down at what I was doing. I had done it without really thinking about it; I had sworn off personal servants years ago, and gotten into the routine of doing my own chores, including dishes.

“It’s calming.” I said. “I think I do it because its calming.”

I set the dried dishes down and stepped over to the stacked cube of meats Eros had been drooling over. Then I shaped the technique of the Void Fist.

With one final breath to steady myself, I punched forward. The qi reserved inside of me dipped as the shaped technique was released by touch from my knuckles. Black spread out over the sphere, cracking it until it started to fall apart.

I grunted and pulled my hand back. My qi went from overflowing and straining my meridians to still being a rapid river inside me. But it was no longer straining me.

The technique consumed an unparalleled amount of qi — a frankly ridiculous amount. It expanded in a second what took the sword forms of my core cultivation technique hours.

The smell of meat and spices filled the room.

“Let’s grab the plates and run before this room drowns us.” I said. There was a grinding noise as the door to the water drain lowered — but didn’t shut. So taking some amount was expected.

The food was rich with qi.

I hefted one of the plates of food. Poppy grabbed another, and we made our way to the exit on the other side of the room. The banquets between each dais only grew until they were practically entire tables overflowing with food. Even my mouth started to water by the time we reached the door.

The next room was a great, open hall. A plane of stasis occupied the entire hall ahead of us. Beyond the plane of glass were more creatures, each progressively growing larger. A door was open between each of them.

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I recognized the creature directly ahead of us. It was a spirit beast — half way between a fox and a deer, with huge, curling horns sprouting from its head. The creature had been captured, stuck in time mid swing of its massive antlers. They spread apart like fractals. My hand rested uneasily on my sword.

A foot below the creature — it had been captured mid jump — black sand filled a pit in the floor.

We hunted these creatures regularly in our own northern forests — spirit beasts — Steelhorns. But this one was slightly different than any I had seen. I paced as it looked at it. There was something unnerving in its eyes. It had been trapped here for — who knows how long? But it seemed to almost be looking back.

The Steelhorns I had seen all featured horns with unique geometries, huge, complex antlers that shouldn’t have been able to hang so easily from their heads. But all of them featured sharp points and jagged angels. This creatures horns were perfectly smooth, even ending in round tips.

“What the hell is that?” Eros asked, setting down the plates full of food he was carrying.

“A Steelhorn.” I said. “They’re a low level spirit-beast. Their meat tends to have a lot of neutral qi…” I trailed off as I looked at the others. Poppy stared at me skeptically.

“You can [Identify] it?” She asked.

“No. Maybe? I’ve just… killed a few before. My father used to send us on hunts for them.”

I used [Identify.]

[Identify Resisted!]

“No.” I said. “Guess the only way we find out is to kill it.”

“Eros, on my right. Anna, fall back and use stealth to flank.” Poppy said, stepping up into position. “Once you lower the wall, I’ll jump in and grab its aggro.” Poppy said to me.

The group fell into perfect cohesion. Hunting monsters was completely in their element. I only hesitated for a second before nodding. Poppy was a born leader.

“Ready?” I asked, getting three affirmations as I channeled the void fist. I considered using the Spheres I had accumulated, but I had no idea what mechanism allowed me to replenish them.

I punched the wall, monitoring closely the amount of dark qi that poured out of me… and then stopped. Black lines spread outward from the point of impact, the stasis bubble beginning to bend and boil and dissolve, but it took no more power than the previous, much smaller stasis zone.

As the zone disappeared, the monster’s cry echoed out through the room, mid scream. It fell into the pit full of black sand, scrambling to its feet and crying out again. Having been captured mid fight, it was already ready and charging at us within a second.

Poppy swung at the creature at the same moment it charged her. She stood over the monster easily. The metal attribute technique built into every Steelhorn spiritbeast shouldn’t have posed any challenge for her — the sharp edges of the horns should’ve scraped harmlessly against her armor.

Instead, her armor deformed, bending inward. With a grunt, Poppy flew across the room and slammed into the wall behind her. Poppy’s armor popped back into form with a horrible noise. Silver smoke wafted off her armor as she rose to her feet.

Eros shot three times. Every arrow seemed to slide harmlessly across the monster’s silver fur.

Without warning, the monster leapt, bucking and kicking. Anna flew backwards behind it. I hadn’t even seen her. I drew my own sword as the monster turned to Eros, charging forward to meet it.

The spiritbeast was often designated to practice your own sword techniques against. If you could parry this, you could parry anything.

My sword met its horns. A thousand times, I had clashed with beasts like these, and a thousand times, I had parried them, sending them crumpling to the ground, often even breaking their neck.

Instead, my sword bent around its stubby, smooth horns.

With a flick of its head, I shot across the room, sliding on the ground. The monster charged and bit Eros’s bow in half. I scrambled to my feet.

Poppy slammed her fists into the monster’s side. The blows did nothing as the creature continued to chew apart Eros’s bow.

“Holy shit holy shit holy shit — ”

Eros scrambled backwards as the monster looked up, ready to charge him.

My mind raced. Eros was pinned to the wall. He wasn’t getting away. I couldn’t get to him fast enough.

“[Zone: Slow!]” I called on the skill on instinct.

A sphere spread out around the monster and Eros both, stretching across half the hall. I scrambled forward, ignoring my sword and channeling the void fist. A number appeared above the sphere, counting down rapidly from sixty until it stopped at five.

[4]

The number dropped as I ran across the room. The deer slowed to a crawl, moving as if in slow motion, its feet still descending to the ground.

[3]

The shaping of the void fist was half way complete.

[2]

Eros started to scramble away from the wall. He wouldn’t make it.

Neither would I.

“[Zone: Accelerate!]”

I cast the zone on myself. The number above the slowed zone didn’t rise, but it stopped dropping. The others looked completely stopped in the relative flow of time. I finished shaping the void fist. The accelerate zone popped like a bubble, a rush of noise and wind suddenly reaching me, like I had just stuck my head up out of the water.

[1]

The slow zone popped right as I reached it. I slammed my fist into the side of the monster. It screamed as it rolled across the floor, its entire right flank exploding into black smoke.

Anna stabbed a knife down into the exposed, raw flesh of its flank, then stabbed a half dozen times until the monster stopped moving.

“What the hell was that?” Poppy asked.

[You have reached level 12!]

“My fucking bow!” Eros shouted. “That cost me thirty silver!”

I used [Identify] on the corpse.

[Anti-Metal Steelhorn]

[A spiritbeast corrupted by the touch of a Celestial. It was born with the properties of its inverted qi counterpart.]

It had no level. I wasn’t sure what that meant — if this creature had never interacted with the system.

“Are you alright?” Poppy asked Eros. Then she ran to Anna after getting an affirmative.

Anna was standing over the creature and panting.

I walked back and picked my sword up, inspecting it. I had felt, seen, heard it bend when I met the creature’s horns — but it was perfectly straight, untouched. I put pressure to the blend, trying to bend it. It felt as firm as ever.

As I walked to the corpse of the monster, dozens of thoughts warred for my attention. Anti-Light, Void Qi, Anti-Metal… they were all things I had never heard of. I needed to ask Wen. He might know more. He also might be an agent of the Grim Tempest.

But was he really aligned with them? He had shown me the mortal world. I didn’t even know what they wanted from us.

“Are you alright?” I asked Poppy.

She turned to me. Her eyes scanned me from top to bottom.

“I’m fine. Did it — it bent my armor when it hit me, but — “

Poppy touched a gauntlet to her chestplate. The metal was undamaged.

“These creatures are… strange.” I said. Then I stabbed my sword down near the monster’s chest, cutting a section of it open, before reaching a hand inside and ripping out the spirit beast’s core.

I held it up to the magical lights in the room. It glittered an off-gray, transparent to the eye and refracting light in odd patterns. It was completely unlike the typical core of a Steelhorn — perfect, chrome spheres.

“We shouldn’t risk fighting the next one.” I said, looking across the room.

There was an exit on the side of the room leading out of this one. Beyond the Zone that trapped the Steelhorn in time, every monster grew larger and larger. The next wasn’t even one I recognized.

It was a serpent stretching what must have been dozens of feet, scales the color the sea. Even trapped in time, they seemed to shimmer. Its tongue was out of its mouth. And if the creature in there matched the first, then it should have anti-qi with unknown properties.

Behind the sea-serpent was a turtle with a blooming tree growing from its shell, and beyond that, a giant of an ape with flames burning on it’s arms. The last creature was so large it’s back of brown, plate like scales nearly touched the ceiling. It was huge and reptilian, though didn’t have the wings of a dragon.

“Then… this exit?” Poppy asked hesitantly.

I nodded and started walking out, ready for whatever waited in the next room.