The wave of force wasn’t painful; it was like a wall was slowly pushing against me. It threw me off the pillar first and into the black, sprawling void beneath me. Despite logically knowing that this formation wouldn’t try to kill me, it still filled me with panick, adrenaline starting to race through me as gravity pulled me down… and then I started to float back upwards.

The first wall of force had moved past me. I could sense the formation tracking me. A second formed, sweeping me up and backwards. I fell down onto a column, trying to recover, before immediately being thrown up and back. It took almost a full minute for the room to fling me back to the start and the formations in the ceiling and wall to deactivate.

Poppy rushed to my side first.

“Are you alright?” She asked, hesitating to put a hand on me.

I rolled over and dragged myself to the wall before leaning on it. My meridians and muscles both ached from the strain of the technique.

“The techniques… the skills this is set up to teach are exhausting.” I replied, unstrapping my sword and setting it next to me. I still had Eros’s water pouch, now looped onto my own belt, and I took another drink of it. “I’m going to need hours to recover enough to try again. Unless…” My eyes trailed over to Annabelle.

She was starting to recover from her earlier encounter. When we locked eyes, her face hardened into determination.

“I think I can do it.” She said.

“Anna, no.” Poppy said, turning to her. “You were injured before.”

“That golem didn’t set off my detect trap skill.” She said. “But those do.”

Annabelle was staring at the spot the formations had appeared in the walls.

“That doesn’t mean you’ll be able to — ”

“Sai.” Annabelle said, interrupting Poppy. “That trap in the ceiling was detecting you, right? And it was an illusion of you? Just a visual one?”

I hesitated, considering if Annabelle would be endangering herself if she tried, before nodding.

“Yes. The skill is some kind of… light element illusion, I believe. An anti-light element illusion?” I asked.

“His after-image made my [Detect Illusion] scream at me.” Eros nodded.

“Then I can almost definitely fool it.” Annabelle said, turning to Poppy.

Poppy still looked unconvinced.

“The formation also stops you from falling down. I doubt that the pit is even that deep — its probably a trick.” I said to Poppy.

“How long do you think it’ll take you to try again?” Poppy asked.

I felt around at the qi inside me, and the qi inside the room. Unlike the earlier sandy arena, the qi in this room was a trickle. The formations must have been consuming it to function, leaving the room practically dry.

“Could take me an entire day to recover.”

Poppy grimaced back at me.

“I’ve got this.” Annabelle said. She looked over the course and rubbed her neck. “I’ve survived the dungeons we’ve raided so far.

“We’ve never been first in. Let alone in a precursor dungeon.” Poppy said. Then she sighed. “But you’re right. I’m sorry for doubting you. Just… be safe.”

Annabelle nodded seriously, then stepped to the edge of the platform. The formation at the center started to glow again. I saw Annabelle concentrate, her face twisting up even as I entered into a half lidded state of meditation to recover.

Annabelle just slipped away from my perception. There was no where for her to go, and yet, she practically disappeared. I scanned the room for her, but spots of it felt slippery. The formation above alternately glowed and dimmed for several minutes.

Annabelle appeared on a distant column more than half way across the room, hands on her knees and panting.

“I… did it!” She yelled. Her voice echoed in the undecorated stone chamber. The formation above glowed a brilliant purple, but she was past every formation in the wall that would’ve generated the planes of force pushing her backward.

For the next several minutes, we watched as Annabelle slowly and carefully leapt from pillar to pillar, often scrambling at and mantling the edges of them before reaching the other side of the room.

She walked up to a dais, hesitating and spinning to look back at us before decisively slamming a hand into it.

The formations in the ceiling and wall turned green and the entire room began to rumble. Stone rose out of the ground, tiles so black they appeared like void, but closer to the light crystals above the dividing lines between them were visible. The room flooded with ambient qi that the tiles began to release.

“She did it.” I said, standing and picking up my sword. I walked to the tiles and put a foot on it experimentally. It was still exerting an anti-gravity effect, making me feel phenomenally light as I walked across it.

I continued to use identify repeatedly as we crossed the room, trying to get it to reveal what the dark material of the tiles was. I could think of a half dozen industrial uses for it — if the material could reduce the weight of mining carts, then mortal miners could transport more. Wagons could be loaded with more materials, or buckets of water could be significantly reduced in weight.

After inspecting it more carefully, I realized the pattern of stars wasn’t random. I paused, standing still and casting a glance back behind me and then forward. Just like the stone tablets at the beginning of the room, it was another instruction manual, each point being a direction to pull forward qi, but the sheer size of the instruction meant that it already included most of the body to activate.

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This technique had to not only be difficult, but dangerous. Gathering a single string of power through your entire body meant that one mistake could send a river of power rampaging through you and destroying you from the inside. And after witnessing what the Void Fist did to stone, I didn’t want to see what it did to flesh.

[Xylem, The twenty-second Anti-Light form. This technique rips open the way between worlds.]

[Partial Manual Recorded to System. Warning: Partial techniques will not operate correctly and may endanger the user. Spend Comprehension points or find the other pieces of the technique to use it.]

“What’s wrong?” Poppy said, turning back to look at me. She was at high attention, scanning the room.

“It’s nothing.” I said, hurrying to catch up.

I didn’t want her picking up such a dangerous technique, especially not if the System was able to hand her the Void Fist. Some of the hoarding of knowledge that cultivators performed was excessive, but I had seen first hand the dangers of untrained cultivators and rampaging qi techniques.

Forget about it’s active effect; the technique wasn’t complete. But besides that… other worlds?

The idea of it sounded more ludicrous than the thought of an illusion formation containing complete spirits and sprawling labyrinths.

This place had asked more than enough questions for me to contemplate.

“Great job!” Poppy said, slapping Annabelle on the back as we approached.

“Thank you!” Annabelle said, a smile appearing on her face for the first time since she had been caught in the first chamber.

“I’m so jealous of that skill.” Eros said.

Our group stopped at the entrance to the next room. There was no hallway; just a single step to another room.

The floor was covered in black sand; qi was boiling off of it, and with the formations in this room no longer active, the room was filling up with it. In the center of the room was a raised table with a stone cup. Water flowed from the ceiling into a basin in the table.

I recognized it immediately.

This was an isolation chamber, with nothing more than water to sustain a cultivator. I cursed under my breath.

“This room isn’t going to fill with sand, is it?” Poppy asked, turning to me. She was coming to ask my opinions on the dungeon more and more with each moment.

“No.” I said, taking one last look back over the stretching obstacle course before stepping inside. The sand shifted under my feet. Poppy and Annabelle followed behind, with Eros coming in last. He held his bow at the ready.

The door disappeared behind us. I sighed, stepping around the table as I scooped up the cup. The water coming from the ceiling splattered half out of the cup as I held it under it. I swished it around. It was ice cold. I gathered my thoughts as I stared at the ceiling. My new companions were poking around the room. Eros tried to dig a hole in the sand with a frown.

“This is an isolation chamber.” I said, voice unhappy. I reached up with one hand and freed my hair from its pony tail before running my hands through it. It fell around my face and draped down to my shoulders.

“So… how do we get out?” Poppy asked, folding her arms.

“We don’t.” I said. “Well, not yet. We wait.” I sat on the sand against the wall, feeling the cool stone on my back, and half meditating as I pulled in qi to replenish my reserves. With the door closed, the density of dark qi boiling off the sand was heavy in the air.

“For how long?” Annabelle asked.

“Probably at least an entire day.” I said, settling in.

“Then let’s eat.” Eros said.

I frowned, looking up at Eros. I had dismissed the prompt for the hidden technique in the star pattern of the floor, but it still haunted me. The way between worlds. These people were real. Way too real. And now they were trapped in a dungeon with me.

Eros unpacked his bag, pulling out wrapped food. He threw a pack at me which I pulled out of the air. I pulled back the paper to find spiced, dried meat even as Anna and Poppy already started digging into theirs. Eros drew water from the ceiling in the cup on the table.

“Is this safe to drink?” He asked.

“As far I can tell.” I replied.

“The water doesn’t set off my [Detect Trap] Anna added, talking around a mouthful of food.

“Eat with your mouth closed!” Poppy said. Then she sighed. “These two never learned table manners. I’m sorry.” Poppy smiled apologetically.

I shrugged.

“I’ve long since hated the extraneous table manners that nobles impose.” I bit into the jerky and tore it off with my mouth to make the point.

“So you ARE a noble!” Anna said, pointing. “I told you.” She elbowed Eros.

The three of them sat close together near the Dais while I leaned against the wall.

“Not really.” I shook my head. “Like I said, I just help administrate.”

“We can be disgraced nobility together.” Poppy said. “You know, in the south of Illyria, where the Merchant Lords rule, they consider dining messy to be a compliment to the host? I hated it. My grandfather would bring half of our family there when we renewed the contracts annually and expected us to end up covered in food by the end. He scolded me for offending our hosts by wiping my hands!”

I laughed at the mental picture of my brother and the Patriarch and governors of Feng covering themselves in food.

“So what you’re saying is I’m actually very noble like.” Annabelle said. I’m destined to be a rich merchant lord!”

Poppy rolled her eyes.

“I’ll take first watch.” Eros said. “Barely contributed myself this whole time. Except for shooting that golem. Sorry for that, by the way.” Eros nodded at me.

“It’s fine.” I said, leaning back against the stone.

“Do we really need to set up a watch in here?” Annabelle said, looking around. “It’s just an empty room.”

“Better safe than sorry.” Poppy replied. “What are the dining rules like for nobles in your family, Sai?”

“Mmmm.” I said, non-committed. I had closed my eyes and started pulling in qi. “We arrange the seats by political and social standing. The most important and powerful people stand at the top. For weeks before events, there’s constant political maneuvering to try to sit next to the rich and powerful, sometimes even escalating into open duels.”

“Dueling is legal there?” Poppy asked, clearly curious. “But what about when people’s levels are too disparate? Surely the oldest nobles almost always win.”

“The old are often complacent. Stuck in their image of the status quo.” I said with a shrug.

“I know a ton of old men who got a few decades tacked on to their lives and just rely on captured and imported monsters for the rest of their levels.” Annabelle chimed in.

“Do they know you?” Poppy turned to ask her.

Annabelle smiled mischievously.

“That’s creepy.” Eros said.

“What? You gotta know your mark if you’re going to rob them!”

“And you’re not even a good thief.” Eros added between another bite.

“I AM a good thief! And I have the levels to prove it!”

“You did get caught.” Poppy added.

“I’m tired of your opinions. Sai, am I a good thief?” Anna asked.

“In my country, we cut off a finger from a thief when they’re caught.” I said. Anna paled, and I realized I had put a foot in my mouth. I continued on. “Or, at least outside of the territories I… help with. There’s been a lot less stealing since we started distributing more food.”

“Interesting! I’ve read some of the statistics on food programs and whether they’re worth the economic benefits.” Poppy said, chiming in and moving the conversation away. “How have they worked for your house? Or, your family’s house?”

I started telling Poppy about the governmental reforms, but Eros seemed bored out of his mind. The conversation drifted back to small talk. After an hour, Anna laid on the sand, ready to sleep. I didn’t blame her. At least the ground was soft. When the conversation reached a lull, I closed my eyes and began to refill my qi.

It reminded me of when I was fourteen, before the foreign cultivator had torn my life apart. Of being shoved in an isolation chamber over and over, let out only for important appearances, skirted across the country and then returned.

But no matter how many days I had spent alone in a cold, stone chamber, eating nothing but bare rations, I still hadn’t been able to break through. The adversity hadn’t made me stronger.

But maybe a few friends like these ones could have.

[New Skill — ]

[You have reached level 10. Please select your first Class.]