The tardigrade had been an excellent choice. She ambled through the swinging blades like they were nothing more than strange furniture, and she felt only a slight numbing sensation from the torrents of flame. Tardigrades were truly top-class tanks.
As she passed through the last flaming barrier, feeling rather proud of herself for her tardigrade-style ingenuity, she suddenly found that her feet had nowhere to perch themselves. Looking down, all her breath left her body as she saw her stubby appendages sway over the edge of a cliffside. She heaved all of her meager body weight backward.
“What the hell!” she murmured, but her tiny, shocked body couldn’t even produce the sound.
Her hallway had come to an abrupt and shocking end, and in the space beyond her was a giant chasm. In the middle of that chasm was a platform, wide, stone, and circular.
Slowly she morphed herself back into her original dimensions, and watched as the platform beneath her shrunk further until it was barely a platform at all—just a ridge that was barely the width of her feet. She pressed herself up to the wall behind her so she wouldn’t fall, gripping it tightly with her fingers.
“I thought trials were supposed to have a little bit of space between them!” Momo shouted at the abyss. She didn’t know who she was talking to, only that she wanted them to hear it. “You know, a little bit of reprieve between invitations to certain death!”
Only silence greeted her. She grumbled.
Well, not only silence—a moment later, a piece of parchment materialized in the air, and floated above the chasm casually.
She had to lean dangerously forward in order to make out the small text.
Dungeon of the Dark Divine
Level 3 Breached
Trial Complete: Axes of Fire
Trial 2 / 3 Complete
Objective failed: Endure unending pain and suffering
“What kind of objective is that?” she muttered, exasperated. Pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration, she added, “Also— Mr. Courier— if you can take this feedback to whoever is managing this whole experience— I do not understand the point of these trials. A long walk through a dark void? Another walk through… axes and fire? And now— what even is this? What does any of this have to do with being a goddess?”
In response to her tirade she received… more silence. It felt almost patronizing.
She gazed upward, hoping to find some sort of watching camera to yell at—something like the recording device that had obviously been keeping tabs on Valerica. But the ceiling was nonexistent. It extended upward into a black night sky, with shining white stars.
“Well. At least I’m outside now,” she mumbled.
She had started in the dungeon’s basement, and now she was on its… rooftop?
Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, it felt like progress.
The courier did at least do her the favor of eventually timing out and disappearing, so she could once again glance at the vast, terrifying chasm.
Eyeing the scary depth of it, she remembered the tall mountains of Wyrmeridge. How scared she had felt to fight something with only a sword and her wings. With no real power behind her.
Her eyes widened.
My wings.
She looked to each side of her, and found that her black feathers were gone. Then again, her hair was also still black, and when she ran her hands gently across her hair, her horns were missing, too. So it seemed she was still stuck in that original Momo form— the one that she had imagined herself to be the moment before she ascended here.
Momo shook her head, smiling slightly.
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The fact that it was that Momo—the earthly, terrified, couldn’t even leave her dorm room Momo—that was facing all these trials… gave her a soft feeling in her chest.
She would do this for her. She would achieve the pinnacle that a person could— for her.
Success was only a chasm away, after all.
“[Death’s Many Forms].”
The Reaping Has Begun!
Target: Biscuit
Entering Form: Raven
Seeing that she only needed to cross a distance, she figured any bird would do the job. As the spell worked its magic, her mouth became quite beak-ly, and her arms sprouted familiar feathers. No matter how many times she polymorphed, the sensation never got less strange—it was like being at the doctor’s office when they used that tiny hammer on your knee, and your leg popped up involuntarily.
Only with the polymorphing spell, her entire body responded like that leg—fingers and arms and toes seizing into action, nerves jumping without her control. Even though she had been the one to cast the spell, she could not direct any variable of the transformation. She could only let it wash over her, hoping that the grotesque process would end as soon as possible.
And soon enough, it did. She squawked experimentally, and when the cry sounded bird-like enough, she took off.
Her flight around the circular room was swift. This place was not infinite, just rather large. She took her time observing the stone platform from above before landing on it— but from all angles, it looked just about the same. Big and circular, jutting out like a stone toothpick from the blackness of the dark chasm. The only intriguing thing about it was a soft white circle painted in the middle of the platform, seemingly about the size of her human body.
She frowned down at it.
This feels too… simple. The first trial hypothetically involved a lot of reading, and if that courier message was anything to go by, the second trial apparently was supposed to be a brute force type of thing about enduring pain—which I thankfully opted out of—but this?
This was just a large shadowy room with a circle in the middle of it.
Bemused, she tried a cursory attempt to get beyond the barriers of the room. She reasoned that if she could see the sky, then she must be able to scale the walls somehow. And when she reached the top of the stone wall, it did indeed end, but… beyond it was just more void. Like an astronaut in the middle of space, she had no interest in traversing complete blackness.
So, seeing no other route, she flattened her wings and sailed toward the platform.
When she landed, she tumbled out of her raven form, and approached the white circle in the center. Up close, she could see that it was drawn in chalk—the lines were imperfect and scratchy, and a small piece of… writing? … had been etched into the center of it.
Borne of negligence.
Apathy.
And Misfortune.
Momo stared, dumbstruck, at the note.
She knew immediately where she’d heard that before.
The origin of the Nether Demons.
That was the recipe to construct one—negligence, apathy, misfortune.
Bottle those fun little feelings up, give them a shake, and then…
Momo’s stomach dropped. Her fingers tightened into fists.
Had that… been the point of all this? The overarching… theme? Each one of the dungeon’s trials had certainly involved a great deal of all three. But why the hell would Morgana build a dungeon to— to breed these kinds of demons? And why would it be the onboarding that a mortal would have to do to become a god? None of that made any remote amount of sense.
She had to still be missing something. Something very crucial.
Swallowing, she saw no other course of action but to trigger the circle. So she carefully placed her clog in the middle, then another, and held her breath.
And waited.
And waited.
Several minutes passed, and Momo wondered if this was yet another dose of instructive negligence and apathy. It sure felt like being left home alone with all the shades drawn.
“Hello?” Momo yelled again. “I think your dungeon might have a bug in it!”
At her words, the platform began to shake.
“Oh, crap,” she mumbled, getting low to the ground for balance. “I take that back—I liked how it was before! Very nice, very calm and serene!”
A sharp, harrowing growl echoed from the chasm below.
Oh crap.
She heard a churning of teeth, crackling and wet. Then a lapping of lips, like a wild dog preparing itself for a meal.
Momo’s entire body began to sweat.
Look at you. You’ve really done it now.
The sounds endured for several minutes, the platform shaking with no end in sight. And God— the growls and hisses were like nothing Momo had heard from any creature. Its cries sounded so pained, so viscerally frightened and angry. Like a caged animal left to starve. They left the hairs on Momo’s arms rigid, and her heart hammered in her ear.
Should she shapeshift? Or would leaving the platform make her an easier target? She didn’t know which direction to turn. Behind her? In front? Where was it coming from? Would it attack?
Momo twisted desperately in every direction she could, feeling a type of fear that was completely new to her. Every sound the thing made felt as if it had been created to explicitly elicit a new fear—tiny chittering legs like an insect, haunting cries like a hyena.
The platform stopped shaking.
Did it… leave?
Momo took a sharp breath in, summoning all her little bravery, and crawled slowly to the edge of the platform. She gazed down into the abyss—looking for signs of any movement.
But everything was quiet. She relaxed, feeling the muscles in her arms slack slightly.
Until a shadow zipped through the air in front of her. She shrieked, toppling backward and scrambling on the hard stone. A figure—about her size—lurched onto the platform. Its neck was bent downward unnaturally, so she could only see a cape of black hair.
It made a low growling sound. And as Momo got to her feet, her entire body shaking, the figure’s neck snapped up—
A pale, featureless face stared back at her.
Momo’s featureless face.
Type: Nether Demon. Level 102.
HP: ? / ?