The feeling of humid air assaulted me, making me feel like I was in a jungle again. Looking around me it looked like I was in some sort of cave, the walls were covered in glowing moss and damp stone, and the floor was littered with sharp rocks and tripping hazards, and the space around me felt strange and warped in some way I couldn’t quite place yet. To my right and left the cave-like tunnel extended straight in each direction, but the ups and downs made it difficult to see past about 20 meters in either direction.

As soon as I got my bearings and felt ready to continue, the System took that as permission to give me the required information.

[Time Requirement: Survive for 5 days]

[Forced Task: Locate the altar and perform a ritual with materials from this list]

Wow, Less Starting Information is really limited with 10 challenges at once, and the Time Requirement has gone from 12 hours to 5 days. I’m glad I picked up some food while I was running through the jungle, otherwise I might’ve had to eat this cave moss.

I prepared myself and made sure to watch where I stepped, so I would make as little noise as possible, while I advanced down the cave tunnel to my left. I was injured and needed a place to hide while I recovered, and this almost bare tunnel didn’t leave any place to really hide. I knew that the Dungeon would try and place me in a relatively safe location, but that didn’t mean that it was completely safe where I was at.

With this in mind I took my time, and after a few minutes of walking I spotted an offshoot tunnel coming off at 90 degrees from the one I was currently walking through. Coming up close to the bend, and carefully peeking around the corner, I could make out a T intersection maybe 40 meters down this offshoot tunnel.

Everything was too angular and straight for this to be a natural cave. The whole thing screamed MAZE to me, and considering the Hostile Environment challenge I had taken on, a maze would definitely be considered a hostile environment, though not dangerous enough. It was too simple for a 10 challenge Hostile Environment, there must be something more going on that I hadn’t seen yet.

Whatever the case, a maze would be no problem for me. I had already been constructing a mental map of where I had been since I had arrived, and with this offshoot being on the right side I decided to follow the right hand rule for now. I knew of multiple ways to solve a maze, but the right hand rule was the easiest, although it might not work if I was in a disconnected part of the maze.

In any case, I started to remove some of the glowing moss from the side of the wall, and spent a few minutes creating a mental connection to the stone where I had removed the moss. I might not be able to get much information from the stone, but I would be able to feel the connection and direction within about 100 meters of myself. With this I would be able to leave behind invisible markers that were each distinct in my mind, and I would be able to find my way even if this maze started to shift around or some other nonsense.

With that done I started walking down the offshoot tunnel. I soon reached the T intersection at the end and looked down both ways. To the left the tunnel extended into the distance, but I could barely make out the glow in the cave turning a slight orange. To the right I could see much farther down the tunnel, and I could barely make out another T intersection the same as this one.

The left had an interesting orange glow which made me curious, but I was currently using the right hand rule so I would have to put off exploring it until later.

I left another mental mark on the stone and turned down the right tunnel. I reached the next T intersection and looking both ways nothing stood out to me, so once again I left a mark and kept right.

I was expecting to intersect with the first tunnel I had arrived in, or maybe reach a dead end, but as I was walking down the tunnel things started to look eerily familiar and my (Space-Time Sense) Skill was tingling. The feeling continued to grow the farther I advanced down the straight path up until the point where I reached a 90 degree offshoot from the path I was following. There was some moss removed from one of the walls, and I could feel the first mental mark I had made.

I had only made three 90 degree turns and I had ended up back at my first mark. This wasn’t just a simple maze, it was a maze with spatial warping going on.

For most people this would be a nightmare to navigate through. For me though it wasn’t that much more difficult than a normal maze. With my unique markers, (Space-Time Sense), and the ability to map out the space in my mind, a spatial maze was a hostile environment I was capable of handling no problem. This would be especially true after I am able to heal and am able to switch out one of my active Skills to my (Space-Time Sense) rather than relying on the inactive Skill.

But this all led me back to the problem I faced, I still needed to find somewhere to hide and recover from my injuries. I was reluctant to go wandering around and potentially end up stumbling into something, so I decided to try and have a look at the orange light I had seen. I couldn’t be certain, but as the saying in this world went, ‘curiosity killed the Human.’

It didn’t take long to reach the intersection with my second mark, and as I snuck through the left tunnel as silently as possible, the bluish glow from the moss on the walls was slowly being overtaken by a stronger orange glow coming from up ahead. Then, after a steep incline, I came upon an opening into a large room.

Looking inside I saw what looked to be the inside of a volcano that had been spliced together with the cave environment I had just been walking through. The ceiling wasn’t that high, and there were pillars of slowly flowing magma flowing out of a few spots on the ceiling down to the floor below. The glowing moss on the walls took on an orange color making the room glow like it was almost molten itself. I couldn’t see anything alive in the room, and I couldn’t feel any heat even though it looked like there was flowing magma in the room, so I decided to get a better view.

Stepping foot into the room I almost immediately started sweating as the heat hit me like a fireball. My eyes started to water as I looked around, and I saw a few rock formations that I could potentially hide behind, but it was questionable if I could heal before I was cooked alive in here. The next thing I noticed was a sulfur smell that hadn’t been there before I stepped into the room.

Looking around the edges of the room I saw three other openings, two of them shimmered with heat and looked like volcanic caves, and the other opening looked the same as the one I had just come through.

Not wanting to stay in the heat any longer than I had to, I stepped back through the entrance I had just come through and felt the much more reasonable temperature greet me. I could’ve stayed in the room longer, but I didn’t want to lose all of my body water because of sweating.

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The heat and smell went away like I had stepped through some kind of film that separated the room from the tunnel. These things made me furrow my brow in thought. I might be able to use this barrier as a pseudo form of cover, sure I might not be able to visually hide, but in enclosed spaces like a maze smell was something much more important to hide, and with the steep incline coming up to the room nothing would be able to see me from down the tunnel.

I was still in pain, and sat down near the entrance to the room, getting ready to rest and recover my aching body and bones. It was crazy to think that I had been back in my prison room less than 8 hours ago. As I sat recovering on the stone floor I wondered how long it would take them to give up on the search for me, maybe a few days, maybe a month, who knew, but thinking about the look on their faces brought me immense satisfaction as I sat there recovering.

-Break-

Five hours later I was fully healed and my mana was almost topped out at 100%. I was in top condition, fully healed and full of energy, but there was one more thing I had to do before I began to explore. I had been avoiding this ever since my mana regeneration had exceeded a certain percentage per hour, the exact percentage was different for everyone, but after that barrier was breached there would be consequences. And now that I had escaped and had the time, I was ready to face those consequences. I opened up my Skills and got ready for what was to come.

[Active Skills/Powers 3/3]-

(Power: Accelerated Cloud Mental Operator; Evolution:0 Level: 86)

(Skill: Tireless Mana II; Level: 53)

(Skill: Physical Recovery II; Level: 41)-

[Inactive Skills/Powers 12]-

(Skill: Mana Maintenance II; Level: 66)

(Skill: Foreign Analysis; Level: 80)

(Skill: Deceive; Level: 65)

(Skill: Sense Mana II; Level: 60)

(Skill: Pain Tolerance; Level: 51)

(Skill: Physical Augmentation; Level: 66)

(Skill: Space-Time Sense; Level: 62)

(Skill: Mana Conversion; Level: 59)

(Skill: Selective Transformation II; Level: 10)

(Skill: Basic Space Control; Level: 81)

(Skill: Mana Crystallization II; Level: 25)

(Skill: Efficient Crystallization; Level: 60)-

I switched out my (Physical Recovery II) for (Selective Transformation II), and I switched out (Tireless Mana II) for (Mana Maintenance II). So now my Active Skills look like this.

[Active Skills/Powers 3/3]-

(Power: Accelerated Cloud Mental Operator; Evolution:0 Level: 86)

(Skill: Mana Maintenance II; Level: 66)

(Skill: Selective Transformation II; Level: 10)-

Taking one last look around me, and not seeing any danger, I shut down my outside senses and focused all of my senses inward. I was leaving myself vulnerable, but what was about to happen required my full attention and concentration.

A few minutes passed as I felt my mana nebula creep towards being 100% filled while my mana cells were already full and pushing all of their excess mana regeneration into my nebula. The nebula was quickly filled, and the borders of the magical space that kept my mana from leaking out and into my body, started to strain from the building pressure and started to leak mana into my body. I used (Mana Maintenance II) to control the leaking mana and make it evenly distribute throughout my body.

My body started to try and expel the mana into my surroundings, but the amount of mana I was leaking was much less than the amount I was gaining and it only continued to increase, and the mana started to build up and saturate my entire being. At first nothing came of this, mana wasn’t inherently dangerous after all, but this wasn’t just any mana, this was my own personal mana.

The mana within me quickly grew and started to resonate with me on a magical level. This resonating started to make my entire body buzz like there were tiny bubbles and bells everywhere inside of me. Everything started to change to try and become more and more in tune with the frequency of my mana.

The sheer amount of mana being pumped into my body moment by moment made this entire process rapidly reach a climax, and then everything seemed to pause for just a moment.

Then the moment passed and all of the mana within my body started to be consumed to fuel a magical transformation. Using my (Selective Transformation II) I was able to just barely guide this powerful magical process. I tried to guide the transformation to change the surface of my body as little as possible. There was only so much I could do with my limited Skill, but I did as much as I could.

The entire process from start to finish only took 15 minutes because of my abundance of mana regeneration, whereas for most others it would take a year or more for their body to change.

My entire body felt exhausted down to my bones, but at the same time I felt so much better, like I had just burned down a wall that was keeping me from my full potential.

I didn’t have a mirror or anything, but using my Cloud I was able to get a full mental image of what my body was now like. My hair was now like thin crystal threads. My irises now looked like kaleidoscopes of all the different colors of mana, slowly cycling through them all. In the past my skin had also changed, but now it looked the same as it had before the transformation. I was relieved, as visually not that much had changed, but there was more to this transformation than just visuals.

Opening up my status I looked through it all and there was now another section below my [Metaphysical Physique].

[Magical Physique]-(Selective Mana Superconductor)-

It was the same as it was in my past life, but I pulled up the description to make sure nothing functionally had changed because of my interference with the transformation.

[Magical Physique: Selective Mana Superconductor]

: Mana you choose to allow can now flow through your body without resistance. Mana you choose not to allow will now face extreme resistance instead. Without your input your body will do its best to allow beneficial mana and restrict harmful mana, however this isn’t omniscient and requires your input to achieve its full potential.

Phew, it hasn’t changed. With this I'll be so much more powerful than I was before. Because I was so magically focused this was like a force multiplier for me. With this, my magic that I used on myself would be 10 times more powerful and use 10 percent of the mana, and the magic I casted outside of myself would be at least twice as powerful and take half as much mana. Basically instead of using 100% of my mana to heal myself, I would now only need to use 1% to achieve the same effect, and for external magic instead of 100% I could use 25% to achieve the same effect. Not only that, but the mana in the air wouldn’t affect me nearly as much either.

I was eager to confirm this as I mobilized a small percentage of my mana to cast a spell on my body to remove my fatigue. Energy practically flooded through my body making me feel like I had just woken up from the best sleep in my life. A feeling of power came to me, with this power boost I felt ready to take on any challenge I faced.

I got up and walked into the spliced room next to me to test out my new physique. As I walked in I still felt the heat inside of the room, but it wasn’t nearly as strong as it was before. If before it had felt like I was being cooked alive, now it felt like I was in an extremely hot desert during midday. It was still very hot for sure, but I could handle it for a few hours at least. And with some cooling magic I cast on myself, I felt like I could stay here forever (or at least until the cooling magic wore off.)

Now I felt ready to tackle any hostile environment I might come across in the Dungeon of Tribulation, even with 10 challenges at once increasing the difficulty. Without mana affecting me, hot places wouldn’t be as hot, and cold places wouldn’t be as cold, although it didn’t get rid of all environmental effects it definitely reduced them. This was why I even dared to take on the Hostile Environment challenge.

I was lucky so far that I hadn’t come across any hostile entities yet, but that was sure to change once I started to really explore this maze. Now that I was ready to start my exploration I was sure to come across some danger sooner rather than later.

I wasn’t afraid though. With my new physique I would be able to physically augment my body to be much stronger, and my offensive magic would pack that much more of a punch. On this first level I felt unstoppable. The next 10 days were no longer a trial to survive, they were now a trial to see how much I could gain before I left.