It was safe to say that I didn’t have a great time after I angered the guardian robot. It was now quite a few ‘days’ after my failure to obtain the Skill Orb, and I had been on the run from the guardian robot ever since. The day cycle was shorter than I was used to, and most of that cycle was spent in the dark, with only 2 short hours of daylight to rest after each grueling night.

Now I sat groggily inside of what seemed like an apartment building as the sun was set to arrive in a few short moments. I pushed myself through my exhaustion and pain as I stood up from my sleeping position, telling myself that this would all be over soon. My body ached from the constant running and dodging I had been doing for days on end, and it made me want to give in and rest just a little more, but I knew I couldn’t afford to stop, not with another night arriving soon.

As my body groaned in exhaustion I tried to motivate myself by referencing my internal clock, and after I saw that this would be the last night on this level, I pushed myself to do just a little more. As a Technic Morph, I had extreme levels of endurance and stamina, but even I was starting to reach my limits after multiple days of running and dodging. No other Rank 0 Tier 9 would have been able to keep up this chase for such a long time. Although that was a gross generalization, there were most definitely others who could achieve the same feat, but thinking that I was the only one made me feel better about my waning will to continue.

I walked out into the dimming streets ready to face off against the robot that had been doggedly pursuing me like I was its mortal enemy, and it wasn’t long before the large frame of the robot made itself known further down the road, along with the ever-present horde of monsters deciding to join in on the coming fun. I hadn’t wasted any time starting up my preparations before this, and I was already limbered up and ready for one last night of running. I created a wedge shaped shield in front of me and started to run in a predetermined direction as soon as I saw the robot lurch towards me.

As I ran, I wasn’t running without thought. I used my excess mana regen and time to hone my lacking offensive spells and launched them at the robot behind me, hoping to slow it down or at least distract it. However, no matter how many spells I flung, the robot remained relentless, its single-minded focus on eliminating me after my attempt to steal the Skill Orb was intense, it was completely undeterred by my pitiful attacks. However the same couldn’t be said about the constant attacks from the monsters.

Because the robot was focusing so much on me, the monsters were able to occasionally get close enough to the robot to deal some damage to it. Of course, the robot was tough, and the monster's attacks mostly just left scrapes and small dents in the robot’s armor plating; but many a mickle makes a muckle, so although the damage the monsters were causing wasn’t much individually it had stacked up to a considerable amount after days of constant abuse, making it much easier to evade the robot than it had been at the beginning.

Thinking about this made me recall the process that had brought me to this point. On the first night I had to stay close to the robot so I wouldn’t be targeted by the monsters, and I fully expected the robot to continue chasing me throughout the day. However the robot seemed unable to deal with the sunlight just like the monsters, at least to a certain extent, because it abandoned the chase and entered a building when the sun started to come up.

At that point I was praising all the gods I knew, and I used the short amount of daytime to put as much distance between me and the robot as possible. However, when the night arrived and a few more hours had passed, the robot tracked me down, even though I had never turned off my concealment magic. I had no idea why I had been located when my concealment magic had worked just fine before.

The only theory I could come up with was a confirmation of my previous guesses and experiences, that the surveillance around the city was an Environmental Hazard, and if that were true then the surveillance had probably grown stronger over time due to the time scaling of the dungeon, making my concealment magic no longer as foolproof as it had once been. The robot probably had some way to interact with the surveillance in the city and tracked me down using it.

So, running away from the robot during the day had been nothing but a waste of time and energy. From then on, during the day, I didn’t venture far from the robot. I rested nearby, catching up on as much sleep as I could before the nighttime chase began anew with the setting of the sun.

Like this, days turned into almost a week, and I had been pushed to my limits. I had been chased, cornered, and almost caught multiple times over the past few days, but at least there was a silver lining to this endless pursuit, my Forced Task was complete. I hadn’t personally killed many monsters during this time, but the robot chasing me must have counted as a sort of lure or trap, giving me points whenever the robot killed the monsters.

With this I would be able to end the floor as soon as the Time Requirement was complete, even though I hadn’t really done much more than run away. I mean, I was grateful to not have to endure this exhausting pursuit any longer, but at the same time I was a bit bitter that I didn’t have that Skill Orb even after getting so close to obtaining it, and the only thing keeping me from getting my hands on it was the robot that had allowed me to complete my Forced Task.

But not all hope of obtaining the Skill Orb was lost just yet. My (Mental Operator) Power wasn’t just for show, and I had been ceaselessly churning through any possible ways that I could obtain that Skill Orb, and I had eventually come up with a plan.

My plan wasn’t some ostentatious trap that was borne out of complex strategies and artifice. No, it was quite simple actually, however most of its success hinged on my own performance.

My plan was to use my freezing offensive spell crystal on the robot, just before the sun came up. Although the freezing spell crystal wouldn’t stop the robot for long, it would hopefully be able to keep it secure long enough for the sun to finish the job. And after the robot was fully incapacitated I could take my time and extract the Skill Orb from within the robot’s fortified body.

As a part of my plan, over the course of the past few days, I had led the robot to a part of the city with the most possible access to the sun, so that when I enacted my plan there would be as much sunlight as possible. I only had one opportunity to use the freezing spell crystal, so I had to make sure everything was as good as it could be for the attempt. And now I was running through rubble strewn streets alongside crumbling buildings.

While running through the streets with the most crumbling buildings yet, I took the chance to look back at the robot chasing me. By this point, the robot had suffered plenty of damage, a little bit from my attacks, but mostly from the attacks of the monsters. It didn’t have the same kind of monster-killing radiation power I did, and it showed. The robot was severely damaged at this point, its movements much slower and more erratic than they were at the start, and the horde of monsters was trying to do their best to destroy the robot that stood between them and the beacon of mana that called to them.

I had used up my last remaining defensive spell crystal by this point in time, and I was in no hurry to join the fight with the robot. I knew I didn’t have much time left before my Time Requirement Challenge was up for the floor, and after that the time scaling difficulty would ramp up explosively, at which point it would be idiotic to stay much longer afterwards. But I was going to get that Skill Orb even if it meant staying on this level just a little bit longer.

After the past few days I had come up with the final touches to my plan to get the Skill Orb from the robot. The first element of this plan was the fact that the robot always stopped chasing me about 10 minutes before the sun came up. The second element of this plan was that the freezing spell would probably only hold the robot for 8 minutes at most. With these 2 things I came up with the plan to fight the robot and get it to stay for as long as I can before the sun came up, then I could freeze the robot as late as possible so I could have the highest chance to immobilize the robot long enough for the sun to finish the job. Then I would be able to pry open the robot and get my hands on the Skill Orb. It was a simple plan, but the less working parts the less that could go wrong.

That led me to my current situation. I had intentionally cornered myself in an area of the city with low and crumbling buildings with plenty of access to the sunlight. I had no idea if the sunlight had to actually be shining on the robot for it to be incapacitated, like the robots I had fought before, but I didn’t want to take any chances.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

-Break-

I tried to keep my mana reserves as high as possible during my run, so I would be able to fight the robot. And maybe it was my exhaustion or my excitement, but the night seemed to fly by in a blur as it now came near the appointed time to enact my plan.

I had about 5 minutes before the robot would usually stop chasing me. So, I started to show signs of tiring out, and started to get closer and closer to the robot. I wanted to get the robot to think that it was close to getting me and it would hopefully stay a few more minutes after its normal time, thinking that I was on my last legs. And as I started to slow down and lag, the robot did stay past its normal stopping time, however it didn’t stay for long.

The robot only stayed for about a minute longer before it started to turn away from the chase. Seeing this, I knew that I had to go to plan B, combat. However, when I tried to stop and turn around to face the robot, my ankle caught on some loose rubble and twisted painfully, sending me crashing to the ground. No! I need to stop the robot from leaving, I can’t fall! However, the robot saw my fall, and instead of continuing to leave, it turned back to me and started to put up some bullet spells to fire at me.

Well, I’m glad it isn’t leaving, but getting shot and injured isn’t much better. With my twisted ankle I tried to get up, so I could maneuver out of the way of the robot’s bullet spells, but my ankle loudly protested such an action and I failed to stand up immediately. Crap, this is a bad time to be injured Radiant. Although I could heal it with some magic, it would take a bit of time, and currently I needed to get out of the way of the robot’s line of fire before even thinking about healing. So I used my Mental Operator to ignore the pain in my ankle, and moved to get behind a large piece of rubble nearby.

Although my plan B was to fight the robot, I wasn’t confident enough in my magic to actually fight it head on. My only goal was to keep it occupied for a minute or two more, then use my freezing spell, but I couldn’t very well do that if I got headshot by the robot.

My feet carried me dutifully towards the nearby chunk of rubble, and by the time the robot’s spell finished I was practically right next to safety. However the robot wasn’t playing around, and it immediately fired off multiple metallic bullets at me.

I didn’t want to receive any of those bullets, so I lunged behind the cover trying to get out of the way, but despite my efforts I still managed to acquire more injuries. Some of the bullets hit the nearby rubble and sent shards flying into my skin, these were minor injuries, one of the bullets managed to hit the mark and dug its way into my back just below my right shoulder blade. Because I had lunged for cover, the bullet’s path went in from below and scraped along the back of my shoulder blade before exiting out my shoulder.

Because I was already suppressing my pain from my ankle, I didn’t scream in pain like I probably would’ve otherwise. However, even if I had been shot, I couldn’t let my injuries get between me and my goal. I already knew this plan would be dangerous, I can deal with my injuries after this is over. Besides, I had my misty ice-steel ring functioning at full power, it wasn’t going to be fixing my injuries any time soon, but it would extend the amount of time I could take before treating them, and currently that was all I needed.

I could feel the robot moving closer to my position while still firing metal bullets at me, probably trying to suppress me and keep me from moving from my spot. However I wasn’t going to be moving from my position anyways, the closer I was when I used the freezing spell the better. So I fired up a shield spell, overloaded it to oblivion, and then did it again, and again. Any offensive spells I could use wouldn’t do much to the robot anyways, so I just hoped to stall for as much time as possible.

The robot arrived sooner than I expected, using some of its appendages to grab my precious cover and push it out of the way. This allowed me to get a clear view of the robot, and I saw why it had arrived so fast. The robot had briefly stopped dealing with the monsters all around us in order to get to me, leaving some of them clinging to its metallic shell trying to claw their way into its interior.

I swallowed hard when I saw this. Dang, it’s desperate, for sure. But this was no time to joke around, because the robot didn’t waste any time firing off its spell projectiles at my shields.

I expected my shields to fall quickly, but they fell a lot quicker than I had hoped. The bullets the robot fired off at close range had more power behind them than the ones I had received from a distance, and it showed from the spreading cracks in my mana shield. The first shield only lasted a few seconds, and then another few for the next, and then the next.

I only had one more shield between me and the robot. If I was going to use the freezing spell then now was the time, but it was still a bit too soon to use it if I wanted to be 100% sure to keep the robot frozen until the sunrise. I didn’t have any other options though, it was either use it now or become a very holey person in the next few seconds. I’m sure Jilly would scoff at me being called a holy person, but even gods wouldn’t be able to prevent that label from being applied in the next few seconds.

With no other option left, I didn’t wait for my last shield to fully shatter before letting loose my freezing spell crystal.

Instantly my surroundings froze like they had been encased in metal, of course this included the robot, which had its spells cease and its movement stop, along with all of the monsters around me.

This spell was a unique kind of freezing spell, it worked differently than just making everything really cold. I wasn’t adept enough at ice and other similar things to achieve something like this with pure cold. No, this was more like a time freeze spell that ‘froze’ the time of everything around me, and just like an ice cube in the middle of flowing water, it wouldn’t be long before everything melted back to normal.

Thankfully the flow of time in the dungeon was much slower, because of the Outside Time Sync Challenge I had chosen when starting the Dungeon of Tribulation. So, in a way, this Challenge was more like a plus for me rather than a minus.

I was prepared to have to face the robot when it ultimately thawed out, but, since I was so close to the robot when I let loose the spell, it didn’t thaw out until a little after the sunrise had melted all of the surrounding monsters to dust.

Just like an ice cube, the time freeze would thaw from the outside inwards, so the robot that was in the center of the effect was immobilized for the longest. Not wasting any time, I set out to obtain what I had spent all this effort to get.

Because the robot had so much mana flowing through it, it would be too hard to teleport all of it into my Internal World, so I instead used my mana, and what little remaining physical stamina I had left, to pry open the robot and get to the Skill Orb stored within.

When I finally got my hands on the Skill Orb I could barely get my two hands around it before I immediately used my (Skill: Foreign Analysis) to scan it. I was pretty sure this was an Archetype Skill Orb, but I was no Skill Orb expert, so I had to make sure. When I analyzed the Skill Orb I received a bunch of information that my (Mental Operator) condensed down to this.

[Mana Well](Archetype Skill Orb)

This Archetype Skill Orb is the embodiment of the Skill: Mana Well. Mana Well provides a constant supply of pure mana directly from within the Mana Realm. This Archetype Skill Orb has had significant modification done to it to significantly increase the throughput of the Mana Well. In addition, an artificial spirit has been implanted into this Skill Orb, making this Skill Orb constantly output abundant amounts of mana.

It was a simple description, but it was like a bomb had dropped on my head. Pure mana wasn’t something easily obtained, especially not in such an abundant supply as I felt coming from this Skill Orb. And the fact that an artificial spirit had been implanted meant that it was as though the Skill Orb was constantly in use, negating the need for someone to be using the Skill Orb for it to be active.

As soon as I understood what its description implied, all thoughts of selling this Archetype Skill Orb fled from my mind. Forget about selling it, if others knew I had something like this, at best I would be ‘politely’ told to donate it, and at worst I might end up dead. This is just way too valuable.

If anyone else were to get their hands on something like this they might give up and toss away the Skill Orb in fear of being discovered. After all, it was almost impossible to hide a Skill Orb, because all Skill Orbs were easily identified once they were ‘observed’, and ‘observed’ meant that even something like my (Space-Time Sense) would be able to easily identify it. As such, others would find it almost impossible to hide a Skill Orb, but I was different, I had my Internal World, which no one, except the most adept space mages, would be able to peek inside of. So I encompassed as much of the Skill Orb with my hands as possible and teleported it into my Internal World as fast as possible.

It was so much easier to teleport it when I could hold it in my hands, even with the massive amounts of mana it was putting out. Then I did the same thing to the robot that had been chasing me; teleporting it, not putting my hands around it. It took a significant amount of time and mana to accomplish, but I stored it in its own separate space where it wouldn’t be able to interact with the other things within my Internal World.

By now my time on this level had finally come to an end, and I once again received the message from the System.

[Level 5 complete. All challenges have been met.]

[Would you like to enter level 6 of the Dungeon of Tribulation, or leave the dungeon?]

All except one of my emergency spell crystals are spent, and I am in no physical state to continue. If I were to continue I would have to be best buddies with Lady Luck, which I am not. Let’s get out of here.

“Leave the Dungeon.”

[Affirmative. Now leaving the dungeon. You will be transported to the reward room where you will be able to choose your rewards.]