“Ugh!” I groaned as I tried to breath in and felt my right shoulder spasm in pain, which hurt even more. I started to take more shallow breaths as I just laid on the now grassy ground which I now lay on.

I knew where I was without even opening my eyes, this was the waiting room before starting the Dungeon of Tribulation. This was confirmed by the System messages I received.

[System has now been fully unlocked]

[Dungeon of Tribulation needs a focus and challenges to be selected before it will begin]

[If no option is selected within 1 hour a choice will be selected by the System]

Great. I’m entering the Dungeon of Tribulation while severely injured and without many supplies. Doesn’t seem like a recipe for success.

I remembered back to the first time I had entered the Dungeon of Tribulation at age 25. Back then I had been fully decked out with some of the best gear the government had to offer, along with 5 other people. Even with all of that, our group of 6 only cleared the 5th floor of the Dungeon before it was decided that we should leave.

It puts into perspective just how hard the Dungeon of Tribulations is, and it was considered the easiest Tribulation to go through! It made me wonder how hard a Tribulation would be for something that couldn’t enter the Dungeon of Tribulation, either because it couldn’t move or didn’t know about it.

I was currently alone and severely injured without any gear. Any other 22 year old in my situation would be hard pressed to make it out alive let alone complete even the first level of the Dungeon of Tribulation.

Not me though. I had been training like a madman for the past 17 years and had past experience as well. If I didn’t rob the Dungeon for everything I could, then I would be severely disappointed with myself. It wasn’t that I was overestimating my abilities, if anything I was definitely being modest.

One couldn’t forget that one of the requirements to be sent to Lonevista Prison, even as a child, was to have the potential to be dangerously powerful in one way or another. One of the reasons why I was considered dangerously powerful compared to others was because of my clean and synergistic build, I was built to be multi-talented and be able to take advantage of anything I had available in order to survive and thrive.

This was because after I had died on Earth, and was given the chance to essentially customize my next life, I decided that instead of using my precious POINTS to modify where and how I would be born, I would instead give myself the greatest chance of survival no matter what situation I found myself in.

And my plan had worked. I had gotten myself out of the bleak and nearly hopeless situation of being imprisoned, suppressed, and mind controlled, by an overwhelmingly more powerful force. Sure it had taken me almost 200 years, but I had done it. I was lying on the ground severely injured waiting to enter a deadly dungeon, but I had done it.

Even as I lay here on the cold grass, my body was recovering from my injuries, my bruises and minor problems had already been healed in just the 5 minutes since I had come here. My (Physical Recovery II) Skill was in the active Skills and was working at full power. That Skill alone would be able to fix me up as good as new in about 4 days, if I was allowed to just sit here that is, but unfortunately I only had an hour before I was sent to the Dungeon of Tribulation whatever my situation was. With healing magic I would be able to heal up much faster, but seeing as I was nearly out of mana that would have to wait.

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I had nothing better to do while I was waiting for my mana, so took a look at the list of options for the Dungeon of Tribulation.

[Choose a focus for the Tribulation]

[Battle, Endurance, Stealth, Crafting, Survival, Information Gathering, Harvesting…]

The list went on and on, and when I chose the one I knew was most suitable for me it expanded into even more options.

[Focus chosen: Survival]

[Choose the challenges you will face, or go back and change the focus]

[The more challenges you choose the greater the rewards]

I wasn’t going to change the focus, since Survival was the best option for me, in my expert opinion, so I went on to choose the challenges.

[Less Starting Information, No System Loot, Hostile Environment, Time Requirement, Forced Task, Hostile Entities, Wider Difficulty Range, Champion Level Entity, Outside Time Sync, Solo]

Technically someone could choose to undertake only one challenge, and if they were alone like me then Solo was a free challenge for extra rewards. Of course Solo made it impossible to have any independent companions, so it wasn’t necessarily ‘free’ but for me it might as well be.

That said, taking 10 challenges at the same time was not recommended, but I was confident in taking on what I had chosen. There were challenges like Reduced Mana Regen, or Active Skills Only, but those kinds of challenges were not worth it for me.

[Solo challenge has been selected. No party forming possible.]

[You now have until the timer runs out to start the Dungeon of Tribulation or change your choices]

With everything ready I just waited there, on the ground, for my mana to recover. I wished that I could look at my Skills or something to distract me, then I remembered that I had my System fully unlocked. I could use the System to look at things instead of relying on divination magic, and so I pulled up my Skills to distract me.

[Active Skills/Powers 3/3]-

(Power: Accelerated Cloud Mental Operator; Evolution:0 Level: 68)

(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)-

Looking over everything I was proud of what I had accomplished over the past 17 years. Compared to others my age, I had about 2 times as many Skill levels. Sure they might have access to Skill orbs and other things, but nothing could beat the sheer amount of time and effort I had put into training my Skills.

At this point I was mostly trying to distract my mind from the pain I was feeling, and after 15 minutes from when I came here, I had enough mana to actually do something useful with. I focused on my shoulder and cast a spell to move everything into place and keep it there. Normally this would be followed up by a healing spell, but I could only let my (Physical Recovery II) do its work.

After doing this 2 more times for each of my legs, over the next 30 minutes, I was still in a lot of pain, but I was at least capable of some movement besides crawling. With another 10 minutes, 5 minutes before the timer was up, I converted what mana I had into Vitality and flexed my (Physical Recovery II) and consumed the Vitality to recover as much as I could before I entered the Dungeon of Tribulation. I would be in a hostile environment without any mana or equipment, but at least now I could run away if I needed to.

I was nervous as the timer ticked down towards 0, I had no clue what kind of environment I would end up in or what kind of enemies I would be facing, so I had every right to be nervous.

But I comforted myself by saying, “It’s only the first floor. I’ll survive no problem right?”

I confirmed my choices and was whisked away into the Dungeon of Tribulation.