Mila
Congratulations!
Trial Tower Tournament Round III is over.
You have made it to the top 512.
Reward: Total Accumulated Trial Points X 2
Current Total Accumulated Trial Points: 10,433,641,778,615,987,424
Mila felt quite accomplished after the coran man died. She’d used American Sign Language’s sign for trap when activating the special ability of Devil’s Contract, warning the man about the hidden clauses she was adding as required by the skill, and the man hadn’t been any the wiser.
Still, she’d been lucky. The man could have not accepted and insisted on a trade without a formal contract, but he’d perceived her as weak and, like many a human man before him, he’d paid the price for underestimating her.
Mila then spent the next twelve hours meditating before the System message for the fourth round showed up.
Trial Tower Tournament Round IV is starting.
Randomly generating competition.
Dungeon Dive competition chosen.
You and your opponent will each appear in a different trial instance where you will need to pass a series of challenges, consisting of puzzles, trap rooms, fights against groups of weaker monsters, and fights against a single strong monster.
Whoever passes all twelve challenges first wins, gains all the belongings of the other trial taker, and has their trial points doubled.
Mila was again impressed by the System’s use of English, as the way the term dungeon was being used was barely even in the dictionary. But she didn’t have enough time to dwell on her feelings, as the first challenge involved fighting a small group of chimera-looking beasts and they were all beyond her, forcing her to use a vial of plague and wait.
Less than a half hour later, the beasts had all died in her instance, but the System informed her that her opponent had already finished the entire dungeon and she found herself waking up in the soul well, somehow not at all sore from lying there for weeks.
Trial Tower Tournament Round IV has ended with your loss.
Total Accumulated Trial Points: 10,433,641,778,615,987,424
Congratulations!
Your rank in the F rank Trial Tower is 257.
All in all, things went better than they’d expected. Had Aalam not fallen unconscious, they likely would have only gotten half the points and rank 513, as pretty much everyone in the top 1500, if not the top 2000, was stronger than Aalam even in the Id state.
Still, though, Mila would have preferred Aalam not to get tortured.
She looked over at him on the stone bed next to hers and sighed.
Then, checking the amount of lust-filled souls in Aalam’s Small Soul Storage soulstructure, she decided to go hunting to get more souls, giving Isaiah permission to go hunt in better locations for him when she met him on her way out.
The Trial Tower for her was over, but she couldn’t choose her rewards until the Trial Tower was fully over and 256 others chose their rewards first.
This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it
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Krysta
Krysta La’Vordi sent out five spatial slices and her opponent, a demonic warrior holding a giant war hammer, was cut into seven pieces.
Congratulations!
Trial Tower Tournament Round XII is over.
You are the top ranked cultivator of the Trial Tower
Reward: Total Accumulated Trial Points X 2
Total Accumulated Trial Points: 18,858,988,781,568
Then, she got one more message.
Congratulations!
Your rank in the F rank Trial Tower is 1.
Standing up from the automated boosting platform she’d spent the entire Trial Tower lying on, Krysta saw her mother smiling at her, the only other person in the room.
Joma La’Vordi was a human with yellow eyes, long mossy green dreadlocks down to the middle of her back, and dark brown skin like Krysta’s. She was a little over ten million years old, but she looked maybe a year or two older than Krysta, and the yellow sundress she was wearing made her look even younger.
“So, how was the experience?”
“I actually lost!” Krysta almost jumped up and down with excitement, but her mother looked confused.
“What do you mean?” Her mother waved her hand and a list of trial takers and their ranks materialized in the air, each letter drawn by a tiny floating vine. It showed Krysta’s name in first place. “The System gave your rank as first.”
“Yeah, I won the tournament.” Krysta nodded. “But in the third Free For All Kill For All, this handsome masked man managed to kill me.”
Krysta looked at the floating list, recognizing over half the names in the top 2024 from the information on possible trial takers she’d looked at before the Trial Tower started. Then she focused on those who ranked the highest for each batch of losers in the tournament section, aware that a plague master in Trial VII likely would have earned far more points than she had.
“He’s probably that one.” She pointed at the rank 257 cultivator, Shadow, an obvious alias. “He’s an odd secretive man following the path of the Heavenly Spark. Most of his stats were barely boosted, but his Spirit was almost as high as my Magic, and he was an absolute genius. Just from watching me, he advanced one space Law Larva to middle grade. I think Vacuum. Then, to save himself so he could successfully trap me, he advanced another of his Law Larvae, Multi-Dimensional Geometry, to high grade, meaning he must have been suppressing its advancement for a while.”
Her mother frowned, looking slightly confused. “His advancement of space Laws allowed him to beat you?”
Krysta realized her mother needed more context, so she explained more about what happened during the third Free For All Kill For All, ending with a smile. “Then I burned to death.”
“So, he’s someone following the path of the Heavenly Spark with a Heroic grade class at F rank and he probably would have succeeded at making it to E rank had he not fought you.” Her mother sounded contemplative. “What a waste of a genius.”
“I thought so too at first, but isn’t it admirable to follow the path you enjoy?” Krysta had a big smile on her face. “And his aura was so stable due to his path. I couldn’t read his emotions at all.”
“Yes.” Her mother nodded, but there was a stern look on her face. “But it is also incredibly risky and usually results in a weaker cultivator. Take this Shadow for example, he was obviously suppressing his advancement in Multi-Dimensional Geometry, one of the most difficult yet powerful space Laws. Most likely this means his natural affinity and inclination for this Law is so high that, while bringing his other Law Larvae up to middle grade, just his passive insights gave him enough understanding to raise his Law Larva of Multi-Dimensional Geometry to high grade.
“Given that level of talent, were he to have focused on just his Law Larva of Multi-Dimensional Geometry instead, it likely would have reached peak grade already, and one peak grade Law Larva has more practical use than even 36 middle grade Law Larvae.
“With 36 Laws, you’re just too likely to run into a bottleneck. There is a reason no one has ever been able to make it past E rank with a Heavenly Spark class, and most of those geniuses who tried chose an Epic grade Heavenly Spark class at F rank, the lowest available, two full grades lower than this Shadow.”
Her mother smiled warmly and reached out to pat Krysta’s head. “You enjoy alchemy and you’ve raised your Law of Cells up to a Law Larva as a result. In the future, you might even take an alternate route of class advancement due to this love when you reach B or A rank, but you’re not limited by it if you ever change your mind while you are still a child.”
Krysta thought about it for a second. “But my talent for spatial Laws comes from my race and bloodline. What if someone instead had a race which was good at all Laws?”
“All Laws?” Her mother appeared contemplative. “For someone with Laws like this Shadow, maybe if he was an Order Dragon he might be able to pull it off for a couple ranks, or maybe a strong soul variant of a race with weaker balanced Laws.”
Her mother’s eyes suddenly widened, as if she’d just realized something. “Those domain skills. And you said he had the Legendary grade Danger Sense skill as well.” Her mother then frowned slightly. “But he has Heroic grade Telekinesis and Runescriber. He would need…” She started to smile. “Oh.”
Krysta frowned. “Care to explain?”
Joma looked at her daughter and started laughing. “This new friend of yours might actually have a decent plan for advancing with a Heavenly Spark class. Most likely, his race is a strong soul variant, probably a strong soul human of some kind. This would give him two full classes from F rank, and, given Runescriber is one of his skills, his second class is likely the Heroic grade Advanced Void Sage. With his Telekinesis and Runescriber skills, he would have 13 skill slots remaining, and these remaining skill slots could then be used to train up 13 different sensory and domain skills which could be used to merge a skill which I only know as theoretical at F rank, Sensory Domain.
“With that skill, learning Laws would be slightly easier, and the advantages when doing alchemy or crafting artifacts would be immense.” Her mother turned and started walking out of the room. “I’ve just been inspired, dear. It might be a few months until I come out of the lab. Keep training and maintain your momentum.”
With that, her mom disappeared, and Krysta, who was very used to this type of action after years of it happening, decided to look at the System notification which was counting down the time she had to exclusively choose rewards from the Trial Tower.
There wasn’t really much she wanted, being the child of one of the best alchemists in the universe making rare materials and unique treasures easy to come by, but then she looked at the cultivation manuals section and smiled, an awesome idea coming to her so she could see the deep-voiced man again.