The room I entered after opening the door had the same basic layout as the room I started the dungeon in, just slightly larger. I tried to pull a book off the shelves to make sure that there was no weird gimmick on this floor. Like on the previous floor, the books did not budge. Grinning to myself, I flew forward and into the passageway straight ahead of me. On the other side of the passageway was a smaller room with three doors.

‘The layout of this floor looks slightly more complex than the previous one, but I guess that makes sense. I wonder what the main mechanic of this floor is. Last floor had that alarm system that triggered when I walked past those pedestals which made books become monsters and start attacking me.’ I tried to come up with predictions but gave up after a few minutes. ‘It’s no use dwelling on this, let’s just proceed through one of these doors and observe what happens. This way, I’ll be able to accustom myself to whatever this floor has to offer me. Following my reasoning from the last floor, I’ll take the right door and keep turning right until I either reach the stairs down or find a dead end. I hope the layout of this floor isn’t too complex as I don’t have anything to create a map on.’ I flew toward the door on my right and pulled the iron handle with my talons.

Behind the door was a long corridor lined with bookshelves. I flew down this corridor on high alert in case any books started falling from the bookshelves as they did on the last floor. Luckily, no books fell and I was able to make it to the end of the corridor without any issues. Once there, I saw that the path split into two other corridors, one to the right of me, and the other to my left. Without hesitation, I headed right and followed the corridor until I came across a door at the terminal side of the hallway. I pulled open the door and observed what was in the room.

It was a small room entirely surrounded by bookshelves indicating a dead end. Normally, I would have left the room immediately and backtracked to the last place I turned right, but something in the room caught my attention. A large mechanical figure, almost like a golem made of iron, moved around the room as if patrolling it. The figure was humanoid and almost entirely made of what I think is iron. It had swords instead of hands, a large gem in the center of its chest, and two empty sockets in its head for eyes I’d assume. I watched the figure move with intrigue as it continually turned when it reached the corners of the room.

‘That thing looks like some kind of security personnel given the way it is moving, but I can’t be 100 percent sure without actually engaging this thing in combat. Speaking of combat, if I was forced to battle this automaton, what would be the best place to target?’ I started thinking of potential weaknesses of this thing. ‘Perhaps the weak spot is the glowing gem in the chest? At least it seems like that is the only part of this thing that is not made of some kind of metal.’ As I was thinking this, the automaton was about to start walking toward the doorway where I was still hovering.

‘I have to decide right now whether to fight or flee to allow myself more time to observe this thing. Fighting would allow me to see the fighting capabilities of it while fleeing would be the slightly safer option as I would have more time to create a plan or way of approaching this situation.’ I went between the two options before making a choice. ‘The best thing to do now is to flee to allow me more time to conduct some reconnaissance on what this thing can do.’ I was about to turn around and fly away, but a loud siren sounded from behind me. The door in front of me closed, locking me in the small room.

I hurriedly turned around and saw that the automaton had already turned the corner and was staring straight at me with a red light appearing from its eye sockets. Following the alarm, two books fell from the shelves before turning into monsters. Unlike the previous two times, these books did not rush me immediately. I became a bit suspicious as to why they did not exhibit their usual behavior. I glared at the three enemies in front of me when suddenly, one of them took action. It was not the 2 books, but rather the automaton. A beam of red light appeared from its forehead heading directly at me. I was completely unable to dodge the beam and the red dot ended up landing directly on my body. As the beam did, I felt my body instantly become heavier and I had to exert more effort in maintaining my altitude than I did before.

‘Why did it suddenly become so hard to stay afloat? The only possible explanation is that the beam has some sort of property that weakens whoever it comes into contact with, but how is that possible?’ I thought to myself while still retaining a watchful eye on all of my enemies. Soon, I saw one of the books charging straight toward me as they had done on the first floor. I tried to dodge it as I had done before, but I was unable to dodge it completely. However, I did manage to avoid most of the damage to the point that I was only lightly grazed by the teeth of the book.

‘I see, so it is not just my ability to stay afloat, it is my entire ability to maneuver myself in the air. This will be a pain to deal with, but it should still be manageable.’ I preemptively moved to the left to dodge the book that I knew was coming from either above or below me. Moments later, a book whistled past me, entirely missing where I was. The other book was already turning around and preparing for another charge, while the automaton was slowly approaching me while clashing its two swords together. As it approached, I felt my body getting heavier and heavier.

‘So the effect gets stronger the closer it is to me. Good to know.’ I charged toward the furthest book and when I did, I felt my body getting lighter as I drew near to the book. The book tried charging at me, but I simply flew slightly upward before slamming my talons on the book as it passed me, dodging the attack and incapacitating the book. The book trembled for a short period of time before falling to the ground without any signs of life remaining.

The second book once again rushed toward me while the automaton took a step closer. I felt my movements slowing, but I was still able to dodge out of the way of the rush and retaliate with a crippling rake with my razor-sharp talons. My attack caused the book to fall out of the air and land on the ground with a hollow thud, never to move again.

The only enemy left in the room was the automaton which was still slowly walking at me. ‘How can I beat this thing? So far, the only thing I know for sure is that it possesses the ability to project a beam of light that debilitates whoever it lands on. I have no clue about how skilled it is with those swords or if it has any other way of dealing with opponents.’ I started thinking of possible strategies while backing away slowly. ‘Wait, I have an idea. If the beam only works on those it can see, what if I enter its blind spot by flying directly above it? It’s worth a try as it is the only plan I have in mind at the moment.’

I flapped my wings and slowly ascended. The automaton raised its head trying to follow my movements and keep the beam trained at me. I continued flying upward until I reached a satisfactory height before flying forward. As I did, I felt the pressure on my body increase, trying to drag me down to the floor, but I resisted and continued flying. When I was directly above the automaton, I felt the weight on my body completely disappear. Noticing this, I stopped flying and simply hovered in the air. I saw no red dot on my body, and when I looked down, I saw that the automaton could not turn its head any further.

‘Heh, so that’s its weakness. It can’t fully turn its head to look in the air. I should take advantage of this and start approaching from this angle so that the red dot can not focus on me, but where should I aim an attack?’ I quickly scanned the automaton’s body. ‘Probably that gem in the chest as it is the only place that seems somewhat vulnerable. I’ll have to use my beak to cause as much damage as possible in a small part of the body, namely the gem.’

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With that plan in mind, I started to begin the execution of said plan by diving straight down at the automaton. It tried to lift its head up to aim the red dot at me, but it could not lift it enough. I kept diving down until I got a clear glimpse of the gem in its chest. I changed my trajectory so that I would collide into it. The automaton tried to dodge my dive by moving to the left, but I managed to adjust the angle I was falling at to once again head straight at the gem. Moments later, my beak impaled the gem, causing cracks to appear all over the surface of the gem before it completely shattered. When it did, the light in the automaton’s eyes faded and it slowly fell to the ground. The battle was finished.

‘Phew, that was a rough battle. I never got to see what the automaton could do with its swords, but I didn’t want to risk it. If it got close enough for its swords to reach me, the weight on my body would probably prevent me from doing too much to avoid the attacks.’ I shock my wings to get rid of the dust that had been collecting on them. While I was doing that, the door behind me slowly creaked open, revealing the halfway I had entered to get to my current location. I went back into this corridor and simply backtracked until the path split again. I knew that heading left would eventually lead me back into the main room where I had started my exploration of this floor.

Not wanting to go into that room yet, so I headed straight into another corridor. At the end of this corridor was literally nothing, no room, no door, no enemies, just a wall of books. I checked for any secret entrances or passageways, but I found nothing, so I simply backtracked until I reached the large room with 3 doors. Following my strategy of always going right, I went into the door that was directly across from the entrance to the floor.

Inside the room, I saw bookshelves entirely surrounding the room, indicating a dead end, and another automaton patrolling around the area. This time, it was walking away from where I was flying, allowing me more time to think about how to deal with this situation. Ordinarily, I would just leave because there wasn’t a point in beating the enemy except to gain battle experience; however, there was a chest in the middle of the room. The chest was very captivating and I was curious about what was in the chest. As such, I decided to engage the enemy so that I could open the chest.

‘Now that I have a bit more time to think, what strategies can I come up with for dealing with this thing? I already have one strategy, but I always like to have a backup strategy in case one mysteriously fails. I also want to see how this thing uses its swords. How could I accomplish this goal?’ I began to come up with a few options, discarding ones that sound utterly ridiculous while combining the key ideas behind the ideas that sounded better to me.

‘This strategy could work… If my main goal is to see its sword-wielding capabilities, then my focus should be on disabling the beam that emerges from its forehead. When I think back to my first encounter with this automaton, the beam came from a small gem-like protrusion in the forehead. I could probably disable the beam if I inflicted enough damage to that gem. With that in mind, how can I get close enough to hit that gem in the first place? Perhaps if I flew above it and quickly dived at the gem from a place that it is unable to see? This is the best idea I can come up with right now, so I'll try it.’

The automaton had just turned around the third corner of the room and was soon to turn toward me. Not allowing it to see me, I flew up in the air and watched the automaton from the sky. Soon, it turned toward the door, but this time, it was unable to see me and simply kept walking along the bookshelves. It walked closer to where I was flying above, prompting me to spring into action.

I dived down at the automaton, aiming at the small gem in its forehead. The automaton, not realizing that something was amiss, simply kept walking forward. I was rapidly approaching it at this point and I would inevitably pierce the gem with my beak. Seconds passed and a shrill cracking sound echoed through the room followed by a shrill shring sound as the gem broke into pieces.

The automaton turned around and immediately spotted me, but it did not make the alarm that it made during my first encounter with this kind of enemy. Instead, it just readied its swords and approached me, ready to strike me down with its two sword-arms. Even though it was approaching, I simply hovered in place watching its movements. It was very slow-moving, but it held both swords in some kind of stance. When it reached me, it swung down its right arm before following that swing immediately with a horizontal slice with its left arm.

Reacting quickly to the attack, I quickly flapped my wings to the left, allowing me to dodge the downward swing. The horizontal swing proved to be harder to dodge as I was in an awkward position to dodge the attack as a result of flapping my wings to the left. I hurriedly retracted my wings and tipped my head down to swiftly drop altitude and avoid the horizontal attack. I narrowly avoided actual damage from the swing, but a few of my feathers were trimmed from my wings.

Seeing that I had dodged its attacks, it immediately unleashed a flurry of swings from all kinds of directions, hoping to make me dodge a certain direction before catching me off guard with the follow-up attack. However, I realized the main trick it was employing, and I avoided each attack easily. This continued for a few minutes before I got tired of the repetitious strikes and decided to end the battle. After the automaton finished its 2 consecutive strikes, I rushed toward the gem in its chest. The automaton crossed both its swords in front of its chest to guard against my attack; however, I was able to maneuver my body around the swords through a series of twists and turns before landing a clean hit on the gem causing it to shatter into fragments.

With the battle done, I went to the chest in the middle of the room and gingerly opened the chest while being careful of any traps that could be triggered by the chest. Nothing appeared from the chest so I pulled the lid back with my talons, unveiling the contents of the chest. There was a single golden ring lying at the bottom of the chest. I grabbed the ring with one of my talons, curious but wary of what the ring could do.

‘I’m not putting this ring on until I can be sure about what it does. I don’t trust randomly placed objects, especially in a sketchy place like this one. Who knows what this ring could do? It could be a regular ring or a ring enchanted with some kind of curse. I know that the latter is a possibility because I have seen such rings in my past life when I was still working with them, which was the worst idea I have ever made in my life.’ I flew back to the room with 3 doors and entered the only door that I had not opened yet.

The room behind that door was fairly boring as it was simply a small round enclosed by bookshelves. There was another door on the opposite end of the end, but nothing else other than books. Still cautious about the possibility of a trap triggering in the room, I slowly flew toward the door while constantly looking around the room for any sudden movements. In the end, this caution was for naught as there was nothing in the room. Sighing mentally, I placed my free talon on the door and slowly pulled it open.

In the next room was the next flight of stairs leading deeper into the dungeon. In front of the stairs was yet another automaton.

‘Another one of these? *Sigh* I’ll end this as quickly as I can then.’ I flew into the air and simply waited until it started to walk toward me. When it did, I quickly dove straight at the gem in its chest, quickly shattering it to pieces and causing the automaton to fall lifelessly onto the ground without even realizing that it was under attack.

‘Well, at least it was a much easier fight now that I know its weaknesses. Let’s just head down for now.’ I flew toward the stairs and began to follow them down. ‘I wonder how many floors this dungeon has.’ Soon, I reached the bottom of the stairs and like before, I saw a giant door blocking my way forward. Slightly above the door was a sign with “Final Floor, Floor 3” written on it.

‘So this is the final floor… I’m interested in how hard it will be and what mechanics this floor will challenge me with. Here it goes, time to clear this trial.’