“Alright. Here will be perfect.”

Liliei sighed, they had come on the first floor and had been walking for nearly one hour before Lenc had stopped. They were in the middle of a large plain filled with grass smaller than on the rest of the floor. The two suns were low on the horizon, each on one side, opposite of the other. It seemed that the cycle day-night on this floor was decided by how far from your apparition point you were and not just the eternal day she had thought.

“So why are we here exactly?”

“I want to test your Abilities, and try to see how to improve them.” He had turned to Nalaine to answer and then turned to Liliei. “So first, can you try to use your first Ability on me?”

“I doesn’t work if you already now that I’m here.”

“Just try it anyway, if it really doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.”

Shrugging, Liliei activated her Ability, powering it about halfway to the maximum she could. The vibrating mana covered her and went out in thin waves of mana. Lenc was looking at her from the moment she activated it and after a few seconds a frown appeared of his face and she perceived him using his Ability to increase his thinking. She just kept using her Ability, waiting for him to say something.

It took five minutes before he shook his head and told her to stop. Nalaine, who had gotten bored after a few minutes and was sitting while controlling a small fireball, turned her head as well.

“You’ve found how it works?”

The Demon had been frustrated to be unable to help Liliei with this Ability as she didn’t understand how it worked.

“Yes, I think I know,” his voice had a slight hesitation to it as he spoke, “but just to be sure, I’ll close my eyes, move a bit and use your Ability again.”

She did as she was told, placing herself a few meters to his left and using her Ability. He opened his eyes after one minute, turning his gaze all around and keeping it on Liliei as soon as he passed on her, a grin appearing on his face.

“Okay, I know. Your Ability sends waves of mana right?”

“Ye, it does, how do you know it?”, she hadn’t explained him how it worked yet.

“In fact what your Ability does is more complicated than that. It does sends waves of mana, but just doing that wouldn’t usually do anything. How it works is that it charge every wave with information that gets transmitted to the ones that are touched by the wave. Its effect is also extremely subtle, which means that it doesn’t get detected easily, but that once you are seen it doesn’t have much effect because then the information it gives is quickly dismissed by the brain since it knows that it’s false.”

This made Liliei think, if it was sending information, then maybe she could choose what to send. Then increasing the number of waves sent probably worked because it kept the information fresh and prevented the other sources from being considered.

“What information did it send?”

“Something akin to ‘there’s nothing interesting here’. It works pretty well, but I’m sure if you can find a way to adapt it to the situation, since if you know what you’re looking for, you can detect the difference.”

Lenc then turned to Nalaine who had been looking with an interested expression and they started talking while Liliei tried to improve her Ability. Now that she knew what to look for, it didn’t take long to find how to do it. She still had to act on the stream of mana that powered the Ability, but now she had to use her Intent to imprint what she wanted to transmit into the mana, before letting it go further. It really wasn’t hard and she was sure she had gotten the trick after a few tries.

She then turned to the two that were talking a few meters further. Nalaine was showing her Ability’s first Level and had some twenty spells of all sorts floating around her. A lot were fireballs but there were some ice shards, prepared lightning bolt, a distortion indicated an air blade and some rocks were also there. Each spell was probably quite weak for her to keep them all but it was still pretty impressive. Then Liliei had an idea, if she could change the information she sent, then maybe if she chose right.

Suddenly Nalaine turned around and every single spell she had prepared shot to a place a few meters behind her. She had fallen into a stance for fighting but after a second she relaxed and her expression turned to one of confusion.

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“What? I…”

Then Liliei was unable to stop herself anymore and started laughing. Nalaine turned to her with an incredulous expression.

“You did that?”

“Yes, why?”

“How did you do that, I mean, I suddenly felt like I would die if I didn’t shoot everything I had behind me.”

“That much? I used my Ability to send the idea of a danger being behind you, but I didn’t think it would be that much.”

If it was that effective, it could be quite useful, but she would have to find a way to exclude some people from the effects. However she also had to try improving her second Level, and she still didn’t understand how it worked. She asked Lenc if he could try to find like he did for the first Level, but he couldn’t get how it worked either, so she just tried to use it.

The Ability was acting a little like the other, creating a layer of mana all around her and sending it, but it worked in only one burst, and the amount of mana that was used was quite a bit higher. She tried looking at what exactly happened, but it was extremely fast and she couldn’t get it correctly. It seemed to be created in three layers and from what they had tested, as soon as the wave passed over someone, the effect stopped. But how…

“I know!”

The sudden shout from Lenc made he jump, startled, and she turned to him as he continued.

“Liliei, your Ability corrupt the information. The wave you send doesn’t act on the persons but on the information that go through. It probably change it so that it looks like what you want to show instead of what really happened.”, he then hesitated a second before finishing. “Let’s try something, use your second ability, but instead of just moving, try making a loud sound.”

Liliei did so, activating her Ability before immediately clapping her hands. And from the smile on Lenc’s face as the wave passed through him, he had found something.

“I think the things you should try to improve on this one is to slow the wave, and make it take more types of information in account. Because at the moment, it seems to only act on the sight, and sounds are ignored which means that other information is probably ignored too.”

“I’ll try that, and how’s it going with Nalaine?”

“I can’t help her much, since her Ability isn’t something I understand at all. I have no idea how it works, so for now she has to improve by herself.”

The Demon was sitting in the grass and visibly concentrating, a spell slowly appearing in front of her, before it suddenly disappeared in a flash and Nalaine made a disappointed expression.

They stayed there another two hours before deciding to do something else. Nalaine hadn’t been able to improve much – there was probably a trick to it that she hadn’t found yet. Liliei hadn’t had much progress either after the few things in the beginning. She hadn’t been able to modify the wave to make it act on anything else, and hadn’t been able to slow it down either – it seemed that it needed the speed to maintain its cohesion and fell apart if she slowed it. They ate something before going to the exit of the floor and instead of going back, they dived deeper, to the third floor.

This floor was the complete opposite of the previous one. It was a huge desert that extended without limit in every direction. It was completely flat, with the exception of one mountain far from where they had appeared. In the sky three suns, one red one yellow and one orange were turning slowly and created an incredible heat on the whole floor. As soon as they arrived, Nalaine used a spell to keep herself and Lenc protected from the heat – Liliei wasn’t bothered by it. Then they started walking in direction of the mountain.

Walking in the sand was quite tiring and they paused every twenty minutes for Nalaine and Lenc to recover. Liliei’s untiring body was quite an advantage in the dungeon, since most of the difficult environment didn’t affect her. They were around halfway to the mountain when Nalaine stopped them. The sand in front of the changed slightly, becoming a more orange tint than the yellow-white they had walked on until there.

“So, from here onward we’ll have to be more careful since monsters are going to appear. They’re mostly sandworms that hide under the sand and jump when you walk over, like this.”

She demonstrated by creating a fireball in her hand and launching it further. Just before hitting the ground, the spell exploded and all around it huge worms shot out of the sands before diving back down under the sand. They wouldn’t be large enough to eat one person whole but if you walked over one you would probably loose your leg, if you weren’t dragged under the sand with it. That wouldn’t be a pleasant way to go, and Liliei shivered just thinking about it. And that was only the third floor, just what would be further?

“If you look well you can see where they are since the sand make little depressions in the sand, but stay careful.”

The advice was more addressed to Liliei than Lenc since he had already passed this floor once and probably knew it. The girl looked around and she could effectively see the small holes in the sand as she followed just behind Nalaine.

They got to the mountain without incident and then began the climb. The circle was placed at the top and so they had to get there. The mountain was made of black rock and made the ascension even harder due to the heat it created. Liliei even began to feel it have an effect on her and Nalaine included her in the cooling spell. There was a small path that went from the bottom to the top and they followed it slowly. Sometimes a cave was present on the side of the path and they stopped for a moment without going further inside.

When Liliei asked, Nalaine explained that the caves were one of the danger area of the floor and that it was better not to go too far inside. It took nearly two hours to get to the top and the three were only too happy to exit that floor, directly going to the next one.

The place the three appeared was inside a huge hall. The place looked like what Liliei would have expected from the interior of a castle, everything was made of polished white and blue stone, with statues standing around the entrances and large tapestries hanging down on the walls. A large double stairway was giving access to a large balcony one floor higher with more entrances. On the walls large windows made of tinted glass let the light enter.

Liliei looked around with an astonished expression, she hadn’t expected that one of the floor would be inside instead of an open landscape like the first three. Beside her Nalaine had a wry smile as she announced.

“You have now passed the status of newbie Adventurer, and entered the first dangerous floor of the Dungeon, the Haunted Castle."