Continuing on from the last time, another hour had passed by, and more PROGRESS had been made! Now Diana’s down to the last 2 layers!

Overall, this puzzle has been quite fun! The challenge imposed by this puzzle was hard, but it was also fair. It gets a bit tedious over time, but all in all, it was very interesting. She’ll most likely give it a good 8.3 on the famitsu score.

Oh! Also, Slimey’s finally back! She didn’t know from where, but he’s back! He won’t do much though.

Crystal and Rei were back at it again, and Crystal’s not complaining as much since Diana wasn’t singing out lout anymore, but still, they hadn’t completely matched up the mirrors yet. PROGRESS has been made though!

“Got it! One more left to go~!”

Second last layer was done, now onto the very last one! I wonder if she’s going to get a three star, since she her speed at completing this puzzle could be considered quite fast, by normal standards anyways.

Oh, on a random note, her [Bubble Magic] levelled up again! It didn’t do much, of course. This was just a party trick after all. But could there be some kind of upgraded version of this magic after she maxed the level out?

But, even if there wasn’t any, she’d still get some [Skill Points] back to spend, so that’s a plus! The available skills to purchase this time was just too good to lose! Her [Slime: Corrosive!] was one of them!

[Slime Cloning]

Costs 30 Skill Points to unlock

It’s in the name. It allows the user to create a clone of themselves. The clone can perform anything the caster could do normally, including casting magic, but the power output is lowered as more clones are created. It’s kinda the Shadow Clone Jutsu from Naruto, but instead of Chakra, it uses mana. The mana cost depends on the level.

[Slime: Hardening!]

Costs 30 Skill Points to unlock

This skill allows the user to apply increased toughness and durability to their slime. At first, the effect is very minor, but the effect increases as the skill grows. The toughness of the slime depends on the user’s magic. This effect obviously breaks when it comes in contact with magic, so don’t go blocking any magic spells with this.

[Slime: Scorching!]

Costs 30 Skill Points to unlock

Just like the name, this allows the user to apply heat to the user’s slime. Despite its name, this does not make the user’s slime burn by any means, but adds a searing heat into it that can be felt on contact. The power of the effect increases as the skill levels. It’s a bit boring, but it’s effective, so that’s nice.

Yep, as I said, all of these new exclusive skills were too good to lose! Sadly, she didn’t have enough [Skill Points] to unlock any of them, and she highly doubted that she would get enough to purchase all of them, but there’s still hope!

Well, it depends if her maxing out [Bubble Magic] would grant her enough [Skill Points] to be worth the effort. It is a party trick in the end, so she wasn’t expecting that many points to be earned from this.

Well, there was also-, oh, hey! She just finished the last layer! Alright then, first puzzle of the third challenge, completed! Ooh~, and there was even a congratulatory message that was given for her! She couldn’t read it though! Luckily, she has her obligatory translator!

“Crystal! Read it!”

“Ugh…’Congratulations on finishing this puzzle. Your speed of completion was commendable, and I have prepared a reward. Finish the rest of the puzzles, and it shall be yours.’”

“Oho~! That’s awesome!”

See! Even the creator of this place praised her for her speed! But, she’s not done yet! There were still ‘Two?’ puzzles left to solve, and she wouldn’t be getting her reward if she stayed here all day long.

Next, was the mirror puzzle thingy, but she wouldn’t be helping in aligning the mirrors. No, no. Instead, she’ll be trying to find the way on how to light the damn cannon. Because, even if all the mirrors were aligned, they still wouldn’t be able to complete the puzzle if they couldn’t fire the thing in the first place!

Well, she couldn’t see anything in the room that could potentially light the cannon, or the torch in that manner. Perhaps it was hidden somewhere? Like in the corners, or behind some hidden wall, or some-, oh, she found something inside the cannon barrel.

“This is…”

From the inside of the cannon barrel, she found herself a nice smooth rod of metal. What metal, she did not know, but when it comes to this, an idea immediately struck her mind!

‘A flint and Steel!’

Yep, that’s right! A flint and steel would most likely do the trick! If she could find the flint, then she could just put them in her crafting grid and, bam! Fire created! Then again, where could she find a piece of flint? It’s not like there was any gravel around here.

Well, it didn’t have to be flint, any rock with a sharp edge should work too, but having a portable piece of flint would be much easier. So she started looking around, searching for any flint, or any sharp rock for that matter.

But there was none! This room was too clean! There were no sharp edges of the wall, the floor was perfectly flat and smooth, even the stone table from earlier was too smooth to be used for creating a spark!

But! Just because there were no sharp edges to be found, didn’t mean she couldn’t create one! With her iron wand in hand, she walked over to the edge of the stone table, and gave it a nice whack!

*Bak!*

……Nope, it didn’t break. Huh. Maybe she couldn’t create a sharp edge after all…No! Let’s not get discouraged first! The stone might just be really hard! Okay, one more swing, up, and down it goes!

*Bak!*

…Nope. Still not broken. Well, seems like the stone really is that strong. Or, maybe she was just too weak? Oh! Then how about Rei? She should be able to destroy this stone in a flash!

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Rei! Can you help for a moment?”

“…?”

“Can you try and break this stone?”

“…Okay.”

*BAK!!!*

Woah! That was one hell of a chop! But, still, even with the incredibly powerful ghoul that is Rei, the stone table was still living its life! Its Haki was too strong for her to break through!

“…Sorry.”

“No, no! It’s fine!”

But, if even Rei couldn’t break it, then what can? She didn’t want to go through the arduous work of trying to find this flint somewhere, but if she couldn’t create any sharp stone to use the metal on, then she’s left with no choi-

“Aha! I got it!”

And that was when, a genius idea struck her mind like Pikachu’s Thunderbolt! If she couldn’t sharpen the rock with brute force, then why not magic?! And she had the perfect tool to do just that!

With a whiff of magic, she created a coat of slime on the edge of the table, and applied her corrosion onto it! Yep, she’s going to try and corrode the edge to make it sharper!

And…it’s not working? Actually, no. It was working, just really, really slowly. Like, a dent was created every 30 seconds or so. Well, it’s really slow, and boring to watch, but it works!

Now, all she needed to do was wait! And while waiting, why not continue training her [Bubble Magic], just hella case the skill reaches the max level before she leaves this room. Hopefully! Since she’s pretty much dying to purchase one of those exclusive skills!

After 15 minutes of rigorous bubble playing, she, didn’t get a level up on her skill, but the sharp edge she was creating was now done and ready to be used. Now, all she needed was to create a spark and light the torch!

Snatching the torch from the wall, she brought it close to the sharp edge of the table she made and struck her rod of metal against it! Sadly, she was really bad at actually doing it, so no sparks were made, at all.

She did light the torch after several tries, but the metal rod she was using was badly scratched and chipped from the many clumsy hits and strikes she made. It’s fine though, because she got the fire!

The odd thing was…Why was it burning to the right?!

She wasn’t a master physicist, but even she knew that fire should burn up, not to the right! She’ll just leave it as ‘It’s Magic, man!’ and move on.

Next problem, how was she supposed to light the cannon again? The hole leading to the rope she needed to light was smaller than her pinky finger, so trying to jam the torch into the hole was a big no no.

Actually, that wasn’t that big of a problem, was it? She could just let the fire into the hole, and since the fire burns to the right, not up, there was no danger of getting herself burned, so that’s a big plus!

“Alright, here you go-

*BAM!!*

“Uwah?!”

I…Pretty sure there was supposed to be a delay before firing, but it worked, so she’s not complaining! And luckily, the mirrors weren’t aligned towards anything, so the big mana cannonball it fired didn’t hit anyone.

Crystal was really pissed though because of that, but just ignore her.

But, Crystal’s annoyance aside, she’d found the way to light the cannon, now all the was left was to align the mirrors, and complete this second puzzle! This time, she’ll help them align the mirrors, because they’re quite terrible at doing this.

With Diana, the legendary ‘ProDavin888’, the puzzle was quickly resolved, and the mirrors were precisely aligned from start to finish in just a mere hour. It wasn’t that hard, much easier than the rotating puzzle she did just minutes ago, but there were still about 30 or so mirrors that she needed to align correctly. Nonetheless, that’s now done too, and it’s time to fire the cannon again!

“Fire~!!”

*BAM!!*

A loud explosion rang out as the cannonball flew at high speeds, making contact and bouncing off the mirrors, until it finally hit the star they had been aiming for! The star shook and exploded into many tiny pieces, which meant, puzzle completed!

But, even with those two puzzles finished, the challenge didn’t seem to be over yet, which meant, that the giant hourglass over there was a puzzle after all. But what was the puzzle?

‘The path is brought by a torch, as the remnants of what was once lost ignites once more. The ashes of the fallen shall rise again, as the flame blazes alight. The light returns as the hands of time move by.’

‘A being bound by time, I am not. Obtuse, I am not, reflected upon the Night. I watch on, as the sand continues to cycle, following and followed by the hands of time.’

These two hints were the ones who had a mention relating to ‘Time’, which an hourglass would normally be associated with. And even then, the biggest clue to it lies in the second one, where it stated that ‘The sand continues to cycle, following and followed by the hands of time.’

Was there some hidden meaning behind those words? A metaphor perhaps? Both Crystal and Rei didn’t have a single clue about it, so that’s a dead end. Or could it mean that literally? Like, as in a clock? But there weren’t any clocks around here-

“Aha! I remembered something!”

And then, it struck her! Sure, there weren’t any clocks here, but there was a clock! Back in the first hint room, there was a clock hanging there, with both hands stuck on the number 10!

The number itself didn’t matter that much, that’s just a red herring. But with both hands stuck on 10, that meant that the clock wasn’t moving! And remember, ‘Following and followed by the hands of time’!

If the clock from before wasn’t moving, that meant that the hourglass right here needed to follow it and stop flowing!

Oh, but wait. How was she going to stop the hourglass? The sand that was flowing inside of it seems to be infinite, flowing out of the drains once it reaches the bottom as new sand comes out from the holes at the top.

…Wait up! Holes! There were holes inside the hourglass, which meant that-!

‘Yeah! This should work!’

“Hey, so? Have an idea, dumbass?”

“Yep~! Give me sec!”

There were holes on the top and bottom of the hourglass, and her mission was to try and halt the sand from moving. There might be some kind of contraption the creator put in to somehow stop it, but she’ll do it her own way!

And with her trademark slime!

“Hap!”

First up, apply [Slime: Corrosive!], next create some slime and let the corrosion take place! Her plan was plain and simple, use her corrosive slime to drill down and create a path into the holes on the hourglass. After that, jam some slime in and stop the hourglass!

Thing is, the corrosion she had was pretty weak, so this would take a while. As she waited, she decided to play with her [Bubble Magic] some more, while also having a pleasant chat with Rei, about food, again.

And just like always, Crystal was looking as annoyed as ever, and Slimey’s just havin’ fun, goofing around and hopping all over the place. He seems over excited about something.

“…Hot, dog?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty much a sausage put in between bread! I haven’t eaten one in a while, but it’s pretty good!”

“…Cook?”

“Well…I’m not that good at cooking, so…”

Right now, the two were having a pleasant chat about this interesting genre of food called ‘American Food’. After Diana mentioned about her home state of America, Rei immediately asked about what kind of food there was there.

It was interesting to know of this country called ‘America’. It was surely not a country she had ever heard in her lifetime. And from what she had heard, the food there seems pretty great! She would love to take a visit one day, but Diana said that it was impossibly far away. If only she knew that America didn’t even exist in this world…

After they finished talking about American food, they jumped onto desserts, and this magical item Diana described as an ‘Ice Cream’. Could this literally be flavoured ice? But there was also cream, but doesn’t taste disgusting then? Rei couldn’t wrap her head around this magical invention! It was too complex!

And before she knew it, her slime had dug down into the channels leading to the holes! Now, with all ready and set, she conjured a huge amount of slime, and crammed it all into the hole, guiding up through the channels and into the hourglass!

Once inside, she spread the slime out and made it cover all the holes that were sucking out the sand! Yep, that’s right! She planned to fill the hourglass until it couldn’t fill anymore!

In no time, the hourglass quickly filled up, until it was completely full to its brim! Just like that, the third puzzle of the challenge had been comple-

*Crack!*

“…Um…Is it, cracking?”

“…Un.”

*Crack!!*

Eh…Is this bad? The glass was cracking, but…it should be fine, I suppose? *Crack!!* Ah, it just cracked again…Well, this looks very dangerous, so she should probably get out of he-

*CRACK!!!*

“Oh crap!”

Since this was getting unsafe, Diana and the rest decided to safely hide at the farthest corner of the room, just in case that thing breaks and glass flies everywhere. Wait, if that happened, wouldn’t the sand also fly out?

*CRACK!!!!!*

Ara, the sand was starting to spill out…This, wasn’t looking good.

*BOOOOOMM!!!!!*

“Kya?!”

And with a flash, the glass broke, and sand came flying out like a storm! In, like, half a second, the entire room was covered in sand. Not filled, just covered. Still, everything was now covered under a thick layer of sand…Heh, suppose you could call this…a ‘Sand storm!’ Hah! Get it?! Since the sand came flying out like a storm, and it was sand, so, haha…haha…hah…

Well, everyone was covered in the sand, so this would probably take a while to get off…

But hey! Challenge completed!