Ch.191The Emperor’s Trial

The location of the Emperor’s Trial was about an hour and a half away from the Silver Wolf tribe’s village.

From the outside, it appeared to be just a small cave in the shade of a hill, but after going a little further inside, there was a steep pit that descended about 10 meters.

“This is the entrance to the testing grounds. Inside, you can use any tactics or strategies you want, but if you leave without obtaining the Emperor’s token, you’ll be considered disqualified. Just keep that in mind.”

“Aren’t you coming in with me? Didn’t you say you’d monitor for cheating?”

“No comment on that. Let’s just say I have ways to monitor without following you directly.”

With that answer, Mag stood with his arms crossed, urging me to get started. I carefully entered the pit and began descending the slope, illuminating the way ahead with my lantern.

After passing through the long downward path, a cool breeze welcomed me to an underground cave that stretched out ahead.

Unlike the pitch-black descent, the inside of the cave wasn’t as dark. Looking up, I could see why.

“I thought it was an underground cave, but it’s actually a crevice in the earth. It’s nice that it’s not completely dark since it’s open all the way to the top.”

Perhaps Mag was watching me from above with a telescope or some other means.

Confirming that visibility wouldn’t be an issue, I turned off my lantern, attached it to my bag, and drew my revolver in my right hand as I slowly moved forward.

There was no need to carry Wolfsbane from the start, as it was a weapon meant for delivering the final blow to lycanthropes.

After advancing slowly for about 5 minutes, my first opponent finally appeared.

‘Rumble’

With the sound of rolling stones, worms emerged from the rock walls on both sides, wriggling through.

They looked similar in appearance and size to the ones I’d encountered in the Black Forge mine, but their body color seemed slightly different.

‘Bang! Bang! Bang!’

The worms’ attack methods included shooting out stones they had swallowed while burrowing through the ground, or swinging their rubber tube-like bodies to deliver heavy blows.

If I stayed far enough from the rock walls, I wouldn’t be in danger of their swinging attacks, and as long as I kept them in sight, I could calmly intercept them with my gun.

‘Screech!’

The worms hit by my bullets sprayed unpleasant green fluid as they went limp, impaled against the rock walls, and perished.

Come to think of it, I’d heard that worms rarely mutate into monsters, so it made sense that the worms I encountered here were ordinary wild species.

The intermittent worm attacks subsided after I had taken down about ten of them. The surrounding rock walls were dotted with holes just under a meter in diameter.

My next opponents would undoubtedly be something waiting for prey inside those holes.

‘It’s tense not knowing what might jump out. Spider or ant species? Or maybe…’

For better or worse, I soon got my answer about the enemy’s identity.

From one of the holes in the rock wall, a shiny spherical object that looked like an iron ball rolled out and fell to the canyon floor.

‘Boom-‘

“Wow…”

At first, I thought it was some kind of trap, but the object that looked like an iron ball rolled forward a bit, then unfolded its curled body and began crawling toward me using dozens of legs.

It appeared to be some kind of pillbug or roly-poly creature with an armor-like exoskeleton.

‘Bang! Bang!’

‘Ting-‘

The white magic bullets bounced off helplessly at even slightly bad angles.

Indeed… to defeat multiple insects with such hard exoskeletons would require considerable skill or a specific ability.

‘If I could hit them with a skill shot at the right angle, I might be able to penetrate that hard shell… but the problem is their number’

There were only three pill bugs approaching me at the moment, but the wall ahead had more than 10 holes.

Even calculating one bug per hole, that would be at least 13 creatures.

If I used skills to deal with each one individually, my mana wouldn’t hold out, and I had to consider that this was just the beginning of the trial.

“I guess I’ll have to test this…”

After careful consideration, I pulled out the magic bomb that Mina had made for me.

The round frame encasing the core mechanism of the flame explosion formula, shaped like a gyroscope, was helpfully labeled with detailed specifications.

[Explosion radius: 5 meters, Recharge time: 30 minutes, Activates 3 seconds after pressing the switch]

“A diameter of 10 meters… that’s a wider range than I expected.”

I wasn’t sure how powerful it was, but if I could lure as many as possible into the blast radius, a drive hunt wouldn’t be impossible.

I held the revolver in my left hand and the bomb in my right as I began running toward the wall riddled with holes.

~ ~ ~ Above the Testing Grounds ~ ~ ~

‘Boom~’

“Oh, he’s doing better than I expected.”

The sound of explosions echoed from the long crevice.

Mag looked down through his telescope at Will battling the pill bugs, a satisfied smile on his face.

Those pill bug monsters, called “Roly Crawlies,” had a fearsome fighting style that belied their cute name.

The Roly Crawly’s attack pattern was to protect itself with its steel-like exoskeleton while quickly rolling toward prey to break their shin bones.

Once the prey fell to the ground, it would make a low jump toward the skull.

Having one’s head cracked open and brain devoured was the fate of warriors who fell to Roly Crawlies.

‘Boom~’

Against such fearsome monsters, the pioneer adventurer was fighting quite well.

Although the explosive magic he used lacked the power to penetrate the Roly Crawlies’ armor and deal damage, the shock waves from the ground explosions pushed and scattered the rolling Roly Crawlies in all directions.

When their rolling trajectory was forcibly altered like that, they lost their sense of direction and revealed the Roly Crawlies’ weakness by unfolding from their ball shape and flipping over.

The adventurer didn’t miss that momentary opening, firing magic bullets from his revolver into the soft underside of the Roly Crawlies.

“Usually, the trick to flipping a Roly Crawly is to strike it from the side with good timing as it rolls toward you… but for a human, that strategy isn’t bad either.”

With the mediocre strength and leg power of humans, it would be difficult to knock a 20-kilogram iron ball rolling at high speed off its course.

Because of that, Mag had thought this nest of Roly Crawlies would be where the challenger named Will would first taste defeat, but his prediction had been proven wrong.

“Well, up to this point is just a matter of combat sense, so it’s possible to pass even without any special skills. But the next area won’t be so easy.”

Even as he said this, Mag couldn’t help but feel excited to see how far this human adventurer could progress through the Emperor’s Trial.

~ ~ ~ Testing Grounds, Third Area ~ ~ ~

“Oh… Mina would love to see this.”

Beyond the rock wall riddled with pill bug nests was a cave covered in glittering crystals.

The floor, walls, and ceiling were all covered with blue crystals, creating an illusion of being inside an ice cave.

“Surely this isn’t a test to overcome greed. There must be some monster that will jump out here too, right?”

The Silver Wolf tribe’s trial was meant to evaluate one’s capacity as a warrior.

If so, I had to assume that some monster that couldn’t be defeated with mediocre skills was hiding in this beautiful crystal cave.

And that assumption proved correct, through the activation of my danger detection skill warning me of a life-threatening situation.

‘From the upper right…!?’

I aimed my revolver toward the killing intent I sensed in the slowed time, but I was slightly taken aback when I couldn’t see the monster or even any projectile coming toward me.

“Ugh…!”

Killing intent approaching in real-time from seemingly empty space.

I gave up on attacking and decided to focus on evading the invisible attack.

Whether it was some formless curse or something difficult to see with the naked eye like a blade of wind, the scale of the killing intent was clearly detectable, making it not too difficult to avoid.

‘Whoosh’

‘Something passed by, creating air pressure. It’s an object with mass.’

As I tried to track the clear presence that had just brushed past me, another wave of killing intent descended from behind.

Again, there was nothing visible but the killing intent in empty space.

I narrowly avoided it using the same technique I’d use against a Strike Falcon, and fired three magic bullets.

‘Bang-bang-bang!’

“Kyaaaah!!”

When the three magic bullets from my revolver hit a point in the empty air, fragments of light shattered like glass in a rainbow of colors, revealing a bizarre creature in mid-air.

Looking closely at its form as it collided with the cave wall and sprawled on the floor, I saw it was a bat covered entirely in a glittering crystal texture.

‘Bang!’

“Kiek…”

After delivering the final blow to the glass-like bat, its glittering body turned a dull black.

“A bat with camouflage and invisibility abilities, plus it makes no sound… without my danger detection skill, I would have been done for.”

I leaned against the crystal wall and reloaded my revolver with magic bullets.

To protect myself from these invisible attackers, my revolver needed to be kept in perfect readiness at all times.

“Let’s take this slowly. If they come at me one or two at a time, it doesn’t matter how many are left.”

I didn’t know how many invisible bats were hiding in this cave, but if I handled them calmly, they wouldn’t be an insurmountable obstacle.

Muttering to myself as if to stay composed, I slowly made my way deeper into the cave.