Emily bees a whirlwind of violence, her arms fshing out, finding the oints between the hobgoblins’ armour before digging Cws into their soft flesh. They try to fight back, shing out with bdes that she deflects gracefully before closing the distawee a speed they barely react to.

  She disassembles the squad quickly, c the floor with their dirty blood before log her arget and dashing forward, leaving fifteen dying hobgoblins to slowly melt bato the floor. Lightning s her legs, letting her cover the gap between her and the group in an instant. The five shield-bearers in the squad line up to block her, log their shields together while the polearms behind them jut forwards to pierce her as she approaches.

  Emily simply crouches a little before springing up, clearing the shields and spinning in the air, releasing the Cws’ bdes aing them whip out, slig through the hobgoblins below her. The shield-bearers fall with their heads split open as Emily nds, deftly weaving the wires of the bdes around the spearmen beside her and filling them with maa, increasing their sharpness before retrag them.

  The wires cerate the hobgoblins, ripping apart their armour and flesh. She pushes forward as the bdes click bato pce before burying them into the throats of the remaining squad members.

  She falls into a sistent rhythm, systematically taking apart every squad one by one and obliterating the remaining goblins with her arcs. The st hobgoblin falls from Emily’s bdes as she lowers her arms, letting them slide out of its stomach. She looks around, taking in the empty chamber.

  “Am I done?” she mutters, gng at her mana and stamina reserves. “My body’s improved so much that, even after I’ve burhrough half my mana, I’m barely short of breath. Hell, I only lost twenty stamina.”

  The chamber shakes as the gates slide shut and the torches ge to a natural e glow, bringing ao the horde. Emily looks around for the door to move on to the chamber, but she doesn’t see anything.

  Weird, is the trial not done?

  She notices an unnatural glow spreading from the tre of the chamber with the same blood-red hue as the torches before. It grows to fill half the chamber with its light, and Emily reises the pattern as a rge-scale array. She keeps her back to the nearby wall, watg in fasation as a red haze slowly drifts up from the massive magic circle. The mana around her grows unstable, and a strange feeling of pressure envelopes her, as if crushing the air from her lungs.

  Frowning, Emily tries to cast a spell, but the moment her mana leaves her body it distorts, bending and twisting in strange ways, f her to divert more of her focus to correct it. The spell still forms, a crag bolt arg out and smming into the floor a few metres ahead of her, but it takes over twice as long as it usually would.

  “It’s a widespread magihibition zone,” she mutters with wonder, stepping closer to ihe runes f the circle.

  As she approaches, a low rumble fills the chamber, and a bubbling bck mass rises in the tre of the room. She pauses and lowers into a bat stance as the mass grows, morphing into a t humanoid figure. The bck liquid solidifies, taking on a dull, stone-like finish. It slowly gains definition, holes f in the head to create an uling face with ay, gaping maw and abyssal eyes.

  The bck stone giant fis birth after a few moments and slowly turns, its empty gaze falling on Emily.

  “What are you?” she says with curiosity, beginning the slow casting of four fireballs as she starts slowly cirg the creature.

  The thirty-metre-tall being doesn’t respond. However, the moment Emily’s mana flows out of her body and begins to form magic circles, it raises its thick arm with surprising speed and points towards her. Its fingers suddenly grow, shooting out and pierg her magic circles, ripping the mana structs to pieces.

  “Tsk,” Emily clicks her tongue and sprints away, avoiding the sharp spears of rock that fall towards her after breaking her spells. “It doesn’t seem to wao cast spells.”

  The creature follows her body with its eyes, drawing back its fingers and bending its legs. It springs forward, creating a thundering crash with each footfall, closing the distaweeo crush Emily.

  Grinning, Emily moves forward to meet it, internally casting an acceleratiohat meets ance from the inhibition zone and s her legs with lightning. She runs through the giant’s legs, sshing a Cw along its ahe metal bde bites into the dark stone, crag with maa and cutting a lihrough. She skids to a halt, spinning around and killing her momentum with a knee against the ground and the spikes on her boots extended.

  The stone giant pauses its charge, smming a foot down to instantly halt its momentum before slowly rotating unnaturally at the waist to face Emily again.

  It’s fast, but it's slow at turning.

  Emily ptes the creature as she watches the gash she left behind being quickly filled with more bck liquid that quickly solidifies, removing any sign of the wound.

  “Tsk,” she clicks her toh a frown. “And it regees small injuries.”

  She tries to summon a mana grenade from her belt but finds it slow to appear, also affected by the mana inhibition zone.

  Damn it.

  Emily charges the greh maa, turning the small metal orb into a brightly crag harbinger of destru before angrily hurling it up at the creature’s chest. Sensing the dahe creature quickly raises its arm, blog the projectile as it fractures, spewing fmes aal shards that tear streaks through the stone limb and cause cracks to form along it.

  A small satisfied smirk starts to form on Emily’s face before the arm simply liquefies itself and reforms as good as new.

  “And big injuries?” she mutters with slight fusion. “Wait, is it a golem?”

  She dodges as the golem sms its arm down towards her, smashing it against the ground with a loud bang that shakes the room.

  If it is, I just o destroy the core.

  With newfound fidence, Emily starts summoning the Whisper from her ste as she sprints through the golem’s legs again to dey its attaarrowly slippiween a sudden wall of spikes that shoot from its ao try to skewer her. She keeps running, creating distaween herself and the giant struct as a sleek bck rifle appears in her hands.

  Reag the chamber’s wall, she spins back to face it and raises the Whisper. She flicks the firior into full, lighting up the barrel with a green glow before l her finger onto the trigger and squeezing. A small crad a light hiss, barely audible to the unenhanced ear, follow as a bullet flies out, almost instantly eg with the golem’s head. A narrow hole appears from the creature’s forehead straight through to the back of its skull.

  The golem barely flihe hole in its head closing up as it pulls back its arm before thrusting it forward. The sturdy bck storansforms into a torrent of pressurised viscous liquid that bsts towards Emily. Reag quickly, she digs her heels in and leaps to the side. Unfortunately, she’s a moment too te and the stream catches her foot, sendiumbling to the ground with a harsh crag sound and a burning pain fring in her right leg.

  “Shit!” she yells angrily as her gun ctters away and she rolls to a stop.

  Pushing off the ground quickly, Emily gnces down and sees her leg twisted at an awkward angle, her foot fag backwards and her boot heavily damaged. She snarls angrily, lightning crag betweeeeth as she grits them and stands up, activating all eight iors along her spine, sending a flood of healing potion into her veins.

  Her leg slowly knits itself back together, her aating bato pce as she leaps towards her dropped on with the other, narrowly avoiding a spike of rock shooting towards her from the golem’s extended arm. Making a snap decision, Emily shuts off the paiors in her leg temporarily as she runs along the chamber wall, splitting the trol of her upper and lower body between multiple threads to maintain a perfect gait while rag the Whisper’s bolt and taking aim at the golem’s chest.

  She pulls the trigger three more times, abs the kickback without breakiride and b three more holes in a line across the golem’s tre mass. It barely reacts to any of them, tinuing to swipe at her with its malleable arms to no avail.

  It’s too big to find the core with normal bullets. I o de amount of damage quickly to find it.

  Dropping and sliding under another arg swipe from her oppo, Emily pulls the Whisper’s bolt bad flicks the mag release, dropping the useless ammo from the gun before she reaches into her belt and pulls out anazih a small, ornate fme engraved on the side. She sms the new mag home, rag the bolt to chamber a bullet before aiming the gun at the golem’s head.

  She takes a deep breath and pulls the trigger before rag the bolt and adjusting her aim agai shoulder, thorax, right shoulder, stomach, left hip, right hip. She sends seven bullets out in rapid succession. The first shot reaches its target as the st leaves the barrel. The hollow bullet crumples against the giant stone body with devastating force, the impact alone sending a web of cracks across the stone as the fractured bullet digs in regardless. The real impaes at almost the same moment, when the rurag the metal projectile break, triggering the explosive mix within.

  A thunderous explosis out as the stone head is blown to pieces, shards of bck rock being flung across the room. , the golem’s left arm falls off, its shoulder disappearing in a ball of fire. Then, the tre of its chest caves in, a burning, several-metre-wide hole puhrough to the other side. Its right arm falls , and anaping hole appears through the golem’s gut.

  Finally, as a heavy explosion rips through the oversized struct's left hip, Emily hears a clear shattering sound, almost drowned out by the explosions but still disible to her sensitive hearing. The golem starts to lose its form, its step towards Emily halting as it starts melting bato a liquid state, starting from the destroyed hip, like blood seeping from a grievous wound. The st bullet hits as the stone has begun to liquefy, cutting straight through with ease and exploding against the wall behind the dying golem.

  Emily pauses in her sprint the moment the creature starts to dissolve, l her rifle as she no longer senses any danger from the dying golem. The red circle on the floor fades as the golem melts into it, and Emily lets out a small breath of relief as its pressure vanishes.

  “o self: having my casting blocked feels gross,” she mutters with a small, victorious grin.

  She chooses not to rex her caution pletely, still aware she is inside a dungeon, and keeps the Whisper in her hands. She reloads the gun, filling it with normal ammunition again and pg the explosive bullets ba her belt before resting it against her shoulder.

  “It was worth using normal fire crystals instead of lesser in these. That firepower erfect,” she says as she g the web of cracks in the chamber wall, still repairing after the st explosion. “It’s a shame I ’t trol the breakdown of a greater crystal yet.”

  She shivers slightly at the memory of a greater fire crystal blowing her room to pieces as time ground to a halt, The Clock saving her from the aftermath of her own experiment. As she shakes the memory away, Emily feels the mana in the room bubble with purpose, gathering in the tre. Her gaze follows it to where she sees a rge, bck chest rising from the ground.

  Is that my reward, or another challenge?

  She steps forward to answer her question, wing slightly as she reactivates the paiors in her right leg. Accepting the buzzing pain tellihat she isn’t fully healed, she approaches the pin bck chest, poking it with the barrel of the Whisper without attempting to open it. When nothing happens, she tries pulling up a system information window and sighs with relief as it works.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  [Dungeo]

  [Rank:] E

  [Description:] A reward chest for pleting a dungeon’s trial.

  ______

  The expnation is brief, but it reassures her that the trial is over, so Emily lowers her gun and reaches out, pushing open the heavy metal lid. A bright light washes out of the chest, blinding her for a moment before her eyes adjust. At the bottom is a yer e, greater mana crystals of various elements, and sitting above them, drawing Emily’s focus, is a ring. It has a seemingly simple design, just a thin band of greeal. However, as Emily looks closer she realises the metal is actually a bluish-silver, mythril, with a dense mass of tiny green runes c it.

  “Incredible,” she mutters, pig up the ring and admiring the craftsmanship of the fine engravings while ing all the mana crystals with a yer of space mana and sending them straight into her belt.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  [Air Walker]

  [Rank:] E

  [Description:] A ring engraved with an easy-to-use flight spell.

  [Effect:] Upon activation, allows the user to step freely on the air around them.

  _____

  Her eyes light up at the description, a giddy grin parting her lips.

  “Jackpot! I couldn’t find anything about flight spells in the library,” she says while st the Whisper and sliding the ring ontht pointer finger.

  The mana in the room moves again, and the chest morphs into a swirling portal, but Emily ig.

  Instead, she els mana into the ring, lighting up the runes around it before taking a step forward and watg wind mana flow from the ring to form an invisible ptform along her sole. Her foot freezes teimetres away from the floor, allowio step off the ground onto the nothingness above. Grinning, she takes oep after another, slowly climbing into the air. After rising teres, Emily removes the mana flowing into the ring, but it keeps p out wind mana on its own, and her step freezes teimetres lower tha. She keeps walking, slowly l to the ground where the ring’s runes go dull again, losing their pale glow.

  “So it drains twice as much mana as each step o lower you down afterwards,” Emily mutters, analysing the fun of the ring.

  She tries attributing her mana before iing it into the ring, p in wind mana and finding herself able to trol it still after it leaves the ring. She gathers it around her foot when it’s fifteeimetres off the ground this time and steps up. She repeats this a few times, stepping up varyis before cutting off the mana and finding herself l by the same odd distances each time.

  “So I gain more trol, but still not plete trol. I’ll decipher these ruer to make my owhen give this ring to Jules. This will be helpful for someohout the ability to pletely split their focus between multiple spells.”

  The walls of the chamber start to break apart as she finishes her tests, falling away to reveal the same void as wheered. Getting the message, Emily finally turns to the portal and steps through to rejoin her friends outside.

  KeroKeron