Linus was at school having his first class of the day given by Ms Winter. When the class was finished, he waited for everyone to leave before approaching Ms Winters. When she noticed him approaching she asked what he needed her for. Linus answered:

"Ms Winter, I am currently trying to train my pet's new skill, it is a mental defence skill that helps in tempering her mind against mental influences but to do she needs to resist different kinds of mental influences. Do you know of a way to train against different kinds of mental influences which don't cost any money so that I can train my pet's new skill?"

Ms Winter thought for a bit, before responding:

"Training your pet's new skill which requires experiencing and resisting a variety of skills can only be done by either spending money at the Pet trainer association or the Pet teacher association when looking in reality. There does however exist a place in the digital world where pet trainers and pets can experience different kinds of illusions, mind attacks and mind control skills. The only type of defensive skills, that need to be trained by experiencing external influences, that can be trained in the digital world are mental defence skills.

You will have to enter the digital world together with your pet and train in the openly available illusionary mists which trap people and their pets inside a misty plain which contains beasts from the iron to silver rank who specialize in illusions, mind attack and mind control skills.

Training there will exhaust your and your pet's mind swiftly so only train there for an hour daily. I will give you access to a special virtual room of our school that allows the entry of both pet trainers and pets into the digital world so that you don't have to go to the Pet cultivator association after school for this. This access will be available to you for the entire school day until the National examination so that you can also do other things in the digital world that requires your pet."

Linus thanked her and immediately made use of the privilege he was given by her to enter a special virtual world and enter the digital world with Nyx. He didn't plan to train in the illusionary mists today as Nyx has yet to learn the skill mind mirror to novice mastery which will probably take another four days according to her current progress.

Linus planned on challenging the nine realms of hell now, to experience it first and see if he even has the chance to complete it before the National examination. He teleported to Blood city which is a virtual city established by Blood Shura solely to accommodate his trial, nine realms of hell.

After arriving, Linus noticed that the city was deserted except for the few people present. When he passed a person, he asked for directions to the trial and why the city was deserted. His questions were curtly answered and he received directions while also learning that the city was deserted due to everyone knowing that the trial will not be passed while the only people present in the city use the trial as a training ground to train their pets against stronger opponents as people who fail the trial will have to restart from the first realm upon reentering making the trial a refreshable training ground that grows with the pet trainer's increase in strength.

Linus made his way towards the trial and arrived before a massive portal flanked by nine devils which each represented a realm. Currently, three devils could be seen lighted up meaning that at least someone was currently challenging the third realm and that this was the highest realm that was being challenged at the moment.

After checking that both he and Nyx were ready he entered the portal. Upon entering, he appeared in a deserted valley without any signs of life except for one figure which looks like a devil but is the first realm's challenge.

The devil started speaking: "Welcome challenger, This is the first realm of hell where you will have to win against me to advance to the second realm or return to your realm as a failure."

It then summoned an LVL 8 iron rank grey wolf which was also an iron rank race. Nyx was already summoned out by Linus thus the fight began immediately when the grey wolf was summoned.

Nyx was the first to attack and used dark petal in conjunction with sharp blossoming to generate a wave of sharp dark petals that the wolf and devil couldn't avoid. The grey wolf immediately defended itself and its trainer by using a skill that any wolf pet can learn, wolf howl. Wolf howl generated a sound wave which resisted the wave of dark petals for the most part. Only some dark petals had made it through leaving some shallow cuts on the devil and grey wolf.

The grey wolf then counterattacked by aggressively rushing towards Nyx with swift speed. Nyx couldn't dodge due to her limited agility and used dark petal together with charming petals to create multiple waves of dark petals with some scents attached to them. The wolf avoided the first wave, but couldn't do the same for the second and third resulting in it using wolf howl again to resist the waves of dark petals.

This time no new wounds appeared, but it inhaled some of the scents and started feeling a bit disoriented and confused, before the devil could react it started rushing again but this time a bit away from Nyx and Linus opening up some more distance. Nyx used that to her advantage and attacked again with multiple waves of dark petal combined with sharp blossoming and charming petals.

The grey wolf which had been affected by the scents had become sluggish and couldn't defend itself on time even after the devil commanded it. Many tiny cuts then started appearing on the wolf's skin but it shouldn't incapacitate the grey wolf and the devil ordered it to attack again as it had awoken from its sluggish state due to the pain.

Unfortunately, when it tried to move, it collapsed on the ground unable to move while yelping in pain. Nyx then finished the battle using her dark petal on the devil to kill it. When the devil died, Linus and Nyx saw a portal appear and they entered the second realm through it after completing the first realm within two minutes.

Nyx had won so easily by catching the grey wolf and devil off guard with its charming petals and the darkness energy imbued in the dark petals aggravating and invading the grey wolf's wounds.

Linus was, however, surprised by the grey wolf's strength as it like Nyx was only at LVL 8 iron rank and an iron rank race. The grey wolf they had to fight had been nurtured according to the highest standards while its skills were all expert mastery. During the fight, it used the skill wolf howl to resist Nyx's expert mastery of dark petal and perfected sharp blossoming combination. While it had also trained two passive skills increasing its skin's defence and speed making the grey wolf deadly if it had been able to reach him or Nyx.

This first trial realm already required Nyx to use all her skills to win, then Linus wonders if they can even reach the fourth trial during this first challenge as otherwise completing all nine trials within less than a month time would almost be impossible in Linus's eyes.

When they appeared in the second realm, they stood in front of a small town wall with a devil next to them. The devil immediately started speaking: "Challenger welcome to the second realm of hell, here you will face a beast horde capable of destroying the town behind you. To reach the next realm, you will have to defend this town wall and kill all the beasts attacking from this direction alone."

The devil then disappeared and a small horde of fifty beasts started storming towards the wall from the direction he was facing. The beast horde existed out of three types of beasts all at LVL 8 iron rank. Those beast types were iron tusk boars, swift spiders and ground lizards.

The iron tusk boars were charging at the front with their strengthened iron tusks and thick hides, swift spiders were flanking right behind the iron tusk boars while the ground lizards were the slowest following behind the two other species.

Nyx was a bit flustered by having to face such a quantity of beasts at once, but didn't shy away under Linus's command and immediately started unleashing waves of dark petals through the combination of dark petal, charming petals and sharp blossoming.

The beast horde couldn't defend itself like the grey wolf and they rushed in the waves of dark petals which Nyx didn't stop unleashing at any moment. The boars managed to charge through with their thick hide filled with cuts and their wounds invaded with darkness energy, but their charge didn't end and still headed towards the wall.

The spiders used the boards as a shield against the petals, but they couldn't all be avoided resulting in half the spiders becoming incapacitated or killed and the other half still moving forward.

The ground lizards were the least affected and only had some cuts while they easily resisted the invading darkness energy. Linus didn't panic due to the lesser results and ordered Nyx to start focusing on the swift spiders as they were the greatest danger and had to be eliminated first as they can climb over the wall while the boars and lizards couldn't break the wall immediately.

By the time, the boars reached the wall and rammed their tusks in the wall started shuddering but didn't collapse. They hadn't reached their best charging speed due to the petals in their way while the scents made all the boars slow-minded that they couldn't accelerate anymore, unfortunately, their charging instincts are so ingrained that they kept charging.

The spiders on the other hand were almost all incapacitated or killed with only a few reaching the wall, but within seconds they too were dealt with by Nyx. By that time, the lizards had arrived before the wall too and started attacking the wall together with the boars.

The initial charge of the iron tusk boars had already moderately damaged the wall but now they weren't damaging the wall anymore minimizing their threat. The newly arrived ground lizards on the other hand were different. They could control the earth element and started rocks after rock chipping away at the wall bit by bit until it will collapse while a layer of rocks surrounded their sturdy scales, locking their positions.

Linus quickly noticed the threat and had Nyx focus on the ground lizards by trying to incapacitate them with charming petals as the petals wouldn't be capable of penetrating their rock defence even with sharp blossoming. Normally Linus would avoid or escape from such opponents or beasts as their strong defence was exchanged for their mobility allowing him to do so. Unfortunately now, this wasn't the case and he could only rely on Nyx to incapacitate them with her charming petals skill.

Within the first minutes, no changes occur but by the time the second minute, some ground lizards stopped attacking or accidentally attacked some iron tusk boars or another ground lizard. This resulted in some boars attacking the lizards penetrating their rock defences with their iron tusks.

This opportunity was capitalised by Linus and Nyx, who started trying to confuse the lizards into attacking the boars. This successfully worked out and all boars started targeting the less numerous and immobile lizards. Nyx then played fisherman by covering their battlefield with waves of dark petals further wounding both the boars and wounded lizards until all collapsed or died.

Linus and Nyx then finished off the remaining beasts who were incapacitated but still alive from their wounds. They had completed the second realm as the portal to the third realm appeared. Linus and Nyx were, however, pushed to their limits and would have failed if the beasts had been more intelligent.

Nyx was currently extremely exhausted from fighting against the beast horde and releasing her petals while sharpening and producing scents while imbuing them with darkness energy. The only reason she had held on was her tenacious will developed from her hellish training and the skill enhanced dark cells that allowed her to convert darkness energy into a life force which she had stored beforehand from cultivating in the contract space.

After five minutes of resting inside the energy pool of the shadow kingdom, Nyx recovered fully and after absorbing dark shadow energy for another 10 minutes, she had restored her previous amount of stored life force that allowed her physique to continuously use her petal combination.

Linus was ready to face the next challenge, but his current mood was sombre as he finally faced the reality of Nyx's shortcomings. Her attack isn't powerful enough even after combining very well mastered skills to penetrate strong defences compared to other beasts who were of the same racial rank like the iron tusk boar who only have a single method of attack which was either a novice or proficient mastery, or the ground lizard who could control the earth element to squash their enemies with rocks.

Nyx's petals could only cut minor wounds and required a lot of them to incapacitate or kill her opponents, if they hadn't been guided by the old man then the petals wouldn't even be capable of wounding those boar hides except for ineffective small cuts, now the accumulated wounds were at least effective due to the invasion of the darkness energy, but that wouldn't always work.

It could be said that Linus had been lucky until now that charming petals and the invading darkness had been effective or Nyx would long have been finished off by beasts of the same rank and level. The only reason she beat the pets at school was that they were still young pets that hadn't matured while their combat experience is next to nothing compared to Nyx and wild beasts who continuously faced stronger opponents or lived in the wilderness.

Now that she had fully recovered, Linus and she left the second realm by entering the portal. When they arrived in the third realm, they appeared in a similar place as the first realm with a devil standing in front of them.

The devil started speaking: "Congratulations challenger for reaching the third realm of hell, here you will have to face a mirror copy of yourself and your pets who will be controlled and commanded by me. To complete this realm you will have to kill all your copies and prove that you are better than me in battle."

Then a copy of Linus and Nyx appeared before them indicating the start of the third trial realm. Both Nyx and her copy attacked using the dark petal combination in conjunction with sharp blossoming and charming petals. When both attacks hit, they were equal in power and blocked the advancement of the other wave of dark petals.