When the three of them die a floating number made of light appears in the sky above me. The number is three of one thousand, so it would seem this is some sort of test or trial. Now that I know the rules I stop holding back and begin the massacre.

Even though they cannot hurt me at all, it still takes a while for me to kill all of them. When the last one dies and the number hits one thousand there is another flash of light. Once it passes I am back in front of the doors of the temple and there is a change on the weird stone.

The first of the ten symbols is now glowing, so I guess that means I passed the first of ten tests. From that it would seem that I need to pass all ten tests to unlock the temple of earth. If they are all combat tests then it should be easy enough, although they should get harder.

'Lizzy, how long was I gone?'

Lizzy 'Gone? What do you mean gone? You have just stood there with your hand on the stone for five minutes.'

Giving Lizzy a surprised look I quickly explain to her what happened from my point of view. From what she said it would seem only my consciousness was pulled into the test. Since that is the case then most likely even if I were to die in the test I wouldn't die for real.

With that in mind I press my hand against the stone and again a flash of light takes me elsewhere. This time I find myself in the middle of a huge graveyard, I cannot see any end to it. Judging from the location, I am totally hoping for undead because they are easy.

Again the symbol appears in the air and then slowly fades away, I am guessing this is basically a preparation period. Not that I really need to prepare anything, but normal people trying this would. I wonder if there is a way for me to take this stone with me, it would be awesome for training troops.

When I have cleared all ten tests I will see if I can separate it from the temple doors. Finally, the countdown ends and the symbol disappears, then I sense movement. Looking around I quickly spot my opponents as they pull themselves out of their graves.

They are skeletons, but from their armor and weapons, I am guessing they are skeletal knights or something similar. They are slow moving so I end up standing there waiting for them to come to me for a few minutes. Once they are nicely crowded around me I cast Holy Light and watch them all turn to ash.

Instantly the number in the sky appears and goes straight to five hundred out of five hundred. With a flash I am back in front of the temple and the stone now has two glowing symbols. Instantly I press my hand down again to start the third test, this is just too easy.

Just as I am getting overconfident I find myself in a completely different situation than I was expecting. Instead of being somewhere out in the open, I am instead standing in a gateway. Ahead of me I can see open plains, but behind me there is a city full of women and children.

As the glowing symbol appears I quickly figure out what is going to happen. Since the city has nothing but women and children I obviously am going to have to protect them. This test is probably going to be me protecting the gate until I have killed a certain number of enemies.

Sure enough as soon as the symbol disappears enemies appear and start rushing towards me. However, I quickly notice that instead of a kill counter floating above me it is a timer. It is counting down from one hour, so it isn't about how many I can kill, it is whether I can hold on long enough.

The enemies this time appear to be orcs, but I can see no end to them. There are already thousands rushing towards me, so I draw Blitz and get ready to fight. All I have to do is keep any orcs from getting past me for an hour, it shouldn't be too hard.

Unfortunately, as I kill the orcs, their bodies disappear, which means I can't use my normal wall of bodies tactic. Instead I just have to keep swinging Blitz for the entire hour to pass the test. With my endurance, swinging Blitz for an hour is easy, if somewhat boring.

However, this does give me some hope that the later tests will be more interesting. Considering the orcs are literally endless I don't even bother trying to keep track of how many I kill. I just simply kill anything that comes within Blitz's reach and wait for the timer to count down.

When the timer hits zero there is a flash of light and I am back before the temple doors. Without even stopping to take a breath I press my hand down and get taken into the fourth test. As soon as the flash passes I splash down into cold water, making me rather unhappy.

Looking around I spot a tiny island and swim over to it so I can climb out of the water. This time there is no floating preparation symbol, instead there is a map with two dots flashing. One appears to be me which means the other must be my goal, beneath the map there is an empty bar.

Figuring out the direction of the goal I leap into the air and start flapping my wings. Instantly a powerful force pushes me down into the water, apparently there is no flying allowed. So instead I start swimming in the direction of the goal, as I do I notice the bar slowly filling up.

It appears to be a progress bar, meaning I have to swim around enough to fill it before reaching the goal. Or at least that is what I am guessing based on what I have learned so far. Judging by how slowly the progress bar is filling, I need to swim at least a few hundred miles.

'Just keep swimming, just keep swimming!'

Suddenly, a huge mouth comes up from below and swallows me whole. However, I had been expecting something like this to happen, after all just swimming isn't much of a test. So as the mouth is closing around me I draw Blitz and use whirlwind attack.

Instantly the thing that swallowed me is cut in half and the water becomes blood filled. Knowing what I do about sharks I expect more things to be attracted by the blood. Wanting to be able to see, I swim out of the blood as quickly as I can.

Once clear of the blood I can finally see the thing that tried to eat me, it looks like a cross between a whale and a squid. While it is definitely dead, there is still movement within the blood, probably smaller things eating the body. Looking around I can see several large shadows in the water that seem to be heading this way.

Not wanting to become part of the local food chain I quickly resume swimming towards the goal. Unfortunately, since I am covered in blood, several things decide that I am food. Each time I kill one it just attracts more hungry things, this test isn't simple.