“Making my way downtown, walking fast, faces pass and I'm homebound~ Staring blankly ahead just making my way, making a way, through the crow-w-w-d. FUCK THIS SHIT WHAT CROWD WHAT DOWNTOWN COULD THEY CHANGE THE BGM ALREADY.” I shouted.

It was already the 30th time this track has been played. Usually on adventures, one could choose to turn on or off the background music as they wish. However, it was between mundane silence or this same old song over and over and over and over and FUCKING over again. And I was still walking to the next clearing.

-Breadtalk-

“Alright I'm beginning to see a pattern here. First a cat for the boots, then a porcupine for the spiky mace, a snake for the rope and now a swordfish for the fucking spear? AM I BECOMING AN AWESOME ZOOKEEPER?” I asked Loki.

“Yes all of them are animals but isn't that a good thing?” He answered.

“Yea I love animals but now that I know what they truly are, I really can appreciate the fact that I stuffed a swordfish into Soup's asshole and all but isn't this animal abuse?”

“They have two forms. Just make sure you stick the spear inside the ass not the swordfish.”

“Oh well I guess you're right.”

My task at hand now was to master throwing swordfishes at dartboards. The fourth weapon which was the exploding spear was a swordfish called Pointy. Pointy summoned smaller swordfishes for me to throw at dartboards. I had to hit the bullseye ten times in a row before he was happy enough to consider me as a pass.

It looks like all the animals were just playing with me. They did not have outrageous tasks. They just wanted me to play with them and build rapport with them I guess. Belieber did come running towards me the moment I found fish in the fridge. Porky the Porcupine (Not pig) was happy with me the moment I managed to putt him through 18 holes of a golf course. (Pun intended) Anaconda the snake just needed me to do yoga with her to pass me. My Anaconda don't want none unless I got flexibility hun. Trust me they weren't easy but the moment they saw me put effort into it, they accepted me. But then again we did have our fair share of epic moments together.

I was ready to throw my fifth bullseye in the row when suddenly Pointy asked me.

“Is your dick more blunt or pointy?”

“What?”

“Just wondering.”

It's okay it looks like we all share the same wavelengths. There was nothing off limits and too random to ask when bonding together as a family.

“Pointy.” I replied.

-Soup-

Tens of thousands of wolves now lay at my feet.

“Time?”

“Two hours and thirty minutes. Well done.” Fenrir replied.

“AWOOOOOOOO!” I howled while doing the moonwalk on all fours. It was a neat trick I realised I could do. I added a few crotch humps as well.

“Not good enough though. I have a feeling Jinx and Breadtalk would be able to do as much. Beathoven might be able to do it too depending on what Hel teaches him.”

“I've taught you to become one of us, a lycan and now your race is no longer human. You've unlocked all the prerequisites to unlock this new class I can confer to you. This new class will be an addition to your gladiator class so don't worry your skills wont be reset. I'm gonna teach you the basics of the class and then you'll repeat the same trial you just did. This time with a time limit of 30 minutes.” Fenrir continued.

“AWOOOOOOOOO!”

“You're just like a fucking dog now.”

“AWOOOOOOOOOOOOOF!”

-Beathoven-

“Surtr sit!”

He sat cross legged on the ground.

“Come here!”

He vanished and reappeared into the nearest torch which was beside me. Surtr had a special ability to be able to teleport to any fire source in the world. (OP! FUCKING OP! But all hail the fire god.)

“Twerk!”

He began shaking his ass until it became a blazing inferno.

“Come on now is that really necessary?” Commented Hel.

“Here's your favourite part! Catch!”

I threw a bar of Cadbury at Surtr and his eyes gleamed with happiness and even cried. His tears were also made of fire.

“Alright you've achieved complete control of Surtr. I'm amazed to be honest. I thought no one could tame that troublemaker except me but oh well I guess chocolate lovers bond together faster than two mythical beings who are on the same wavelength. Alright please take note the contract between me and Surtr which also applies to you is that you can only summon him once a day. The duration is dependent on how long you are able to maintain and play that melody. Remember the moment you stop or miss a note, Surtr will be unsummoned in the next minute no matter what. Then you can only summon him again the next day.”

I was not surprised at the contract. In order to summon Surtr, I had to play an insanely hard song which I had no doubt I would be unable to play in real life. I could only manage this in RR because of my insane wisdom stats which were all I've been adding to since level 1 as well as my concentration and stamina stats which were raised because of the vigorous duration of music I had to play. In a perfect scenario, I could only imagine being able to summon Surtr for 4 hours. However, being able to summon a mythical fire beast with powers rivaling a god was more than I could ask for. But in reality, the moment I missed a note that was it. I had to learn how to make the best out of it.

“I understand master. Thank you for teaching me such an important song. I will make sure all my enemies burn in the fiery hell Surtr will unleash upon them and make your underworld even more populated.” I thanked Hel.

“Don't thank me just yet. I still got about 3 hours worth of time here before I go back. There's something else I can still teach you.”

I trembled in excitement as Surtr said his goodbyes and vanished because I stopped playing the moment I tossed the chocolate bar to him.

“Don't worry. It's a song as useful as the one used to summon Surtr.” She said, winking at me.

-Jinx-

*turns off BGM music*

I couldn't take it anymore. I had been walking for about two hours non stop, just to reach a fuckin-

Suddenly I saw it. A break in the path. My sacred land. My holy palace. My utopia. My paradise.

“MY CLEARING!!!!!” I yelled as I ran towards it, excited to take on my final challenge.

The moment I stepped inside it, the air around me changed. Suddenly, a figure appeared before me, enshrouded in a huge dark cloak, smelling of death and with my heigtened intuition gained from the trial, I could tell that he was made of darkness mana so compressed, so pure, it was the darkest black mana I've ever seen. Of course I only could see mana this way since the first trial so I had no comparison to this but I could tell without even looking that this being was someone who was insanely powerful and affilated with darkness.

“Good Afternoon Jinx. I am the master of this forest. I will only appear before an individual who has passed the first three tests. You have already passed the trials and have learnt much more about mana manipulation ever since you stepped into the forest. This is not a trial. This is something you should call a gift. In this clearing, I will summon monsters of a high quality for you to battle against. Monster after monster will come after you and of course I will adjust both the quantity and quality. You will not know how many rounds there will be. You will be given a fixed amount of 40000 mana and 10000 health at the start of every round. No more, no less. Defeat every single monster until this ends. You have already completed the forest of no return. This is just a bonus round I give everyone who has passed it. However, no one has reached the end of this bonus round except for one extraordinary gentlemen. Then again only three people have ever had the privilege to attend this. Do not waste this chance. Let us begin.

Before I could even say a word, the shrouded figure floated up into the air, to the side of the clearing and raised his hands up in the air.

*Poof*

Suddenly, ten king cobras were in the same clearing as I am, circling me as I was surrounded. Suddenly, I realised how much the training changed me. I could literally sense the quality and amount of mana coming towards me. Purity due to compression or dispersion was still not as clear but it was enough. I could tell that poison mana was being prepared to be spit out at me. All 10 of them had mana the colour of black and blue, darkness and water mixed together which were the basis of poison mana.

The 10 snakes shot their mana at me but I already prepared my countermeasure. I teleported the instant I saw the mana leave their mouth and reappeared behind one of the snakes, out of the circle I was enclosed in. I took out my sword, got ready my gravity crush and decided to use compression to see what happened. A gravity crush that usually took only about 100 mana cost me 500 mana. The effects were devastating as well. The hovering head was smashed into the ground so hard that it's head got buried into the ground and it was stuck there. It wasn't dead yet but the head was stuck underground. It thrashed it's tail around wildly. I could tell mana was being recharged by the other 9 so they were not ready to used their poison spit attack at me yet.

I took about 10 seconds to be further entertained and laughed abit at the snake thrashing around wildly with it's tail before I recomposed myself.

I teleported instantly to the next snake, repeating the actions and soon, there were 10 huge holes in the ground, each with a cobra head stuck inside and I proceeded to slowly whittle them down.

The shrouded figure then proceeded to the next round. Three minotaurs.

Minotaurs were hardly seen in RR. They were rare creatures because they had both brute strength and intelligence. Part man, part bull.

The three of them surrounded me again and this time I could feel a different type of mana being charged by them. I saw green mana being charged into their feet and they prepared to stomp. Instinctively, I teleported up into the air and used gravity to lighten me and slow my descent. Sure enough, the spell they used cause an earthquake and the ground where I was standing on was split and stalagtites were popping up from the ground as well. Looks like mana intuition really was useful in fights.

I used the same tactic once on a minotaur but it didn't seem to work. They had considerably tough skin and defence compared to the king cobras. The gravity crush did damage but it didn't seem to be too impactful. It had to be because of their high defence. I changed tactics. Seeing that they used earth mana as their primary attack on me, I used fire mana and did my own improvisation.

“Infernal Tornado.”

I used fire and wind mana in a 50:50 ratio and visualised my attack. I used two blocks of highly compressed mana, one of wind and one of fire so that was 5000 mana each block instead of 1000 and then a flaming tornado popped out. It wasn't a huge tornado but just about the size of a minotaur. However, because the mana was so compressed, the minotaur was immediately swept into it and the health bar went down as quickly as a download bar when downloading a 1MB file. Almost instantaneously.

The other minotaurs looked shocked and trust me a man with a bull's face looking shocked is also another sight that is funny as hell. I used the Infernal Tornado spell two more times and the other two minotaurs also died.

And on and on it went. More creatures were summoned, from a whole army of water kappas to an insanely strong lightning Kirin. From a handful of holy knights to a lone dullahan. From a bunch of zealots to a horde of fairies. The enemies didn't get harder and harder. It was balanced. Like the total level and average levels were almost constant. This trial wasn't something like to see which stage you would reach as each stage got harder and harder. Every trial was unique. That was the selling point.

I needed to adapt to enemies of different kinds. Strong defence or armoured monsters like minotaurs and dullahans. Enemies with high magic proficiency and magic defence like zealots and fairies. Monsters which are all rounded like holy knights. Enemies which were extremely offense oriented like the Kirin. This was me adapting to many situations, different types of mana, different types of attack and defence. This was to ingrain what I have learnt over the past three trials in a battle royale. This was indeed a gift.

I had to use my mana management and intuition I learnt from part 1 to deduce what type of attack the enemy was going to unleash and what mana I should use to counter it. I had to react fast as well which part 1 was all about. I could still remember that meteor shower of mana oh my god it was like a painter splashing pints of paint of 9 different colours over and over again randomly.

I had to use my mana control from part 2 because I only had a fixed amount of mana each fight. 40000. No more no less. I also had to control the strength of each attack. An overkill would be undesirable and not finishing off the enemy would be dangerous.

I also had to use my dispersion and compression from part 3 according to the situation and monsters I'm facing. Against the army of kappas, I needed to disperse my electric mana to shock them slightly and make them alot easier to disarm and vanquish because all of them were slightly affected by paralysis. Against the snakes as I've demonstrated, compression of a gravity crush led to very devastating and entertaining effects.

There were so many enemies I lost count. I easily faced at least 20 different types of enemies already. No wonder the figure said that he would not tell me how many rounds there would be. It was also mentally challenging. Knowing your end point is very important in tasks. Imagine someone asking you to go run a marathon with you. It could be a 5km short marathon, 10km, 21km, 42km. You would train according to how long your marathon would be. But what if the run did not specify the distance? What if it was only a 1km run. What if it was 84km? It was utter mindfuck. Trust me it is not pleasant.

-Five hours later-

Night has fallen in the forest and I was still on it. Was the figure making me go through the entire beastiery?

By this point I've already seen everything I've seen before. Wolves, skeletal soldiers and even king kongs that made me nostalgic but honestly I was reaching my limit. My hit points and mana were refilled every round but concentration and stamina was another problem. I've seen monsters that would shock a person. Centaurs, a fucking hydra and A FUCKING WYRM. Of course their levels should've been adjusted due to the nature of this event but still. You don't show someone a wyrm which usually takes about 50 players to bring down even though this wyrm was severely underpowered, it was still scary as fuck. And the hydra really was no joke. By the time I killed it, it had 20 heads.

By now I could even identify the purity of the mana being cast. It had to do with the shade of the colour. The higher the purity, the more amplified the shade became. Highly compressed fire mana was the colour of the most fiery red you could've seen. Normally it was just orangey-reddish. Darkness mana could range from black to JETBLACKASFUCK black which looked awesome. You get the jist of it.

I was at my limit. I was in the middle of fighting a dragon. Nothing surprised me anymore. I saw fire mana of a high density being charged and I was too lazy to even avoid it. I immediately countered with water mana of my own which I compressed, wanting to take the dragon head on in it's own game. His jet of fire met my geyser of water and both did not give way to either. The moment his breath finished, (I could tell with my mana intuition of course) I looked at the immense amount of steam which was just generated and decided to use it to my advantage. I made a mist which when combined with the steam, made it even hazier than usual and soon visibility was close to zero.

I learnt that a dragon's weak spot were where there were no tough scales and that meant two things. Either the eyes, or the interior of the dragon itself. Since visibility was low, I decided to go for the interior. I had to draw his fire breath out. Surely enough, the dragon tried to use his fire breath to light up the surroundings to obtain better vision and I could see the mana and his location as clear as day.

The moment he opened his jaw, I teleported in front of him, encased myself in ice armour of the highest density to protect myself from the fire and stuck my katana down his throat.

“Ice katana.”

I encased the katana in ice as well and made it such that the tip grew longer and longer. I used gravity mana to make it as heavy as possible as well while elongating the sword and sure enough, in the next split second, my katana went through the dragon, piercing it's stomach and intestines and causing frostbite to it's whole system.

The arms of the shrouded figure went up again and I just wanted to resign. However, this time, the poof was different.

*POOF*

'CONGRATULATIONS!' a banner that stretched across the whole clearing appeared while lights also appeared out of midair.

“Well done! So well done. I had a great time watching you apply the things you learnt in this battle royale. You've done so well. You could give Zarak a run for his money. Both of you have very different styles though. You focus more on spells whereas he focused more on swordsmanship. I look forward to the day where the two of you will meet each other. I gave something to Zarak when he managed to complete this and I will give the same thing to you.”

He held out his cloak to me. His figure was skeletal. He was made of only bones and it was covered by the cloak from before but now he was 'naked'.

Received : Death's Cloak.

Death is a weird force. His embodiment likes to do weird things. Most people say they can see him when he comes to collect his victims. However, occasionally some can see him at either halloween parties or clubs as well. He has queer hobbies but one thing is for sure. This cloak is made from Death himself and he enchanted this with his own essence.

Untradable

Required level : 1

Item level : 1

Defence +10

Magic Resistance +5%

Darkness Resistance +20%

Strength +1

Dexterity +1

Intellect +1

Luck +1

Mana Regen +10%

HP Regen +10%

Affinity to Darkness +10%

Holy shit an item with a level. These sort of items get stronger with the user and they are extremely rare. YAYYY WOOOO! Plus this looks... SO FUCKING BADASS OMG. A torn and tattered cape which looks as black as darkness itself. It is so light as well. Light and opaque. Dayummmm.

It was indeed a nice and rare cape. However, that was not the only piece of good news I got out of this trial.

Quest Complete : Forest Of No Return

You have successfully completed this quest that Jörmungandr has tasked you to do. You have received the following rewards:

Endurance +500

Perseverance +300

Sustenance +300

Intellect + 50

Concentration +100

Fame +1000

Unlocked higher masteries of mana manipulation, ouroboros seal and katana mastery due to completing a recognised trial.

Quest Complete : Bonus Round of Forest of No Return

You have successfully completed this quest that Death has tasked you to do. You have received the following rewards:

50000 EXP

10000 Gold

Death's Cloak

Affinity to Fire +10%

Affinity to Ice +10%

Affinity to Water +10%

Affinity to Wind +10%

Affinity to Lightning +10%

Affinity to Earth +10%

Affinity to Gravity +10%

Affinity to Light +10%

Affinity to Dark +10%

Fighting Spirit +1000

Endurance +500

Persevarance +500

Sustenance +300

Fame +1000

OH YEAH! What crazy stat bonuses. No wonder there was so much walking. It greatly increased my endurance, perseverance and sustenance stats. Walking for 2 hours in between each clearing really did test my patience. The bonus round was also extremely beneficial. No wonder I had to fight against so many different types of enemies with different types of elements. All of them were of such high speciality such as the lightning Kirin and water Hydra that they gave me added affinities. Even if their levels were reduced.

No wonder Jörmungandr asked me to do this. I really did become a whole lot stronger. But I wonder what he has been doing while I was training my ass off here.

Suddenly, I received a notification in my party list. I opened it up and received a shock. They had a lot of explaining to do. All three of them.

Party Name : Bunch Of Tards. Party leader : Jinx.

Jinx, Level 130 Elemental Swordsman

Beathoven, level 125 Rhapsodist

Soup, Level 210 Lycanhero

Breadtalk, level 120 Joker

End of Chapter 28