《Advent of the Mindfire Mage: A Challenger's Return Story》103: Trials By Fire, Part 2
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When I was ready, I went down the second corridor on the left. This one led to a relatively small, circular chamber with five evenly spaced doors opposite the way I'd entered.
[Trial of Insight]
[All but one path leads to dead ends. Incorrect paths also contain deadly traps. If you choose an incorrect path but survive, the correct path will be closed to you and you will fail the trial.]
[First, find the odd one out.]
This time, there was no apparent time limit. A good thing too, because at first glance, the Sanctuary's instruction to "find the odd one out" seemed hopeless. The five doors looked identical in every way, no matter how hard I stared at them. Each had a look of intricately carved stone, and the carving itself was quite complex, so if there really was a minor difference in one design, it could take hours to find it. Unlike the doors leading to the start of the trials I'd opened so far, they weren't designed to just push open either. Instead, each one had a button slightly to its right.
An idea finally came to me after a long time of fruitless staring. I was leaning against one of the doors to rest, idly thinking that while it may look like stone, it had the same unnaturally smooth feel of a stronger synthetic material that it shared with all the rest of the Sanctuary.
"You know what would be an incredibly dick move?" I said to myself, "If the difference wasn't even IN the carving, but one of the doors was actually made of stone, or an otherwise more natural material, and that was how it's the 'odd one out'."
A moment later, I realized what I just said and moved to check all the doors by touch. Sure enough, the second door from the right clearly felt different. It was slightly rougher, and the edges of the grooves in the intricate carving were sharper. The most telltale sign though was how different the inside of the grooves felt.
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I held my breath, and pushed the button to open that door. I could see that it led into another round chamber of equal size just a short distance away. I entered, and the way I came slammed shut behind me. It was only then that I realized that there didn't seem to be any doors in this one.
Oh crap, did I screw it up somehow? My eyes darted this way and that, as I got on guard for any death traps to activate.
However, none did, and a new notification appeared:
[For your second task, find the unnatural spot. Press on it to open the hidden way.]
After pondering that for a moment, I finally spotted that the walls in this room were quite different from the previous room and indeed the rest of the Sanctuary. Instead of being mostly contiguous, as was mostly the case elsewhere, here there was a great number of bricks of "stone," all highly variable in size. Too, quite a few of them were sticking out of the wall, some a little some a lot.
"So, I need to push the right one in," I muttered, "I'm guessing the wrong ones activate death traps, and might even disqualify me from this trial. There was a trick to it last time, there'll be a trick to it this time..."
But the trick wasn't readily evident. After a while, it was clear that it wasn't going to come down to a difference of material this time. As far as I could tell it was all "unnatural," so that couldn't be what the message had meant.
"Tch, I've been at this so long my hands are getting cold...wait, what?"
I'd been feeling around the walls of the room for quite some time by this point, and for the most part they'd had a rather pleasant warming effect. My hands shouldn't have been able to be so cold. I experimented around, and discovered in a particular section—if I treated the way I'd come in as south, the section in question was a little south of due west—was cooler than the rest.
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I felt around that section, and found that in a certain direction it got colder still. I kept feeling around, as though I was playing an inverted game of warmer/colder.
I stopped at a single protruding brick, near to the top of the wall, that was almost like ice to the touch. I pushed it in, and it clicked and stopped moving in when it was halfway level with the wall. A moment after the click, I heard a welcome grating noise as the wall directly across from the entrance to the chamber slid up to reveal a new passage.
The third chamber was much larger than the previous two. Other than the way I'd come, I counted a whopping twenty-four other doors. They were all shut, with no apparent way to open any of them.
[Good work getting this far. For your final challenge in this trial, seek the only place of safety. At its end, you will find the switch. But be warned: This time, choosing wrong will result in a plunge into the magma sea.]
The moment the notification vanished, all the doors surrounding me opened—and through them, strange hovering metallic sentries, each of roughly human size, began pouring in by the dozen. Far from being driven to panic, I smiled.
"Heh, I think I know the trick to this one already."
The eight doors closest to where I'd entered on the right had been in my field of vision at the start, and I'd seen sentries come through all of them, so I dismissed those. I started fighting them off, making sure to keep an eye on doors I hadn't checked. When a new enemy appeared through one of them, I stopped keeping track of that door.
It was surprisingly easy to multitask this way. The sentries, identified by my as , were powerful, numerous, and took a fair bit to destroy, but both they and their attacks weren't very fast.
I got slightly unlucky this time. I'd examined more than half the doors before I found one, four doors left from the far side of the room, that didn't seem to be spitting out more sentries. Figuring I couldn't be too careful, I checked the rest of the doors to make certain that they were. As I'd suspected, every door but that one was letting more sentries into the room whenever I destroyed some.
I made my way inside that door. Like the other doorways, it was pitch black inside. At least, until I was properly inside. Then a series of lights turned on—revealing a lever identical to the one in the last, unfortunately extremely memorable trial at the end of a long hallway. Trying to add a slight sense of ceremony, I rubbed my hands together a bit, then pulled it.
[Trial of Insight: PASS]
By the time I looked away from the notification, I found myself already back in the central chamber.
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My House of Horrors
The hearse with the weird odor slowed to a stop before the entrance. The sound of pebbles could be heard bouncing on the ceiling. There were footsteps coming from the corridor, and there seemed to be someone sawing next door. The door knob to the room rattled slightly, and the faucet in the bathroom kept dripping even though it had been screwed shut. There was a rubber ball that rolled on its own underneath the bed. Wet footsteps started to surface one after another on the floor. At 3 am, Chen Ge held a cleaver in his hand as he hid beside the room heater. The call he was trying to make was finally answered. “Landlord, is this what you meant by ‘the house can be a little crowded at night’‽”
8 1971Death Incarnate (Completed)
Kei was a menace or called by most, a demon. He gets into bloody fights with others. Which makes him a problem to the common folk and criminals alike. But he can't win forever. So, his life came to a close with another merciless brawl. With Kei trying to take as much of them to hell and in his final moments, he never regretted his decisions in this mad world filled with cruelty. If the world is cruel to you then be more crueler back. Then he received a second chance in a sword & magic world but with a condition from the Goddess of Death. To save the Demon race. Note: Don't expect a good story, it's just smut trash as my first published fiction. Updates are infrequent and may or may not revise these chapters.
8 113Where am I?
An interactive story where the readers guide a man who awakens in a dark room with no memory.While I have a world and a background, what happens with the MC will be decided by the actions the players decide he will take, presented as choices per chapter.The tags will change with time, depending on actions taken. But there will be magic and and exploration as a part of the nature of the story.Anything else... would be spoilers.
8 128Human Mate (Under Editing)
"Hey Garret can you help me with something?" Isabella asks."Yeah sure" Instantly Isabella's lips connect to mine. My mind dint register what was happening at first, her lips moving against mine. Seconds before pulling away I get the worst pain in my chest. Almost like Isabella had caused it. When I pull away Isabella gives me a confused look. I growl at her for lac of respect.When Isabella cowards away from the menacing growl, I get the best scent of Lilac and Vanilla. My mind goes wild wondering where the scents came fromI look into the hallway and the smell grows stronger. I see a small girl in the arms of my beta Dylan and jealousy rips through me. MATE Emily is entering her last year in High school. Her mom died when she was young and she has a very distant father. She is moving to Arizona leaving her cheating boyfriend behind and entering a whole new school. Not knowing what to expect, she just hopes that it's not like the torture she went through at her old school. Garret King is the Alpha of the Lunar Eclipse pack. He has been looking for his mate since the age of 16. He's not the super bad ass alpha that many would suspect, but he sure looks the part. What happens when Emily goes to this new school and Garret finds her?More importantly what will she think of him after sense their first encounter isn't so lovely.*Disclaimer: This cover photo is not mine, if you know the photographer tell me who they are and I'll give their picture credit**Criticism is accepted here*
8 141Colliding Ambition
Book 1 in the Colliding SeriesOne Dream, Two AmbitionsKatherine Mitchell has grown up around hockey, with her father being a hockey legend, James Mitchell. it was a given Katherine would grow up to play professional hockey. Katherine transfers to Delcour University, but the hockey season has already started, so when she gets an email from the Coach to the boys hockey team, Katherine is curious. What Katherine doesn't know is she's about to get offered a spot on the boys hockey team. But what she doesn't expect is the captain to hate her, or rather hate the idea of a girl on the team. Rohan Griffin is the captain of the Delcour University boys hockey team. Rohan has grown up with one dream, play professional hockey. After joining the draft, all is going well for Rohan, he's playing at his best, school just started, he lives with his bestfriends, he's having fun. That is until Coach offers Katherine Mitchell a spot on the boys team. Now Rohan is convinced Katherine will cause the team to loose.What happens when they realize they're feelings for each other?~Dual POV18+⚠️TW⚠️Mentions:-Drugs-Attempted Rape
8 132Grand Magic Games: Fairy Tail X Magi Crossover
Sequel to Fairy Tail and Magi crossover: After the Fairy Tail crew return from Tenrou Island, they have to prove themselves to be the number one guild in Fiore. However, some people from the Magi world get transported in the Fairy Tail world. Can they return home, or will they be stuck there forever?
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