[Trial of Balance]

[Avoid the obstacles and reach the end. You may try again from the start as many times as time allows. Time limit: 1 hour.]

This time, the timer started immediately. The challenge wasn't as straightforward as it sounded. It wasn't totally dissimilar to the Speed training courses I'd undertaken in the virtual space all that time ago, before I'd even cleared the 1st Floor, in that I needed to run, jump, and balance across platforms and such, many of which were very small, and/or moving and/or unstable in some way.

But where the training courses had been a straight line, this challenge area was an open field of sorts. One could, in theory, take one of probably at least half a dozen routes across, some being easier than others, but none of them able to be called easy overall.

The speed training courses didn't contain hazards like I faced here, either. Both things like jets of flame and obstacles between platforms of the smashing, crushing variety were common in the course. After a certain point was passed, some sort of devices that shot various fireball spells at me started up too. Yes, as the notification said, I could keep retrying, but that was assuming my bones remained unbroken.

When it came to that though, the evolutions I had undergone came in definite use. My body's appearance hadn't changed much through either of them—I was delighted that I was an inch taller and my skin was incredibly healthy, making me rather more attractive according to a few—but my body was a heck of a lot tougher than it had been before, even with all the HP I had gained through stat points prior to using the totem. So, though I got knocked off a few times, I was able to keep trying more or less unscathed and without having used much in the way of my health potion reserves.

It certainly wasn't easy, but by the time the trial passed the half-hour mark, I was getting extremely close to the end in my attempts. After another five minutes, I made the last breakthrough I needed to reach the other end of the field of obstacles, and pulled the lever. I got another PASS message, but the Sanctuary didn't teleport me back this time. I guess this place only warps a challenger away from trials that would be tricky to walk back from normally?

Now there was only one passage remaining on the left, the one closest to the great door leading to the Core Chamber. This one led directly to a chamber as large or slightly larger than the one where I’d fought the legion of guards. However, this one contained no evident exits other than the entrance, which shut behind me. What it did contain was four lava pools about half the size of swimming pools, at cardinal southwest, northwest, northeast, and southeast positions (if you treated the direction I’d entered from as cardinal south.)

[Trial of Combat]

[Defeat the Magma Golem. No time limit.]

At the far end of the chamber, a huge section of wall slid open with surprising speed. Behind it was the Magma Golem.

“Hey,” I squeaked, “what’s twenty feet tall and black and red all over?”

The answer, of course, was the Magma Golem. I didn’t have the Monster Lord to compare to, but this would be easily the largest boss I had fought. I wasted no time in using Enemy Scan:

BOSS Monster (I)

It out-statted me in every area, except, thank goodness, speed. It attacked wide areas, but its imbalance in stats meant its Speed was effectively even lower than the number indicated by quite a bit, so I was able to bombard it with impunity. Judging by the damage numbers I was putting out, it had extremely high fire resistance, but not immunity. Probably either 75% or 80% resistance, so my attacks were still running into a 25 or 30 percent penalty. It had over half a million HP though, so this was going to take a while.

Just as I was getting complacent, it reached one of the magma pools. In less than a second, it glowed extremely brightly, and for another five seconds it was as though I was back in the Trial of Pain again. Unlike that time though, it did a lot of real damage. I was also irritated to find that it had recovered roughly 100,000 Health. Headway had been made, since I had dealt nearly a quarter million, but I still attacked with new urgency after just barely avoiding the things follow-up attack. The magma pool it had reached had been emptied, though.

Mobility was starting to be a problem too. When it attacked, puddles of hot magma were left behind, and they were beginning to fill the eastern half of the chamber. Minute after minute, I dodged, weaved, and bombarded, all while the Magma Golem bombarded back and slowly made its way toward the next pool.

I failed to stop it from reaching it, but only just. Whatever had healed it had also gotten rid of all the stacked defense reductions from Flame Javelins, and it took me a few strikes to realize that. I got off a Repel Flame before its second superheated attack, but it didn’t do any good—mostly likely the damaging heat was magical in nature. However, a new Enemy Scan put its remaining Health at 114,513. I was hurting quite a bit myself, but I was confident and the boss was clearly getting desperate. It attacked more quickly, but also more wildly.

However, this also filled the rest of the room with hazardous puddles more quickly, so I kept my own barrages as fast as I could. The vaguely human-shaped golem fell to its knees, its cracked, red glow dimming as its health hit 0, before it had made it 1/3rd of the way to the third magma pool.

[Trial of Combat: PASS]

[Clear Time: 11:27]

“Halfway done,” I said as I returned to the hub chamber. Back on Earth, I’d talked to myself when I was alone a lot. I’d just sort of stopped not long into the 1st Floor—after the third or so time I’d given away my position to Throskarts that way, I decided I had to put my foot down. Now though, I was nervously, excitedly slipping back into old habits.

“I wonder what difference it really makes to clear all the trials, as opposed to just five of them?

Well, gathering intelligence on the Sanctuaries in general is part of my purpose here! It’d be bad if I stopped really trying just because I’m close to an overall pass.”