章 8: Trial 7 "Mana" - 7
(Author's Note: I have decided to change the leaderboard so that it displays what floor a player is on, rather than the highest floor the player has completed, as it seems more intuitive to me.)
Walking into the room, I breathed in the warm, yet familiar scent.
Breathing in the smell of musky leather, I stared in awe at the numerous shelves and rows of books that appeared before me.
This was one of the first times that I was actually in awe when climbing the Tower of Ordeals. In the game that I had made, I had tried my best to make it look like real life, but the graphics in games could still not come close to if you were experiencing it with your own eyes.
It was just fulfilling to see my creation be portrayed in such detail, as I could see even the smallest books in the endless sea before me.
[Trial: Mana
Objective: Choose a magic skill book and learn it in 3 hours
Difficulty: Extreme
Rewards: +10 Mana, Skill
Punishment for Failure: Death]
When I had coded the library, I had let an AI that I made, randomly make the skills that filled this library, although I had placed one skill at a certain place for me to learn every time I had beta tested, as I really liked this skill.
Also, once a skill was learned, its book was removed from the library, so no two people had the same skills in the tutorial tower, as it was only in the main tower were you could start to buy more common skill books like "Fireball".
I ran to the 777th row, went down to the 77th shelf, and then grabbed the 7th book on the shelf, titled "Figureless Shadow".
This was the skill that I had specifically placed here, as I always chose the assassin class when I beta tested, and this skill would still be very helpful with my spy class.
I then started opening my mana circuit.
This was the true hard part of this test, and was the reason why it was an "extreme" difficulty test, compared to the other tests.
Opening your mana circuit was something that was extremely hard to do. You had to enter a deep meditative state, where you concentrated on moving your mana through the circuit, breaking through the barriers of impurities the clogged the circuit.
Most people would just struggle to free up the specific pathways that the skill used, as different skill were activated based on the pathway that the mana flowed, so freeing up only a specific part of your mana circuit was a good strategy, but in the long run, freeing up only a bit of your mana circuit would cause extreme pain and makes it slower when you tried to completely open up your mana circuit, so I decided to open up the whole thing here and now.
Sitting down cross-legged, I closed my eyes and focused on the mana running around my body.
I started at the crown of my head, they slowly started freeing up the mana circuits in my head, working my way down to my shoulders, arms, chest, torso, legs, and then feet.
When I got to each part, sweat and a black liquid flowed out of my skin and then it felt as if my insides were burning, but I gritted through the pain and muckiness and finished the opening of my mana circuit with only 3 minutes left.
I quickly touched the book, which engraved the was to flow the mana into my brain, so that it became second nature to me, and then activated the skill by pushing mana through those specific circuits.
I immediately completely melted into the shadows and passed the trial.
Spending only a second in the shadow, I came out and completely collapsed on the floor, having spent all of my mana.
[Congratulations on passing the trial.]
[You have gained 20 mana points.]
[World Wide Announcement: Player "Anonymous" has become the first player to fully clear their mana circuit!]
[Due to this inhuman feat, you have been awarded 10,000 TC]
[Several former magicians that became transcendents have taken an interest in you.]
[The Immortal Magician takes an interest in you.]
[Your fame has increased!]
After reading through all of the notifications, I spent the 10,000 TC I had just earned on an instant cleaning scroll out of the store and ripped it.
In less than a second, all of the muck and sweat that had accumulated all over my body instantly vaporized, making me clean again.
Leaning my body up against a bookshelf, I checked my status window again.
[Player Shinubwa Lv. 1 (174,920,000 TC):
Strength: 17
Stamina: 40
Agility: 20
Mana: 30
Hp: 20
Perception: 30
Intelligence: 20
Extra Stat Points: 0
-------------------------------
Job: None
Titles: "Perseverance Maniac", "Millionaire"
Skills: Tactical Domination (S), Figureless Shadow (AAA)]
"Figureless Shadow" was a skill that let me become completely invisible in any shadow. I could also use the skill to "melt" myself into other people's shadows and I could also create a shadow that I could hide in, although a random shadow in a sunny place is suspicious though so that trait wasn't all that particularly useful unless I needed a way to become completely invulnerable to physical attacks when running away from an enemy.
Also, another reason why I got this skill was because if I ranked it up to an S-Ranked skill, it would also let me teleport between shadows, but the ingredients that I needed to consume for that were on the 7th floor of the main tower, so it was still unobtainable right now.
I then checked the leaderboard again.
"Leader Board"
[Leaderboard:
1. Zero (Tutorial Tower 3) - 8th floor | Lv.3 | 73,146 TC
2. 876 (Tutorial Tower 82) - 8th floor | Lv. 1 | 63,931 TC
3. Bam25 (Tutorial Tower 82) - 8th floor | Lv. 1 | 63,281 TC
4. Anonymous (Tutorial Tower 83) - 7th floor | Lv. 1 | 174,921,000 TC
5. Liu Zhang (Tutorial Tower 61) - 7th floor | Lv. 1 | 69,789 TC
...]
Well, it looks like Zero figured out the thing that you could do in the meantime on the 8th floor, while waiting for other players.
As I hadn't opened the door to the next floor yet, the leaderboard still showed that I was on the 7th floor.
'It also looks like 876 and Bam25 were actually my sisters, as both of them still remained on the leaderboard, despite having both made it to the same floor in the same tutorial tower.'
'Well, it seems like I'm about to catch up to them.'
With that in mind I opened the door to the first "Hard" floor.
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WorthyAdversary
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