Capítulo 6: Chapter 1: The test
Time Skip (9 years later)
(POV, Dante Ashborn)
It had been 9 years after I started my hellish training with Ashborn. In the first 4 years, I had been doing exercises to enforce my body so that it would withstand the power of Monarch of Shadows. Afterwards, until today the training was constant sparring with Ashborn, when I asked him why he always fought with me personally and he said the reason was that he was my teacher which meant he was the one who had to train me. Also, I was raiding low level dungeons to get some fighting experience.
Yesterday was a relaxing day for me. My grandfather told me that today would be my final test, and if I passed, I would finally inherit his legendary power. All he told me was that the test would be divided into three parts.
As I wondered what the test would be, my grandfather came into my room and told me that we would start exactly at 12 o'clock. I looked at the clock on the wall and saw that I had 15 minutes before the test. I was also told that I couldn't use any equipment, so the only thing which I could do, is mental preparation for the exam.
At 11:55, I went to the training field where the test would be held. Exactly at 12 o'clock, I saw two figures appear on the other side of the field. They were two generals from my grandfather's shadow army, Tusk and Greed. I assumed that the test would require me to fight multiple opponents with good balance and chemistry.
Even though I didn't see any shadows in the action before I knew for sure that they shouldn't be underestimated even the weakest shadows of the normal rank, so I quickly took a defensive stand, but before we started, I asked my grandfather a question.
Dante: grandfather, before we start, can I ask you a question?
Ashborn: Of course!
Dante: thank you! How should I know that I passed this part
Ashborn: good question, you have to defeat both of them. They are shadows but they still can be damaged and if I consider the damage made by you on them enough, you win. Also their physical and magical abilities will be reduced to your level so don't worry about them easily overpowering you.
Dante: Okay then, let's start.
After I finished speaking, Greed rushed at me and tried to punch me, but I dodged by jumping over him. Then, I rushed to Tusk because my grandfather had taught me that mages could be very dangerous in team fights and needed to be eliminated. Tusk was capable of debuffing and attacking with dangerous magic. While I was running towards Tusk, he conjured several fireballs, but I easily dodged them. When I was in front of him, I faked a punch, jumped in the air just above his head, and punched him in the face. As a result, he was eliminated, and only Greed was left.Even though Greed was a strong opponent, my superior martial arts skills allowed me to defeat him easily.
Ashborn: Good job! I didn't expect any less than that from you. For now I will let you have 5 minutes break before we proceed with the next part.
Dante: I am not tired so we can go directly to the next stage without rest.
Ashborn: Okay
I saw how Greed and Tusk disappeared and one of the shadow marshals appeared instead of them. The legendary dark night Igris. So the next fight would be a fight against a knight. I knew that this would not be as easy as against Tusk and Greed who were not strong in martial arts especially Tusk, now I had a swordsmanship test against a knight with nearly perfect sword skills and much more experience than me. While I was thinking, my grandfather started to explain the next part.
Ashborn: your next fight will be against Igris. The test is made to evaluate your swordsmanship skills and to make it the test of swordsmanship, Igris will hold back to your level of power. Also both of you will have the same swords which were made by my powers.
Next second I saw how a dark sword appeared in my right hand and the same appeared in the Igris's hand.
Ashborn: your goal is to hit Igris by sword at least once then you will be declared as a winner, I will allow you to continue to fight until you are able to, if you lose a sword a new one will automatically appear.
The instructions clearly said that if I want to win then I need to hit him with the sword, so Igris would mostly focus on the sword which meant I could try other methods to catch him by surprise and than hit him with the sword.
Ashborn: when I say start, you can begin the duel
Ashborn: Start!!!
Even though the duel started both of us decided to keep distance between each other. I was at serious disadvantage because as a shadow Igris has unlimited stamina which means he can fight forever. While I am a devil and a trained heir to Shadow Monarch himself. However, until I inherit his powers, my stamina is limited, but I think I can keep a good fight for several days but I am still pressured to win quicker. Then I was seeing Igris prepared to rush at me I took a defensive stand and our clash began.
After several hours of fighting, I was covered with a lot of cuts made by Igris while I couldn't land a signe hit with my sword. My faith that I could win started to get weaker. However, I knew that I couldn't give up because I needed to prove to myself that I was worthy of that power and that I could protect everyone I considered important. The only solution which I could think of to win against him was letting Igris hit me deep with his sword, so that I could get at least a second to hit him. It was a very risky strategy with someone like Igris but I had to try. I felt a lot of pain and a bit light headed due to blood loss, but only my motivation and will power allowed me to stay consiuos. I rushed to Igris and when I saw him deflecting my poor attempt to hit him, I knew it was a signal for me that right now would be the situation of all or nothing. Igris obviously had been ordered before the fight to not put any very serious wound on me so he obviously didn't expect me to let his sword go through left side of my stomach when he aimed to put one more cut. I could feel his surprise which gave me enough time to gather all of my remaining strength left to hit him with my sword. It wasn't enough to put any visible damage to his armour but it was everything I could do at that moment and the next second I could feel how my eyes became heavy and my vision became blur and dark and after that I passed out.
(Time skip: 1 minute)
I woke up quickly because one of the Shadow marchalls, Beru had healing abilities. I then looked at my grandfather and before I could ask him the question which was eating me from inside, he answered it as reading my mind, but it shouldn't really be necessary because it was obvious what was in my head.
Ashborn's spirit: congratulations! You passed the test, even though the way you did it, wasn't exactly what I expected.
I sighed because I became one step closer in achieving my goal.
Ashborn's spirit: I think you are ready to listen for the last part of your exam.
Dante: yes!
Ashborn's spirit: okay, the last part will be the most difficult, you will have to complete a dungeon on your own. You will have to try to understand the rank of your dungeon on your own. You have to go alone with no equipment or help.
Dante: let's start.
Ashborn's spirit: I will open the portal to the dungeon and you can enter it any moment you want. After you enter, you will have 1 hour to finish. Do you understand?
Dante: no questions.I saw how Ashborn's spirit nodded and opened a purple and red portal to a dungeon. I stood up and walked to it and readied myself to enter it. For several seconds I was standing in front of the portal and focusing on doing everything fast because one hour for a dungeon around C or B rank is very little, so I would have to be fast and accurate. After waiting for a bit more, I entered the dungeon and immediately started to look around the place, and I was surprised to see a jungle dungeon. I quickly started to go the only way in the dungeon. After going for some time I met my first monster. I knew that monsters in the dungeons were aliens and monsters from different worlds but still I was surprised to see some kind of hybrid of monkey and spider in front of me.
I assumed by their physical appearance, they would have the agility and strength of the monkey and ability of the spider to go on the walls and the rooftop, and to use the web. When dealing with fast and agile opponents either you had to be faster and more agile than them or enough accuracy and strength to finish the fight with one punch. I didn't know about how strong their senses were and due to time pressure. I decided to go with the simplest solution. Head on confrontation. I rushed at the monster, obviously it easily dodged my punch and used web to catch my arm, afterwards it tried to pull me by my arm, but I was stronger than the monkey, so I easily caught it and punched it in the chest and surprisingly my arm went through the chest and killed the monster instantly. From this fight I could already make several conclusions which could help me later.
First of all, I was right about their abilities. Secondly, I knew, I had higher physical strength than them. Finally, I knew that they had very low durability which meant, I could kill them with much ease, everything left for me was to finish it quickly.
I immediately started running fast through the forest. Sometimes I encountered one spider-monkey, sometimes they were in groups. Their web wasn't strong enough to restrain me seriously but it still annoyed me. However, after 40 minutes, I finally reached the boss room. 20 minutes would seem long enough to defeat the boss when mob monsters were defeated with such ease, but very often there were high rank dungeons where the normal monsters were not very powerful and were not really equal to the rank of the dungeon, but the boss was completely overpowered and could alone compensate for everything and killed the whole peerage with much ease, so I should be very careful and do not understimate my enemy.
I decided to enter the boss room, and it looked like a nest inside the tree, I automatically started to look around to find the boss himself, however couldn't see him anywhere, but suddenly I felt very strong pain in my back and how I was sent flying. After, I recovered from the shock I could see the boss of the spider-monkey dungeon standing on the place where I was a second ago. He was not like other spider-monkeys, he looked more like a gorilla-monkey.
I already knew that it meant a lot of trouble because most likely this form kept the advantages of the minor version. On the other hand, it is obvious that it had much higher strength and durability, so the main disadvantages which I could exploit are closed. Also, I think that the web may be strong enough to restrict my movement for some time and I can't let it happen because each second was important for me. I decided to wait for it to strike first, it started to shoot web bullets from its mouth which meant that for me to have a chance to win I would need to close the distance or I would be in the serious disadvantage. Luckily, the size of that thing did make its agility and speed worse. However, it didn't seem that my punches really did a lot of damage and after 15 minutes, time was pressuring more and more and I had to do something. I was starting to panic but I couldn't, I had to think calmly. I decided to run after the boss and continue with my current strategy. After 2 more minutes I had seen how this boss protects it's spider legs and it's when I knew which was it's main weakness while continuing to fight normally to not raise suspicion I waited for the moment to strike it's spider legs. Finally, I found that moment and broke two out of four spider legs which caused so much pain that the boss just fell on the floor without movement but I couldn't waste time so I broke all of the spider legs left and then started to punch the boss in the face due to pain from broken spider legs and my punches, the boss quickly gave up and was killed by me from his face smashed into unrecognisable state.
After it was dead, I checked the timer and it showed that I had 17 seconds left which meant that I passed. My mind wanted to jump around in joy, but in contrast I sat on the floor and started crying for different reasons. There were cries of joy of completing the test and inheriting the powers of Shadow Monarch, cries of joy for not letting down myself, my parents and grandparents and cries of sadness that I couldn't share it with them. I was crying, all of the mental exhaustion from 9 years of training finally letting itself out in one go.
After crying myself out, I exited the portal and was greeted by my grandfather's spirit.
Ashborn's spirit: congratulations my child, I am so proud of you finishing this test and finally being worthy of my powers, I hope you are ready to do it now.
Dante: of course, I have waited for this moment for so long, so I can't wait to finally do it.
(A/N: if you have any questions or if you find any mistakes in grammar or information please do not hesitate to write that in the comments, I will try to answer all of the questions and edit the mistakes I made.)
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