Chapter 59 - Drained

The entry to the eleventh floor was something unlike any test realm the group had seen before. The walls were glass, seeming wafer thin panels of glass that would crack at the slightest touch, but showed the outside world with unprecedented clarity. The world itself that was going on around them was odd in its own right, with buildings that tried to reach the sky, airships much like Rosie’s demise looked, but Laurence could see that there were no arrays within the world at all. There were horseless carts that belched out smoke, various mechanised animals and sprawling cities that could only really be eclipsed by the city floors like Spirit. The places behind the glass would flicker and change as the testing area moved location, allowing everyone inside to glance into the world like an uncaring observer. Every few minutes the area would shift, allowing Laurence and his friends to see many of the civilisations in the world before they reached the reception area that the Adjudicator had set up for himself. Within that time they managed to see a city full of scy scraping buildings, a town washed away by storms, a peaceful plain in the dead of night, and a deep ocean filled with thousands of odd fish and crustaceans. The world that the Adjudicator had chosen to perch himself in was obviously a very rich and varied one.

The reception area itself was very comfortable, with the Adjudicator lying face down on a large bed. As Laurence’s group arrived, she looked up and smiled. For the first time the group had a good look at her and were surprised. She was a young woman with a small shell on her back, emerald green skin and piercing yellow eyes. “Well, what do we have here?” she said, looking across the group. “Six entrants, that’s a surprise, usually we don’t get that many at once. You all climbing together? Well you can try and do the challenge if you want, though you all need to pass to get the reward”.

“We all intend to pass the test,” said Cleo, her eyes hardening at the woman. “The reward for this floor is free access to all previous floors right?”

“Yes, I will be upgrading your pointer ring to allow access to any of the Gates you have entered before. Now you know the reward, who wants to go first?”

“I will,” Laurence said. He stepped out in front of the group and faced the turtle-woman.

“Good, then go through the door to my right. Reach the end of the path and you’ll pass. If I have to come and get you, then you failed. Simple right?”

“Uncomfortably so. I’m sure there’s something else within this hallway I have to walk down”.

“There is,” the woman said. “I just don’t feel like telling you is all. Now come on, get going. I don’t have all day you know”.

Laurence sighed and strode towards the door, before striding through into the hallway. Immediately he could feel the mana within his body draining out of him. It was slow, but noticeable. At first he could ignore it, but the further down the hallway he reached the more mana was sucked out of his body. After about twenty steps the amount being sucked from him was becoming visible. Thin streams of grey-red mana were being pulled out of his skin and sucked into the white walls of the hallway. After fifty steps he reached an impasse. His mana was being sucked out of his body quicker than he could replace it, he was beginning to truly lose mana now, but he was only half way. There were fifty steps to go.

By seventy steps, Laurence’s body was a third full of mana. There was no way that he was going to be able to keep the pace he was going up, he had to find some way to restore his mana, and quick. Even standing still he would feel the drain from his body. He simply had no chance to rest. He racked his brains for an answer, but there was no technique for him to restore himself under this kind of pressure. His inner flame formation was rotating as fast as it possibly could, but still he could not keep up.

He clenched his fists tight and glanced down before taking his seventy-first step. His pointer ring glinted in the light, its black surface shining like a beacon of hope towards his success. He smiled and began to breathe in once more. He knew that even now, even after becoming a False Immortal, he would still be able to easily restore his mana reservoir with little effort. He pushed himself further, reaching step seventy-eight before he finally succumbed and activated the ring. A mass of mana equal to his full reservoir flooded into his body, restoring his strength. He pushed on to step seventy-nine, then eighty then eighty-one. By ninety he was almost empty, but he used his ring once more. There was only one charge left, but he knew that he could make it. Ninety, ninety-one, ninety-two. His body was already half empty. Ninety-three, ninety-four. He was chugging on fumes. The last ten steps were torture, but he knew he could make it. Ninety-five. Ninety-six. He could hold on no longer, he pulled the rest of the mana out of the pointer stone and moved on. Ninety-seven, ninety-eight. His full reservoir had only lasted two more steps. Laurence could not help but feel despair. This should not have been as hard for him as it was, but he pushed forwards. His excess resources that even filled his cells were being drawn out, his eyes swam. Ninety-nine. He felt like he was going to throw up, he was sweating, his body was crying out for some release from the emptiness within.

Laurence took his hundredth step and collapsed, falling through the door in front of him. He had reached the other side. It was a tiring mess of pass, but he could not help but feel happy. His work for now was done. He had reached the other side of the path and was almost ready to go onto the eleventh floor and face the Lupe. He just had to wait for the rest of the group now. Sitting down, he crossed his legs and began to focus his inner flame, feeling the mana in the room flood inside him, filling every single pore that was sucked dry by the hallway. He could not help but feel that the mana he was receiving was far richer than he thought was possible. This was true Heaven ranked mana, something that he should have had access to, but as he was a False Immortal and not a Heaven ranker, he had no capability to make. This room was preparing him for the transition from one realm to the next in a way that he found immensely comfortable.

After a few moments he opened his eyes and looked at the room he had walked into for the first time. Before him was a wall that showed the journey through the tunnel, but over ten steps rather than the hundred it actually took. He watched as Cleo entered the room and strode through what he had struggled so hard to do in moments. As she reached the end and had not even broken into a sweat he began to realise why he had such a hard time.

When Cleo walked into the room and saw Laurence she ran over and hugged him. “Are you okay? What in the name of the tower happened to you?”

“It was nothing. The test sucks out any Saint mana in your body so this room can let you replace it with Heaven ranked mana instead. It’s a way to prepare Challengers for their ascension. At least I think it is”.

“It might be some sort of cruel and unusual torture, right?”

“Exactly”. Laurence pointed at the wall in front of them. “We can watch the rest of the group take the test from here. I wonder if anyone is going to fail”.

The both turned to look at the wall before them and relaxed as Jim entered the hallway. While they knew that only Yun would have no issues within the rest of their group, they had the most faith in Jim’s success. He took his first step and immediately started running down the hallway. Like Laurence, he stopped at half way when he realised that his mana restoration would no longer cut it. From this point on he changed however. There was a thin sheen of mana that appeared around his forehead as he materialised his diadem. Laurence frowned. He did not know enough about the Book of Order to tell what Jim was doing, but he knew that it was most likely a foolhardy idea. Jim was one for crackpot schemes; they would work, but inevitably they would end up backfiring on him in some way that he forgot to account for.

This can’t be good...

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