First Trial [3]

"Haa…Much better." After washing myself and changing into a new pair of clothes I bought in the shop, I had finally decided to head to the ancient ruins that I previously saw.

Ever since dying in the hands of that lame excuse of a king, everything seemed to pass by in a flash. Participating in these trials made me feel something that I've never felt before. Emotion. In a mere 7 to 8 hours, give or take, I had felt more fear, joy, anger, and emotion than I would ever experience in my previous life. I initially had no intent in participating, but now, for some odd reason, I had the strong urge to continue engaging in these trials.

I shook my thoughts away and focused my attention on the ancient ruins before me.

The ruins were smaller than expected, surprisingly. With overgrown weeds and tangled vines spread out all over the place, the ruins were in fact extremely underwhelming. Its pillars were covered in dust, dried-out soil, and all kinds of debris that one can think of. Altogether, the disjointed pillars and ruins covered about the area of a small field.

Shaking my head in dissatisfaction, I casually strolled around the surrounding area of the ruins. At first, I was hoping to find something worth taking, but as time went on, all of my prior expectations went to the dumps. There was nothing except for rocky debris and fallen structures obstructing my path.

Letting out a deep breath, I proceeded to take a look at the insides of the ancient structure.

It wasn't particularly dark inside the building as the slits and crack in the infrastructure allowed quite a bit of light to leak through. Similar to the outside, the interior of the ruins were devoid of anything interesting. There wasn't much to see other than some occasional corroded swords and empty kettle pots laying around in the open.

Suddenly, feeling a slight numbing sensation on the top of my forehead, I immediately stopped what I was doing. But after standing in the same place for a couple of minutes, that sensation I felt previously was nowhere to be found. I shook my head and continued to search the empty ruins.

Carefully scrutinizing the place up and down in attempts to unveil a secret passageway, all my effort was eventually for naught. Disheartened and empty handed, I reluctantly left the proximity.

After leaving the ancient ruins, I continued my collection of coins and items.

Fortunately for me, a few moments later, a pillar sized bear with crimson-red fur ruthlessly approached me with an enraged expression on its ugly face. An evil smile flashed across my face as I pulled Hailstorm out of the crest on my hand. With globs of drool running down its mouth, the wild bear quickly closed up on me with speed faster than I had expected. Instantly readying myself, a cold aura suddenly burst out from the weapon in my hands. With a small burst of force in my left foot, I lunged at the incoming beast with all of my might.

The bear, however, seemed to ignore the sword in my hands and thrusted its sharp claws in my direction. Knowing that the claw would reach my head before I could slice its head off, I quickly adjusted Hailstorm in order to face the bear's might head on.

Clang. Clang. Clang.

After exchanging a few strikes with the bear, I roughly approximated its strength. It was definitely above my level, if not even higher than that. It had a dense, bloodthirsty aura surrounding it. I was relieved that it didn't seem as strong as the wolf I encountered previously, but I knew that I still had to go all out.

Using the inventory feature to my advantage, I took out some metal projectiles and secretly threw them towards the bear's pressure points. Traveling at speeds faster than sound, the metal projectiles swiftly made contact with the bear's skin before bouncing straight off its iron-like body.

'Damn it, the projectiles aren't sharp enough.'

Attempting to find another makeshift plan, I quickly took a few steps backwards to give myself some space. The bear, however, took its chance and immediately closed the gap between us.

Its berserk-like state suddenly increased its potency as it seemingly became more wild and powerful. Almost like it was teleporting, the bear instantaneously appeared in front me and swung its massive arms downwards towards my body. Relying on my instincts, I barely dodged the attack, but it still grazed the side of my arm, causing blood to continuously gush out from the wound.

The adrenaline, however, kept my pain to the minimum. I quickly adjusted my posture and readied myself for the incoming barrage of attacks.

Ceaselessly clawing at Hailstorm, the bear showed no signs of becoming tired. Furthermore, its blood-red eyes seemed to be glowing even more intense after each strike it made.

I, on the other hand, was slowly starting to lose stamina. With each strike bearing the pressure of a mountain, it was only a matter of time before I lost to the savage bear before me.

Taking a deep breath and tightening the grip on Hailstorm, I quickly summoned a steel dagger within the clutches of my teeth. Tilting my head to the right, I then explosively jolted my head back towards the bear's direction, loosening the bite I had on the dagger in the process.

Foosh.

The dagger, accelerating towards the bear's eyes at point blank, gruesomely dug itself into the pupil of the beast's eye.

With a fearsome roar, the ferocious bear, however, didn't stop its attacks. It was like he was in a trance, unable to comprehend pain. In addition to its injury to its left eye, its claws were slowly becoming entrapped in a thin layer of ice.

Due to the freezing aura surrounding Hailstorm, the bear, who had been continuously hacking at the weapon, was bound to experience such a phenomenon.

With the beast's claws slowly becoming increasingly more brittle from the cold, its seemingly unbreakable claws steadily began to chip away after each hit.

Eventually, half of the bear's arm was frozen solid from the aura exuded by Hailstorm. The pressure after tanking each strike from the bear was, unfortunately, still unbearable, but the frequency at which it happened shortened an exponential amount. Additionally, the red glow it had around its body started to dim down. It was evident that the bear was nearing the end of its berserker mode.

Also nearing my limit, I decided that it was time I ended this fight. With both hands still on Hailstorm, I deposited my shoes back into my inventory. After doing so, I withdrew the shortsword I used to kill those extras from before into the gap in between my toes. With a firm grip on the sword, I swung my leg sideways towards the bear's torso with all of my might. Bright red blood splattered all over my clothes as the bear roared even louder than previously.

This time, the bear definitely felt the pain as it stumbled backwards, attempting to regain its composure. I used this to my advantage as I rapidly lunged forward and slashed Hailstorm towards the injured bear.

Slashing down at the beast with every ounce of my stamina, I then collapsed onto the ground. Gasping for air, my chest heaved up and down, hoping to replenish the oxygen that I had depleted during the fight.

Catching my breath for a few more seconds, my gaze cautiously reached the corpse of the bear. Its body was split cleanly in half, without any blood spilling out from the wound. The reason behind this was because of Hailstorm, it sealed the cut with its freezing attribute.

"Haaa… I need to figure out a way to disable the freezing attribute. If, in any case, I don't land a lethal blow, I'm dead meat. It would be like never injuring the opponent at all, since the wound would be sealed shut by ice otherwise."

Knowing that the bear was in fact still alive, I quickly grabbed my shortsword and diced its body into pieces. Afterwards, I went to pick up the metal projectiles on the ground.

'They are at least worth something.' I chuckled to myself internally.

Just as I was about to leave, however, the mythical weapon in my hands suddenly started to glow violently, almost like it was reacting to something.

I quickly scanned my surroundings and I abruptly saw a bright, golden glow coming from one of the diced-up pieces of the bear's corpse. Then, a small, bright-yellow marble slowly started to float towards Hailstorm.

Shaking the surrounding area, the moment the two came in contact with each other, a bright light enveloped the entire world as a ringing sound prevailed.

Only after the light and obnoxious ringing dissipated did I see what had happened. The mythical weapon in my hands suddenly had a much stronger aura surrounding it. In addition to this, the blue decorations encasing it became more extravagant and picturesque, almost like beautiful ice sculptures engraved onto the sword.

I was both confused and grateful. Confused because I didn't know what exactly had happened. Grateful because I knew that whatever it was, it was something beneficial for me.

After admiring the beauty that was in my hands for a little bit longer, I stored Hailstorm away into my crest and walked off into the distance.

…

"Only about 8 hours left…" I murmured underneath my breath.

By now, almost all of the remaining sunlight has turned into darkness. In contrast to the sun, the moon here wasn't particularly bright. The day here was extremely long and the night was probably pretty short.

For the past 8 hours or so, I was having fun fighting beasts as well as looting them afterwards. Oddly enough, being here made me a lot more excited than my previous world. The reason was mostly because I wasn't the strongest here, whereas I was definitely the strongest in that other world. Being strong isn't fun, not really at least. It's honestly just boring when you effortlessly defeat something. It even got to the point where no person nor animal would even dare to challenge me, much less defeat me.

I was eager to explore this world more, that is until the trials are over. I was secretly hoping that the trials would continue on forever so that I can keep enjoying myself. However, nothing good ever comes with being greedy, so all I could do is just pray that interesting things would happen in the future.

Currently, I was lying in a pile of leaves which served as a makeshift bed. It wasn't comfortable but I didn't have the luxury to be picky. Soon, I dozed off with an ecstatic smile on my face.

For the rest of the night, I had a dream of living my life as an ordinary man.

…

Waking up to the brightest light that one could ever experience, I lazily stretched out my arms and legs. Yawning loudly, a couple of tears could be seen rolling down the side of my face.

"Best sleep I've ever had, no doubt about it." I exclaimed.

Stretching my body out once more, I then proceeded to wash my face in a nearby river.

Leisurely, I took out my watch to check up on the time. I activated the watch and a white display plate materialized out of thin air. In bright, blue letters displayed the time remaining in the trials.

However, as I looked at the time, my face suddenly began to pale. I only had a few minutes left until the trial was over.

Hurriedly, I dumped out all of the items out of my inventory and sorted them out.

"4 stamina recovery potions, 2 healing potions, 8 metal projectiles, a dagger, a shortsword, and a… Hold on, what's this?" I said as I began listing out the things in my inventory.

In my hands was an old and discolored book that looked like it came from prehistoric times. With a rich, Indigo colored stripe on its spine contrasting its grayish front and back covers, the book looked extremely odd. On the front was golden and illegible symbols written in a mysterious font.

Opening up the book, I started to read the contents contained within it. However, to my surprise, the pages inside the book were also filled to the brim with unknown symbols. Exhaling a deep breath, I opened up the shop and attempted to sell it.

–Unable to sell this item.

The red message that popped up soon disappeared as the shop display went back to normal. Furrowing my eyebrows, I had no choice but to store the useless book back into my inventory.

Though, looking down at the items sitting on the ground in front of me, the edge of my lips curled up into a huge smile.

I picked up all of the stamina recovery potions and went into the shop display once more. The shop automatically recognized what I was trying to sell and brought up another display.

– Would you like to sell [4] Stamina Recovery Potions for 40 coins?

Below the display were two buttons: one that said, 'yes' and one that said 'no'. Without hesitation, I pressed on the 'yes' button and coins began flowing into my inventory space.

I then repeated the same process and sold the rest of my items. Selling the 2 healing potions for 20 coins, the metal projectiles for 16 coins, the dagger for 15 coins, and finally the shortsword for 30 coins, I received a total of 121 coins. Including the coin I already had, I now had 122 coins with me. Smiling with satisfaction, I promptly heard a beeping noise signaling the end of the first trial.