After taking their time to mourn their fallen friend, the challengers of the dungeon turned, noticing a golden portal that had appeared in the room. From what they could tell, they could either enter the door to the next floor, the door heading back, or the portal leading to the unknown. Hal let out a silent breath, knowing that the fallen Nishi had always been their scout to investigate the unknown.
Thus, Hal took a step forward himself, taking it as his duty to replace the fallen ninja. The others watched as he silently advanced into the portal, waiting for several seconds. As they were beginning to think about following after him, he stepped back with a bewildered expression. “What was it?” The black-robed caster asked.
“An island.” Hal answered, still confused. “A warm island of flat stone, one with its own sky. After I entered the portal, I heard Lord Tower’s voice. He said that I had earned the ability to freely travel between this world and ‘Earth’.”
The others looked on in confusion, slowly moving to enter the portal one by one, with even the two slimes following behind. They had never heard of anything like this before. After all, the only ‘true’ challenger to defeat the five star dungeon merely seemed to have vanished, the one witness telling nobody of her survival but her friends and family.
Sure enough, they all arrived on the island that Hal spoke of, seeing a clear sky high above their heads. There had never been such a warm climate on the nethrak world, making it clear to them that they had gone far outside their own territory. Additionally, the slimes themselves had never heard of the planet ‘Earth’, making even the two of them wonder at what they were seeing.
Congratulations. A voice rang out in the minds of the other six survivors. As god slayers, you have each earned the right to travel between my world and Earth at your leisure. Simply focus on the portal that brought you here, and another will appear to allow your return.
Hal looked out at the calm ocean surrounding the island, feeling the urge to explore this new world. However, he ultimately shook his head, turning to address the others. “I say we head back.” He told them in a somber tone. “Nishi’s family needs to be notified, and we should let everyone know what happens when the trial is passed.”
The others all nodded their agreement at this, and they turned back to the portal again, returning to the world of Tower. Once back, they entered the door that would take them to the surface, where a hopeful party was waiting to celebrate their return. It was not uncommon for such parties to spend days camped outside the gate of the five-star dungeon’s entrance whenever a strong contender entered the arena. They would wait, sending someone to check the door of the dungeon every so often. If the door changed, it was a sign that whoever had entered had failed.
The crowd cheered when they first saw Hal climbing the stairs, carrying his familiar axe over his shoulder. Clearly, they had managed to return from the five star dungeon, a feat never accomplished before. The crowd went wild at this development, before suddenly quieting down. That was because they noticed a body being carried in the arms of the white-robed healer. The expressions of the challengers were not ones of celebration, but of mourning.
As people noticed this, their jubilant cries died down, and the somber atmosphere began to fill the square. Hal gave a nod at this, stepping forward to address the crowd. “Everyone, please hear me out.” He said, projecting his voice through his ki to cover the square.
“Today, we have made a discovery. The ‘titled doors’, from which none have returned, are doors which contain a god as a singular opponent.” The crowd began to murmur as they heard that, finding such a development surprising. They knew that there were gods aside from Tower, as Pietra and Atraxi were well known to the slimes.
“The only way through this challenge is to slay the god present within the room. After doing so, a portal will open to a new land.” Hal informed them, earning looks of confusion from the others. “But, this discovery came at a great cost. Our teammate… our friend, Nishi has left us, his spirit returning to Lord Tower. He fell in battle, buying us the precious openings we needed to defeat our foe. I can say that without him, the battle may have very well been lost to us. I ask that you let us pass, so that his body may be returned to his home for a proper burial.”
Slowly, the crowd began to part in front of Hal and his team, allowing them to advance out of the central square. From beginning to end, nobody but Hal himself spoke, as if using their silence to honor the dead. Their steps were heavy as they walked down the streets, navigating the city with the crowd following silently behind them. The planned celebration had become a funeral procession.
Eventually, the group made it back to Nishi’s home, where his wife was already standing outside and waiting, her hands clasped over her chest. It seemed that someone had sent back word that they were coming, as she stood ready to accept the man’s body. Her expression was naturally sad, but she kept her words to herself, simply nodding to Hal and the others.
Hal, for his part, didn’t say anything either. Instead, he clasped one arm over her shoulder, offering her a solid nod before turning to leave. The wife hugged her husband’s body against herself, before turning to walk towards the city’s graveyard. What came next was a matter for her and her alone, her final moments together with her loved one.
“That should do it.” James said, wiping his brow as he looked at the large device before him. Currently, this was still the prototype of the final product, so it was natural for it to be far larger than normal. In fact, they had devoted an entire room of their extradimensional research branch purely to the construction of a spherical three-dimensional printer.
The object in question stood three meters tall and five wide, with four pillars of black metal devices surrounding a glass sphere. Inside the sphere were two nozzles on directly opposite sides from one another, while the outside of the sphere had two omni-directional thrusters positioned at the base of each nozzle.
“You sure that this will work?” Treisha asked curiously, James nodding his head in satisfaction.
“In theory, at least. The eight gravity fields should cause the center of gravity for the localized area to be airborne. Once the sphere has reached a stable point, we just have to turn it on and use the script Chel programmed.” As James said that, he hit the big blue button on the control panel to start up the machine.
There was a whir of energy, the four pillars beginning to hum. Each one released a translucent field from both the top and bottom, causing the glass sphere in the center to ‘fall’ upwards. Once it passed the central point, it began falling down again, eventually stabilizing in the center of the field.
At that point, James typed a command into the console, and a white beam of energy shot up from the base of the device towards the sphere. Once the energy struck the sphere, it was channeled through the two nozzles, and spun into strings that shot inside the sphere itself. As the nozzles were positioned directly opposite each other, the strings converged in the center, where they began to cluster together.
The thrusters on the outer edge of the sphere lit up, rapidly spinning the sphere and causing the positions of the nozzles to move. The assistants outside widened their eyes as they watched a stone-like object slowly beginning to take shape within the sphere. Of course, at the moment it was only a tiny pebble. “How long will it take for the entire stone to be formed?” Nora asked curiously.
“According to our projections… eight hours.” James admitted with a faint sigh. “We’ll need to find a test subject for this system stone, as well. Once we’ve confirmed its effects, we can try to work on improved printers. In its current stage, this one needs constant monitoring. One overlooked malfunction could make the entire thing explode.”
“And let me guess, that’s our job?” Nora asked with a wry smile, though James shook his head.
“No, you haven’t finished your advanced omnitool training yet. Only Chel and I can stop the printer if certain malfunctions occur.” When Nora heard that, she glanced around, noticing that Chel was suspiciously absent.
“You lost a bet, didn’t you?” Thea asked with a knowing smirk, causing James to click his tongue.
“I swear, I tried everything to keep her from cheating this time… she can’t keep getting away with this.” He muttered under his breath, his eyes firmly locked on the rapidly rotating sphere suspended above the pillar of white light.
I smiled as I saw the first team to really complete Tower’s god slayer trial. Although they had lost one of their party members, it was still no easy feat for them to have killed a god as they did. And now that they had done so, they would be able to open the way for the rest of Tower’s people to begin integrating with the rest of the world.
Next to me, Scarlet looked thoughtfully at the screen. “If they were to have their divinity forged now and become true gods, would they be able to walk people through additional dungeons to give them access to Earth?” She asked, reaching over and taking a little bit of popcorn from the bowl on my lap.
On the other side of her, Leowynn shook her head. “I doubt that Tower would leave a loophole that big, unless he intended for them to use that method. Otherwise, the portal probably just won’t appear if they use a god to kill a god.” Tower was one of the oldest mortal deities, and he had spent quite a long time on his plan to create a powerful race that could supply him with an ample stream of divine faith. Given how much thought he put into his dungeon, she couldn’t see a loophole like that being unintentional.
“Don’t put it past him.” Aurivy spoke up with a small grin. “Tower’s always been one that I couldn’t quite predict. If people do try to use tricks like that to get through, I could see it working, in a way. Just… not quite how they planned.”
“What do you mean?” Scarlet asked, looking over to receive an explanation. Aurivy simply held up a finger.
“One additional floor per god in the party. That’s what I would do if it were me. If they have one god, they must defeat the second floor in a single run. Two gods, the third floor. This way, it tests the survivability and stamina of both the godly escort and the party being escorted.”
Scarlet furrowed her brows briefly, before opening her eyes wide with understanding. “You mean whether or not they can survive standing by in a battle between gods? Multiple ones at that.” Having been in many such battles herself, she was fully aware of the collateral damage that could be unleashed during a battle on that scale. In fact, it was probably accurate to say that she had more experience fighting gods than anyone else.
“That’s right!” Aurivy nodded her head. “Though, I don’t know exactly what method Tower will use. He might even make it so that gods can’t enter the dungeon to begin with. I wouldn’t put that past him, either. After all, his whole goal with the dungeon was that he wanted his people to be strong enough to easily survive with Earth’s development before he allowed them to integrate.”
As we were discussing this, we heard Chel happily humming to herself as she walked out of her room, heading to get a snack from the kitchen. All of us turned to look at her curiously, with me being the one to ultimately speak up. “Is everything alright down at the lab?”
She glanced over, nodding her head. “Yup! James is just going to be busy for a while, so I decided to get myself a treat while I wait for him.”
