Login Beyond the Centuries

Chapter 2

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Vol.1 Ch.2

[ 2 ] Right place, Right time

Translator : Blackhole32

Gewalin doesn’t really sure of her sense of time, sometimes she felt like she was slept for a very long period of time before woke up, sometimes she felt like she woke up normally on an ordinary morning.

Before she died, she lived in a dormitory. In the back of that dorm, there’s a house that have roosters. These chickens will always wake her up in the morning. But in the mornings of this new life in this era, there’s no rooster to wake her up in 5 a.m. ever again, made her felt differ in the first place. However, adaptation is one of her specialty, therefore, she doesn’t have much problem about that.

And this morning, is the first morning she woke up in a shack, in the virtual world online game. It drives her in confusion of her own ident.i.ty a little. She in 3 centuries ago, she in the present time, she in the virtual world and she in the online game world right now, are made her ident.i.ty in her vision looks really foggy.

Bird’s songs in the forest woken her up in the dawn. Everything seems so real for her, made she feel difficult to believe that she is in the virtual world, not the real world.

The stinky smell of rotten crab meats came out from the hard layered banana leafs and hits her nose, seems like she has to find her food once again.

Today, she really think that a small knife is really necessary, her saw blade sword is not well suit for making a wooden harpoon. Having difficulty for a long time, she finally finished her awry wooden harpoon. Its appearance is awful but at least, it serves well as a harpoon. Many fishes was pierced up from the clear river, the bonfire was lit again and a big fish the size of an entire arm was skewered over it.

Finished her breakfast, she executed the plan she made before she slept immediately. She first start running with full strength, running over the beach use more strength than the plain surface and she thinks it’s good to train her body. After running until her stamina depleted, she rest. After she rested, she continue running again.

The condition when she rest for just a little moment and then she can regain full stamina makes her feels enjoyable because the stamina bar that regain little by little can be seen clearly in numbers, makes an exotic experience to her. For people who is working out for their strength, the changes need times to be appeared clearly, not something accurate like this.

When the stamina bar exceeded to 100 points, Gewalin changes her course to long-term running instead. Long-term running plan using less stamina than full-strength running. In the same time, her stamina regenerates slowly but, the regeneration rate is still lower than stamina uses to run. therefore, her stamina finally depleted and she has to rest to regain her stamina then continue running again.

The entire morning was used to continuously run and rest, if it’s not someone who has his or her strong determination and definite goal, very few people would archive the objective before losing the willpower to something that’s too boring like running for six hours continuously. Only the pleasure of knowing how her body has strengthen over times made Gewalin able to run forward without bored to death.

After eaten more two big grilled fishes for her lunch, Gewalin continues her run again. In this afternoon, she can clearly noticed that the growth rate of her maximum stamina has slowed down drastically compared to the amount she gained from when she just stated training previously. Her max stamina stops at 160 for a while, and the rate off stamina drains during running has lowered clearly. When she realized that, she puts more effort and try to run faster, but her max stamina didn’t increased much so she decided to change her course plan again.

This situation happens in almost every games, they may be in different form but overall is the same; when one’s ability is increased, the difficulty to gain the experience is increased too.

Gewalin runs until her stamina was drained out but she didn’t stop and continue running without rest unlike before. The suffering from training over limit has occurs as expected, heart beating fast, heavy headache, heavy breathing rapidly and makes her throat dried and burning all-over her lungs. The more she forced herself to run, the slower she ran and her legs are beginning to hurt, her vision got blurry like those who’re going faint.

And everything maintained in this states for times to times and Gewalin is beginning to wonder, If compared to her condition since when she just started training before she was a.s.sign in the school’s sport player back in her past life, the condition of her right now is less severe than the reality in a big gap and being static at some point but not getting any worse like when she really workout outside.

This is one of the changes with generations, the time has pa.s.sed 300 years, people who get more convenient from technologies were gradually weaken. Their hardships tolerance have decreased and left lesser than one-third of its original.

Even if the game is very hardcore, a game is still a game. The pain in game will be limited at 10% and this was evaluated from the ability and familiarity standard of people in this era. Therefore, the suffering she currently has is more than enough for an ordinary person in this era could bear.

Gewalin endured and run nonstop, and with the system within this game, she will gain the experience points to improve her game character according to difficulty and times. Her stamina recovery rate has skyrocketed.

It’s not that no one ever tried this, but everyone just can’t endure the suffering similar to that of real life. Gewalin, who’s from the past has many times stronger endurance than people of this era so she’s able to bear this pain and run nonstop.

Actually, this game has anti-m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t mechanism and would force-logout the game character immediately if the system detected that the player has any pleasure toward the suffer over its limit to decrease the advantage from training of this type of people that not only they will gain their happiness, but also gain more ability points. However, Gewalin is not fallen to that case, she’s just enduring it hard and still receive the pain. That’s why the system is allowed her to continue this training.

A part of Gewalin’s stubbornness pushes her forward in her experimental running with her curiosity of how far she will be able to go. Unfortunately, with blurry vision of hers, she tripped over a random rock lying on the ground and fell flat on the ground, unable to stand up. She decided to stay like that for a while until her stamina has regained and hits the maximum.

Her current stamina hits 300 points and her stamina recovery rate is at 30 points per second. The numbers displaying these value had changed its color from white to orange and Gewalin has no idea what it’s meaning is, but if she was a player that has studied the beginner’s guide then she would know that any stats value that has orange text means that value has reached its maximum limit and unable to raise anymore than that.

If there’s a question about if stamina recovery rate of 30 points per second is its maximum limit, then the answer of that question is no. Many players have their ways to increase this value by magic equipment, potions, spells or various items they have, but if it’s only count by the base physical ability, then Gewalin is definitely the first player who archive to raised her base stamina recovery rate to its maximum limit, and she has no idea about how great it is at all. Not only she didn’t know about it, she’s even regret it, because right now, no matter how she tried to increase the strength she uses to run, her stamina won’t deplete at all as its recovery rate and usage are just overlapped and she won’t be able to increase her strength by running anymore.

In her evening, Gewalin is examining her character stats while sitting in front of a bonfire, thinking about Level system. Normally, ordinary RPG games will have the numbers displaying Levels to measure the character’s ability and there will be Experience Points to gather for raise ones ability, but in her status screen, apart from name, HP and her stamina, there’s no text to displays the character’s Level.

Bur if stamina is raised from running, then she’s understand that her character’s abilities can be raised by doing activities relating to them. For example, This day’s running workout will raise the physical ability, especially in endurance and stamina.

On the next day, after she packed the leftover and dried grilled fish with banana leaves and put it in her shoulder bag, Gewalin quickly takes her saw blade sword and head inside the forest. In her whole life till now, Gewalin only travel through forest 3 times. By her slight, this forest is very familiar to the jungle she traveled through before, except for the trees that are abnormally huge, those piles of dried leaves, bushes, ivies, vines, tiny insects and withered branches are the same.

While travelling through the woods for a while, she then began to uncertain about if she should continue walking or should she saves up the time and go back to her shack? Traveling forward without knowing the destination is a bit too reckless, but then she remembered that she forgot to mark the track to go back to the river. Laughing off her silliness, she continues moving forward.

An hour has been past while she’s walking deeper under tree’s shades, Gewalin found herself lost in the deep woods without knowing directions as the sun was blocked by shadow of the forest, she can only remember the path between two big trees that she just walked through.

“Hisss!” A sound similar to snake threatening its foes appeared from her left.

Gewalin saw nothing at first except for a strange bush with its appearance similar to a caladium but with its leaves almost reach the size of threshing baskets. (TL : Caladium or Elephant ear is a species of plant with its leaves have the shape of heart. you can search on your browser for more detail :D)

Suddenly, a creature emerged from the gap in the bush and show itself in front of Gewalin. It is a reptile similar to the small dinosaur she saw in the movie that will hunt in groups, even if it is ‘small’ but it’s still a lot bigger than her.

Her feeling right now is totally different from when she faced the Freshwater Stone Crabs, especially with hostility of the creature with the eyes of a predator staring at its future food.

Gewalin is very certain that its reptile bulky mouth is smiling at her, unmistakably it’s the smile made when people saw delicious food before their eyes.

The threatening tone blasts again as a signal for Gewalin to run immediately without even thinking to fight, her only thought is “Too scary!”, the feeling of being preying on is very rare for people who live far away from jungles like her, but she now clearly understand how a deer who was chased by lions in animal doc.u.mentary movies feels.

A run for life once again, but this time she has more endurance unparalleled to the past. She almost got pierced by those sharp teeth many times, but with her smaller figure, she can extend the range little and little by chose to run through the narrow tree formations. The dinosaur, which is bigger than the gap between the trees, can’t run through it and have to take a detour around the trees and couldn’t catch its little prey even once.

While not successfully flee from the first one, the second and third and more joined the chase, make Gewalin more thrilled by the time pa.s.sed. She now has a total of five dinosaurs chasing her for intention of eating her alive, their hunger drive their saliva out of their mouth, strings of clear liquid making trails behind the chase. Gewalin has to throw her saw blade sword that getting in the way of her escape with regret, even if it’s not a fantastic sword, it’s her first handmade weapon anyway.

Her strategy of running through narrow gap of the trees worked well, she ran for quite a time until there’s finally no sound of footsteps chasing her anymore. She didn’t turn her face back as she hold the motto “Run for life, no look back”. She really grateful for her super high stamina recovery for allow her to run non-stop and finally get out of the woods.

Gewalin slowed down and sit to rest her heart which is throbbing rapidly to return to normal beat. She looked back at the silent forest, before she smile and laugh for herself. Sighing with relief, it’s really hard to believe that not many days ago she was a person living in the future with full of high technology developments, but right now she just fled from the chase of a pack of dinosaurs from ancient era. The sudden changes of environments leaves a strange feeling in her mind.

She look at the forest again, then get up and continue her way, thinking about the rage face of those hunters for let a delicious meal like her gone away.

Walking for a while, her surrounding changed to spa.r.s.e forest. Normal size trees growing separated from each other unlike the ancient jungle earlier. Gewalin travels forward with no destination in her mind for a time then she found a little human walking path that made by walking pa.s.s this path for many times cause the gra.s.s under withered away, showing the bare soil under it. Walking on this path for a while but still can’t find the end of this path, she decided to run instead and wondering why this little wild path is too strangely long.

The more she runs, the lesser trees she sees. From the spa.r.s.e forest, the scenery changed again to the open gra.s.sland. There’re few trees and bushes scattered around the places, and then, she finally found other player than herself.

20-odd meters further from her, there’s a group consists of four people arguing with each others in front of a structure that looks like an arch made out of stones that pop out of the ground.

When she gets closer, she can see more details of this group. three out of four are men in similar clothing, that is the brown hard leather clothes. They have two knives attached to their waist in each side, a short bow and a quiver on their back and a mini leather shoulder bag attached to their back and waist.

The another person is a young woman with different attire. She’s wearing a firm black long-sleeves robe with blue vest on top of it. Bottom part is a trouser and layers of leather armor that looks comfortable for moving but not really help in protection.

“Little-sis, can you come over here for a moment?” A young man in the group who looks more adult than the rest called Gewalin. She’s hesitating between running past them or have a little chat with them. Talking to strangers is not her strong point.

“What is it, big-brother?” It’s embarra.s.sing to address someone that certainly looks younger a big-brother, but with this appearance, she really should address him that way. It’s still better than trying address herself as a girl anyway, she would feel more unease if she’s not practice herself to get used in the role of a young girl with Kesorn beforehand.

“Do you want to join our dungeon exploration party?” (TL : A party in term of group in MMORPGs)

Before Gewalin even reply to that, a young man in the group interrupted her with his disagreement.

“It’s probably not good, brother. Look at her, that clothes she wore is a very beginner’s clothes. She will die before we even reach the door.”

Gewalin looks at herself and agreed with him. She just criticized other’s clothes but hers is even worse.

“I think so too. I will be nothing but a burden for you” She replied.

“What’s your Level? and how did you get here?” Another man apart from two earlier asked in the subject others forgot because of their desire to find more people for reasons.

The area they’re in right now is not a place for beginners to casually walk, because if ones didn’t have decent-Level comrades with them then they should have abilities high enough to survive.

“Level? this game has Level?” Gewalin asked with widen eyes in surprise.

“Hoy! just how long did you play this game!?” Young man who asked about her clothes shouted.

Gewalin thinks back again and answered. “This is the third day” Time pa.s.sed for three days but she feels like its at least five or six days in her mind as new things happened in last three days are really different from what she used to live in boring life before.

“Three days! Little-sis, you didn’t die once, right!?”

Gewalin shook her head in confusion.

“And you didn’t read the game’s manual before?”

She shook her head again. The young man raise his hand to interrupt and slowly explains things to her.

“Little-sis, for people who just entered this game the first time, they will be randomly sp.a.w.n somewhere on this world. When they died for the first time, they will be sp.a.w.ned at the main human’s town Gawglai City (TL : spelled Gaw-glai) most of them will die immediately after they was sp.a.w.ned because the system will randomly send players to the face of enemies, but whoever survived, if they have their luck with them, they will found players who’s grinding their level nearby”

“And what about Level?” Gewalin remembered the horde of crabs back in the riverbank and asked about Level she curious of. So this forced randomly resp.a.w.n system is the reason why she has to face to giant crab since the beginning.

“No, this game doesn’t actually has Level indication or system. Little-sis must hire the Nine-Dimensions Guild to appraise your abilities and you will get your certificate paper of how your abilities is in what level” He replied.

Although she’s still confused, but she could make out something now.

“So, what will you do now? I won’t refund the money OK? you are the one who’s not make a clear appointment so you’re the wrong one” The only woman in this party speaks for the first time.

Three young men look at each other. They’re adventurer party of four friends, after gathering information and make some researches, they finally got the key of the unexplored dungeon., but when they reached the deep part, they found a mechanic door that requires five people to pull the levers to open it, all of them have to go back to find more people.

Today they hired an adventurer who specialized in alchemy using common ingredients found in dungeons with really high cost for them to have enough people to open the mechanic door and have someone to brew potion for them during the adventure.

But when its reach the appointed time, one of them has an important urgent matter and can’t join the journey. When they’re discussing about this, Gewalin showed up in the same time.

“This big-bro think we need a little practice. Walk slowly, eliminate the enemies one by one. Losing a little times but I think we can manage to reach the door. We will talk about this later when we reach the destination”

The young man who called Gewalin looking at her from head to toe, then he open his inventory window from his bag and grabs a full set of leather armor, giving it to the girl before him.

“This big-bro gives you theses armors as a service charge for you little-sis. These are not expensive armors but a beginner like little-sis to find this quality of armors might takes up a lot of time. This big-brother’s name is King, That cheeky person is Jack, That silent one is Wattana and another person who didn’t come is Aekkarach, also this hired adventurer is Moonwitch”

“My name is Gewalin” Gewalin introduced herself after everyone just finished their introduction.

“Wear these armors now … this must be the first time little-sister wear these thing. Do like this; grab it and thinking about wearing it and there will be a window to chose the equip command. Select ‘yes’ and the armor will be equipped automatically”

Gewalin did as suggestion and successfully equipped her armors, she feels a little more maneuverable from before. The leather armor is that comfortable but it helps with some defense.

“Hey miss Moonwitch, share some of your health potion to this little-sis over here. Work like what you hired for will you?” Jack speaks in teasing manner as he doesn’t like the amount of money to hire this person.

Moonwitch giggled and hands her health potion to Gewalin. These health potion is in the gla.s.s container in the form of tube a little bigger than a pen. There’re ten of them.

“Little-sis Gewalin have to call your belt’s window and insert these potions in the empty slots, cheap armor like this have only ten slots at most. Can you see the number at the bottom? change its value to 50% and it will automatically heal you if your HP is lower than 50%” She’s speaking while inspecting the reaction from King, the leader of the party, thinking he will express his displeasure when she’s speaking in sarcastic tone, but he didn’t show any expression, as expect of an adult who can control himself.

Party invitation window from King showed up for Gewalin to hit accept b.u.t.ton. When she accepted, King leads the party into the dungeon immediately. He inserted the key into a hole in the middle of the stone door and turn it softly. The stone door lifted up to the ceiling, making a heavy stone creaking sound. The smooth stone staircase leading to a square main hall inside can be seen.

“You two walk on right side. When we was here earlier, there was no traps so we can easily walk through here but there will be low-level skeleton warriors blocking our way frequently. Wait for us to clear them out and follow” King informed two girls before he advanced inside.

Gewalin followed the group and observe the surrounding at the same time. Each square rooms was connected by a pa.s.sage with about three meters wide and high. The main hall is about two or three times higher than the pa.s.sage and has about twenty meters wide. Around the wall, there’re oil lamps installed far from each other in the same distance. Dim yellow lights is enough to see in the pa.s.sages.

And Gewalin found the first skeleton warrior, giving her a strange feeling about this scene before her. A skeleton with no skin or fleshes walking wobbly in front of her around ten meters. One of its hand’s holding an old rusted sword loosely, hands with no flesh to support clearly makes it harder to hold a sword.

Three young men ducked and moved to the skeleton’s back and attack simultaneously. With only one attack, the skeleton worrier breaks apart, scattered on the ground. Because in first their first exploration, there’s no interesting item drops from theses skeletons so King just leaves it like that and lead everyone forward.

Gewalin tried to pick a rusted sword that was left on the ground and saw that its edge is not sharp anymore, but it can still be used to attack with brute force so she grab it with her. The skeleton has no item in their body left so it becomes dust and disappeared.

“There’s no problem for you to pick that, but make sure you didn’t make any sound. The enemies will know we’re here” Wattana, who’s looking at her speaks. Gewalin nod in consent and quietly follows.

This kind of travel is to take care of those skeletons frequently and check for the traps until they stop at a wide room. Its wall has five levers attached to, every levers have the distance apart from each other about two meters.

King sighs quietly, thinking back when they have arrived here the first time and has to go back with great regret because they can’t solve this mechanic with lesser people than its requirement. If Gewalin did not showed up in the right time, not only they will lost their time for nothing, they will even lost their money to hire Moonwitch for a very high cost too.

“We tried to pull the lever one by one before but nothing happened. This big-brother is thinking that if we pull them altogether, it could work. Okay everyone! stand on your position, I will give the signal”

And after everyone is in their position, King gives his signal.

“When I counted up to three, everyone pull yours lever. Ready! one… two… THREE!”

All levers are pulled down together and a mechanic sound resonate across the room.

“Ohh yeah! it’s worked! Brother King is really right!” Jack clenches his fists hard and throw them in the air showing his cheerfulness.

Not cheering for long, the pa.s.sage they pa.s.sed earlier was suddenly blocked by a stone door moving upward to the ceiling with rumbling sound and the floor they’re standing on is slowly beginning to descend.

“An Elevator!” Jack exclaimed.

Stone elevator slowly moving deeper while their tension is building up until the time has past three minutes and stopped, the wall that used to be an entrance opened, showing the pa.s.sage with the same design as in previous floor. Therefore, this pa.s.sage is leads back to the same direction they entered, but in the deeper level.

King turn his head and gives a command to Gewalin and Moonwitch “You two wait here. When we finished checking for enemy’s trap, we will give you a safe signal and then you can follow”

Seeing the two nod two or three times, The three began their role they specialized at quickly. Wattana pulled out his duel knives from the sheaths, lower his body and slowly crawls forward, his eyes moving around, checking for traps with his trap detection skill. Only if there’re traps below the limit of his skill, those trap will glow in a very prominent light.

Jack hold his bow tight, ready to support from nearby and King, who has the highest level of enemy detection skill within the party, is using all his concentration to detect enemies in the dark with a bow in his hand. The three are rather strained because exploring new dungeon is a very dangerous work. Their first risk is that they have no information about their foe at all. When there’s no info, they can’t prepare beforehand. And worse than that, if it’s the new type they do now known of then, they better prepare their coffin by now. (TL : It’s mean prepare to die– cough — let us wait for ‘you died’ — cough)

“Wait” King whispered, the other two stopped immediately.

“In front of us, a skeleton with heavy armor ahead. Jack, you use your fire arrow and use Concentrated Shot skill together with this big-brother”

The skill ‘Concentrated Shot’ is a basic skill of archer. The skill itself is nothing complicate, just concentrate the power to pull the bowstring with all of ones might. They worked together for a long time, enough to make them synchronize their moves perfectly.

Two arrow pierced through the air making a sharp noise as one being together. Fire arrows repelled the darkness on their way while being shot in the air, revealed all four sides of the wall toward the target.

“Crank!” Arrows. .h.i.ts the hard iron plate and bounced off, resonates across the pa.s.sage. The three almost have heart attack, Concentrated Shot skill uses up some casting times but its power is many times stronger than normal, even if it’s a monster a lot higher level than them, it can’t defend the arrow to pierced through its armor. This mean, that if the arrow bounced off, their enemies are too far higher level than them to make any effect.

Skeleton warrior suddenly turn its head. Its eyes glow red like the fire shines in the darkness. It runs with its highest speed toward the intruders. Its foot armors. .h.i.t the ground very rapidly. Only hearing upon that, the three have to give up their hope and accept their fate. With area this narrowed and with the monster this deadly, none of their tricks could work against their impending doom.

But, it looks like the G.o.ddess is still smiling at them. Just only five meters before the skeleton reached their position, it stepped on a single stone plate, and that plate is a trap activator. The entire wall on this pa.s.sage with its length about six meters suddenly pushed forward and hit the skeleton warrior on the way, crushed it flat to the opposite side of the wall with high speed and high power. After that, the trap wall moved backward to its original position and become a plain wall like before perfectly, leaves a pile of the sc.r.a.ps of bones inside a super deformed armor across the room.

The resonant of the sound makes two girls on the back flinched, but with the darkness devoured this pa.s.sage, they see nothing at all. The three look at each other once again, then sigh in concert, terrified with what just happened.

“If brother King did not saw them first, we might be replaced the position with that pile of bones over there. My trap detection skill can’t even see this trap, brother. We’re not even ten meters far from it” Wattana tells his leader.

King compress his lips, forming a straight line. The level of Wattana’s detection skill, if not on the top ten, is definitely on the top of the top hundred of this game. They play this game together by let each of them train in separate specialization in the concept of organization so they can journey together by using each person’s skills according to the situation.

He himself trains the enemy detection skills, Jack trains the a.s.sa.s.sination skills, Aekkarach trains the survival skills and Wattana trains the skills about mechanic and traps. Because they don’t have to lose their time to train every single skills, they can access dangerous areas without having very high Level.

“Watt, will you risks yourself to try to disarm the trap?” King asks his teammate.

Wattana glances at the pile of sc.r.a.ped skeletons, then replied ” … Lets try brother. Even if I failed, I will probably get a lot of skill’s experience. If success, we don’t have to fear this kind of trap anymore”

“Umm … Jack, you go tell the two over there. If we failed here, we can’t go anywhere. Let us regroup here is better, This big-brother will explain this to them myself”

“Yes, brother” Jack got his word and go back to call the two girls and regroup.

Gewalin and Moonwitch look at scattered pile of bone on the floor with concerns. Moonwitch ask the three with doubts.

“I really wonder why you all don’t have any support item to a.s.sist in exploring the dungeon? It’s strange, really. You have high enough money to hire me but don’t even have a single support items? I traveled with many parties before but you are the first with nothing but yourselves”

“It’s not your business alright? just do your work as what you’re hired for” Jack utterly express his displeasure, but Moonwitch is not a novice-someone who will shook just by this expression. By her profession, she will meets with a lot of types of people anyway.

Other than gazing to Jack a little, She stares at the expressionless King with the hope of making something out, but he replied with his usual poker face.

“Actually, we have no reason to tell you apart from what’s in the contracts, but now we’re at the dead-end so telling you now is not going to be a problem”

King points his finger to the trap “Ahead, is a very high level trap even us can’t detect it. These kind of traps can be detected by some high level. You are no stranger to dungeons so you probably saw them before”

Moonwitch nods. There’re many items that have the ability to detect traps. Some kind of medicine, some kind of spells and even some kind of monsters have this ability, but most of them can only detect the traps with low complication. If for the higher level traps, ones will need rarer and more expensive item for those traps too.

“We’re the late generation adventurers, don’t have enough money to find those kind of items. The money used to hire you is our final sum of money” King speaks in a resign tone.

Moonwitch listened and sigh. An adventurer means a player who trains the survival skills and pioneers the new lands. Exploring each places have many chances to discover valuable items, but the person who’s late will be exploited because no matter where they go, everywhere are explored and there’s almost nothing left for them. These type of adventurers are a called ‘Late generation adventurer’.

“And you don’t have any friends who expertise in fighting?” To travel in dangerous places, there’s a need of fighters to fend off deadly monsters along the way.

King shook his head as an answer.

“I really amazed at you lot, really. To reach this far without any good items or high level player in your party. Moonwitch speaks as how she really felt. “Unfortunately, I don’t have any potion to gives the ability to detect traps in this journey. I thought you guys that even paid for me this far have everything prepared”

Even Jack has lost his irritation now.

“Right now, Wattana is trying to disarm this trap. If he’s success then we don’t have to fear this kind of trap on this level anymore and we will be able to travel deeper inside this dungeon. If not, our journey will end here”

King lets the others stand in safe place and gives a signal for Wattana to begin.

Wattana slowly and carefully step on the floor to activate the trap and called a Trap Disarmament skill’s window to examine and found six-colored cube puzzle with the total of nine cubes. Traps in Parallel Adventure game will uses different kinds of puzzles to disarm the trap according to its difficulty. six-colored cube is one of a many kinds of puzzle. (TL : It’s Rubik’s cube puzzle)

“They’re cubes, brother King. I think I can handle this, 9 cubes, five minutes” Wattana inform King.

“How many of cubes Watt’s skill able to skip?”

“Seven cubes, brother King, then I have to handle the last two myself”

Every level of Trap Disarmament skill means lower the level of puzzle to solve by one level. This means the trap they’re facing is on level 9 and Wattana’s Trap Disarmament skill is at level 7.

“Do your friend has any item to increase the level of Trap Disarmament skill?” Moonwitch asks King.

“Nothing, it’s all his own ability”

Moonwitch’s jaw is dropped when she heard the answer “You gotta be kidding me… I never saw anyone with the Trap Disarmament skill level reaches seven before, except for any rare item to increase the level of the skill”

Jack makes a heh sound in his throat and King makes a little smile. She then realized that if the trap detector has the level reached seven, then the other two won’t have any worse skill, less or more.

“Sorry to interrupt, can I ask a question?” Gewalin, who’s silent the whole time before, open her mouth for the first time.

“What’s it?” King replied.

“If we failed to disarm the trap, what will happen?”

“Then we’re dead. If we failed to disarm the trap, the trap will be activated immediately, and we will get a bunch of minced meat in our place” Moonwitch answer the question. She looks at the state of the skeletons in front of her and can guess how this trap works.

“If dead, what will happen?”

“Whoever died will returned to the sp.a.w.n point, it was up to each person that where they say their sp.a.w.n point at”

“Are we sp.a.w.n immediately?”

“We’ll have to wait. Ones with high level will have to wait a little longer, if it’s beginners then they will sp.a.w.n immediately … And how long did you guys have to wait to resp.a.w.n?” Moonwitch asks King in her last sentence.

“You really are nosy. But I will tell you, we need a full day to resp.a.w.n” King replied.

Moonwitch’s certain that he’s lying, which is not strange. Everyone has a need to keep their secrets untold, but if they actually uses up a full day then, that’s mean they’re players with middle ranking abilities to high ranking. Players this level is not really few nor many, this level of players can be archive if ones have enough effort for it.

Right now, Wattana is beginning to solve the six-colored cubes. The nine cubes are glowing and floating in the air, seven out of nine are turned white and another unsolved two are within Wattana’s hands.

Solving two Rubik’s Cubes in five minutes is impossible for anyone without experiences, but Wattana is sure that he can definitely solves these Rubik’s Cubes in five minute.

Gewalin, who’s never successfully solved the six-colored cubes puzzle even once, is really amazed after she saw how quick Wattana’s hands are moving. The first cube is solved within two minutes with heart beating fast, and the another one is solved in no time. Turns out that he can disarm nine level traps with no effort.

The sound of disarm trap is clicked. The wall that used to crush the enemy and is a part of this trap, moves itself aside and reveal a secret room hiding inside.

“My Trap Disarmament skill has reached the level 8!” Wattana tells King with joy.

King pats his younger friend to congratulate him and have him lead everyone inside the secret room that appeared instead of walking through the normal pa.s.sage. Every adventurers are known well that there’s always rare items hiding withing the trap controller room.

Inside the room are full of mechanic parts and a lots of giant gears. Across the room, there’re three levers aligned together in a line, each one has a metal plate with number on it.

Wattana stops and read look at the sign, speaking “We’re still lucky, this trap here has sat to level 9. If it were level 12 or level 15 then we’re done for.

“Brother king, there’s a sword here” Jack called from a corner of this room.

Everybody gather at the weapon that was hanged on the bars. Five long swords in its scabbard that looks very st.u.r.dy, Five shiny metal longbow and beside it is a locked metal treasure chest too.

King picks up a bow to examine and bent it to the end of his arm. He gives other two bows to Jack and Wattana.

“Save another bow for Aek, the last one and five swords are for selling … How’s it Watt? can you picks lock this chest?

“Level five chest, brother. If Aek is here then it’ll be easy”

“And what puzzle it used to lock?” Jack asks.

“Sudoku … no time limit, but you should find somewhere ti sit. I’m not really skilled at this puzzle” Wattana answers.

If this is a trap then his Skill could help him in solving puzzles, but for the locked chest, the skill connected to is survival that his is only on low level.

“Then this big-brother, Jack and Moonwitch will explore nearby. And little-sis Gewalin, you wait here, roaming around will just make you lost” Finished his line, they walk out, leaves only Gewalin and Wattana inside the room.

While Wattana’s having a headache trying to solve the puzzle, Gewalin began to explore the area inside the secret room. When thoroughly explored this area, she found that he mechanics in this room is very similar to a clock tower she saw in the picture, most of the mechanics are consist of many sizes of gears arranging in complicated formation.

And when she tried to explore the blind spot, she flinched in surprise. There’s a skeletons sitting in the corner of the room. At first she thought that she was finished, but when looking at it better, she found out that this’s just a normal inanimate skeletons. One thing that is very prominent is a glove. It was a square big long glove similar to that of transforming robot’s arm.

Gewalin turns and calls Wattana of her discovery, but he’s too concentrated on the puzzle that he can’t hear her call. Seeing like that, Gewalin decided not to interrupt him. Even she’s a little bit afraid, but her curiosity won this time, making her remove the glove from the body and hold it for a better look.

Gewalin needs all her arms to hold the glove, she estimated it to be around ten-odds kilograms. With a thought of having some fun with it, she inserted her arm inside the glove with the intention of trying to role-playing as a transformed robot. But when she inserted her hand to the end, the glove emit the sound of activated mechanic. Soft layer inside the glove shrinks and reshapes to support her hand and arm smoothly and finally a clear “Clink!” sound emits from the glove, it was like a sound when an elevator has reaches its destination or the sound of a microwave when heating up the frozen foods inside the convenient store (TL : In Thailand, this certain convenient store is 7-Eleven)

“I got it!” Wattana shouted in joyous when he finally solved the puzzle

Gewalin uses her left hand to support her super heavy glove, dragging her legs to Wattana who’s successfully open the treasure chest. In the moment when its cover open to the level to activate the machine inside, the click noise of mechanic hidden in the chest emits.

With the experiences in opening a treasure chests in dungeons for many times of Aekkarach that Wattana, who’s always looking him solving the puzzle, knows that this particular sound will be heard in chests with valuable item inside. Wattana moves his head to the side with a success to avoid the iron needle the size of a thumb that was shot out of the chest, but the one with bad luck is Gewalin, who’s coincidentally getting in the needle path.

The iron needle that was shot with high power, pierced her forehead between the brows through out of her head in the back before she even knows. In the next moment, she found herself sitting on the edge of a fountain in the middle of Gawglai city with confusion on her face.

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