*SPLASH*Leon plunged into a mysterious, cool body of water. The unexpected stimulus temporarily shocking him. After a moment he came back to his senses, and started swimming towards the surface. Leon had forgotten to breath since the moment he had started falling, and now could barely stop himself from breathing in a mouthful of water.
Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click for visiting.
As he breached the surface of the body of water, Leon greedily gasped for air. After he regained his composure, he was amazed by what he saw. There were countless things that had no business being underground, such as ma.s.sive trees, exotic fauna, and even animals. The landscape was breathtaking. There were waterfalls, canyons, meadows, mountains, and countless other beautiful sights.
"What the fuuuu..." his thoughts trailed off as he took it all in.
At first he thought that he was no longer underground, but then he realized that although it was ma.s.sive, he was still in some sort of underground cavern. The walls seemed to stretch out to the very limits of what he would be able to see, but they were indisputably there.
Leon pulled himself up out of the water onto a smooth flat rock at the edge of what seemed to be a small lake. The lake endlessly fed into a stream regardless of the fact that there was no obvious source of water supplying the pond itself.
Pushing back his long damp hair he looked up to where he suspected he fell from, yet there was hole in the wall that he could have slid through.
After thoroughly a.n.a.lyzing the cliff, Leon pushed thought to the back of his mind for the moment. He turned his attention back to his surroundings, and made his way up a small hill on the bank of the pond. What he saw on the other side once again took his breath away.
There were fields of flowers, directly next to breathtaking mountains, that were surrounded by forests of ma.s.sive trees. There were countless biomes seemingly packed together, surrounded by the intimidating walls of the cavern in a 30 mile wide dome.
All Leon couldn"t help but think "this makes no sense". In the world Leon lived in it certainly wasn"t rare for people to know, or use magic. This, however, seemed as if it was on a far to ma.s.sive scale to be explained just by magic, and yet Leon couldn"t think of anything else that could satisfactorily explain what was going on.
As he took in his surroundings his eyes landed on what seemed to be a paved road that started from a conspicuous looking platform that had strange carvings on its base, and lazily wound its way through the various sights towards something far off in the distance behind one of the various mountains.
Figuring that he had no better alternative he made his way towards the mysterious path. He crossed through a meadow filled with flowers, and a few rabbits, then leapt over a small stream, before making his way up a hill, and towards the path.
There was no doubt that the path was man made, but it didn"t seem as if it would be very practical to use as a road for carriages. It was made up of differently shaped flat rocks, that all fit very closely together, which made the road have an interesting pattern that resembled cracks. These cracks would have also made any carriage that attempted to use this particular road have a very b.u.mpy journey.
Leon made his way towards the mysterious platform, and grabbed a fruit off of a tree, in order to satiate his still grumbling stomach. As Leon approached the platform he couldn"t help but marvel at the sheer amount of money that must have gone into creating such a structure.
The platform itself was raised 5 meters off of the ground by some sort of magic, and was only connected to the ground by a staircase at the end of the path. There was a large circle that was glowing orange on the bottom of the platform, and if Leon was close enough he would have been able to hear a constant hum being produced by it.
As Leon munched on the various fruits he had picked on his way here, he began to climb the stairs that lead up to the platform. When he got to the top he recognised an array that was carved into the metal, which he felt like he had seen before. After a moment of thinking he figured it out. The array resembled the teleportation runes that was used by the royal army to teleport to pre designated places in order to quickly deploy where needed.
Although he was initially elated, he was soon let down as he realised that there was something missing from the array that prevented him from activating it. In the center of the array there was what appeared to be an empty diamond shaped slot, that Leon a.s.sumed was where some sort of key was supposed to be placed. Even with the key though Leon wasn"t confident that he would be able to activate the platform. He didn"t know the first thing about how to use magic, which was the privilege of the higher cla.s.s, and only rarely would commoners with exceptional talent be taught anything about magic.
As Leon turned away from the platform to follow the path towards where ever it would lead him, he noticed a small inconspicuous sign. The sign simply read "Welcome to the Dungeon of the Dragons Legacy". Leons jaw dropped.
"A dungeon? WHAT?" his mind started racing as he processed what that meant.
"Dungeons are notorious for killing even the most talented of wizards, and martial artists." Leon thought. "I remember reading about one notorious dungeon in particular that wiped out an entire legion of the kings elite knights from his royal army that he sent to challenge it. Apparently he wanted all of the riches that are supposedly hidden deep within every dungeon."
Leon was not foolish enough to think that he would be able to clear a dungeon, especially considering all of the stories about powerful people challenging them never to heard from again. The only problem was that it didn"t seem like he could leave on his own. He thought about waiting here for someone to come through the portal who could rescue him, but he quickly threw that idea out. There was no guarantee that anyone would be coming soon anytime soon, and even then he still didn"t have a key to activate the formation anyway.
After thinking it through he decided that he would follow the path while at the same time promising himself that at the first sign of danger he would run immediately, or even better, if possible he would hide. With an air of fict.i.tious confidence Leon began to follow the winding path once again, only this time he went away from the platform, and was proceeding much more cautiously.
He couldn"t help but eye every living creature that he pa.s.sed, and yet to his surprise not one of them even spared him a second look. This made him feel a little bit relieved, but at the same time he began to feel more, and more paranoid.
Leon made his way through meadows full of flowers, around giant rocky mountains, through forests full of ma.s.sive trees, and he even crossed over a canyon. As he followed the path for mile after mile, and pa.s.sed countless breathtaking sights, Leon eventually began to feel ever so slightly less paranoid, and he began enjoying his amazing surroundings. It was almost as if this path was created just to show off all of these splendid sights.
After hours of walking down the path Leon finally saw what appeared to be the end of the path. There were 3 ma.s.sive doors built into the side of a wall, and each one of them was unique. The leftmost one seemed to be an amalgamation of ice, countless rare and exotic metals, embers, dirt, and countless other things which weren"t as obvious that were held together by some mysterious force. The center most door seemed to be made out of... Weapons? There were swords, bows, daggers, arrows, and even some strange weapons that Leon couldn"t put a name to. The final door on the right was made out of several unrecognisable contraptions along with gears, nails, and even books.
There was no better way to describe the doors other than odd. As Leon approached the ma.s.sive doors he noticed that they each had a sign in front of them. The left door read "Trial of Magic" the center door read "Trial of Martial Ability" and the rightmost door read "Trial of the Mind".
After reading these signs Leon finally understood why no creatures were attacking him. To put it simply he was simply in a lobby of sorts. But this brought forth a more worrisome realisation. There were no people here. Given the fact that people could survive here without having to fear for their lives Leon was sure that he would have seen at least some people here, who either lost their nerves when they entered the dungeon, or were forced to enter as some sort of cruel punishment, and had no intention of facing any of these challenges. Regardless of how dangerous dungeons were there was no shortage of people who would try their luck at clearing them, and there were even entire cities build around dungeons.
A terrifying thought cross Leon"s mind, "what if this dungeon hasn"t been discovered yet?" Thinking back to how he ended up in this dungeon Leon realised that he did not enter it in a normal way. He somehow fell into it. Not that that made sense, it was just his only explanation. However, if that somehow was the case, then that would mean that he had no guarantee that this particular dungeon had even been found yet. Dungeons come in all shapes and sizes. Some appear like mountains, others like wells, while some other less inconspicuous ones appeared as giant towers. The fact that some dungeons could blend into their environment did not help to calm Leon"s nerves.
After coming to this startling conclusion Leon began to lose hope that someone would be able to come save him. He turned to look at the giant doors wearily as he realised that if he wanted to get out of this dungeon he would have to go through one of these doors, and he didn"t feel like living out the rest of his life in here away from civilization. After some thinking he decided upon the door that he would go through and stepped up to it. As soon as he touched it he was immediately whisked away to another location.